Chapter 21

 

Kir carried on in silence until early evening, by which time they were in the skirts of the mountains.

Dej didn’t mind staying quiet; all that howling and screaming had left her throat sore, and talking hurt. Instead she used the ride to get used to the world as it now was. When she focused on this or that thing – she wasn’t always sure what was a plant and what an animal – from her perch on the rhinobeast’s back, knowledge sometimes popped into her head; she knew, by looking, whether it was safe to eat, or dangerous, or its relationship to some other thing. Other times she didn’t get any idea of whether she could eat, or be hurt by, whatever she was looking at, or even what it was.

And there was something else. She knew they were heading north, for the mountains, but that wasn’t just because she remembered her lessons. She knew because she sensed it, inside. Like knowing up from down, she knew which direction north was.

At one point, as they took a small diversion to avoid a dried-up riverbed, Dej looked back south, but she couldn’t see Shen, just the desert. Only now, as evening fell, was the light the colour she was used to in the shadowland, gold rather than silver.

When they stopped for the night Kir dug out more jerky. Dej asked if there was anything else to eat. Kir nodded. “Your belly needs filling. Wait by the beast.”

Kir stalked away into the twilight. She stopped a little way off, raising then lowering her head, as though listening, then scenting the air like a dog. She walked a few steps farther, stopped and sensed again. After the third change of direction she whipped out her knife and fell to the ground, stabbing at the earth. Dej wondered if her companion had gone mad, before realizing she was using the ironwood blade to dig a hole.

When Kir straightened she held a pale shape as long as her forearm. Some sort of grub, slow-moving, with a soft beige body and beak-like brown lumps at both ends. Dej’s new senses told her it was edible. She wasn’t convinced.

“Fetch the bowl from the pack on the top left.”

Dej did as Kir asked. The rhinobeast huffed to itself as she rummaged around in its luggage webbing.

“Now hold this end.”

Again Dej obeyed, although the grub wriggled disgustingly, exuding a smell like old boots and a not-quite-heard whine that put her teeth on edge. Kir ran her knife along the bug’s underside, tipping it up so the liquid that came out – pale brown and thick as honey – drained into the bowl. Kir offered her the bowl and Dej took it, making herself drink without hesitation. It tasted sweet, though with a mushroomy aftertaste. She offered the half-empty bowl to Kir, but she shook her head.

Afterwards her stomach gurgled, but she felt stronger, the aches and pains more distant.

“You need solid food?” asked Kir.

“Yes. Please.”

Kir lit a brushwood fire and rolled the bug carcass into it. The dead beast sizzled and popped.

The land around them contained enough life to confuse her still-tender senses, although with night coming on, some of the activity was muted. Dej looked beyond the fire, back down into the darkening desert lowlands.

“No questions?”

She looked over at Kir. “Loads. I’m not sure where to start.”

“Hmm.” Kir wasn’t going to give her any clues.

“All right. How long was I lying out there, before I woke up?”

“Two days.”

Min would have left the crèche by now. “And you were waiting there, all that time?”

“Much longer and I’d have left you to it.” Something on the bug gave a meaty pop. “That’s about ready,” said Kir.

Now it was cooked the old boots smell had matured to something more like meat, and the taste wasn’t so bad, though the flesh took a lot of chewing.

Afterwards, Kir gave Dej a cloak sewn from strips of cured hide, advising, “Wrap yourself up well; some of the life out here likes bare flesh.”

They lay down to sleep, one on either side of the rhinobeast. The creature’s solid warmth was comforting, but Dej found herself wriggling in her cloak. The knowledge of which direction was north hadn’t left her. If anything, it grew as she drifted towards sleep, and kept her awake. She would be more comfortable if she wasn’t lying against the direction of the world. Even so, eventually she slept.

 

Dej sat bolt upright. Dawn was close, the skyland life around her ramping up to full daylight. But all that mattered was her guts. She threw her cloak off, scuttled away from the rhinobeast, and squatted. When she was done she cleaned herself up as best she could, using plants her animus-given knowledge told her wouldn’t sting or fight back.

Kir was up when she finished. Dej braced herself for mockery but the skykin merely held out a flask and said, “Drink.”

“What is it?”

“Water. You should try and eat some jerky too.”

Dej did as Kir suggested then let Kir help her back onto the rhinobeast. “That jerky… was it beef?” she asked.

“Something like that.”

Shadowkin animals died out here so they must have traded for it. “Did you get that for me because it’ll take a while to adjust to skyland food?”

“Partly,” Kir replied as the rhinobeast ambled into motion. “Though you never will, entirely.”

“What do you mean?”

“Being incompletely bonded means some skyland food will take time to get used to. Other things you’ll never be able to eat. And you’ll need shadowkin food too sometimes.”

“Oh.” Something else she’d had no idea about. “So what else is different? Between us and, ah, true skykin I mean?”

“‘True’ skykin. Huh.” Kir snorted. “Well, there’s the distance to your animus. You’ll have felt that.”

“Yes. It’s like…” she struggled to find a good way of putting it, “… like being able to call on it, but not having it in your face all the time.”

“Something like that. And no continuity with past lives. No certainty.”

That was one of the animus’s greatest gifts, according to the crèche tutors: the comfort of previous lives. “What else?”

“Depends on your animus.” Kir kicked the rhinobeast harder, urging it up the slope. “Your animus gives you talents, just like they told you in the crèche, but when you’re incompletely bonded you’ll lack some, while others can be… out of proportion.”

“So, maybe you don’t know what all the plants do, but you can see when someone’s ill inside.”

“Something like that.”

“And do you have, uh, a special talent?”

“You should be more worried about yours. Assuming you’ve got one.”

 

On their second overnight stop Kir went hunting again, this time staying away long enough that Dej started to worry. They were deep in the mountains, in a narrow valley with overhanging cliffs. Kir didn’t light a fire before she left so Dej stuck close to the rhinobeast. When her forehead itched she pulled the sticky leaf dressing off and found the wound reduced to a small, sore indentation.

Finally, Kir returned with something slung over her shoulder like a big cousin of the lizards that sunned themselves on the walls of the crèche, though with an extra pair of legs. “What’s that?” she asked Kir.

“Rockslither; just a small one.”

The rockslither turned out to be three creatures in one, coming apart in segments under Kir’s knife, one set of legs per section, with skin smooth and pale as a baby’s cheek on the inner face of each piece, and a twisted sinewy cord running down the middle of the whole beast… or beasts. It still looked more like food than the bug had. Tasted more like it too. And it stayed down. When she commented on this the next morning Kir said, “That’s good, because you’ll be eating a lot of those little bastards.”