Clarion by Kate Wilhelm (ed.)

Author:Kate Wilhelm (ed.)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

The jerk of the cage being hauled in woke him up. He did not remember the dream.

It was sunset. The sun, now a flattened red-gold disk, hung just above the horizon, smearing a streak across the ocean and feathering the clouds with orange. In the east, behind the sun-colored mountains, the sky was already getting dark.

It was the tall guard with Valerian’s dinner. He went to the south comer and took out the empty food bucket, replaced it with a full one; did the same with the water bucket. Then he cranked the cage back out over the cliff.

Valerian inspected his meal. It was, as always, the remains of the guards’ mess. There were four pangolin leg bones, slender things about two feet long, and a variety of scraps. He laid the four bones carefully beside him, and began on the scraps. He had learned during his first winter to take his food seriously, for he was constantly hungry and the guards were inconsistent in their feeding. Engrossed as he was in the act of eating, he thought little of the events of the day.

When the bucket was empty and polished clean he picked up the first bone and brushed the dirt from it. He pulled pieces of meat from around the joint, working carefully with his fingernails, and popped them into his mouth. Then he gnawed the gristle away until the bone was completely bare, and beat it against the bar beside him to crack it. He pulled the bone apart carefully, and sucked the spongy marrow out. He didn’t like the taste of the marrow but he was sure that it helped, so he ate it all and then washed it down with water.

The next bone had already been gnawed down to the gristle. “Chief’s bone,” Valerian muttered angrily, as he did at all the well-stripped ones.

As he was washing down the marrow from the last bone, a vedanjrak the size of his hand flew into the cage and onto a bone. It was nearly a miniature version of the anjraks, but its wings were mere stubs. Valerian eyed it closely; he needed more vedanjrak shell to plate his next statuette.

This vedanjrak was looking for food. It crawled over the pile of bones, exploring with the tiny claws on its forelegs, and scraping occasionally with its mandibles, but Valerian had done a good job and there wasn’t much for it.

He picked up a piece of bone and knocked the thing into the dirt a few feet away. It crawled towards the pile. He knocked it back again, and again it worked its way towards the bones. He repeated the action several times and the creature kept returning. It couldn’t even remember what had happened seconds previously; it lived only in the present, in which food was just feet away. Valerian laughed out loud.

Then the vedanjrak flew toward the bars and he had to act fast. He slashed at it and knocked it to the dirt, and before it could jump into the air again he smashed its head.

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