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  “Your turn, Seamus,” Sinead said.

  After there was a rabbit apiece, duly dressed and skinned, she motioned for them to move on.

  “How about all your little friends in there wanting to die?” de Peugh asked.

  “There are more folks in Kilcoole than just us ones,” Liam said.

  In two more hours, the trail led to a kidney-shaped lake, clear as crystal and full of lily pads. The curlies became restive.

  “Whoa, boy,” Clotworthy said, leaning forward and patting the curly’s neck to reassure it.

  “Darby’s a mare,” Liam offered.

  “Girl, then. What’s wrong with her?”

  “They want to go swimming,” Sinead said, hopping down from her mount. “And unless you want to go, too, I’d suggest you dismount and remove her tack. You others do the same.” Liam and Seamus already had their saddles and bridles off.

  Minkus and Mooney, who had been walking, decided to join the horses. The freeze of the previous night had cooled the water only slightly. The day had been sunny and warm after the snowfall, and the lake, like most Petaybean waterways, was partially fed by hot springs.

  Sinead was hot and tired, too. She wasn’t naturally cranky, but she was at a loss how to impress on these oafish offworlders the seriousness of the relationship between the species on Petaybee. She had heard in stories and songs how it had been on Earth before her great-great-grandparents left; how the animals were no different from made things, how the world was something you walked on and nothing more. Maybe it was because Petaybee was alive that the relationship between hunter and hunted was a special, privileged one; maybe it was not like that on old Earth; maybe it wasn’t like that anywhere else in the universe, except . . .

  The old songs and stories her ancestors’ ancestors had handed down as curiosities long after they had any meaning in their day-to-day lives reflected that once the animals were thought of as sisters and brothers, just as they were on Petaybee; that once they talked with people even more easily than they did now. Maybe this new batch of crazies had the right idea. Maybe you had to pretend that living things were something to be worshiped, instead of doing as Petaybee and its inhabitants had always done and having a bit of friendly give-and-take. But maybe it took religious awe to get bozos like these blokes to respect anything.

  She waded in after the men and horses and plunged her hands, then her head, into the lake’s waters, surface diving, opening her eyes to see the swaying stems of the lilies. The curlies’ feet churned up mud, but soon they, too, were swimming—curlies were good swimmers. The mud settled and she could see their hooves working away underwater. Then, as if by agreement, all six of them dived at once.

  Lily roots were a great delicacy for curlies, one of their favorite foods, and she could feel their gaiety as they closed off their noses, lowered their extra eyelids, and dove like seals for the bottom, their tails streaming out behind them like mermaid’s hair as their lips and teeth pried loose the lily roots. Once the roots were captured, the curlies turned snouts up, pumped with their front legs, and were back on the surface, munching their catch.

  The men were all in the lake now, as well. Sinead climbed out, dried herself, and dressed. Seamus had emerged before her, and Liam followed shortly after. The curlies made three or four more dives.

  “Looks like them fellas are more interested in horseplay than the curlies are,” Seamus said, watching the hunters dive and splash each other and try to catch the curlies’ tails.

  One of them was busily trying to uproot lilies, hoping to curry favor, no doubt, Sinead thought with a wince at her own unspoken pun.

  Liam said, “Their feet probably hurt and they know well enough that once they’re out of there, they’ll have riders back on ’em.”

  Seamus grinned. “Ah, Sinead, it’s a cruel taskmaster you are.”

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But I don’t seem to be gettin’ through to them, now do I?”

  “I always thought it was simple,” Liam said. “All my life, everybody I know, any time they wanted anything, just listened to what was wanted and did it and they were taken care of. It’s not like it’s difficult or anything. But these fellas just don’t seem to think that way.”

  Seamus whistled for his curly, and the others automatically followed. The men playing in the water either didn’t see or pretended they didn’t.

  “Ah, we’ve worried them enough, Sinead,” Seamus said with a wink. “They’ve no guns to do great harm with now. I say we take our curlies and leave them on their own a bit.”

