In the flare of lightning, the creature gestured unmistakably toward the rocky bank. They swam awkwardly for shore, keeping Sooleawa’s head above water. Chilaili dragged her daughter onto the broken litter where the lip of the ravine had crashed down. Sooleawa wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving at all. The strange creature bent, listened at her chest, then tilted Sooleawa’s head back and forced open her beak. It used surprisingly strong, blunt-fingered hands to press up under her rib cage. Water trickled from Sooleawa’s mouth. Chilaili saw at once what the slender creature was doing, pushing the water up and out by compressing Sooleawa’s lungs. Chilaili, stronger and larger than the stranger, took over the work.
The strange creature crouched down over the girl, listening, then fastened a tiny mouth over Sooleawa’s and blew air down her throat, again and again. Chilaili watched in astonishment as the creature—she couldn’t call it an animal, for it was clearly intelligent—worked frantically to try and breathe life back into Chilaili’s child. When Sooleawa twitched and moved, Chilaili’s fur stood on end. Her daughter made a choking sound, ghastly and weak, then her rib cage heaved and she started to vomit water. The creature hastily turned Sooleawa’s head, rolling her onto her side, which helped the girl bring the water up more easily. Chilaili took her daughter’s head gently between her hands and steadied her when she began to tremble violently, coughing and gasping for air.
At a blur of unexpected movement, Chilaili jerked her gaze up. The creature had abandoned them—but only for a few moments. It came rapidly back along the rocky lakeshore, moving at a somewhat reckless jog, given the uneven footing, the driving rain, and the uncertain shadows and flares of the lightning. It was carrying something, a squarish, bulky thing that proved to be some sort of carrysack, and used the glowing thing in its hand to light its way along the debris-riddled shore as it ran. The creature pulled from the carrysack something lightweight, as thin as the inner bark of the seylish tree. It spread the thing across Sooleawa’s shuddering frame.
It was a blanket of some kind, Chilaili realized, its surface silvery as moonlight and strange to the touch. Chilaili appreciated the effort, but it was far too thin to do much good. Sooleawa’s shudders eased away almost at once, however, startling Chilaili into investigating more closely. When she slipped a hand beneath the filmy thing, she found a surprising amount of heat building up under it. What strange manner of blanket was this? And what manner of creature was its maker?
At that moment, Sooleawa’s eyes opened.
Her gaze rested directly on the face of the creature which had saved her life.
Her pupils dilated in utter shock. “M-mother?” she gasped, stiffening in fright.
“Hush, dearest one,” she soothed, stroking her daughter’s wet head-fur. “This creature has returned your life to you, precious one. It risked itself to free you from a tangle of branches under the water, gave you breath from its own lungs.”
Sooleawa stared from Chilaili to the slender creature which crouched beside them. It was watching them through strange, luminous blue eyes. Its long head-fur, as black as the night, lay plastered wetly to its pale hide, falling in a bedraggled mass past its narrow waist. It wore strange body coverings over much of that moon-pale hide, coverings that looked ruggedly sturdy, to protect its fragile-looking skin. Beneath the upper coverings, its body bulged strangely at the front, and its hips flared wide beneath the narrow waist. It even wore coverings to protect its feet. If the blunt ends of its fingers were any indication, there were no claws inside those foot coverings, just bare stubs like those at the tips of its long, thin fingers.
It was looking at the belt Chilaili wore, the belt which held an empty sheath where she normally carried her knife. And as it stared, its round and luminous eyes narrowed slightly, its expression alien and baffling.
“What is it?” Sooleawa breathed, her voice an awestruck whisper.
“I don’t know,” Chilaili admitted. “It’s nothing like the Ones Above, is it?”
