The Last of the Ageless (28 page)

Ti’rros interrupted his dreary thoughts by handing him a small bag filled with slices of dried and sugared fruit—more of the supplies they’d stolen off the mule.

“Thank you.” Dalan headed toward his homeland on foot, still too tired to transmeld.

By midafternoon, he found himself treading on dried and bleached grasses, with Nyr and Ti’rros following him. By early evening, they’d reached the grasslands.

Dalan tossed himself backwards and stared up at the sky, haloed by the tall grasses. Saquey passed through his field of vision, and Dalan imagined himself flying home beside his companion as he should’ve done days ago. As he would do, soon.

He’d made his decision. He needed to say goodbye.

Ti’rros peered down at him, the thin hairs on her head dancing. A tree’s expansive plume of thickly covered branches, so unlike the scraggly trees of the borderlands, flanked his view of her.

The Joey curled her long tail around her body and planted herself against its trunk. “It seems it’s time for a rest.”

Grasses rustled, and Dalan sat up to see Nyr tossing her bloodstained clothes on a bush. He hadn’t realized she’d been wearing Ancient fabrics, which rarely needed washing. The material held up for centuries, and sunlight easily cleansed it of stains and odors—though he imagined the bloodstains might linger until washed.

After a small meal, the three of them set off again toward the west. Dalan kept silent, wondering how to broach the subject to his longtime traveling companions. Saquey forged ahead, skimming the tops of the grasses, sometimes grasping their heads between its fuzzy legs. For some reason, it reminded him of home, perhaps of one of many carefree flights through the woods with his siblings in bird or insect or bat melds. It made him wonder if, once he returned, the elders would ever permit him to return to his birth form, when the necklace could so easily spy on them.

As though sensing his nostalgia, Saquey zoomed straight for him, until he and the dragonfly saw eye to multifaceted eye. Images of home sprang into life before him, clearer than memories. The elders’ circle of trees. His friends’ and extended family’s houses up in the canopy. His favorite spot for watching mutated boars roam below.

“Were born near my tribelands, weren’t you, Saquey?” That would explain why the dragonfly recalled so many images of the forest the Omdecu Tribe called home. That thought put Dalan at ease, filling an emptiness he hadn’t noticed before.

They waded through the grasses for hours, until he felt his stomach rumble. The quiet had been refreshing after the nightmarish events of the past few days. Dalan appreciated that no one tried to steer him toward any particular course of action, not even the necklace. He almost felt like himself again, as long as he didn’t dwell on past events.

So when he noticed a herd of elk foraging through the grasses to the north, he raised a hand. Within him, the jaguar’s spirit begged for release.

“How about meat for dinner?” he asked. He decided it would be his parting gift to them. Then he would head home, he vowed.

Ti’rros rubbed her palms together. “Hunting a herd that big is dangerous.”

Nyr tipped her head. “Though with your Ancient weapon…”

Dalan dug through his pack and pulled out his LEC6. He handed it to Ti’rros. “Wasn’t planning on using it, but you can cover me if things get out of hand.” To Nyr, he said, “Being around you seems to bring out the cat in me.”

The transmeld came easily, but with no less pain than usual. As Dalan sank beneath the grasses, he noticed Nyr’s lips pressed firmly together. “No one cares about your opinion,” she said to no one in particular.

Dalan pushed through the grasses toward the elk. As the grasses enveloped him, he heard Nyr talking to the necklace. “He’s a kid, what do you think? I don’t know. He feels like hunting, I guess.”

He didn’t expect any of them to understand. The jaguar scented elk, and his more human concerns evaporated.

He peered through the grasses at the herd, hunting for the right prey. Most of the specimens seemed young and healthy. If he pursued one of them, he’d risk a good kick or antler to the ribs. The jaguar slipped around the edge of the herd, keeping an eye out for scouts. On the northern side of the herd, he spotted a good candidate, a cow favoring her front leg.

The breeze shifted, and several of the nearest animals raised their heads. A male bugled, and the herd moved away with wary looks in all directions. The female he’d picked followed at a slower pace, hobbling along on three legs.

