Chapter 6
Szhe’ka
The forest feels endless in its supply of brambles, bushes, and trees that all look the same yet are so different, but I trudge on.
The knowledge that I can be found by the trespassers and torn apart, or worse, at any given time is enough to energize me in short bursts but I make sure to also make my way carefully. It would not do to run into the arms of another band of predators in my quest for safety.
I long once more for the sky and her gentle comforts.
I cannot tell how far I have traveled or if I am walking in circles because it all looks the same to me and I am weak with hunger.
I do not know if there are many sources of food besides the river I had rested at earlier but I’m painfully aware of the reality that I don’t have the stamina to hunt or chase down any of the smaller prey-like creatures that have scurried past me in the forest underbrush.
I find myself wistfully remembering the many blue- and silver-skinned prey that had populated the river, which had shied away from my earlier splashing.
I bet they would have satiated my hunger had I had the presence of mind to be quieter while entering the water but I regret nothing.
The water has been the only thing on this accursed ground that has reminded me, if only a little bit, of my home in the sky.
“Keep moving,” I say to myself, hoping that it is enough to breathe some life into my rock-heavy legs.
I drag myself forward before collapsing against a sturdy looking tree. Maybe my flockmates will understand my dying here, damaged and defeated in this unfamiliar and hostile planet but I begin to hear the bushes rustling from somewhere up ahead and a foreign language being spoken.
Someone was heading this way, two someones judging from the call and response.
Their scent is different, something I have never encountered before but from their strides, I can tell one of them is injured, even though I cannot tell what could have caused this.
It would be safest to assume that they are hostile and prepare to fight for my life.
This strikes fear into me and my eyes widen in panic as I search around me for somewhere to hide.
There is no need to run because I will be caught before I can make it far, but maybe I can hide from whatever this is.
With my movements still, I hope that they will venture farther away from me but my heart drops when the rustling gives way to proper footfalls.
They pick up the pace and continue straight toward me.
I have to run but the pain in my legs and the multitude of injuries dotted all around my body remind me that it will be a fruitless pursuit and I might only end up being hurt faster.
If only these accursed trespassers had not removed my wings, I would only need to kick off the ground and flee the area, regardless of injury to my body.
At a loss for a solution, I draw myself to my full height against the tree’s feathers standing on end, talons fully extended and try to communicate my way out of this.
“Can hear coming closer. Leave alone,” I struggle to sing out, only realizing now how breathless my walking has made me.
I am first replied to in a language I cannot understand, and then in one that I can.
“Not hunters,” a female sings back, stumbling her way through the feminine harmonics of the song like it is an unfamiliar tongue, shocking me considering I had neither expected to be understood nor replied.
Relief washes over me like a wave and my feathers lay lower against my skin.
They are closer now and I can make out the rough shape of the two creatures headed in my general direction. The one I’ve been communicating with is clearly a female but she is not alone; the other individual is much larger so I’m back on my guard once more.
Almost immediately, I hear her language change to the same foreign one I heard before and I know I cannot trust her. She may not sound like the trespassers that took away my wings, but there is no way of knowing who she is or who she is with.
“Don’t believe. Please leave,” I sing back.
“Please believe. I am taken by hunter, make slave. Give me translator then left sky. Manticorid help me. Will help you, if let us.”‘
Her voice is small and hopeful, traveling to me with a sincerity that I almost don’t want to trust but cannot help it as my options are extremely limited.
Besides, I’m next to defenseless in my current state; if they wanted to harm me, going this far to gain my trust is pointless and given the events I have just lived through, who better than I to understand having your freedom taken away.
While I sympathize with her, I am envious of the hope in her song
“I feel pain for your molting. For taken freedom. My regrets,” I express back, hoping she can feel that I truly am sorry.
They rustle closer, out of reach of my claws but close enough that I can make out their body shapes much better and smell their diverse scents; the silent beast smells of muscle sinew and musky danger; he is a predator, not one of the kind who assaulted my home, but dangerous nonetheless.
