AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Young drakes! Twice the muscle and half the sense of drakka. We were downwind. They would have fed their way right to us, perhaps. You’re not fit to hunt anything but slugs.”
“Am too.”
“Then where’s your kill?”
“I didn’t know they could run so fast,” Auron said after a moment’s thought.
“Thank the Spirits for rats and bats that die and fall to the cavern floor, then.”
“If I could fly, I’d find us food. Dead beasts, beached whales, carcasses bears have buried till they’re tender. I’d drive wolves away from their kills. Or best of all, a battlefield feast. That’s what Father ate before he flew off with Mother.”
“I can hardly stop my mouth watering,” Wistala said, clamping her nostrils shut. “If cold and covered with flies is your taste, so be it. I’m going to find us something fresh and warm. Rest somewhere out of the wind, and wait here.”
She moved off down the slope, and Auron curled up among the roots of a pine, where he watched his scales change color as the sun climbed up the sky and moved the shadows on his back.
Wistala returned, dismayed. “I almost got some big-footed eary hopper. Only a couple mouthfuls if I had, but anything sounds good now.”
“Almost” won’t fill our bellies, Auron was about to say, but thought better of it. His sister looked to be close to tears as it was. “A mountain hare?” he asked.
“Perhaps. It jumped at the last moment and ran like an arrow. An arrow that zigzags. It turned quick as thinking. We need to eat. What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll get one another time. Let’s try to find the western entrance. We’ll be able to smell where he goes, if nothing else.”
“There was a herd of deer in a gully, but they have ears like dragons. I think they even smelled me downwind. Every time I crept up, they began to move away. I’m sure they can outrun me. I found a perch, but they never fed near enough to it, and now it’s getting dark.”
“Show me this gully,” Auron said.
They moved into thicker stands of timber, interspersed with marsh meadow. Snow still hid in shaded areas under timber, but yellow and blue wildflowers sprouted bright in the sunny spots.
The gully coursed down the mountainside, deepening as it descended. Half-exposed mossy rocks stood out from its sides, like the bumps in Father’s pebbled underbelly.
“Softly now, Auron,” Wistala said with her mind. He followed as she crept from rock to rock on the side of the gully.
“There.” It took Auron a moment to know what she was talking about. A wide-antlered deer stood atop the gully, staring straight at them. Auron twitched, but Wistala put her tail across his neck.
“They can run longer and faster than us. One leap—that’s all you get with deer,” Wistala echoed Mother’s words to him. Her mind felt so like Mother’s; it made his hearts hurt.
She continued. “If I come any closer, he walks away, always watching me. I don’t dare walk directly at him, but even at an angle he moves all of them downhill. We can’t see the herd now, because they’re around the bend he’s standing on.”
“Wistala, can you find your way lower down the gully? Back out and go around. In a big loop?”
“I suppose.”
“You’re good at finding a perch. Get to one over the gully, and I’ll bring them to you.”
“You mean like . . . like,” she thought, forming a mental picture of a shepherd moving his flock when the word escaped her.
“Like I’m herding them. Exactly.”
She looked around. “Give me until when the sun rests on that dead tree branch. Drive them then. Can you hold down your hunger until then?”
“I’ll do my best.”
She brushed him with her nose. “It’ll have to do. Remember, don’t go right to him or he’ll run. Angles, angles.”
“Get going—I’m trembling already.”
He stayed in her mind until she was out of range, getting the feeling for how she moved among the trees, taking advantage of every deadfall and stump. Why hadn’t Mother taught him to move like that?
