Thwei'kha Bhu'ja's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The pale creature was gone east after the offal, but Thwei'kha did not trust the quiet. He sat by the shuttered window with the spear across his knees. The skull of his first kill lay wrapped in the flour bin. He needed to know what the second thing was before he stepped outside again. A hunter who guessed wrong at the door died at the door. "You have seen it before," he said to Mara. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat across from him. "Twice. Never this close. It hunts the deep pines past the split rock. It does not come to smoke or salt like the black one did." She held up two fingers. "Two toes forward, one back. Long stride. It climbs." Skar'khan spat into the stove seam. "Climbs means it can drop on you from a branch. Means the deadfall trick won't work twice." Thwei'kha needed eyes he could send where his own could not go. He looked at the mechanical raccoon on the sill. Its blue lights had come back on an hour ago, the long way, as Mara promised. "Can your machine follow a track and show me what walks it?" Mara touched the raccoon's shoulder plate and slid open a small hatch. Inside sat a folded thing with thin wings and a bright body, no bigger than her palm. "It carries this," she said. "The wings send back what the wings see. Half a mile, then it comes home." He had not known such a thing existed. He did not ask how. "Send it east. On the pale one's trail." Mara set the winged thing on the table. It opened once, closed once, then lifted and slipped through the window crack. The raccoon padded to a copper dish on the floor. Its eyes went dark and the dish lit up with a small moving picture, gray trees sliding past. They watched. The picture crossed the offal drag, then a stream, then climbed. It found the creature at the base of a leaning pine. Ridged skull. Long tail. Two toes forward and one back, just as Mara had said. It was eating the scraps slowly, without hurry. Then it lifted its head. It looked straight at the picture. Its jaw split sideways in a way no wolf's jaw split. A second mouth pushed out from inside the first. The picture jerked, tumbled, went black. Skar'khan swore. Thwei'kha did not move. He had what he needed. The thing was tall, clawed, climbed trees, and carried a jaw inside a jaw. It ate slow because it feared nothing in these woods. It had seen the winged eye and known it for what it was. "It knows we watched," Mara said. Thwei'kha stood and lifted his spear. "Then it knows we are coming. Good." He walked to the door and drew the bolt back one notch. The approach was no longer blind.