Was it asking if she’d heard? Or if it had woken her? Or if it had put her to sleep? She had no idea. She liked the sound. She reached out, meaning to gesture Go on, and the creature handed her the tubes. There were seven of them, polished, tied together with braided strips of grass almost as fine as thread. Ofelia bent her head to look closely at the work. Someone had made those narrow strips, then braided them — evenly, she noticed — and then braided the braid with others, and wrapped the tubes. The tubes themselves felt light, like the bones of birds or stems of great reeds. They had been stained a deep vermilion, so she could not tell what color they had been. Unless that was the color. They smelled like the creatures themselves, a pungent but unclassifiable odor.
The creature’s hand came close now, pointing to one end of the tubes. Ofelia saw little notches carved in the tubes. She blew experimentally into the end of one; a sound came out, not musical at all but breathy and harsh. She tried another with the same result.
“I’m sorry,” she said, handing it back to the creature. “I can’t play it.
Was that satisfaction on its face? It blew a ruffling flourish, triumphant, then stared at her.
Ofelia grinned. “Its lovely,” she said. “I wish I could do that.”
She looked at the others. One held a gourd covered with a network of laces strung with beads. It shook the gourd, and produced the light rattling rhythm she’d heard. It held the gourd out. Ofelia took it, and shaking it remembered a rhythm from her childhood, a song she and Caitano had danced to. She felt her toes wiggling as she tried to match the memory with present sound. A deeper drumming joined her; she looked up, startled. One of them bounced a stick — a stick that looked remarkably like a bone — against its torso. She lost her rhythm, found it again. Now one of them clicked long black toenails against the floor. The one with the collection of tubes blew into them again.
Ofelia concentrated on the rhythm she was trying to make, but she kept losing it in the confusion with the other sounds. Finally she quit trying, and simply shook the gourd back and forth. Around her the creatures made a variety of sounds, all of which wove together in ways she enjoyed without understanding. When her arm got tired, she quit shaking the gourd and just listened. She had not ever imagined what it would be like to make music in a group… it was fun, she decided, but it would be more fun if she knew what they were doing.
When they stopped, she grinned and handed up the gourd to whichever one would take it. Then she shook her arm, to explain why she had quit. She thought she might look for some of the old cubes, the ones the colonists had played for recreation nights, and let them hear what human music was like. Most of the cubes were gone, of course; people had combined their cube libraries when they came, but reclaimed favorites when they left.
Tomorrow. She was too tired tonight, too ready to go back to sleep. She got to her feet, grunting a little, then shuffled back down the hall to the control room. They watched, but did not follow. She shut herself in, lay down on the thin pallet and wondered if they would keep making music. If they did, she did not hear it. She woke when one of them bumped against the door, woke all at once in a fright, her heart racing. But they didn’t try to push their way in. It was nothing like that other time, the time she woke to the bump on the door and it was the shadow in shadows pushing his way in, wanting her, wanting her despite her refusal. Ofelia sat still until she regained her breath. Not the same at all. Now that she could hear something other than the blood rushing in her own ears, she could hear them down the hall, grunts and squawks.
She looked at the chronometer before she opened the door. Midmorning already; she had had plenty of sleep. When she opened the door, sunlight streamed in the open front door. No creatures. Ofelia closed the control room door behind her and went to look in the kitchen. Another mess — one of them had broken a jar of kilfa and the pungent smell of the green berries filled the room. Ofelia grumbled to herself as she swept up the spice and the glass shards. Like children indeed — you had to keep after them, after them every time.
But they seemed to be gone. They weren’t in the sewing rooms, or the hall, or the assembly room where Ofelia had heard the colonists debating which destination to choose. When she looked out into the muddy lane, she saw tracks leading away eastward, but no creatures.
They would be back, but in the meantime, she could check on her own house and garden. The mud in the lane squished between her toes; in the ditches, the water trickled clear at the bottom. It was a hot, muggy day, typical of the weather after sea-storms; the sun felt like a soggy hot towel on her shoulders as she walked across to her house.
There on the floor were the blurred marks left by the one who had followed her inside, the wet towels, already mildewing, she had used to dry it. Ofelia hated the mildew smell. She took the towels outside and spread them on the garden fence. This time it had not blown over. The plants, flattened by wind and rain, were beginning to recover, lifting a few leaves above those still beaten flat. Ofelia picked the tomatoes that hadn’t been turned to mush, gathered a handful of beans, and four ears of corn. She had pulled most of the cornstalks upright again when shrieks erupted in the forest.
Now what? Ofelia noticed that the sheep were ignoring the din, nibbling placidly at the meadowgrass nearby. The shrieks and yelps came nearer. She could see nothing, but whatever it was must be in the lower brush now. Then it came nearer — a troop of the treeclimbers, tails high, loping toward the village and screaming. The sheep lifted their heads, ears stiff. Behind the treeclimbers — on either side — were the aliens, their high-stepping gait now lengthened into an easy, efficient run. They were herding the treeclimbers… herding them to the village. The sheep bolted, scattering with frightened noises of their own. As she watched, one of the creatures lengthened its stride, caught up with a treeclimber, and caught it by the neck. At once, it slung the treeclimber around, like a child swinging a doll by the arm, and at the same time drew its long knife with its other forelimb. No, Ofelia wanted to cry. No. But it was far too late; the knife finished what the snap of the neck had begun, and the dead treeclimber twitched, its blood draining out into the grass. Two more had been killed; the surviving treeclimbers made it to the village, where they raced up to the rooftops and chittered wildly.
Ofelia unclenched her fingers from the fence. So the creatures hunted. She had known they could not eat human food. They would have been hungry after the days of storm. And those were only treeclimbers. Yet… it was hard for her to reconcile her memory of the night before, making music with the creatures, with this: with the creatures lapping the blood as it flowed from the necks of their prey, with the quick, efficient gutting of the carcasses. Would they eat them raw? She couldn’t stand to see it if they did, yet she could not look away. The little troop had formed again, the dead treeclimbers slung by their tails from the belts of those who had caught them (she thought — she was just beginning to know the differences between them).
They saw her. One of them waved a bloody knife, as if in greeting. Or threat. Ofelia swallowed. Behind them, the pile of innards had already attracted a swarm of black buzzing things that Ofelia knew were not really flies. She turned away and went inside her house, but did not shut the door. She hoped they would leave her alone (that bloody knife) but if they didn’t, she did not want to be surprised by a knock on the door. She looked at the orange-red tomatoes, the green beans, the green husks of corn over the yellow kernels. She wasn’t hungry.