The akule had long kept sacred likenesses of the Ones Above who had created Chilaili’s clan, to remind them of their duty to their makers. They brought out the likenesses for the various sacred ceremonies their clan observed during the long wheel of the year. The creature she studied so closely in the lightning flares was as unlike the Ones Above as Chilaili was. And given its reactions, the way it stared back at her, this creature had never seen any of the Tersae before, either. Where had it come from? There was only one place Chilaili could think of that made any sense at all: the sky.
Certainly, there had never been anything like this creature anywhere in the world. And since the Ones Above dwelt amongst the moons and the stars beyond, it was reasonable to believe other intelligent beings might, as well. The Ones Above had sometimes spoken through the Oracle about devils among the stars, but this creature could be no devil. It was far too fragile-looking to be a devil. Besides, the devils spoken of by the Ones Above did nothing but kill and this creature had worked frantically to save Sooleawa’s life.
Its strange, glowing stick, its wondrous knife, and its gossamer-thin blanket told Chilaili that these creatures were able, like Chilaili’s makers, to manufacture things far beyond her understanding. She shivered beneath the downpour, staring almost fearfully into its luminous, alien eyes. It met Chilaili’s gaze squarely, then gestured carefully toward itself.
“Bessany Weyman,” it said, its voice an alien ripple of sound, pausing between the two words to emphasize their separateness. “Bessany Weyman,” it said again, then gestured to Chilaili and her daughter.
“Chilaili,” she said slowly, touching her own chest, then touched her child’s shoulder. “Sooleawa. My daughter, Sooleawa.”
Bessany Weyman repeated the sounds of their names. Its accent was strange, its eyes oddly compelling as it studied them. Flares of lightning and the driving rain caused it to shiver. It spoke again, a rapid burble of sound, then gestured down the shoreline in the direction of a good, deep cave Chilaili knew existed along the base of the cliff—the shelter she had been trying to reach when the tree had come down. Chilaili nodded, pointing toward the cave, then said, “Daughter, there is a cave at the other end of this shoreline. I have used it before, when caught by bad weather. Can you stand?”
Sooleawa was desperately shaky, but managed to rise to her feet with both Chilaili and Bessany Weyman to assist her. Bessany Weyman folded up its silvery blanket and returned the thing to its carrysack, then offered a shoulder for Sooleawa to lean against. Had Sooleawa been fully grown, the alien would have been far too short to be of much practical use, for it was a small creature, but Sooleawa had just turned fifteen and would not reach her full growth for a number of years yet. The creature’s shoulder was almost the perfect height for Sooleawa to lean against. Between them, Chilaili and the alien creature braced the shaken girl, helping her limp down the rocky, debris-littered shore of the lake.
Blood trickled hotly down Chilaili’s side from deeper injuries her daughter had sustained. Chilaili clicked her beak in agitation, but until they got Sooleawa to shelter, there was little she could do about the wound. Sooleawa was trembling violently by the time they found the cave entrance. It lay half a Tersae length above them, where the ravine wall sloped back under a deep overhang. They climbed a scree-littered slope, then stepped into a dry shelter, out of the wind and rain.
They eased Sooleawa down and Chilaili ran careful hands over her child, searching out the extent of her injuries and peering worriedly at the deep cuts which still oozed beneath Sooleawa’s fur. Bessany Weyman rummaged in the carrysack again, removing a number of fathomless items. The alien set up several shiny poles which somehow collapsed into themselves for storage, but when pulled open extended an arm span or more in length. It set the poles up carefully, angling them to its satisfaction and anchoring them against the rocky ground, then fastened to them a large, lightweight sheet of some tough fabric, similar to the silvery blanket, but made of a different substance.
It proved an effective windbreak, keeping out the gusts and occasional drifts of rain that blew into the shelter. A second item sent light flooding into every crack and crevice of their shelter, as bright as the noonday sun, yet Chilaili could feel no appreciable heat radiating from it. A third strange device looked like a squat, squarish lump of metal without any practical use at all, but when the alien fiddled with it, the thing began to glow a dull reddish color and gave off a delicious heat, warming their protected little shelter in an astonishingly short time.