While she smells clean, oddly sweet, I must still be careful.
“You from here?” she sings out to me again and I remember my aerie and the fact that I will never see it again, and my brothers.
I cannot help the sad warble in my throat. “No. Stolen from aerie. I was changed. Something stolen, not gained.”
“I am sad. What was taken?” I can feel the emotion in her song, the raw honesty that she expresses, so I sing back.
“Part of me. All of me.”
She hesitates before singing to me again, asking if she can approach me.
“You may.”
Her voice makes a switch and she is back to speaking the foreign language to her ally.
A part of me wonders how it must feel to be given the gift of knowing other languages by the same trespassers that took away my wings, but then I remember that nothing is a gift from creatures as spiteful as those.
If she was taken as a slave, then it was more for them than it was for her. I wonder why she calls them “hunters.”
“We approach you,” she says and I let her know that I am waiting.
After all, there is nowhere else for me to go.
They come in through the bushes and although the light is fading, I can see them clearly. A bright orange-colored beast on all four legs and a much smaller creature with it that I assume must be the female communicating with me.
I can tell that he is protecting her, his body tense as they both look at me, wonder obvious in the female’s eyes.
The beast has its eyes stuck to me and I can tell it is as wary of me as I am of it.
Probably more for the benefit of its companion than for itself; it is nearly as tall as I am with massive paws tipped with claws nearly as long as my talons and a long spear-tipped tail I can tell is venomous from the taste of the air; its body is crisscrossed with scars everywhere I look—old scars that tell me this beast is a warrior and in the state I am in it would make a very short song of dealing with me.
Conversely, the female is much smaller and frail looking, mostly covered in a sort of black-looking skin, I cannot immediately see any injuries on her but still cannot shake the sense that she is injured in some way. Her song tells me so.
Something in her is broken, my drums tell me, even if my eyes cannot see it.
I stand once more to offer my welcome.
“Greetings. I am Ree. Your name?” she offers first, clearly concerned at the difficulty I’m having.
What a curious creature to be concerned for what must look to her to be a wounded monster lurking in an unfamiliar forest.
“I am Szhe’kadedade,” I sing, but the small female only looks at me with what I can tell is confusion.
“My regrets. Do not understand.”
I can tell that I am the first of my kind that she is meeting, so must give her grace.
I repeat myself and she pays careful attention, clearly hoping to understand this time. She still doesn’t. Her regrets are communicated in her song as she tries to repeat what I say and fails. She asks if she can call me a name completely different and I fight the feeling of disrespect.
It is not her fault.
“If short you like, then Szhe’ka,’” I sing, giving her the name that only my brothers call me and hope that it is more manageable.
“My regrets,” she sings back, defeated.
“No need for regret.”
I join my fingers into a circle as I sing, letting her know that there is only forgiveness between us.
Ree and her companion, Thivoll, she tells me, comically attempt to do the same but I appreciate the effort taken. It is the first kindness afforded to me by another living being since I was ripped from the skies above and I am thankful.
After the introductions have been made, I settle back on the ground and pull my legs close to me, wrapping my hands around them so that they don’t have to be flat against the ground.
All the walking has rubbed them raw and I am grateful for a chance to not have to use them, even if only for a little while.
“What taken, brother? Can we find?”
Ree sounds hopeful when she asks me, determination in her song.
Her question pains me because there is no way to fix the damage done to me or find the ones who did it. Again, I’m struck by her concern for a strange creature such as I must be to her and I wonder if I would be similarly magnanimous if I were in her shoes. I think not.
Instead of wasting effort trying to explain, I resolve to match her openness and obvious care with total transparency.
The pain shoots through me and I close my eyes, crying out when I spread my wings out for her to see.
I don’t stop my song, letting it express all of the things I cannot say. The orange beast growls and it gives way to a howling song, following the pathway of mine.
He too has known pain.
Ree joins and we sing together, our voices so different but belting out the same heartbreaking pain of once being something whole and now missing parts.