Storm (2 page)

I jump into the stream and am instantly thrown off my feet. No! Where is he? I can’t see anything. I can’t regain my footing, so I scrabble to all fours and look around. Amare’s gone. “Where are you?”

They’re all gone. I’m shouting and flailing around for them, but they’re gone.

And the stream is a roiling river. I claw my way to the closest edge—the far edge—and roll away. The water follows me. The river widens by the second. An uprooted sapling slams into me. Then another. I get to my feet and run at a slant, uphill. The
ground is mud now. It sucks at my feet. I clump as fast as I can. The water swirls around my calves.

A fox goes swimming past! A mountain fox, way down here!

I look back. The cows on the field on the other side of the stream are gone. Maybe it’s just that I can’t see them through the sheet of rain. They’ve got to be there. Cows are big.

My brothers. I turn in a circle. They’re nowhere to be seen.

The water is at my knees.

The ground here is a gradual incline, and the water is climbing fast. I head for the promontory, where it’s bare rock going nearly straight up. I grit my teeth; I’m not a good climber. Amare is the best climber in the family.

I slog through the water and at least now it’s pushing at me from behind. It takes so long to get to the rock face. The water is at my waist now. It crashes against the limestone. I climb, feet and fingers seeking crevices, jamming in and hooking. Higher and higher.

I’m out of the water at last. I’m panting. Everything is so slippery. I have to keep moving or I’ll slide into the pool below. But I can’t keep moving. I have no energy.

Something falls somewhere, splat into the water below. It splashes the back of my legs. Move! I reach up, and, what? My hand flaps around in an opening. I pull myself up so my eyes are level with that hand. It’s a small area, not a cave, not even a proper ledge, just a rock shelf. But at least it offers a respite from the work of clinging. I climb onto it and sit, my knees against
my chest, my arms tight around them. I know my fingers bleed, but I don’t want to suck on them. I want to keep my knees as close to my chest as possible, and the only way to do that is to hold them in place with my arms. I must stay curled. I must shrink into a tight stone that can fend off the elements.

Perhaps the rain lessens a little or perhaps my eyes somehow work better, because for an instant I can see far out below—it seems like far—and all I see is water.

Mamma, Papa, Barak, Talas, Amare. I swallow. But they’re all stronger than me. All except Amare. They’re already on high ground. They have to be. When it stops raining, we will find one another, the whole family.

Something pinches my neck. I slap at it in terror. But it’s the swamp kit. Soaked to the bone. I pull on him till he comes free, strands of yarn still caught under his claws. He held on like a devilish fiend! Good. Good for him. I curl him into a ball under my chin, and I cradle him there with one hand closed over his head.

W
ater laps at the edge of the rock shelf. It’s still raining. I have no idea how long it’s been raining, for the passing of time is blurred. Night is thoroughly black. But day is various shades of gray with periods of pitch black now and then. So it’s hard to keep track. It might be two days, but it could be three. My stomach says it’s three.

Please, Ba’al, god of storms. It’s enough now. Please let that be enough. Please go to sleep
. I wonder if Ba’al hears my prayers. I’ve been praying on and off the whole time.

I press my lips together. Prayers are one thing, thoughts are another. Gods hear only prayers. That’s a relief, for I have few good thoughts about Ba’al right now.

I close my eyes, tilt my head back, and drink the rain.

Screamer, as I’ve dubbed the swamp kit, doesn’t scream even though my head movement exposes him. He’s so weak, he hardly makes a noise anymore. But he licks at the trickle of water that comes down the front of my neck.

The rasp of his tongue feels good. Warm. This rain is not cold, but just being wet all the time has chilled me. I fight shivers.

Something sharp strikes my forehead. Then many sharp things. I right my head and open my eyes as pebbles come pelting down. More and more of them smack the top and back of my head. I need to move, but if I stand, the rock slide could sweep me from this shelf. I can’t decide what to do; I can’t think straight.

The pebbles stop.

I sit waist deep in mud and pebbles. My toes wiggle free. Beside me is a young bird. A bedraggled chukar partridge. It lies limp, its head flopped to one side, but I see its chest rise and fall, rise and fall. I pull it carefully from the rubble. “Thank you,” I whisper, and wring its neck. That’s the fastest way to kill a bird, the most respectful way. But the head comes off in my hand, an unintended violence. I stare at it a moment, then I clear a spot of rock shelf at the rear and set the head down. I place Screamer beside it.

