Golden Dream: Fuzzy Odessey by Ardath Mayhar

Author:Ardath Mayhar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

vi.

The family moved eastward, as the strange female had suggested. But they went slowly, for as they forged through the forest and threaded their way up and down streams in order to find possible crossing-places, they found more and more zatku. Evidently, the prawns had migrated here in great numbers.

They grew fat. Lo-Shta (Dark-Fur) and his mate congratulated themselves often on finding such rich hunting-ground. Whether or not the Hagga they had heard about lived here, it was a good place for Gashta.

Baby grew too heavy to sit on the heads of any of the adults in the family. He was cross about it, but every shoulder was his to perch on at any time. He sat there with bad grace, for it had always been a peculiarity of the little Gashta that he preferred head-sitting to anything else. However, that was the worst drawback to this new territory that any of his family could find.

One afternoon, as they rested in the tops of two adjoining feathertrees, something big crossed the sky above them. It was NOT a gotza. Generations of experience had made gotza-recognition a matter of certainty among their kind. It was quiet, it had no wings, and it moved in a straight line.

Dark-Fur looked after it, once it had passed out of sight. His forest-bred eyes noted individual trees beneath the line of its flight, and his mind was busy.

“The one we met said that those Hagga have wonderful things. That was a thing, for there has never been a flying-beast like that in our skies before. And a flying thing is a hoksu-washa, indeed. It is that it might be going back to its nest for the night, as the gotza do.”

“We are in a new place,” his mate said. “It might be that other things fly in these places. Things not-like gotza.”

“No Gashta we have ever met has mentioned such things. No, that is a Hagga-thing. I will follow it to its place. Will any go with me?”

They talked among themselves, but none wanted to go on such a chancy errand. There was no discussion, once the decision was made. He detached the baby’s hands from the fur of his mane, touched his cheek to that of his mate, and trudged away with his zatku-hodda at the ready.

It was not safe, going through the forest by day. He hurried, but he was cautious. The thing he followed was long out of sight and hearing, but his unerring sense of direction kept him to his course, even when the light failed him. He toiled through the darkness, his ears pricked to identify every sound from trees and undergrowth, and he lost little time in his journey.

He knew that he was going straight, as that flying thing had gone. He hoped that it did not roost very far away, for he hated leaving the family for long at a time. It was a great relief when, just before sunrise, he found himself standing at the edge of a clearing, in the middle of which were several very large and totally unfamiliar humps or hummocks.

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