Chapter 10
Szhe’ka
Among the males of my species, coloring can often indicate temperament and until now, I never had to wonder whether it is so for all creatures. Looking at the color of Ree’s sister’s hair, I can almost understand why she is so intractable.
There have been many jests about how little red there is mixed in with my feathers. I always admired those who wore it proudly, and had the temperament to match.
However, we do not have time for this and I must try to make sure we get down from here before we can be found by any hunters.
After all, this is not far from where I last saw them and who knows what else this forest has to offer, we could get attacked by predatory animals too.
So far, it has proven unsuccessful to get the female down from the tree, as she is adamant that I am part of a plan with Ree to hurt her.
It is almost funny how she should think that I am with the enemies when I too have been hurt by them and even though I want to show her and tell her of what they’ve done to me, I don’t think this is the right time.
Right now, our focus needs to be getting ourselves off this tree and back to Ree and safety.
Some part of me wants her to get to know me without feeling immense pity for me.
I do my best to assure her that answers will come later. “I rescue from tree. Find sister. Explain.”
I try to sing as truthfully as possible but it seems that she has absolutely no trust in me. At first, I understood. Why would she trust a stranger after what the hunters have done to her? But the back and forth is exhausting and I wonder whether she is not grateful to be saved?
There is fear in her song and as much as I want to reassure her, I am also scared that someone will find us here. Night will begin falling soon and I cannot have us still out in the open if that happens.
Turning my head, I survey the land below us.
It is still peaceful and I allow myself to relax a little bit.
She has been singing with anger in her voice, but pitched to a quiet volume, so at least she has some sense of the danger.
It is obvious that it is not native to her with the way her singing is forced but her voice is beautiful and her lungs strong so she does not lose breath easily like Ree did.
I find myself straining to balance the tumultuous emotions fighting for dominance in my chest. A large part of me is intrigued by this delicate creature and her odd movements, while the rest of me is drowning in rapidly mounting frustration at the circular conversation we have been stuck in.
Looking back at her, I try to speak again, lowering my voice. “Almost night. Cannot stay here. Danger.”
She refuses me again and my chest swells with annoyance.
It deflates just as easily when I think about what I am doing wrong. I have never been able to communicate with females properly and instead of learning, I allowed my unease to set me on my feet before the ritual was completed. It must be why communicating with the red-haired female is so hard.
I can sense her distrust and it hurts me that all I want to do is help and she believes the worst already without knowing me. She doesn’t even know my name and I don’t know hers either, even though I want to know the resonance and feel of it in my throat.
Although I do not know the possibility of any of that happening in this tree that she is refusing to get down from.
Lost in my thoughts, I do not notice that I am staring until she chirps at me to stop in a short, sharp song so I offer my apologies and it goes silent between us for a moment. Because of how she has herself folded in the silver cage, I cannot see all of her, but I cannot give up now.
There has to be a way to convince her that I am a friend and not a foe. Almost immediately, the skeleton of a plan begins to form in my tired head. I realize that she very likely will not have any idea about the whereabouts of the hunters—the very beasts we are both running from.
If I can find a way to explain it to her, there might finally be a sense of urgency.
“Hunters below, will kill if hear.”
She says nothing and I feel encouraged.
Maybe my plan to explain who the real enemy is truly worked. I start to sing again, this time a wordless thrum meant to reassure a frightened hatchling but before I can build up the layers of resonance, she interjects with another chirp of annoyance, her bright-red eyes looking adamantly into mine.
She does not relent.
“There is danger, but I am not,” I promise her.
She lets out a strange sound thick with disbelief but she stops moving away from me.
I need her to move closer, and soon.
My impatience is growing at her behavior and I briefly entertain the idea of just leaving her to whatever grim fate would surely occur but I cannot break my word.
“Hunters hurt you, hurt Ree, hurt me.” I can hear her labored breathing as I sing, turning my back slightly so I can show her my mutilated wings. I get no reaction and her eyes seem unfocused as her breathing increases.
I know no matter how much she mistrusts me and Ree, it would be overpowered by the sheer fear she must have for the trespassers.