Without hesitation, the jaguar burst from the grasses. He leaped onto her back and sank his fangs into her neck. With the extra weight, the cow went down, but he’d misjudged the angle and slid down her flank. She flailed her legs as she landed on her side, and he dodged a kick. The rest of the herd fled.

As he narrowly avoided a hoof to the face, he pounced on her ribs. With a paw on his prey’s shoulder, the jaguar took the cow’s head between his massive jaws. He clamped down, piercing the cow’s skull between her ears. Her struggles ceased.

Latching his teeth around her neck vertebrae, he proceeded to pull the carcass back to his previous position. Dalan’s mind slowly pushed the jaguar’s down as he approached the spot where he’d last seen Nyr and Ti’rros.

Dalan considered how to rinse his mouth before transmelding back into birth form. From the corner of his eye, Dalan spotted Nyr approaching him from downwind, and he let go of the carcass. Nyr pulled out a knife and faced him as she field dressed the animal. In his mind, Dalan whispered a plea to the spirit of the elk, that it would forgive them. He didn’t feel guilty, though. The cow had been wounded, and they were using its body for nourishment.

After she finished, Nyr said, “Take it a little farther. Let the scavengers have at it.”

She looked up at the buzzards already circling. Dalan took hold of the carcass, pulling it in Nyr’s wake as she waded through the grasses. When Ti’rros appeared in his field of vision, Dalan stopped. The two of them began cutting at the animal.

Nyr paused, her knife held in the air. “I suppose you want to eat in that form and let us do all the work?”

Dalan couldn’t answer, so instead he yawned and began licking his paws. Nyr let out a growl, hacking at the body. Several long minutes later, a hefty chunk of meat landed next to him.

Nyr glared at Ti’rros, who said, “At least we don’t have to cook his portion.”

“That’s not the time-consuming part, you idiot.”

Dalan wolfed it down and licked his paws some more. He watched Nyr and Ti’rros continue slicing off strips of meat. Saquey buzzed in and out of his range of hearing, scouting.

Dalan’s eyelids grew heavy as night descended. Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would head home. The last thing he heard was Nyr grumbling about how he’d nearly gotten them trampled to death and then expected them to clean up after him, too.

The next morning, he awoke to an insistent buzz in his ears and the aroma of burning flesh in the morning air, which offended his stomach. When he opened his eyes, he found Saquey hovering right in front of his face. The dragonfly rose straight up and then flew off, sending him an image of a prairie mouse.

Dalan had slept through the entire night without taking watch. He blinked and transmelded to birth form. “Let me sleep all night? Neither of you rested?” He gulped from one of the canteens they’d taken off the mule.

Dalan had directed the question to Ti’rros, but Nyr answered, “The Joey and I split watch duties. You were impossible to wake up.”

“It seemed unwise to bother you.” When Nyr cast her a dirty look, Ti’rros amended, “Perhaps only your bug can wake you.”

Ti’rros pulled delicious-smelling sticks of meat from the fire and passed them over. While the jaguar had processed the smell as burning flesh, in his birth form, Dalan thought it perfectly cooked. He winced as he grabbed his chunk; the Joey’s resistance to heat must be greater than his. Ti’rros tore into her portion, leaving Dalan’s stomach growling while he waited for his to cool.

When he took the first bite, the flavors exploded on his tongue, and he narrowly refrained from moaning aloud. The jaguar couldn’t appreciate the pleasure of a well cooked meal. He hadn’t tasted such delicious meat since leaving his tribe. Living in the drylands like a Purebred human had been more of a challenge than he’d expected.

When they were done, Dalan rose and started west on foot. He’d need to digest a little and recover some energy before he was ready to fly.

To his surprise, Nyr called after him, “I thought you might want to stop at Searchtown on your way. It’s just a short ways to the north.”

“Searchtown?” He turned back.

“It’s where an Ageless rules over a whole tribe of Purebreeds, much the way the other Ageless woman we met did over those two men.”

