They Fly at Ciron Read Online Free PDF Page B

moments of love and concern, my stepmother’s smile at a chipmunk my youngest brother caught for a pet,the corn cakes my father baked for a friend of mine’s party when I asked him, or the songs the two of them sang together once, just after dark by our bedside, had been, indeed, the whole of it. And while the flames fell back into the embers, it struck me: This isn’t a story of some real childhood that we’re telling of now. No, this story is a present we’re making for my worried old father and my sick, sick stepmother, for having been two very, very fine parents indeed—and who’d certainly given us a childhood fine
enough.
But once I realized what sort of present it was, I was happy to sit there for another hour, completing that present, weaving it together with my brothers and sister—I was happy to make it for them, happy to give it to them; and I went to sleep afterwards, content we’d done it. And three days later, I left on another journey, knowing I would never see that fine old woman again, and that there was a good chance I might not ever see my father again either—but thinking no more about the story we’d given them, those few nights ago, than anyone ever thinks about a present you’ve given gladly to someone who deserves it.” Naä was silent a few steps more. “At least I didn’t think about it until after I’d been here, oh, three weeks or a month. Because, you see, Rahm, you’ve all, here, given a present to me.
    “You’ve given me—not another childhood; but rather a time like the
story
of childhood we put together that evening to help my parents through their final years. And, till now, I wouldn’t have believed a time or a place like that was possible!” They walked on together over the warm earth. “It’s beautiful here, Rahm. So beautiful that if I were anywhere else and tried to sing of this beauty, the notes would stickin my throat, the words would stall on my tongue—and I’d start to cry.”
    They had reached a stretch of green graves and stopped to gaze at where stone slanted from the smoky grass. “Yes,” Rahm said, after a moment. “It is beautiful, Naä. Thou art right.”
    Naä took a long, long breath. “So you brought a puma back with you. Did you leave it down with Kern and Rimgia? I wonder what sort of stew Ienbar will make out of
that
—before he puts the claws on his necklace.”
    “I didn’t bring it back,” Rahm said. “I gave it to a friend.”
    “You gave it to someone in the village before you brought it to show Ienbar?” She laughed. “Now that’s the first thing I think you’ve ever done that’s shocked me!”
    “Not a friend in the village. This was a man who helped me on my journey. As I fought the cat, a Winged One flew close. This man frightened it away with a powergun.”
    Naä turned to look at him. “A powergun? In my home, Calvicon, a man came through once with a powergun. He used it to do scary tricks—set a bushel of hay on fire—in the market square. But he told my big brother, who was his friend for a while, that they could be really dangerous, if used improperly…Where was he from?”
    Rahm shrugged. “He wore a black cloak. And black gloves. And a black hood. There was a silver crow on his shoulder—and on the sling which held his gun. His name was Kire, and I—”
    “Myetra…” Naä’s face darkened.
    “Possibly,” Rahm said. “But why dost thou look so strangely at this.”
    “Crow,cloak, and hood, in black and silver, are the uniform of officers in the Myetran army. What would such a soldier be doing here—so close you could leave him in the morning and be here by noon?” She walked, considering. “And with a powergun. Were there others with him?”
    “I saw only the one alone. He said he was a wanderer like me, out to see our land.”
    “—with a powergun? It doesn’t sound good at all.”
    “By why, Naä? We do not know them.”
    “Calvicon knows them,” she said. “And what they know isn’t