  Sinead returned his wink. “An excellent idea. Perhaps without us looking on they’ll figure things out for themselves.”

  9

  Clodagh looked over the four white-robed figures and shook her head. “I don’t know what Sean thinks I’m going to do with all of you. There’s only me at the house, but I don’t think there’s enough stretching space for all of you.”

  “Please, Clodagh,” Sister Igneous Rock said. “We don’t want to put you out. But we have learned that the Beneficence manifests itself to you in certain caverns warmed by its blessed blood and breath. We could ask for nothing better than to be allowed to live there.”

  The others nodded eagerly, but Clodagh shook her head. “The caves aren’t living places. It’s okay to take shelter there if you’re caught out in the weather, of course, and it’s okay for animals. Not for people.”

  “Forgive my ignorance, Clodagh, but why is that, would you say?” Brother Shale asked.

  Clodagh shrugged. “We talk to the planet most directly in the caves. If someone’s living there, it wouldn’t be polite to go in and have a chat with their house. And on the other hand, how would you like someone setting up housekeeping inside your mouth?”

  Sister Agate beamed. “Oh, she is so wise. They said you were wise, and you really are just as wise as they said. Isn’t she wise, brothers and sisters?”

  “Indeed. But might we, at least, become acquainted? Would you introduce us to the planet?”

  Clodagh shrugged. “You’re standing on it. But I don’t see why not. Only thing is, we just had one latchkay, and there’s not another one s’posed to happen till Snowdance. And a latchkay is really the best time. But things are happenin’ so fast, maybe we should have another one sooner.”

  “How soon is the next one?” Brother Shale asked.

  “Two, three months. Depending.”

  “Oh,” Sister Igneous Rock said. “But that won’t do.”

  “Why not?”

  “We had hoped to come and worship and return home to spread the Word within the next month.”

  “Hmph,” Clodagh said. “If you go that soon, you’ll miss most of the winter.”

  “Well, yes,” Brother Shale said. “It is said that the exterior temperature gets down below minus two hundred Fahrenheit, and I have rather poor circulation to endure that sort of cold.”

  “Never mind that,” Sister Igneous Rock said staunchly. “Now, Clodagh, I appreciate your importance as the nominal high priestess of the Beneficence, but I really don’t understand why we should wait for a latchkay. Brother Granite told us that significant communication had taken place quite extemporaneously when people wandered into or were taken to the caves by one of you. That is what we wish.”

  Clodagh said, “Okay, but I’m not any kind of priestess. I guess I better take you tonight, and we all can sleep there. This once.”

  “Fine,” Brother Shale said. “Now then, what will the Beneficence perceive as an appropriate sacrifice?”

  De Peugh was the first of the hunters to notice that something was missing. “Damn!” he said, slapping the water.

  “Damn what?” Clotworthy asked, shaking the water out of his ears.

  “The Great White Huntress and her native bearers have deserted us and taken the transportation!”

  “Oh dear,” Minkus said, “I’m afraid he’s correct. I do hope she left our clothing. My winter togs came from Herod’s on Nilus Two and they were hideo
usly expensive.” He flung this last bit back over his bony white shoulder while wading to shore. “Ah!” he said, once there. “It’s all right, chaps! Our kit is all accounted for.”

  “Great,” Ersol said. “So it’ll take us much longer to freeze to death this way.” A fat black cloud chose that moment to cross the path of the low-hanging sun, and a teasing wind chased wavelets up to wet the back of his legs as he danced around on the sharp stones scattered along the shore.

  The first one to finish dressing was Mooney, who, looking to the far side of the lake, pointed and said, “She didn’t take all the horses with her! Look, there’s one of them over there!”

  “First one to catch it gets to ride!” Clotworthy said, and started running. Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite finished putting on his boots, and tripped and fell facedown in the shallows, wetting his water-resistant parka and muddying and scratching his face.

  Ersol, a more experienced hunter, proceeded calmly into the lumpy undergrowth sprouting beneath the sparse, skinny trees.

