…And you know all this to be true,Ith said, leaning down more closely to Arhu; and suddenly the air itched with wizardry, spelling done without diagrams, but in the mind… if itwasspelling, and not some saurian congener to the Whispering. Isee it in you, asyouhave seen it, though you have denied the sight. I see you too have heard the laughter. Forward in time: and back.
Arhu looked up into Ith’s eyes, an expression of horror growing on his face, his eyes going wide, slowly going almost totally to dark. He crouched down, still gazing up into Ith’s eyes, his claws starting to dig into the stone, scrabbling at it. Arhu seemed unaware of what he was doing.
“They were crying, first,” he said softly. “Not laughing.Ehhifhave such weird sounds, you can’t tell them apart half the time… But it was warm. Our dam was there, so we weren’t afraid of the noises they made. The little ones, theehhif-kits, they were crying, but they did that a lot if you scratched them, or when they scratched each other. I didn’t know the words then. Now I know them. ‘Daddy, please, Daddy, let us keep them, let us keep just one, just one, Daddy!’ ”
Rhiow rolled quietly upright, glanced over at Urruah. He was still sitting leaning against the wall, his eyes closed down to slits, but he was awake, watching and listening. Saash had her back to Rhiow, but Rhiow saw an ear flick, just once.
Arhu lay still gazing up into Ith’s eyes, his claws working, working on the stone. “He said, ‘We can’t keep them, the landlord won’t let us have more than one, Itoldyour mother not to let her out until we got her spayed, well, it’sherfault, you take it up with her…’ He picked us up. He wasn’t bad about it, he was always careful when he picked us up. He put us in a dark place. It rustled. He closed it up. We couldn’t smell our mother anymore. We heard her crying then, we tried to get to her, but we couldn’t see, it was dark, we were all jammed together in the dark, and then the noise started.”
Rhiow swallowed, watching the convulsive, obsessive movement of Arhu’s claws on the stone. “It was loud. We didn’t know what it was. A bus, I think now. We couldn’t smell anything but each other, and some of us got scared and madehiouhorsissin the bag, it got all over us and smelled terrible, we could hardly smell each other anymore. The noise stopped; we were crying, but no one would let us out, we didn’t know where our dam was— Then something pushed us hard against one side of the bag. It felt strange, we were falling, we tried to come down on our feet. Then there was another big noise, we came down hard, it hurt…”
Arhu swallowed. The fear in his voice was growing.“Itwas cold. We were crying and trying to get out, but the black stuff wouldn’t give no matter how we clawed at it, our claws weren’t any good. And then we hit something, and after that it started to get wet inside, not just from oursiss.Wetter and wetter. A lot of water. The bag was getting full. There wasn’t air. We kept falling in the water, and it got in our faces, we couldn’t breathe. We tried to stay up… but the only way we could stay up was by climbing on each, climbing on each other…”
Saash had slowly come to her feet now and was slipping close to Arhu, but he paid her no attention, only gazing up at Ith. It was as if he saw, in those reptilian eyes, the one vision he had been steadfastly denying himself, or saw it mirrored, as the other saw…
“They bubbled,” Arhu said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “They bubbled when they breathed the water. They stopped moving. Their smells went away. They died. And the rest of us had to climb on them, on their bodies, and put our heads up and try to breathe, and there was less and less room, less and less air, and it was so cold.”
Barely even a whisper, now; even that faded.“So cold. Nowhere to breathe. Sif died last. She was my twin almost, she had my same spots. She bubbled underneath me. I felt the breath go out, I smelled her scent go away…” Iwas the last one. I was the strongest. I climbed best. Then the last air went away.Istarted to bubble. It was cold inside me. It got black. I said, Good, I want to be with my littermates. But I couldn’t. Something grabbed the thing, the bag we were in, and pulled us out, and broke the bag open. It was anehhif.It saved me, it dumped me out on the ground.Incredible bitterness at that.It dried me off, it took me to a bright place, they fed me, they put me in a warm room. Later anotherehhifcame and took me away. She fed me, she kept me in her den. She gave me ahiouhbox, but every time I made siss orhiouhin it, it would smell of them, and I would remember my brothers and sisters, howtheysmelled finally, and how they started to bubble, and I couldn’t go back to the box. I had to make thehiouhsomewhere else in theehhif’s den. And then she took me out of her den and put me in a shoulder-bag and took me in another loud thing, a bus, and she put me down in the street, and she went away fast, in another bus. I couldn’t find her den again. I went to live behind the Gristede’s.
His claws were starting to splinter. Saash, behind him, began slowly to wash his ear. Arhu was still looking up at Ith, into the saurian’s eyes.
Iheard the laughing,Arhu said, over the soft grating of his claws on the stone.When theehhifthrew us in the water. And while we were drowning:thatlaughing. It knows nothing can stop It, or what It does. It can do it whenever It wants. It was the Lone One at the bottom of theehhif’s heart that made it do that. It’s always at the bottom. I see It now. And It’s at the bottomhere. Isee…
You also see,Ith said,how there is nothing but the pain, no matter what we do against It.
There was a long, long pause: almost one of Ith’s own.
Idon’t know,Arhu said.
He said nothing more. Saash washed him, her purr of pain and compassion rumbling and echoing loud in the long dark hallway. The flexing of Arhu’s claws was slowly stopping; his head dropped so that he was no longer staring at Ith. Arhu lay there gazing down at the barren black stone of the floor, and did not move or think, at least for any of them to hear.
Rhiow slowly got up and paced over to where Urruah leaned against the wall.What now?Urruah said to her.
Let him alone for a while,Rhiow said.He needs time to recover, after that. And frankly, after hearing it, so do I.Arhu’s pain had shaken Rhiow, in some ways, worse than her own had been doing.
They went away and sat down together, leaving Saash with Arhu, while Ith leaned down over them both as Saash washed, a peculiar kind of company.
So,Urruah said.The Lone One tried with you, and failed… I think. Now It’s tried withhim…and there’s no way to tell how It’s done. Who’s next?
I think,Rhiow said,It may have tried with him once already. And it failed then. I’m not sure… but Itmayhave tried one time too many.
But It’s getting desperate,Urruah said.If these attempts on our effectiveness fail, It’s just going to try brute force, a hundred thousand saurians or more, the way it dumped them out into Central Park. It’ll wear us down, and kill us without us doing anything useful.
Let’s not give It the chance, then,Rhiow said.We’ll go straight down.