Diego didn’t answer. He listened with part of his mind to what she said, and with the other part, he was composing a song. Again, he longed for an instrument, wishing to make a song with angry music which even the biggest drum could not emphasize strongly enough.
When they camped for the night, he began writing his song down, while sunny looked on curiously, still talking.
Her voice was like rain falling now, or the drone of a ship’s engine. He nodded and grunted, but the song was at the front of his consciousness.
Buried alive, screaming,
The stone smothered
The roots strangled
The soil smothered
White death like
Your snow-skin
From one like
But unlike
A son.
Diego stopped writing. The planet should have a song for that murdered part of it, but this was not complete, not right. It needed a better song than this. He sang it to Bunny and she thought it was good, but then, the critical side of his nature reminded him, she was also proud of her jingle about her snocle license. This song must be the very best that could be sung, for it was of terrible injuries that must be healed.
The next morning, riding toward Harrison’s Fjord, they were silent.
You are not a cub and you cannot live forever with me in the Home, Coaxtl told Goat-dung.
“I understand why you would not want me,” Goat-dung said, “for I am nothing and no one. But if I cannot live with you, then go ahead and eat me now, for I’d rather be eaten by a friend than by strange beasts, and I will not return to Shepherd Howling.”
Did I say that you should, foolish youngling? But there are others in the village at the mouth of this river.
“They’ll make me go back,” she said, full of fear, but Coaxtl said she would wait, and if they tried, she would kill them and take her to a farther village.
So there was nothing for it. She submitted to the will of the cat as she had submitted to the will of others eventually on every occasion but one. Coaxtl walked with her for a way; but on the open plains, where only cold waters fed the river, she lay along Coaxtl’s back, hands locked in her mane, knees pressing against the cat’s ribs, so that they could cross to cover more quickly.
The sky was still pale pink from the setting sun when they heard the beating heart of one of the company’s hummingbird airships. Coaxtl wanted to run away, but the plain was vast and the airship faster even than the big cat’s great strides.
Goat-dung watched with awe as the airship approached. She had seen other aircraft in the sky, and the Shepherd had told them those were the Guardian Angels of the Righteous, sent by the company to over see them. She had seen a hummingbird ship only once before, however, when it delivered supplies to the Vale one hopeless winter when a team of the men had walked into Bogota seeking relief. The Shepherd Howling had agreed to this only reluctantly, for she heard him arguing with his advisers: but they knew they would starve without assistance. When the airship came, it was wonderful. Food, more food than they had had in months, and even warm clothing and toys for the children.
So Goat-dung was not afraid when the airship hung above them, close enough that she could see two men arguing through the glass bubble that formed the hummingbird’s single eye.
She climbed off Coaxtl’s back, feeling the soft warmth of the cat’s fur through the rents in her clothing. Her feet were bound up in uncured rabbit skins now, fur side in; the skins stank, but they kept her feet warm. Stunned with fascination, she watched the airship set down.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Coaxtl?” she asked the cat. When there was no reply, she turned to see the cat bounding back across the tundra.
A thought whispered back to her across the distance. Your own are here. Good hunting and warm sleeping places, youngling.
“Good hunting and warm sleeping places, Coaxtl,” she whispered back, under her breath, but already she was watching the handsome pilot emerge from the aircraft and the tall, thin man with the high forehead and long white tail of hair walking toward her. Another man lingered in a second doorway in the back of the airship.