Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“But if you breed, your numbers will grow, and you’ll eat all your animals and go hungry again.”

“Promise of Potipur,” it said stubbornly. “Promise. You hold still now. For Tears.”

“Tears don’t work on the Noor,” she cried. “They don’t work on blackskins.”

The flier stopped, beak agape. “Noor. You are Noor?”

“I am, yes. Medoor Babji. One of the Noor.”

“No. Dark from sun. Humans turn dark from sun.”

“I am not dark from the sun, Esspill. I was born dark. Look at my hair. The Tears won’t work on the Noor. It won’t grow inside us.”

“Try,” the flier snarled. “Try anyhow.”

She edged away again, feeling in her sleeve pocket for her knife. “I’ll fight,” she threatened. “I may kill you.”

“Fight!” it commanded. “Do that!”

Wings out, claw fingers stretched wide, talons lifted, beak fully extended, Esspill launched herself at Medoor, who dived in a long, flat dive into the River. It was instinct, not reason. It was the best thing she could have done. She came up in the water, clinging to the bowline of the Cheevle, began tugging at it, frantically working the boat into the water beside her. On the shore the flier danced up and down, pulling the boat away from her, screaming its rage.

Then it was gargling, its beak wide, eyes bulging. A long wooden shaft protruded from the flier’s breast. She turned around, staring. Through the rocky arms that embraced the bay came another boat, no larger than the Cheevle. In it sat a man. In it stood a … a flier? Not a flier? Something very like, and yet not?

It had a bow in its wing fingers, an arrow nocked, the arrow pointed at the shore where Esspill still staggered to and fro, falling at last in a shower of dark blood onto the sand.

“Hello?” called the person. “We saw your smoke. We’ve been looking for you for over a week.”

“Thraish,” cried the other, drumming his keeled breast with his wing fingers to make a hollow thumping. “I have killed a Thraish.” Thumpy-thump, delight in that voice. “Look, Burg, I’ve killed a Thraish!” It turned toward Medoor Babji, bowing. “Happy day, woman. I have saved you.”

“We’re called the Treeci,” he told her, working the sculling oar as they moved down the coast, westward, the Cheevle in tow. “Have you heard of us?”

“I have,” she admitted. “There are Treeci on a place called Strinder’s Isle.”

“Oh, there are Treeci on half the islands in the River,” he said, making an expression that was very smilelike with a cock of head and flirt of eyes.

“That’s possibly an exaggeration,” said the human person. He was a stout, elderly man with white hair that blew around his head like fluff.

“Possibly. Or possibly an understatement, so far as that goes. What was that Thraish trying to do to you, eat you?” The Treeci turned to Medoor Babji once more.

“She had Tears of Viranel wrapped up in a leaf. She wanted to put them on me and then eat me. Tears don’t work on the Noor, though. Our skins are too dark.”

“I’ve heard that. Had you heard that, Burg?”

“Oh, it’s probably written down somewhere. In the archives over on Bustleby. It’s probably written down there.”

“You know about the Noor?”

“We have histories, young lady,” said Burg. “We aren’t savages. We’re literate, human and Treeci both.”

“But where—where did you come from?”

“The same place you did, originally. Probably for the same reason. Trying to get away from the senseless conflict over there.” He jerked a thumb to the north. “Long ago. At the time of the Thraish-human wars. They were eating humans then. It’s a wonder they haven’t eaten them all by now.”

Medoor Babji shook her head. “No. No, we have a—they have what my mother calls a detente. An agreement. They eat dead people. Northshore dead people, not Noor dead people.”

The Treeci spat. “Carrion eaters,” he gasped. “So I have heard, but I find it hard to believe, Medoor Babji.”

“Oh, come, Saleff, the Thraish were eating human dead during the wars. You know that.”

“Out of desperation, yes, but …”