The kit looks at the head.

“Eat it or die.” I wipe my tears and snot with the back of one hand and get to work plucking the bird. Then I bite into it. I’ve
eaten raw eggs, raw goat and sheep, of course, of course; lots of meats are as good raw as cooked. But I’ve never eaten raw birds. My stomach turns and I retch into the water that laps around my toes. I bite again and force myself to chew. I spit out bones. It’s surprising, disappointing, how quickly the bird goes from being hot to being cold. Even the blood is cold now. There’s an instant of terrible bitterness. That green stuff Mamma taught me to carefully scoop out, no doubt. But it passes. Now I chew on the feet. I doubt I can swallow them, but chewing feels good. The bird was small, not rotund like a chukar should be. Maybe it hadn’t eaten since the rains started, just like me. I could eat three more.

I look over at Screamer.

He’s tapping at the bird head with one paw. The helpless idiot. I push him away and crush the head with a rock. I dig out the tiny brain and extend it to Screamer on my fingertip. With my other hand, I make a roof over my finger so the rain won’t wash away the precious sustenance. Screamer eats the brain. Daintily. Funny kitty. I’ve lost all table manners, but Screamer has not. I suck the eyes out of the destroyed sockets and give them to Screamer too.

The water around me moves in tiny waves. It carried away my vomit and seems almost clean now. So I wash my face and hands in it. It stings my eyes. I taste it. It’s salty! The rain has been so heavy, it’s made the seas rise this high. The seas!

This is a magic rain. An evil rain.

I can’t think about that. I can’t succumb to terror. Get moving!

I fight my way to standing and lift Screamer onto my shoulder. We have to climb higher. He quickly moves under the curtain of my sopping hair.

I fold my hands into a ball in front of my mouth and exhale on them. I was lucky not to fall backward when I climbed to this shelf.
Please, whatever force is helping me, please stay with me now. Don’t let me fall. Don’t let another shower of pebbles sweep me away
.

I climb. And that mysterious force must be right beside me, for just a body length higher up the rock face is a clump of ferns that must have been washed there from a patch of grassy hillside above, and in its midst dangle three more birds. I’ve raided chukar nests before—simple ground scrapes in the middle of ferns or bushes. These fledglings should have gone off on their own days after hatching. But here they are.

“Hello, little chukars. Scraggly things. Hello. Did you return to your nest—pathetic as it was—seeking comfort? Poor, desperate things.”

I climb in tiny increments to keep from falling, my eyes on the ferns. I hardly dare breathe as I reach out a hand and tuck the birds between my mantle and my shoulder. If they stay alive until I arrive someplace where I can eat them, they won’t rot. Dead things rot. Fast. Though maybe not in rain like this. “I’m sorry,” I say to them.

Three of them. I search through the ferns, but only with my eyes. I won’t risk letting go of the rock unless I’m sure there’s a
bird to grab. But there aren’t any others. The ferns held exactly three. That’s what my thought had been:
I could eat three more.
I should have thought,
Many more
. Chukar nests can hold ten eggs, even fifteen sometimes.

“What do you think, Screamer? Hmm. Are you saying I couldn’t have kept them alive long enough to be able to eat them all fresh killed? Good point. Their bodies would have been wasted. It’s better this way. Only three is better. You’re right.”

I climb, and the rock gets ever more slick. I hold on with fingers and toes, pressing my whole body to the surface as hard as I can. It scrapes my cheek with each upward movement. The pounding of the rain on my head replaces all thought. It doesn’t hurt, it just wins.

At last my hand reaches an open spot again. Let it be a cave this time.

But it’s a peak. I crawl over the edge and onto an alm—a mountain meadow—the home of my chukars, no doubt. I stand and walk away from the edge. My feet slip on mud that’s a thin layer now; the rain has washed so much away that here and there bare rock shows through. I balance carefully, arms out to both sides, moving slowly. The mud grows thicker the farther I get from the cliff edge. I sink into it gratefully. Dirt means plants. I know plants.

