“Vardin,” Dargan said in reproof, but it was a little too late.
Tacras glared. “You disrespect your elder!” He shoved to his feet. “Be fools then. I know what I saw.”
He stamped away, off between the tents, and everybody sighed. Ildras reached over and gave Vardin a shove on the shoulder, apparently as punishment. Moon kept his mouth shut and did not wince in annoyance. They had all been making fun of the old man anyway. Vardin had just brought it out in the open. If Dargan hadn’t wanted that to happen, he shouldn’t have made his own derision so clear.
“He’s crazy,” Kavath said, sounding sour and worried as he watched Tacras walk away. He was another outsider, though he had been here much longer than Moon. He had shiny pale blue skin, a long narrow face, and a crest of gray feathers down the middle of his skull. “He’s going to cause a panic.”
The Cordans all just shrugged, looking unlikely to panic. Dargan added, “Everyone knows he’s a little touched. They won’t listen. But do not contradict him. It’s disrespectful to his age.” With the air of being done with the whole subject, he turned to Moon and said, “Now tell us if you saw any bando-hoppers down in that end of the valley. I think it must be the season for them soon.”
When Moon had first found the Cordans and been accepted into their group, Dargan had presented him with a tent, and with Selis and Ilane. Moon had been very much looking forward to the tent; in fact, it was the whole reason he had wanted to join the Cordans in the first place. He had been traveling alone a long time at that point, and the idea of sleeping warm and dry, without having to worry about something coming along and eating him, had been too attractive to pass up. The reality was every bit as good as he had hoped. Selis and Ilane, however, had taken some getting used to.
It was twilight by the time he reached his tent, shadows gathering. He met Selis coming out with the waterskin.
“You took long enough,” she snapped, and snatched the packet of meat away.
“Tell that to Dargan,” Moon snapped back. She knew damn well that he had to wait for the elders to divide up the kill, but he had given up trying to reason with her about three days after being accepted into the Cordan camp. He took the waterskin away from her and went to fill it at the troughs.
When the Cordans had fled their last town, many of their young men had been killed covering their escape. It had left them with a surplus of young women. The Cordans believed the women needed men to provide for them; Moon had no idea why. He knew that Selis in particular was perfectly capable of chasing down any number of grasseaters and beating them to death with a club, so he didn’t see why she couldn’t hunt for herself. But it was the way the Cordans lived, and he wasn’t going to argue. And he liked Ilane.
By the time he got back, Selis had the meat laid out on a flat stone and was cutting it up into portions. Ilane sat on a mat beside the fire.
Ilane was beautiful, though the other Cordans didn’t think so, and their lack of regard had made her quiet and timid. She was too tall, too slender, with a pearlescent quality to her pale green skin. Moon had tried to tell her that in most of the places he had lived, she would be considered lovely, that it was just a matter of perception. But he wasn’t certain he had ever been able to make her understand. Selis looked more typically Cordan, stocky and strong, with iridescent patches on her cheeks and forehead. He wasn’t sure why she had been stuck with him, but suspected her personality had a lot to do with it.
Moon stowed his weapons in the tent and dropped down onto the mat next to Ilane. She was peeling a greenroot, the big, melon-like staple that the Cordans ate with everything, fried, mashed, or raw. After the kill earlier in the day, Moon wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t be for the next day or so. But not eating in front of other people was one of the first mistakes he had ever made, and he didn’t intend to make it again. It had gotten him chased out of the nice silk-weaving town of Var-tilth, and the memory still stung.
“Moon.” Ilane’s voice was always quiet, but this time it held a note of painful hesitancy. “Do you think the Fell are here?”
Tacras’ story had, of course, spread all over camp. Moon knew he should say what Dargan had said, but looking at Ilane, her pale green skin ashy-gray with fear, he just couldn’t. “No. I’ve been hunting in the open all up and down the valley and I haven’t seen anything. Neither have the others.”
As she wrapped the meat up in bandan leaves to put into the coals, Selis said, “So Tacras lies because he wants to frighten us to death for his amusement.”
Moon pretended to consider it. “Probably not. Not everybody’s like you.”
She gave him a sour grimace. Forced into actually asking a question, she said, “Then what?”
Ilane was having trouble getting the knife through the tough greenroot skin. Moon took it and sawed the hard ends off. He squinted at Selis. “Do you know how many things there are that fly besides Fell?”
Selis’ jaw set. She did know, but she didn’t want to admit it. All the Cordans knew that further up in the hills, there were birds, flighted and not, that were nearly as large as the small Fell, and nearly as dangerous.
“So Tacras was wrong?” Ilane said, her perfect brow creased in a frown.
Moon finished stripping the greenroot’s outer husk and started to slice it. “He saw it with the sun in his eyes, and made a mistake.”
“We should all be so lucky,” Selis said, but Moon knew enough Selis-speak to hear it as a grudging admission that he was probably right.
He hoped he was right. Investigating it gave him yet another reason to go out tonight.
“You’re cutting the greenroot wrong,” Selis snapped.
Moon waited until late into the night, lying on his back and staring at the shadows on the tent’s curved supports, listening to the camp go gradually quiet around him. The air was close and damp, and it seemed to take a long time for everyone to settle down. It would never go silent; there were too many people. But it had been a while since he had heard a voice nearby, or the low wail of a fretful baby.
Moon slid away from Ilane. She stirred, making a sleepy sound of inquiry. He whispered, “It’s too warm. I’m going to take a walk, maybe sleep outside.”
She hummed under her breath and rolled over. Moon eased to his feet, found his shirt, and made a wide circle around Selis’ pallet as he slipped outside.
He and Ilane had been sleeping together since the second month Moon had been here. She had made the first overtures to him before that, apparently, but Moon hadn’t understood what she wanted. Ilane hadn’t understood what she had interpreted as his refusal, either, and had been very unhappy. Moon had had no idea what was going on and had seriously considered a strategic retreat—right out of the camp—until one night Selis had thrown her hands in the air in frustration and explained to him what Ilane wanted.
Ilane was sweet-tempered, but her lack of understanding was sometimes frustrating. Several days ago, she had said she wanted to have a baby, and Moon had had to tell her he didn’t think it was possible. That had been a hard conversation.
She had just stared tragically at him, her eyes huge, as if this was something he was deliberately withholding. “We’re too different,” he told her, feeling helpless. “I’m not a Cordan.” He thought that if there had been any chance of it, it would have happened already.
Ilane blinked and her silver brows drew together. “You want Selis instead.”
Selis, sitting across the fire and mending the ripped sleeve of a shirt, shook her head in weary resignation. “Just give up,” she told Moon.
Moon threw her a grim look and persisted, telling Ilane, “No, no, I don’t think...I can’t give you a baby. It just won’t happen.” He added hopefully, “You could have babies with somebody else and bring them to live with us.” Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t a bad idea. He knew he could bring in enough food for a larger group, even with the elders taking their share.