"Success?" Jessica yawned, a question that was not a question.
"Success," Justin agreed. Another round of chuckles.
"Now it's time for the chicken run," Jessica said.
Toshiro yawned. "Ruth still wants to try it."
Justin and Jessica locked gazes, and both laughed simultaneously. "Ruth?" Justin said incredulously. Then both said at the same time, in the same little-girl singsong: "But what will Daddy say?"
They broke up again, the laughter subsiding to hiccups. " ‘Pon my word," Justin said finally. "Zack ruined that child."
"She's asked to become a Grendel Scout," Gloria said. "And asking why we won't let her in."
The others shook their heads in unison. "No mainland for Camelot's eldest virgin," Jessica agreed. "Not until she breaks the leash."
Justin stirred lazily. "You have to admit she's a hell of a chamel trainer, though."
She nodded. "Chamels are fun. Justin, the Earth Born used to explore! I remember when they brought the first chamels back from the mainland."
"And lost Josef Smeds to a grendel catching them," Toshiro said carefully.
"Yes, but—" Her eyes were locked on the northern horizon. "I won't say it was worth that, but you can't explore without risks. And every trip teaches us more. Teaches me more about myself."
"I just wish... "
"I know," she said quietly. Jessica intertwined fingers with Toshiro, and gave his hand a squeeze. She affected a huge yawn. "I think... that it's time to turn in."
They rose, and retreated from the firelight. From out in the darkness there came a gasp, followed by a prolonged and girlish giggle.
Justin watched her go, and then, belatedly, became aware of the weight of a feminine head on his shoulder. "Behind us," Gloria said. "Geographic, just rising."
He turned; Gloria turned with him. Geographic was a silver line with a dot at one end. No details showed, but it looked huge, just above the line of the ocean.
Twenty-four years ago... God. "Ten times the mass, back when it went into orbit. Interstellar brakes! I wish we had photos. Can you imagine how bright that drive flame must have been?"
"No humans to see it from down here. Maybe it blinded a few grendels." Gloria was almost behind him, her hands toying with his hair. "Is that really your wish?"
To see it myself! "I wish... that tonight was Fantasy Night," he lied.
"It's any night you want," she whispered. She reached up, turned his face with her fingertips, and kissed him blisteringly.
His hands found the warm, soft places on her body, and they sank down together by the firelight. There was no fumbling; latches and straps unbuckled as if by magic.
If anyone saw them there, no one commented. There were no gawkers as their bodies, gilded by the light of embers and twin moons, entwined for almost an hour before release finally calmed them both.
They cuddled for a time, whispering, then, suddenly freezing, scrambled for a thermal sleeping bag.
Then there was silence, save for the distant sound of water, and the call of some far-off night creature. No one heard. The fire consumed its last morsels of fuel, and began to fade. No one saw.
The only eyes that remained open were grendel eyes. Open, staring, glass eyes.
Dead eyes.
Eyes that saw everything, and felt nothing at all.
Twenty-four years before...
It should have been dead of night. Her body knew that, even though the whole world glared silver-blue in the light overhead. The grendel had tried looking near it, and had been blind for most of a day. Blind with the agony in her head, eyes that saw only at the edges; blind long enough to die, but the lake monster hadn't killed her.
Since then she had not looked up, though she would wonder about that spear of fire in the sky for the rest of her life.
For a long, long time there had been nothing but the hideous pain in her head. Now the agony in her head was receding. Now she could remember that she was hungry. Feeble with hunger. How could she feed herself if she was too feeble to fight?
And how was it that she had never had such a notion until now? She had never fought the lake monster, but hunger would never have stopped her. Only fear.
At the southern end of a vast lake, where the water emptied out into a sluggish muddy river, there the grendel had lived as a swimmer. There she had first drawn breath, and killed a sibling for food. She began to remember, now, how hungry she had always been. She and her sibs had fought for room to swim and room to run, for space to hold their own swimmers, and had eaten what they killed, until only three or four remained. She remembered the sister who had challenged the monster of the lake, and died almost before the grendel could turn to see.
The lake monster lurked along the west side of the lake, where pebbly mudflat gave way to horsemane trees. Farther south the forest was different, a tangled mass of vines and hives and trees that grew like puzzles and snares. The lake monster lurked sometimes in the horsemanes, but never in the tangle forest. And south of the tangle forest was where the grendel and her sisters lived, and a myriad of their spawn.
Her sisters died, and there were only the grendel and her own spawn. And still it was not enough. She'd grown too large. Eating her own spawn felt wrong, repulsive, and that wasn't the worst of it. She and they didn't have the room. If they tried to spread out, the lake monster took them. No room to feed, not enough moss and insects for the spawn, meant that they never grew large enough to feed their mother. She had to move.
Here the muddy river flowed into the lake. By the silver-blue light of a thing in the sky that fit no pattern at all, she looked south. The patterns linking in her mind now showed her how strange it was that she had ever come here alive. She hadn't had the sight, then. Wherever she looked, then, was only fear, no patterns at all.
She'd seen how fast the lake monster was in the water.
And on land... but not the southwest shore. Something so peculiar had happened there that the images remained even now...
It had only been a little time since the change, for her and for the sister she must drive away. Her sister, beaten, had retreated to land. She had crossed that patch of pebbly mud and into the tangled forest beyond. No web of plants could stop the juggernaut that was a grendel. Her sister might find new turf.
The grendel watched her from the southern shore. Food was scarce, and there was the lake monster too.
Her sister was in the tangled trees, and into some kind of dust or mist. She screamed once, and burst out of the trees in a spray of wood and vines. Even the lake monster had never moved that fast. The grendel watched her streak down the pebbly mudflat at the head of a dust-cloud comet.
The lake monster lifted her terrible head—and let her pass.
She was nearly out of sight when she tumbled to a stop. She seemed little more than a heap of bones. The grendel had never dared go for a closer look.
And beyond that place was the lake monster's favorite lurk.
No, the west shore was impossible even to the senseless being that the grendel had once been. The route around the east shore was twice as far, twice the distance in which the lake monster could find her...
She must have had just a trace of pattern-making ability, even then.
She had waited for a hard rain, then gone wide around the east shore. Prey was fast and wary. On speed it could be caught. When the rain stopped she must enter the lake to shed the heat, and out of the water before the lake monster could come—
And so she had lived until she reached the river inlet.
The river was what she sought. She had arrived starving, but bottom feeders had fed her for many days. Then came a sickness in her guts, that moved into her head and inflated. For days she had known nothing but the pain in her head.