“Radio,” it said slowly.
“Radio?” Chilaili copied the strange word.
It nodded.
Chilaili thought about the best way to word her question. “Radio is human Oracle?”
It studied her with an expression that—if Chilaili were interpreting it correctly—radiated considerable surprise. “Oracle?” it repeated the word.
Chilaili tried to explain, pointing to the sky. “Oracle. From the Ones Above.”
Abstract concepts were almost impossible to convey, with their painfully limited vocabulary. Chilaili pointed to Bessany Weyman’s complex tools, pointed to the sky. “From the Ones Above?”
The alien seemed to understand that Chilaili knew these devices had come from the sky, and that somehow, Chilaili had seen something else that had come from the sky, but it didn’t look very happy about that fact. The human asked, “What are the ‘Ones Above’?”
Chilaili used one claw to sketch the general outline of the Ones Above in the mud. “The Ones Above,” she said, pointing from the muddy drawing to the sky again.
It was a crude sketch, very little like the Ones Above, really, but the shape she’d drawn looked nothing like a Tersae and even less like a human. Bessany Weyman stared at it for a long time, then pulled a device from its carrysack and pointed it at the drawing. Chilaili hurriedly erased the marks, worried now, and more than a little afraid. The alien held her gaze for a long moment, then wordlessly put the device away again. It brought out another device instead, similar to the collapsible poles of the shelter frame, only this one opened into a circle at one end, then bent back around to fasten securely. To this, the alien attached a long, almost transparent net of exceedingly fine mesh.
Bessany Weyman gestured for Chilaili to follow, then led the way around the end of the lake, to a deep pool where a shelf of rock made an ideal place for fish to gather. It peered down into the water, which rippled grey-green in the cloudy morning light. Rain pocked and roiled the slate-dark surface. Chilaili could see the warm shapes of fish in the chilly depths, good-sized fish, enough of them to feed Chilaili, her daughter, and the alien. The human studied the fish for several silent moments, then dipped the net swiftly, with a sure movement, and dragged three to the surface. They struggled wildly, but the net was made of strong fiber. The alien scooped them out, killing them neatly with a sharp blow of their heads against the rock. It waited patiently for the remaining fish to lose their fear and regather, then dipped the net twice more, capturing ten fish in total. The human handed half of them to Chilaili.
She accepted with a rumble of thanks in the base of her throat.
They returned to the shelter, where the human proceeded to build an ordinary fire, although it lit the wood with a device as strange as the flameless heater. It then produced a small knife-shaped device and touched a recessed place in its end. The knife began to hum with a strange, very low sound. This, then, was the tool it had used to free Sooleawa from that underwater death trap. The blade was as long as the human’s hand—and the alien took great care never to touch that blade with its fingers. It used the humming knife with great skill, gutting all ten fish, stripping off neat little fillets almost completely devoid of bones, then tossed the offal and gristly bones into the water, glancing occasionally at Chilaili as if to check whether or not it had violated some clan taboo with each new activity.
The human cut several short sticks from a nearby shrub, then did something that caused the knife to fall silent. It put away the strange tool and spitted the fillets on the sharpened sticks. Chilaili and her strange new companion held the makeshift roasting spits over the flames and soon the tantalizing scents of hot fish filled their little shelter. Sooleawa sat up, pulling the silvery blanket around her shoulders with a shiver, but ate with fair appetite—a truly hopeful sign.
They shared the meal in silence, but it was a companionable silence, born more of hunger than uneasiness or lack of vocabulary. When the last, flaky morsels had been eaten, they started another language lesson, which carried Chilaili and the human far beyond the shelter, naming everything within sight. The alien tried to convey a sense of grammar and language structure as it strung together words and attempted to communicate the concepts behind those groupings. By nightfall, Chilaili was starting to make progress. By the end of the next day, she was able to speak in crude, somewhat disjointed sentences, although somewhat seriously limited in scope and topic. That second night, she taught Sooleawa everything the human had taught her during the day. Her daughter carefully repeated back the words, glancing at Bessany Weyman to confirm that she’d said them correctly. The alien wrinkled its face in the pleasure expression again and again, saying, “Yes” and “Good” many times.
