Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (22 page)

Manuel said, “How about this?” He slid
the screen that he’d been
drawing
on
out onto the table and eyebrows rose.

***

Dex woke up cold and reached over to pick up a couple sticks and stir the fire back to life. Once the tip of one of the sticks had caught from a coal
,
hie
held the other one over the flame until it caught
too
and laid them together
so that
they would both burn. When they were burning brightly the heat warmed
hies
front. After a bit hie turned
hies
back to the fire to warm
hies
wings. As hie
turned
to face the cliff hies eyes flashed wide. Dex turned violently, pushing up, hies wings exploding from
hies
back, arc
h
ing up to lift himr to safety. Syrdian, roused by Dex’s violent motion and the boom of hies wing extension also startled awake, wings lifting, then curling suddenly back down in reaction to pain from the sudden movement. Dex and Syrdian unconsciously shuffled together, staring at the cliffside where glowing red lines had appeared. “
What
is that?” Syrdian asked.

“
I
don’t know!” Dex whispered.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before! Do you think those glowing lines are on the face of the cliff every morning?”

Dex turned to look behind
himr
with
hies
fore eyes, for a moment thinking that the sun might be rising back there and shining through some kind of gaps
in the trees
to create the lines. But no, just as
hie
’d seen with
hies
back eyes, behind
himr
was still the darkness
of
the west where the sun had set. The sun
would
be coming up in front of
himr
to the
east
, on the other side of the cliff and the mountain. No one else had a fire burning
that might
cast that eerie glow either.

Dex turned back to look at the cliff itself. Could there be something in the cliff itself that glowed? There were
a few
faint bluish spots in the wall of the Yetany tribe’s cave that glowed for a while after sunset. Not as brightly as this though! Perhaps it was the spirit of an ancestor?

Syrdian said, “Dex! At the bottom... the red lines look like a dalin, seen from the side!”

Dex’s wings rose involuntarily and made a soft downbeat as
hie
looked at the lower lines.
It does look like a dalin!
Genex, Dex’s drunken parent, had been famed for scratching representations of animals into the limestone of the cave walls. Dex had taken some pride in the awe that visitors from other tribes demonstrated when they saw the images. Dex had occasionally tried scratching some images in the dirt himrself. But the
ir
scratched drawings... though more complex, weren’t as cleanly representative as the elegantly simple glowing lines on the cliff face in front of
himr
. And Genex had never
drawn
a dalin, only animals. Neither had Dex.

Dex and Syrdian both jumped a little in a startle reflex when another dalin appeared next to the first one, both of the drawn dalin’s appearing to be looking up at the cliff.
The cliff!
Dex suddenly realized that the lines in front of the dalins looked like the cliff would, seen from the side. The
lines
went up about six body lengths as compared to the drawn dalins, then showed the relatively flat area at the top of the cliff. Oh!
A
nd the lines behind the dalins in the drawing were trees! Dex looked around... like the trees surrounding Syrdian and himr. “Is that a drawing of you and I and the cliff?”
hie
whispered to Syrdian.

Syrdian’s wings rose a little as hie stared. “It is?”

“
I’m
asking you?”

Syrdian’s head tilted one way, then the other as hie stared. “I think you might be right!” hie whispered back.

The drawing changed again, startling Dex and Syrdian into lifting their wings a bit again.
This time one of the dalins was represented climbing the cliff side, hands and feet on it as if
its
claws were sunk in.
The drawing changed to one showing the dalin back on the ground, rubble at hies feet and a defect in the cliff where the dalin’s claws would have been.

After a pause, the drawing shifted again. This time it showed one of the dalins flying near the top of the cliff with a rope… no a vine, dangling below it.
Dex drew
hies
head up and back. This was amazing!

The drawing shifted
. T
he upper dalin was tying the vine around the base of a tree while the other end dangled to the bottom of the cliff where the lower dalin held it. When the drawing shifted again the dalin was flying to the top of the cliff with
a second
dangling vine
.

A final drawing appeared. This time the lower dalin appeared to be walking up the cliff. Hie had
hies
hands on the vine that was tied to the tree at the top of the cliff. The second vine looked to be tied around hies waist. The dalin at the top of the cliff was leaning back, pulling on that vine.

Dex stared in wonder. It was as if the drawings were telling himr and Syrdian how to get up the cliff! Hie stepped closer to the cliff to look at the drawing closer. Would there be more to see up close?

Suddenly part of the drawing disappeared, then the entire drawing disappeared! Syrdian cried out.

Dex stepped back, hoping that the drawing would reappear, maybe it had been frightened by
hies
approach. Hie also turned to see what had frightened Syrdian. Syrdian, eyes wide
,
was staring at Dex. “What?”

