would. Having chosen a life almost exclusively by sensation, she
exhibited little or no concern for the development of her intellect. She
had never learned to talk, showed only the vaguest interest in anyone
but her sister, and immersed herself with joyous abandonment in the
ocean of sensory stimuli that surged around her. Running as a squirrel,
flying as a hawk or gull, rutting as a cat, loping and killing as a
coyote, drinking cool water from a stream through the mouth of a raccoon
or field mouse, entering the mind of a bitch in heat as other dogs
mounted her, simultaneously sharing the terror of the cornered rabbit
and the savage excitement of the predatory fox, Verbina enjoyed a
breadth of life that no one else but Violet could ever know. And she
preferred the constant thrill of immersion in the wildness of the world
to the comparatively mundane existence of other people.
Now, although Verbina still slept, a part of her was with Violet in the
soaring hawk, for even sleep did not necessitate the complete
disconnection of their links to other minds. The continuous sensory
input of the lesser species was not only the primary fabric from which
their lives were cut, but the stuff of which their dreams were formed,
as well.
Under storm clouds that grew darker by the minute, the hawk glided high
over the canyon behind the Pollard property. It was hunting.
Far below, among pieces of dried and broken tumbleweed, between spiny
clumps of gorse, a fat mouse broke cover. It scurried along the canyon
floor, alert for signs of enemies at ground level but oblivious to the
feathered death that observed it from far above.
Instinctively aware that the mouse could hear the flapping of wings from
a great distance and would scramble into the nearest haven at the first
sound of them, the hawk silently tucked its wings back, half folding
them against its body, and dived steeply, angling toward the rodent.
Though she had shared this experience countless times before, Violet
held her breath as they plummeted twelve hundred feet, dropping past
ground level and farther down into the ravine; and though she actually
was safely on her back in bed, her stomach seemed to turn within her,
and a primal terror swelled within her breast even as she let out a
thing squeal of pleasurable excitement.
On the bed beside Violet, her sister also softly cried out.
On the canyon floor the mouse froze, sensing onrushing doom but not
certain from which quarter it was coming.
The hawk deployed its wings as foils at the last moment abruptly the
true substance of the air became apparent a provided a welcome braking
resistance. Letting its hind quarters precede it, extending its legs,
opening its claws, the hawk seized the mouse even as the creature
reacted to the sudden spread of wings and tried to flee.
Though remaining with the hawk, Violet entered the mind of the mouse an
instant before the predator had taken it. She felt the icy satisfaction
of the hunter and the hot fear of the prey. From the perspective of the
hawk, she felt the flesh puncture and split under the sharp and powerful
assault of her talons, and from the perspective of the mouse she was
wracked by searing pain and was aware of a dread rupturing within. The
bird peered down at the squealing rodent in its grasp, and shivered with
a wild sense of dominant and power, with a realization that hunger would
again sated. It loosed a caw of triumph that echoed along the canyon.
Feeling small and helpless in the grip of its winged assailant in the
thrall of excruciating fear so intense as to be strong akin to the most
exquisite of sensory pleasures, the mouse looked up into the steely,
merciless eyes and ceased to struggle, went limp, resigned itself to
death. It saw the fierce beak descending, was aware of being rended,
but no longer felt pain only numb resignation, then a brief moment of
shattering pain then nothing, nothing. The hawk tipped back its head
and bloody ribbons and warm knots of flesh fall down its gull. On the