The rain falls as heavy and steady as ever, but the air is light enough that I can make out extensive green of varying heights ahead. I walk slowly. The plants don’t make themselves known
to me till my hands reach for them. Coriander greets me like a charm. I stuff the lacy leaves in my mouth and imagine the green juice running down my throat, seeping through my insides, making me spicy too. I chew on the more pungent stems now. The root comes up and I didn’t even tug on it. That’s because the ground is so sloppy. I hold the root up to let the rain wash it, then I eat it. Good. This is good.

I pull a chukar out from under my mantle, whisper thanks, and twist its neck. I don’t know for sure if it was still alive. I don’t want to know. We need that meat, Screamer and me. I reach for the kit, who huddles under my hair behind my neck, on the outside of the mantle. He resists. Idiot.

I give him a hard yank and he comes loose, a strand of yarn under a claw again. At this rate, he’ll ruin us. I drop him in the mud and plop the bird’s head and one wing in front of him. “I’m not going to crack the skull for you this time, Screamer. Do it yourself.”

The kit stays hunched, as though by bending his legs he can escape the rain.

I pluck the rest of the bird and eat it.

Screamer just stands there.

I kneel beside him. “I know you’re a baby. But you can’t stay a baby all your life or you won’t have one. Eat or die.”

Screamer just stands there.

I smush his face against the bird head. “Please. Please eat. Come on, Screamer. Eat the eyeballs, at least. Please.” And the
kit finally tears in. He eats the eyeballs first, as though he understood my words. Now he eats the tongue. He cracks the thin bones in the side of his little jaws and makes mewly guttural sounds. He’s got to the brain now. Good. Finally he gnaws on the wing. Ineffectually.

I snatch it from him and he growls at me. “You couldn’t be a worse idiot if you tried.” I pluck it and give it back to him. Screamer devours it. He grinds the bones with his back teeth.

This meal, as it were, took time. And though I’ve just eaten, I feel as though I could drop. I crawl on all fours into a lush thickness of green. Not only coriander, but dill and fennel. Maybe the seeds blew here from fields below, or maybe these plants have grown here since the beginning of time. But if this rain keeps up, they might not be here much longer.

I lie on my right side with my left arm reaching across my chest and a little forward. Screamer nuzzles his way under my arm, so that the sleeve of my mantle makes a roof for him. I should kick him out. If something happens to me, he has to fend for himself. He has to learn. But I can’t think straight right now. Besides, I knew when I propped my arm that way—I knew the kit would take the opportunity. A pair of idiots. I close my eyes.

Thud.

I struggle against the weight on me. I shout and push. The weight rolls off and gets to his feet.

Screamer screams.

I’m on my feet, eyes level with the chin of a boy in front of me. It’s very dark—night dark—but even so I can tell his face is distinctive, large nose, wide-set eyes. I might know him. He might be a fisher boy.

“Sebah?” he says.

I don’t know his name. But I’m sure that’s who he is now. “You must be fast,” I say.

“What?”

“You raced up the hill ahead of the water.”

“No. I was in a boat when the rain started.”

A boat! “Where? Where’s your boat?”

“I couldn’t bail fast enough. It filled to the brim.”

“So you swam here?”

“I can’t swim. I held on to the gunwale. Boats don’t sink unless they spring a hole.”

“So where is it?”

“It floated to a rock face and I climbed away. To safety.”

“You let the boat go? You idiot! The boat was safety!”

“Who’s an idiot? If I didn’t get out of that boat, I wouldn’t have anything to eat. I lost my nets. You can’t catch fish with your hands.” He puts his face in mine. “You’ve been eating.”

“Coriander grows aplenty here.”

He pushes his tongue into my mouth. I jerk backward. “I knew it,” he says. “Blood.” He puts his hand behind my head and grabs me by the hair, pulling me up so hard I have to stand on tiptoe. “Give me your meat.”

“Let go.”

“Meat first.”

“What? You think I’m going to run away?”

“You carry a knife.”

He knows things about me. My teeth feel grimy at the thought.

He puts his other hand on my throat and feels for the string that normally holds my pouch. He reaches farther down.

“Stop!”

His hand moves up again. And he finds them. He pulls out a chukar. The fledgling should have died of terror by now if nothing else, but it lets out a quick series of
chuk-chuk-chuk
s loud enough to hear through the rain. I’m amazed. The boy’s lips protrude and his brows come together. “You ate one of these?”