Chapter 9

‘Sylviana, come here. This is something you must see.’ She went out and stood beside him on the parapet. Skither was preparing to leave.

He stood solid with legs spread and hooked claws clinging, his abdomen expanding and contracting as he prepared for the single thrust that would send a massive burst of air through the small opening in his purposely dislocated jaw.

He let the final breath gather inside him. Then spreading his wings for balance, he exhaled in a quick and powerful motion. The result was a whistling sound so loud and shrill that it wounded the hearing even through covered ears. All the Valley seemed to hush in its aftermath, an echo of silence, as if all life for miles around had stopped its breath to listen. Indeed, thought the girl, even a creature that did not know the massive killer from which it emanated, would be sure to stay far clear of the place from which the sound had come. The Mantis rested for a short time, then repeated its territorial warning.

Akar returned out of the larger cave as Skither’s breathing became normal once more. After several minutes he nodded imperceptibly to the wolf, then spread his wings and took off slowly. He circled the mountain twice, swooped low down the canyon as if in anger, then turned westward at the sandstone ridge and moved steadily out of sight. Sylviana stood watching Kalus, whose eyes gleamed with some fierce emotion that was beyond her experience, but not her ability to feel. He was silent, lost in some world of his past, then spoke.

‘It will be a long time before the Commodore ventures so far from its hole, to steal the flesh of those yet living.’

With this he seemed to come back to himself. He turned to the girl, contented. ‘There is much work to do.’ He reached above and behind her on the rockface to the place where he had set the pelt to dry. ‘Have you ever worked with leather or fur?’

‘Yes, a little.’

‘Good. Take my knife and see if you can cut four long strands from the skin, each about as wide as your smallest finger. They need not be straight; they are only for binding wooden poles. I go to the valley to fetch them. Do not leave here until I return.’ He began to descend, remembered himself. ‘The sword... ‘ He passed her and reentered their tiny island of space, emerged with the sword, unsheathed. Its well-preserved edges looked sharp in the sunlight.

‘Be careful,’ she said.

‘I am always careful. Akar will come with me.’ He took a lock of her hair in his fingers, and would have kissed her if he knew how. He whistled for the wolf and started down.

‘Kalus?’ He turned. ‘Won’t you need an ax to cut the wood?’ He could not hide his smile in answering.

‘I don’t have to cut it. I steal it from the beaver.’

The two hunters met on the broader ledge and descended into the shadows of the gorge, leaving the girl with only the large rabbit pelt and Kalus’ jagged knife, in truth not much improved from the museum relics she had studied as a child. She moved to a small, relatively smooth stretch of stone just inside the entrance, and laid out the fur upon it. She sat down and tried to work, but after several tentative starts had only succeeded in shredding one corner and cutting her finger on the knife. There seemed no safe way to grasp it, no soft or unsharpened place anywhere on it.

‘Oh, this will never work.’ She sat there on the stony ground, angry and frustrated, sucking her finger and cursing this backward, half-animal world.

But then an idea came to her. She tried to suppress it, but again the strange and uncharacteristic stubbornness crept over her. She moved to the dark fissure of the shaft and looked down, deliberating. After several minutes of internal bickering, she reached her legs out over the side, lowered herself to the first shelf, and began to descend.

Kalus and the wolf returned late in the afternoon. Sylviana had not been idle. As the man-child laid five straight and sturdy poles on the floor by his accustomed sleeping place, he found there waiting for him four long and curving strands, spiral cut from the skin to assure greatest length and thickness. The girl returned his questioning gaze, held up a long hunting knife it its leather sheath.

‘If you can steal a sword, I can at least take a few things to make my life more bearable.’

He looked past her on the floor to see one of the furs from her former bed, folded over and half filled with treasures she thought to keep. He asked to see the knife. He withdrew it from its sheath and gazed at it admiringly, not at all upset. Instead he nodded his approval.

‘You have done well. He said we could take one other weapon, and I see that you have chosen the best.’ He gave it back to her. ‘What are the other things? Will he miss them?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s just a few books, some bowls, and a flask for carrying water. And this.’ She pulled the fur closer, fished around inside it for a moment, drew out a small whet stone. ‘It’s for sharpening steel.’