The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [31]
As Octavia turned, a large salamander, or similar such amphibian, mostly pale green but with fat red spots, appeared on the shoulder of the fecund, grinning, and its face—or so it seemed to Octavia—bore hints of her own features, including the black kholic’s mask, which arced over the snout, mocking her own.
Nahid walked a few paces behind Name of the Sun, on Listower Avenue, between the ever-leaning structures. A chicken ran between them, pursued by a lone, sluggish cobali. The sound of the blacksmith, and the smell of his forge, was in the air.
They were going for a beer.
Bland-faced moon, sinking, peered down upon Pan Renik. He was very near his nest and out of breath. His failure to bring anything back from his expedition stung inside. Within the thin limbs of familiar territory, here at the top of the world, more expanses yawned than either branches or leaves: the dome of the open sky was so close. Winds became stronger, too. Crisper gusts reached Pan Renik’s lungs, more fragrant and liberated than those stifled ones puffing in the stinking settlement.
Pan Renik imagined he could detect hints of impossible reaches. From where, he wondered (for perhaps the thousandth time), could these winds originate?
Before long, powerful yearnings to be elsewhere—somewhere other than this world—coursed through his blood, taking him over, inflaming him with the thwarted desires he could never explain (had he ever anyone to explain anything to). Was there more to life? There had to be, to continue. More than just branches and the open sky and poisonous clouds below.
Looking directly into the waning night, frowning, Pan Renik suddenly paused. Intangible masses of billows extended out to the horizon, of course, dusted white in places by the waning moon and, from underneath, by occasional flashes of far off lights, but there was . . . something else? A new scent? A sound he had not heard before?
He strained to hear, to sniff, to discern.
Nothing.
“Galls,” he swore, though he did not himself know to whom or what he referred.
Small evidences of life arose from the settlement below—a faint, chanted prayer (for the dead man, no doubt), and a child’s brief cry. They were returning to their beds. Wind and the creak of limbs joined with the voices. Belly full of wistfulness (and that’s about all), Pan Renik gave in to the profound wave of futility that suddenly washed over him, draining him of the small hopes he had detected on the night breezes.
Once in a while, like now, he deliberated opening his veins with a sharp piece of wood, spilling his thick red sap over the people below—
A loud wail brought him out of self-indulgence.
From above.
He looked up.
From his nest.
Pan Renik’s body went cold: he was utterly at a loss. The wail had not been the caw of a lemur or the scream of a nighthawk. Maybe he’d misheard? Had gliders arrived, in his absence, to romp with abandon on the woven leaves of his bower? No. The cry had been from none of these sources: it had been from a person, a person in need, a person in distress.
A person in his nest.
No one could ever have climbed up while he was gone. No other citizen came here. There was not one in the settlement who could climb as well as he, none brave enough to leave the nets and webs and safeguards they all pathetically clung to down there. Not even padres had the balls to come up.
He made a few low hooting noises, to relieve his anxiety, and bobbed his head.
Who in the world could be up there?
After a few beats of his heart—wondering for just a moment if he should wait until the sun rose farther, so he could see the situation better—Pan Renik forced himself to subdue his fears and climb higher.