Through the window, she saw them pass, high-stepping over her garden fence, walking through as if they owned it. Most went on over the lane fence, but one looked in the kitchen door and squawked. “I saw you,” Ofelia said. “Go away.” As if it understood, it turned away. Then it swung back, and pointed at the vegetables on her table. “You can’t eat that,” Ofelia said. “That’s my food.” A grunt. A complicated movement of the upper limbs that she thought might be like a shrug in meaning, and it left, hopping nimbly over the lane fence. She could hear its feet squelch in the mud. Where were they going, muddy-footed, with bloody prey slung from their belts? Not to center — ! Ofelia looked out to see. They were strolling along the lane, pointing at one of the treeclimbers that squatted on a roof-edge. They were strolling east, toward the shuttle field. Her stomach turned, remembering the bloated corpses the Company reps had left.
All day she told herself it was only natural. Of course they had to eat, and of course nothing in the village could feed them, any more than she could eat the fruit of the great forest trees. Why shouldn’t they hunt? Humans hunted, if they lived on worlds with game they could eat, and they ate farm animals elsewhere. She herself liked meat. She didn’t like killing, but then she hadn’t learned how early enough. These things had been hunting from childhood, she supposed. It didn’t mean they were killers, really. Killing things to eat was not the same thing as killing them just to kill.
But the treeclimbers were just as dead. And she had not seen them eating the treeclimbers. Suppose it had been only sport, only for fun. She shivered. Those long knives… had that been how the other colonists died? No, because she had heard explosions. They had spoken of other weapons. She had seen no weapons but the knives, no tools but the musical instruments. Were these the same aliens that killed, or something else? And how had they lived here for forty years without meeting them before? In the afternoon, she went back to the center, secured the door to the control room as well as she could, and latched the other doors, including the outside door. Then she went back to her house. It was not secure — nothing was secure — but she wanted to sleep in her own bed again. If it was the last night, very welclass="underline" she would be comfortable for that night, at least. No more sleeping on floors, whatever happened. She had stretched out on her bed, her body happily finding its hollows and bulges again, when she heard them coming back up the lane in the dark. Grunts, squawks, more of the low churring that sounded like contentment. The one with the set of tubes was blowing into it again; she could hear the notes above their gabble.
She knew when they came to the locked center by the chorus of squawks. Anger? Disappointment? Who could tell, with aliens? Thumps against that door. Would it hold? More gabble. Then, inevitably, thumps against her own door, followed by a trill from that odd collection of tubes. Ofelia felt a rush of hot anger. They had the whole village to live in: why did they have to bother her? Why couldn’t they let her rest?
Didn’t they know she was an old woman, a tired old woman who needed her sleep? Of course they didn’t. She had no idea how old they were. Grumbling, she got off the bed, turned on the light, and went to the door, in no humor to cooperate with them, whatever they wanted. The one with the instrument held it up, shook it, and then gestured to the center. It probably meant it wanted to hold another musical night there. She didn’t. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, all night long, without interruption. And she wasn’t about to turn them loose in the center without her supervision. “Sleep somewhere else,” she said. “All the houses are open.” Except hers; she stood in the door determined not to let them in.
The one with the instrument shook it again, pointed again, and this time held out two of its long-nailed digits. Two? Two what? Two musical evenings, two nights, two of the creatures? Now it pointed at the instrument, and then at the center door, then held up two digits.
“I don’t want you in there alone,” Ofelia said, “You’ll make more mess.” The many eyes blinked at her. The creatures did not go away; they did not move. She knew if she shut the door, they would bang on it again. She knew she could not get to sleep until they were satisfied. It was as bad as having the family again. She knew she had given up a long moment before she was ready to admit it to them, “All right,” she said. “But you’re not spending the night there.” They would, and she couldn’t stop them. She would have to decide where to sleep, and her body had already made that decision. She needed her own bed. When she opened the center door, two of them slipped past her and darted into the sewing room on the right. The rest stayed in the lane. In the light streaming out from the hall, Ofelia saw that no tree-climber bodies hung from their belts; they must have eaten them. She shivered. The two creatures reappeared, one with another bundle of tubes, and one with the gourd hung with strings and beads. They waved these at the others, and with a series of rapid grunts the whole company moved off down the lane, eastward as they had come.
All they had wanted was their instruments. Ofelia could hardly believe it. She turned off the lights, relatched the door, and watched as the shadowy forms melted into the darkness farther down the lane. Back in her own house she lay a long time awake in her bed. Who could imagine how aliens thought? Who could imagine why they did what they did? The music she enjoyed, but the killing… so quick, so easy, so casual… though she had seen people kill like that, the quick twist of the neck for chickens, the quick thrust of the knife for sheep, for calves. But not at a run, not loping across the grass. She could not help but imagine herself, her old stiff body in a shambling, hopeless run, with the creatures chasing her, laughing to each other, enjoying the chase, until one of those hard-taloned hands caught her by the neck, and one of those long sharp knives emptied her belly onto the grass.
The soft music trickled in through the closed shutters of her windows. They had settled somewhere nearby, perhaps in a corner of some garden, and now they made music. She imagined the comfort of having full bellies after several hungry days during the storm, and heard that in the music. Not that it made sense. She fell asleep at last, arguing with herself about whether it made more sense to sing or sleep after a feast. Her dreams terrified, but never quite woke her. Morning. Still muggy, but less so. A stronger breeze from the sea, damp but fresher. Ofelia woke comforted by her own bed, by the familiar shapes and smells of her own room. The terrors of the dreams translated quickly to the comfort of her own space, her own time.
She went into her garden before the sun was high, for the first time in too many days. The tracks of the creatures didn’t bother her; they had mashed only two bean plants and one of the green squashes. She busied herself restaking the tomatoes, raking away the rotting leaves, loosening the soil. She found a little yellow tomato, one of the sweet ones, that she had missed the evening before, and put it straight into her mouth. Sweet, juicy. A grunt across the fence; Ofelia looked up to see one of the creatures watching her. How had it come so silently? She kept turning up leaves, looking for crawlers, for slimerods, for aphids, for another ripe yellow tomato. A slimerod halfway up the stem; she picked it off and cracked it. The creature squawked. Ofelia looked at it. It held out its digits.
“You want the slimerod?” She could not believe that. Slimerods were slimy, itchy nuisances. But she walked over and dropped the slimerod into that waiting hand. The creature grunted at her, and flipped the slimerod into its mouth.