On the third morning, when it was clear Sooleawa would be able to travel again, their unlikely companion packed up its carrysack and made ready to return to its nest. The human actually invited them, with gestures and words, to accompany it. “You come my home, Chilaili, Sooleawa. You come, much happy.”
Chilaili and Sooleawa exchanged a long glance, then Sooleawa said, “I would like to see the human nest, at least, Respected Mother. I want to know more about these creatures I owe my life to. If you think it safe?”
Given what it had done for them already, Chilaili couldn’t imagine the human deliberately doing anything to harm them. And Chilaili, too, was curious. Moreover, as Icewing Clan’s katori, it was her responsibility to learn everything she could about these newcomers, to protect the clan as best she could. So they went with the alien, walking for three full days through broken country where deep gullies and ravines slashed unpredictably through miles of forest. Stands of thick-boled conifers showed like dark streams flowing through the vast, pale-green seas of broad-leafed trees that predominated where soil and rainfall allowed them to thrive. When winter came, the broad, water-rich leaves would turn crimson and brilliant gold, then fall in a brightly colored rain, leaving the dark-needled conifers to rule the eleven long months of darkness, snow, and ice. Come winter, every other living plant would go deep into hibernation or die back to roots and seed pods.
Scattered here and there, in sheltered valleys and white-water gorges, rushing plumes of water shot out across the ragged, jagged lips of stone, falling with a perpetual misting spray. Tree ferns swayed like graceful girls and broad-spined, prickly akrati fronds rattled like whole nestfuls of warlike boys caught up in late summer’s courtship dance. By winter, these gorges would be solid ice, fantastical sculptures of it, where waterfalls froze, locking away the tree ferns and the prickly akrati in a coating of solid ice up to a handsbreadth thick. Winter turned such gorges into a breathtaking wonderland—where one tiny misstep could leave a body crushed under cracked and falling tons of ice and snapped-off trees or impaled on ice swords and thorny protrusions where akrati fronds jutted out with six-foot-long points of ice.
Winter on Chilaili’s homeworld had five hundred brutal ways to kill the unwary, the careless, the poorly trained. Chilaili worried about the humans. This world did not forgive ignorance or poor judgment or even one moment of inattention. When the deep cold came—all eleven, bitter, long moons of it—even native animals were pushed hard to the ragged edge of survival. The clans always lost heavily over the winters: the old ones, those who fell ill or suffered some other weakness or infirmity, the unlucky huntresses who came back maimed, if at all. How could the humans, complete strangers to winter’s treacheries, possibly hope to survive, even with their magical tools?
Chilaili and her companions finally reached the edge of a large valley which Chilaili had seen before, only too many times. She stared, horrified. The humans could scarcely have chosen a more dangerous place to build, a fact she did not yet know enough vocabulary to convey. Sooleawa tipped her head to peer up at Chilaili, having caught scent of Chilaili’s sudden, acute worry.
“What is it, Mother?” she asked in a low whisper while the human forged on ahead, greatly excited now. “Do you know this place?”
Chilaili turned her gaze from the long, knife-blade gouge in the ground and met her daughter’s troubled eyes. “Oh, yes,” she murmured in their own tongue, “I know a great deal of this place.”
A long, steep-walled gorge snaked away through the badlands of cliffs and broken fissures, topped with its fringe of forest like a heavy green beard. A sparkling clear lake drowned the far end of the valley, born of the meltoff pouring down from an immense glacier that towered above. Calving ice thundered down each spring in an avalanche of debris that spilled into the far end of the lake and set its pristine waters to sloshing. The humans’ hard-walled nest stood within a spear’s throw of the lake. High above, water exploded in freshets and gushes, leaping down across the face of the glacier and roaring through the narrow upper fissure where this particular gorge was born.