“What makes you think—”

“Don’t be coy, fool. The voice told me you’re struggling with some ridiculous quest—may as well stick together until you’ve seen it through.”

“And you, Ti’rros?” Dalan wondered why Nyr would want to help. “Help” was probably the wrong word. She wanted the plunder, no doubt.

“You know I am with you until you are safely returned.” The Joey’s tail bobbed.

Dalan took a deep breath. “Need to go home.”

“I thought you couldn’t go home until you did this.” Nyr crossed her arms.

To the west, the horizon darkened with trees. His home forest. Saquey came buzzing back to him, circled around him, and then headed west. When Dalan didn’t follow, Saquey circled him three times before zooming westward. Then it waited a few yards away and bombarded him with images of home.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten, Saquey,” he called. To Nyr he said, “Will travel with you for a ways, but then am going home.”

A heavy weight settled over Dalan, making him wonder if he was doing the right thing by not immediately flying away. But when he thought back to the hunt yesterday, he recognized it as an excuse to remain with Nyr and Ti’rros a while longer.

He doubted his tribe would ever accept him so long as he wore the foreign necklace. His best bet for removing it would be to stay with Nyr and Ti’rros, who were every bit as desperate to remove the cursed things.

A cool breeze picked up, wicking away the sweat on his skin. He concentrated on keeping his footing, stepping over the lumps that dotted the ground, as though the dirt and grass barely covered something else.

Nyr called a halt at midday, after they’d traveled down a slight incline. Dalan lifted his eyes from the uneven ground for the first time in hours.

“What is it?” he asked. Beyond a stream trickling through the slight dip in the earth before them, a gray blob was situated on a small rise.

“The town of Search, of course,” Nyr said. “We can keep going a little ways, but then we’ll need to do some reconnaissance.”

Only then did Dalan realize the grasslands had been eerily quiet. “Where’s Saquey?”

Grasses extended on the horizon in every direction for miles, but he heard no buzz and saw no tale-tell dot. His heart thumped, and he searched inside of himself for that tendril so familiar and yet still so foreign, a reminder of home, that piece of him he hadn’t known was missing.

“He fell behind a few hours ago,” Nyr said. “I just assumed you’d ordered him to go scout somewhere.”

Dalan took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He followed the invisible bond to its source. “Is north of here.”

Images from Saquey poured in. A pattern crisscrossed his vision, bobbing over the grasses. A tower overlooked the town, its shiny exterior betraying its Ancient origins. He’d never witnessed such geometric precision. A perimeter of rusted metal fencing and piled stone covered in weeds and brambles paled in comparison to the towers’ well-built architecture.

He felt something strange along the bond with Saquey, something he’d never felt there before. His parents had often spoken of sensing something akin to human emotion through the bond, but he didn’t know how to interpret the images or the emotions he received from Saquey. He scoured the landscape for potential threats.

“What is it?” Nyr’s grip on his arm brought him out of the vision.

His mouth gaped open, and he dropped his pack with his extra rations, the offerings, and his LEC6 on the ground beside Ti’rros. “Am not sure.... Have to find out.”

With that, he wasted no time transmelding, feathers sprouting before the last word came out of his mouth. He shrank into the grasses, then burst from them in a surge. He spotted figures in the grasses to the north, approaching the tower from Saquey’s vision. As he swooped down, he heard a singsong chant.

“We caught him, we caught him!” Five teenagers paraded below. They were nearly old enough for their trials of adulthood, by his tribe’s reckoning. A stick extended over one boy’s shoulder, with a large net on the end.

To Dalan’s horror, a huge dragonfly fluttered inside.

Chapter 14

Dalan’s heart pounded as he considered how to free Saquey. He could try to dive-bomb the teens, distract them enough to drop the net. But that might get Saquey’s delicate wings injured.

A broken dragonfly was a dead dragonfly—Saquey wouldn’t survive long in that condition. Plus, the teenagers outnumbered him, and they’d already captured one flying creature. He couldn’t afford to get himself captured as well.