  “I see it,” he hissed back to the others, and stalked it. Meanwhile, Clotworthy stood and picked up a bow and arrow; he was followed by Minkus, brandishing a spear, and Mooney, who held the dagger in his teeth so he would have both hands free to grab the curly’s mane if necessary. De Peugh took the time to hoist the quiver of arrows onto his shoulder and test the bowstring before following his fellows. He also, prudently, stuck a rabbit in one of the forty-seven capacious pockets of his hunting vest.

  The curly looked as if it was amenable to being caught, standing quietly, drinking from the lake, until Ersol was almost within touching distance of it. Then it lifted its head and looked at him.

  “Holy horseshit, will you look at that!” he said.

  The curly-coat shook its shaggy head at him, its newly sharpened single horn glinting, and trotted off a safe distance. It blinked at him, once.

  “It’s a fraggin’ unicorn!” Ersol called back to the others.

  “Well, don’t just stare at it, shoot it!” de Peugh growled, coming up behind him and drawing his own bow. “You can bet your retirement fund those things don’t get depressed and go lay in holes waiting to die.”

  “No one,” Minkus said, “will ever believe this.”

  “Not unless we take the head back with us.” De Peugh let his arrow fly.

  The arrow was just a bit behind the animal, which galloped off, not in fear, it seemed to Minkus but as if it had suddenly thought of a previous appointment.

  “Missed!” Ersol said, and sent his arrow flying, too.

  They were not stupid men, on the whole, and it didn’t take them too long to decide that they hadn’t a prayer of catching the heretofore mythical creature, so they stopped chasing it.

  Thoroughly winded and disgusted, they turned back to where they had left the rest of their winter gear and the rabbits Sinead had left behind for them.

  Something new had been added. What looked like an enormous calico housecat, the base of its tail thin, the tip bushy, was licking the last of the last rabbit from its mouth. Behind it lurked the curly-corn, quite as if, Minkus thought, the two beasts were conspiring against the hunting party.

  Minkus was inclined to remonstrate with the beasts, but de Peugh had worked his way into a leadership position and hushed the lot of them with a finger to his lips.

  The cat sauntered toward the curly-corn, and the two of them ambled off into the woods. With a stealthy wiggle of his fingers, de Peugh motioned the others to follow.

  Together they crept after the elusive beasts as quietly as five men unaccustomed to Petaybean ground cover could creep. The animals managed to stay just out of range, but did not seem to notice their arrows.

  “You can tell nothing here is used to being hunted,” Ersol whispered. “They aren’t taking anything fired in their direction personally.”

  With another gesture from de Peugh, the men spread out and came toward the animals from five different angles. This time, when Ersol fired his arrow, it glanced off the flank of the curly-corn, which whinnied and began to run. The cat chased it, as if in a game. The men broke into a run, too.

  Suddenly the curly-corn reared, his chest looming over Minkus. Now was the time to use the spear—or never. But the cat evaded Mooney’s dagger by springing straight across the shaft of Minkus’s spear, knocking it aside.

  Minkus, who fancied himself no mean hand at springing himself, threw himself at the cat at precisely the same time as the other four men. The cat’s fur brushed his hands as his feet landed, tangling with eight other feet, and the lot of them plunged through the underbrush and down, down, bruisingly down into a deep, dark hole.

  Landing on that part of himself best suited for abrupt seating, Minkus was showered with debris from above. Looking up, he saw the faces of the cat, its teeth bared in a wide grin, and the curly-corn, staring down at himself and his companions. Perhaps there was something to this anthropomorphism after all, he thought. He could have sworn that both animals wore expressions of profound satisfaction.

  “I think I broke my jaw,” Mooney mumbled. Or that was what Minkus understood him to say. Mooney’s actual statement was obscured by what seemed to be the echo of his last word, distorted into “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

  After sending Liam and Seamus on to the other culling places, Sinead and the extra curlies turned back to where she’d last seen the cheechakos. It had started snowing in the time they took to make their plans, and a light coating of snow masked the lakeshore and its surroundings. She missed the spot at first, for there was no longer any clothing or weapons or any remains of the dead rabbits.

