The second indentation in the shale floor was larger than the first. The straw that filled it was yellow, smelling of freshly mown fields. The weavings that covered the straw were dyed in various shades of blue. A single fur of some great white beast was spread over the weavings. Ki lifted the corner, feeling the weight of the thick hide, the softness of the white fur. A thought crawled across her mind – what creature had once worn this skin? She dismissed it. She was here on her own quest. Her fist closed tightly on the corner of the fur. With a shoulder-wrenching jerk, she ripped the hide from the bed. She hissed in satisfaction.
Three eggs. Any one of them would have filled Ki’s arms and been a burden to carry. The shells of the eggs were a dark mottled brown. Individual blue weavings nestled about each one, sheltering it from contact with the others. Their shells had become leathery with their nearness to hatching. They would probably part with a splatter at a blow from Ki’s fist. But she slowly drew from its sheath Sven’s knife. She came close to the eggs, put one knee upon their mattress of weavings and straw. It gave softly with her weight. One egg rolled a quarter turn toward her.
Something brushed Ki’s head. She sprang back from the contact. She looked up, lifting the lamp for more light. Bobbing and floating from her movement, the brightly painted wooden shapes swung on fine strings from their wooden support. Tiny Harpies, painstakingly carved and painted, whirled in a miniature flock over Ki’s head. They circled round and round, like birds coming down to feed. Their bright wings were spread, their dull, turtle-beak mouths were carved open as if they were shrieking and whistling for joy. Their eyes had been touched with gilt to give them the gold color characteristic of a Harpy’s liquid eyes. Ki watched them bob and circle. They were a child’s toy.
The impact of the thought set her shaking. A child’s toy, like a string puppet or a little wooden horse with wheels upon its feet. A toy for a thinking, growing being. Ki looked at Sven’s knife in her hand and at the eggs on their bedding. The egg nearest her gave a sudden pulse of life, then was still again. Like a baby’s kick.
Her hatred deserted her in a dizzying rush. She tried vainly to recapture the logic of her vengeance, the anger that had sustained her. The knife fell to the floor. A sudden disgust at what she had planned to do rose in her, splattering from her gaping mouth upon the floor. The bitterness of the bile in her mouth was the bitterness of her hatred for the Harpies. She could empty her body of neither. Nor could she complete the vengeance she had come to wreak. Another gush of stinging liquid shot from her nose and mouth as the spirit of the vengeance inside her ripped at the spirit of justice that dwelt there too. Ki stood panting, her whole body quivering with the conflict inside her. Her mercy was despicable weakness; her vengeance a cowardly injustice. The eggs were before her, the knife upon the floor. It would be the work of an instant to part the shells like the rinds of sun-rotted fruit. The unborn Harpies would gush from their amnions. The translucent little wings would never stretch leathery-pinioned and wide. The silent, closed faces would never become aware, greedy, and mocking. The birdlike talons would never rend flesh, the tiny forearms would remain forever curled to the undeveloped chests.
She stooped for the knife. She would see those prebirth faces, the turtle beaks that held the lines of an idiot smile. She would look into the eyes covered with nictating membrane, evil eyes masked with cloudy innocence. Innocents. The uplifted blade fell slowly to Ki’s side again. She shook her head, tears of rage stinging her eyes. This last month she had lived a dream of vengeance, tasted it in her food, pillowed her head on its comfort. It was here before her, the act that would culminate her grief and outrage. She could not do it.
A rectangle of light fell into the den, dimming Ki’s lamp to nothing. Ki looked up dully at the silhouette in the door. It was the male. His turquoise plumage glinted in the sunlight behind him. His tall frame filled the entrance, dwarfing Ki to a half-grown child by comparison. His whirling golden eyes fixed on her as she stood before his brood, knife in hand. Ki’s own green eyes lit with an unholy joy. Here, at last, was a fulfillment she could take. The knife turned to point at the Harpy. He was beast, man-killer, child-taker, an animal to be slain, not the sentient being this den would have her believe him to be. She did not move toward him, but stood still, waiting.
From the sky he could have hurtled down upon her, talons outstretched to rend, to slam her rabbit body against the earth and eat his fill of her flesh. But they were both on the ground now, within a den that roofed them over with tons of rock. He was not a creature designed to charge across land at an enemy – but he did. His long bird legs worked like plungers as he rushed at her, his whistle of outrage filling the cave. His forearms, no bigger than Ki’s own arms, reached grasping toward her. But it was a beat of his great leathery wings that stung the knife from her hand and drove her to her knees. The lamp, with its burning wick and burden of oil, flew from her grasp.
The whip of plumage across her eyes blinded Ki. She scrabbled across the floor, seeking by touch for the weapon he had struck from her hand. The floor was hard and cold to her fingers, empty of the blade she sought. She heard his laughter burst out high above her – the evil laughter that had laced her nightmares for too long. She screamed herself, a sound that burst from her, born of agony and hatred. The deeper, piercing scream of an enraged male Harpy echoed hers. Ki sobbed, and rose weaponless from the floor, determined to at least be standing when she met him.
She was knocked to the floor again by his headlong rush as he shot past her. She lit on her shoulder and hip with a painful slam. A jab of pain leapt up in her hip, sharper than the shock to her shoulder. Her hip had slammed against the haft of the knife. She rolled, her hand closing on it, and came to her feet to meet his next rush.
It did not come. As her stinging eyes focussed, Ki saw a blaze of yellow flame that illumined the whole back of the cave. The falling lamp had scattered its oil across the straw and weavings of the eggs’ nest. The lit wick had ignited it all. It roared with fire, the dry straw flaming readily. A flame licked out to catch the starry screen, to leap to the unfinished tapestry on its frame. In the midst of the burning nest the male Harpy stood like some nightmare demon rising out of hell. His tiny forearms clutched one of his eggs to his chest. The flames were roaring about him, making the leathery pinions of his wings curl and blacken with a terrible stench. He roared in hatred and agony, but the sound of his pain could not cover the dull poppings as the other two eggs burst at his feet. There was a shushing noise as the amnions temporarily quenched the flames about them; then a terrible smoke arose as the flames boiled away the liquid. Ki backed away from the scene, arms raised to blot the image from her eyes, the stench from her nose. She stumbled over the uneven floor, then was abruptly seized from behind, engulfed in plumage that became merely the door hanging as she fought her way clear of it. It fell about her as she stumbled, blinking, in the day-brightness on the ledge. She looked about her, uncomprehending. Never had she stopped to wonder how she would escape from that height when she had completed her vengeance. Now the fates had seized her revenge from her and left her with a problem: She had not died.
A screamed whistle betrayed the speck that plummeted from the sky. Ki ducked instinctively, crouching against the oncoming fury. The speck became a hawk, an eagle, and finally the unmistakable outline of a diving Harpy. Blue-green plumage and hide glinted against the paler blue sky. The cilia, like hair, blew long and turquoise behind her. She fell on Ki like an arrow from the sun.
The ledge offered Ki no shelter, no place of concealment, not even a niche to defend. She grasped her knife in both hands, raised it high and straight above her head. She did not doubt that the plunging talons would kill her with the first blow. Ki only hoped that she would feel the metal of her knife in the Harpy’s meat before she