“Will find. Force touch you.”
There is a hitch in her breathing and I know that my song has worked. A large part of me feels bad for scaring her this way but it had to be done if we are to make any progress at this point.
I watch her start to crawl toward me and I help her open the cage so that the broken shards does not hurt her.
She lets out a wordless melody and I am taken aback by the pure, unbridled malice her voice is capable of holding.
“Get me down,” she says in a resonance that makes my feathers clamp tight to my body.
This one was clearly already familiar with unhappiness even before this situation.
However, there is no time to check manners and I reach out my two bottom hands to grab her. There is a flash of fear in her face when she looks at me and I hope that she does not move too much as I climb down. I am not a climber and doing it with all four hands on the way up was hard enough.
With two hands holding onto the small female and just two left for climbing, I am very unstable and she does not hesitate letting me know her thoughts.
“Terrible climber,” her song tells me after I bump her into a branch.
Embarrassment washes over me.
I want to apologize but one of my hands begins to slip from the tree and I realize that I need all of my focus to get us both down from the tree in one piece. I decide to ignore her and continue climbing my way down until we reach the bottom of the tree.
She doesn’t even let me properly place her on the ground before she eagerly detaches herself from me and takes a few steps to create some space between us. As I dust off leaves and tree particles that have stuck themselves to me, I can feel her gaze on me, heavy and questioning.
“What now?” she asks me, her hands folded across her body in a stance that seems defensive.
Her eyes seem to scan me from top to bottom, no doubt reassessing me and noticing my injured body and I cannot help but feel judged.
I do not look anywhere near my best right now; my feathers are matted and muddied, shot through here and there with bits of leaves and sticks, and my skin is bruised and scarred.
I carefully keep my mangled wing stumps tucked into my feathers, thankful now she didn’t seem to see them earlier as I tried to convince her.
I cannot help but survey her as well.
Her arms and legs are proportioned opposite of what they should be.
Legs long where they should be short. Her one set of arms delicate and short.
Although she is taller than Ree, she is still very small.
Looking at her makes me feel relieved that I have fulfilled one of my promises to Ree.
I can only hope she makes it a little easier to fulfill the second goal of getting her to safety.
“Better walker than climber?” she sings, her tone holding a taunting resonance.
I want to tell her that I am not built for the ground, that I am a creature of the skies forced to suffer these current circumstances. But then I remember I will never fly again.
“We go,” I sing back.
It is obvious that she did not expect a response from me and she makes a small sound of annoyance. She starts to sing a reply but stops before I can understand the melody. She does this a few more times and lets out another grunt of frustration.
I know that she is embarrassed at how little she understands the language, so I offer advice.“Sing slowly. No need rush.”
Her red eyes look up at me and she scoffs. “Too long. Few words. Stupid language.”
There is embarrassment in the melody of her song and although I feel insulted on behalf of my lost brothers and the entire flock, I understand that it is not native to her and will have to take some getting used to.
If I was covered in as many red feathers as Tch’tek I might have a cutting reply, but instead sympathy rises within me. Then another emotion.
Instead of being annoyed, I am slightly amused by her fledgling-like behavior. What would Nnaiv say if he saw me now having to guide someone so clueless through the intricacies of our complicated language?
“Sing slowly,” I intone to her.
“No. I sing how want,” she resonates, staccato anger and defiance mixed in with the same taunting reverberations.
She still mocks me. I feel disappointment begin to settle in my stomach.
I am disappointed in myself because this should not have been so hard.
We still need to meet up with the others, my time on the ground keeps making me miss my flockmates and if I am to survive any further I will need to make these strangers my new flock.
At least for a short time.
It’ll be hard with this one. Despite my best efforts, it seems I have only managed to enrage her more. I want to ask her why she is so angry at everything and what I can do to help but I quickly realize that like me, she has been displaced.
She is lost, confused, and unsure of who to trust and it is blinding her from seeing that all I want to do is help.
I decide to be patient with her, even though it feels like I am losing grip on the situation. Ree did not give up on me when all I wanted to do was sing death.
“You sing how want, but not here. Not now.”