  “I know I left ’em around here somewhere,” she said, dismounting and looking for signs that would enable her to start tracking the men. Brushing aside some of the snow, she uncovered the vestiges of sets of tracks, two sets leading away from the site and one leading back. There was also one clear set of the pawprints of a track-sized cat. She began calling, but her cries were not answered, and after trying to tell one broken bush from another, she gave up and decided to find Liam and Seamus instead and send Seamus back to Kilcoole for help while she and Liam, the best tracker of the three of them, continued to search.

  Clodagh was beginning to realize why religious congregations were sometimes called “flocks.” The ones following her to the hot springs had less sense than sheep and were noisier than magpies.

  They insisted on walking to the hot-springs cave barefoot, even though she warned them about the coo-berry brambles that still guarded the cave entrance from the unwary and uninvited. The coo-brambles had settled back into being ordinary weeds again, their extraordinary growth curtailed once the brambles had penetrated and removed all of the Petraseal and most of the people who had painted the sealant in four of the planet’s communion caves. The brambles had been cut back, poisoned, and burned, but there was still a thriving growth at the hot springs. You just had to know how to avoid it.

  Clodagh did avoid it. But the newcomers insisted on walking straight through the brambles, and she had an awful time getting them loose again, finally having to resort to the little mist bottle of coo-repellent she had thankfully remembered to carry with her.

  Then the newcomers wanted to enter the cave by prostrating themselves and crawling in like worms, but Clodagh pointed out that since the entrance was through the waterfall, they could drown that way, and really, truly, the planet didn’t care a bit how they came in as long as they didn’t have any Petraseal with them.

  They did insist on groveling and kissing the cave floor the moment they entered, though.

  After genuflecting six or seven times, Sister Igneous Rock threw her outstretched arms into the air and cried, “Speak to us, O Beneficence . . .”

  All they got was an echo, not of the last word, but of the O. It sounded like, “No, no, no . . .”

  “Tell us what you would have us do! How can we dedicate our miserable lives to your service? How can we redeem the error of humankind to your greater glo
ry? How can we demonstrate that, though unworthy, we are more than willing to do your bidding? How can we convince you to show us your will?”

  “How?” echoed the others. “Tell us how.”

  Clodagh sighed. They could start by shutting up. Even if it had something to say today, which it apparently didn’t, not even the planet could get a word in edgewise the way these folks carried on.

  After a time, they did stop babbling. Clodagh had half fallen asleep by then.

  Lazily, she roused herself. “You all done now?”

  But just then, Brother Schist collapsed back down to his knees and yelled, “Halleluja! I just heard voices!”

  “What? Where? Why should it talk to you and not to the rest of us? What did it reveal to you?” cried Sister Agate.

  “It said, ‘Fraggitall, these things have thorns.’ ”

  “Uh huh,” Clodagh said, and stepped over them to the cave’s entrance, sliding between the waterfall and the cliff face.

  Portia Porter-Pendergrass and Bill Guthrie were tangling themselves to shreds in coo-brambles.

  Clodagh took her spray-mist bottle from her apron pocket, spritzed her way to them, and tried to help.

  “Get away from me!” Portia shrieked. “Guthrie, what kind of a man are you? Make this—this witch—let go of me!”

  “I thought you came to talk to me,” Clodagh said, genuinely puzzled. “Sean said you folks wanted to.”

  “Pay no attention to her, Dama,” Bill Guthrie said. “She’s hysterical. She became addicted to one of her company’s own tranquilizers—sad case, really. I wanted to talk to you about the pharmaceutical potential of some of the materia medica you have discovered on your charming planet, but Portia thought we should just begin taking samples. Unfortunately, the samples seem to have taken us.”

  “Sure looks that way,” Clodagh said. “Dama, if you just stand up and pick off the ones stuck to your clothes, I think you’re free now. It’s startin’ to snow anyway. Coo-brambles shrink when it snows. Come on over to the spring and let’s wash and treat those scratches. You got some pretty deep ones.”