Then, like a light going off in my head, I realized something. "Jara, Ket? Is that why Hork-Bajir have blades? To strip the bark from trees?" Ket Halpak stood up. I was sitting on a rotting log, so she towered above me like a skyscraper. She pointed to her elbow blade. "For straight cut." Indicating her wrist blade, she said, "For taking off."
Sticking out her knee, she explained, "For down by ground."
"For the bottom of trees," I said. "Each of the blades has a special use. Each one is for harvesting tree bark."
"Yes."
She sat back down and took another chunk of bark.
"They aren't weapons? You don't use them to defend yourselves from enemies? To kill prey?"
Jara Hamee looked right at me. "Hork-Bajir have no enemy. No prey.
Hork-Bajir not kill.
Yeerk kill. Yeerk kill Andaiite. Andalite kill Yeerk. Hork-Bajirdie."
"You're caught in the middle. But that's why the Yeerks took over your race - the blades. They made you deadly, once the Yeerk evil was in your head. You're the ultimate soldiers. All because you're adapted to eating tree bark."
The Hork-Bajir had nothing else to say. They went back to eating.
"Look, I have to go for a while. I ... um, I have to go get food, too." Ket Halpak held out a chunk of bark. "Our food yours."
"Thanks. But I need a different food."
I didn't tell them what I ate or how I got it.
You know, it's strange. I never feel guilty about being a predator when I'm with humans. After all, good old Homo sapiens is the king of all predators.
But these deadly looking Hork-Bajir were not predators at all. Despite their looks, they were no more dangerous than a deer with a large rack of antlers.
They were just victims. Just a species that had the bad luck to look fearsome. And now they were caught up in a war between Yeerks and the rest of the free species of the galaxy.
I thought of all the battles we'd had with
Hork-Bajir. They had come close to killing me more than once. I had hated and feared them. Now I just felt sorry for them.
And I felt sorrier still, because I knew that my friends and I would fight against Hork-Bajir again in the future.
"l'll be back in half an hour or so," I said as I took wing. "Don't worry. I won't leave you."
s I flew up through the trees, I saw the sun just peeking up over the rim of the earth in the east. It instantly lit the treetops with gold.
It was a beautiful sight. Golden leaves and dark shadows beneath, and clouds all red on one side and still night-gray on the other.
It felt good to be up off the ground. It felt good to have air beneath my wings and a cold clean breeze in my face. I'd spent the night clinging to a Hork-Bajir's horns and slogging through the brush. That was no place for a bird. Or even for a human in bird shape.
The air was still flat, no thermals, no up-drafts, so I had to work hard. But it felt good,
flapping my wings and stretching my cramped muscles.
I would miss this when I became human again. Would the Ellimist give me back my human body and let me keep the morphing power? I hoped so. I'd hate to think I would never fly again.
Below me I spotted an opening. Not even a meadow, really, just a small clearing with tall grass and fallen logs and the telltale burrow openings of rats and voles and other tasty morsels.
But I had to be careful. This clearing probably belonged to someone.
Another hawk, possibly. Not to mention other species.
I had to get in and out fast. Get in, make my kill, and bail.
I swept the ground with my laser-sharp eyes, looking for the tiny movements that would betray a mouse or a rat. Sometimes, when the light is just right and the hunger is sharp, it's almost like I can see right through the ground. Like I can see the mice in their warm burrows.
Maybe that's why I didn't see the danger. Maybe it was because I was totally focused on eating.
I did spot a rat, though. A nice, plump thing, waddling along toward his own breakfast. I dived from up high.
Then I hit a sudden air pocket! It threw me off-balance and I nearly splattered myself into the dirt. I yanked back just in time and lost my rat.
"0h, man!" I complained. "Whatever happened to the good old days, when breakfast was a nice easy bowl of Wheaties?"
Well, it would be that way again soon. As soon as the Ellimist kept his promise to me. A warm bed at night and a nice, easy breakfast in the morning.
Not that that's how it had been when I was human. I hadn't exactly been in a nice, normal family. See, both my folks left a long time ago. After that I just got passed around from one aunt or uncle to another.
When I was stuck in morph and disappeared from the human world, I don't even know if any of them looked for me.
I shoved those thoughts aside. I flapped my wings, ready for takeoff.
But I just cleared the tops of the tall grasses when -
WHAM!
I was hit! It was like someone had thrown a brick at me. I was down, fluttering in the grass, beating my wings in terror.
What hit me? What the ... what the heck was happening?
And only then did I see it poking through the
grass - an intelligent, curious face, tawny fur, four big paws, and a body that might have been three feet long from its nose to the end of the weirdly curved, short tail that gave the beast its name.
Bobcat!
The wind had been knocked out of me, and I practically fell apart when I saw the big cat.
It circled around me, watching me curiously. Wondering if I would fight back. Calm brown and gold eyes surveyed me as I would survey a wounded rat.
The hawk in me wanted to flap its wings and try to scare the cat away.