“How are you doing that?”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You are! The red glowing lines appeared on your back instead of the cliff!”

“What! That can’t be!”

“They did.”

Dex stretched
hies
neck up and over to examine
hies
own back, “There aren’t any lines
on me
!”

“There were. They
appeared on your back when they disappeared on the cliff.
They looked like part of the picture from the cliff, just smaller. You can’t tell me you aren’t making them!
”

Dex felt hies wings ripple in… excitement? Dread? Hie walked back around to where Syrdian had crouched by the fire. Hie put another stick on
the fire
and looked back at the dark cliff face. The sky over the mountain had lightened but everything not lit by their fire still
was still black and indistinct.
Syrdian touched hies leg. Dex looked down, Syrdian pointed at the cliff face. The glowing lines were back showing the dalin flying over the cliff face trailing a vine again. After a moment, it changed and the dalin was tying the vine to a tree. Then flying back up with another vine. Then the lower dalin was climbing the cliff by pulling on the vine
tied
to the tree while the upper dalin pulled on
the
vine tied to the lower dalin’s waist.

Dex looked at Syrdian. The glowing lines show
ed
the flying dalin with the vine
. T
hey went on to repeat again.
Dex crouched next to Syrdian, “I think the lines are trying to tell us how to get up the cliff,”
hie
whispered.

Syrdian nodded but said nothing.

Dex lay down, saying, “Maybe we’ll try it when it’s light.”

Syrdian said, “I’m hungry,” but Syrdian
crouched
down next to Dex as
hie
stared at the glowing lines repeating their pictures on the cliff face
over and over
.

When the glow in the clouds over the mountain had had brightened enough to see well
,
Syrdian got up and said, “I’ll try to get us some food.”

Dex said, “Shall I come with you?”

Syrdian said, “No, you get the vines
shown
in the pictures,” and walked off down the ridge
into the forest
carrying
a pointed staff
and Dex’s flyer swatter.

Dex shrugged hies wings and walked out into the forest looking for a vine. There were thousands of them but
hie
didn’t know how
hie
’d get one down from a tree. Dex cut one near its roots and pulled on it. It pulled loose
from little rootlets and guided
himr
over to the tree it ascended
. Hie pulled harder and harder to get it to come loose but when it was about a body
’s
length above
himr
it would no longer come loose
from the tree. Other vines had
entangled with
it so that
hie
was actually trying to pull many
vines
loose
. Hie leaned hard on it, it was strong enough to support hies weight as
hie
’d seen in the diagram but if
hie
climbed up and cut more of it loose, how would
hie
get back down?

Dex tried a couple of other vines without success.
One pulled loose to about three body lengths because it was young and new and mostly
on top of
the other vines but then it broke. Young, new and smaller
didn’t look like
a good choice since it wouldn’t be strong enough to bear Syrdian’s weight.
Hie looked for one that ran along the ground so
hie
could cut it loose
,
but
they all promptly went up trees
.
Dex climbed a tree, clinging to the vines instead of the bark while trying to cut a single vine loose.
Hie
had to beat
hies
wings to help climb while trying to cut a vine loose. It was exhausting and before hie had the six body lengths of vine
hie
needed
,
the vine became small and weak.
Hie
pulled it loose and fluttered to the ground.

Dex
scratched the base of
hies
right hind wing and looked around.
Hie wondered,
w
hy do the red line
Spirit
s want us to use vines instead of rope
?
After some thought
hie
decided that even if the lines wanted them to use vines
,
that
rope should work
for the same purpose. Hi
e walked back to their little clearing and was about to take off when Syrdian came into view climbing up onto the ridge. Hie had a
swimmer
! Dex was
bemused to realize
that
hie
hadn’t
believed
that
Syrdian had
a
ny
chance of getting
them
food. “Syrdian! How did you get the
swimmer
?” Dex was pleased to see it looked large enough to feed both of them easily.

Syrdian shrugged hies wings, “I like
catching swimmers
. I saved a little of the flyer
from
last night for bait.”

“Really? How do you catch fish with bait?”

“
I use this little
bone spike
I made, tied to
a fiberlin string.” Syrdian pulled out a lengt
h of fiberlin with a sharp bony point aimed
back along the string. “You put the bait over it to hold the
point
against the string and dangle it near the swimmer in the water. When the swimmer swallows the bait, you tug on the fiberlin and the little
sharp end
pops out to the side and catches in the
swimmer’s
stomach. Then you pull the swimmer out of the water with the fiberlin.”

Dex admired the swimmer a little more, glad that the morning wouldn’t be as hungry as hie had expected. “I’m going to fly up to the cave and get some rope. I can’t get any vines like the red lines show in their pictures. Well
,
I can’t get pieces of vine
that are
long enough to reach the top of the cliff
anyway
.”