The cold-king flicked Marguerite off as if she were a fly. She landed on her shoulder, and the roadrunner-boy ran to her and crouched over her, fierce and futile.
Grandma Harken pulled the leathery thing out of her pocket. It was the scale from the dragon.
The cold-king turned his head, snorting. “What is that?” he said, sounding surprised, and it occurred to Grandma for the first time that he might not know that she had freed the monster.
He lifted his hand. She could not flee, and she could not dodge, and she was already against the wall. The next blow would likely kill her, for her bones were no longer as strong as they had been.
For lack of anything better to do, she put the scale in her mouth and bit down hard. The musty reptile taste mixed with the salt of blood, a thin, acrid stew.
There was another crack of thunder, like the sound of the shackles breaking, and something struck the wall of the old adobe.
The cold-king turned, startled. Pebbles rattled from the ceiling.
It occurred to Grandma Harken that she should probably get up before the ceiling came down.
She rolled sideways, slowly, onto her knees. She did not seem to be dead yet.
The wall shuddered under another impact. There were cracks in the wall now, running in all directions.
She stood up. Her back felt like an open wound.
The wall fell.
Through the gap came sunlight, thin and hazy as it was in this place. She saw the blunt wedge of the Gila dragon’s head, and then it drew back and slammed forward like a hammer.
The cold-king blinked in the sudden light. His face was fish-belly white under the coat of hair.
She looked around for something to throw at him—it didn’t have to be large, just a distraction, anything to buy the dragon another few moments—and then the roadrunner-boy charged.
The sound he made was half-human, half-bird.
The cold-king slapped at the air, and another wave of power washed over them, but differently.
The roadrunner-boy fell down and was a roadrunner. Marguerite’s cry became the harsh scold of a mockingbird. And Grandma Harken, who had been hunched over, searching for a weapon, dropped back to all fours, her body twisting into a shape at once forgotten and familiar.
Her ribs heaved. Her ears were as long as her arms. Two sickle horns rose up on her brow. Her fur was white with age, but her legs quivered with the memory of speed.
Well. Well. It’s been a long time.
She would have laughed then, but jackrabbits don’t.
The cold-king stared at her. “You were supposed to be a bird,” he said, sounding baffled. For a moment he sounded less like a monster and more like a man. “They’re always birds.”
The dragon hit the wall again and it fell down and took part of the roof with it.
Grandma stamped. She couldn’t help it. She had no other way to shout a warning. The roadrunner ran for the open doorway, and the mockingbird fluttered, dodging falling stone.
The cold-king spun around as masonry struck him, and the Gila dragon reached in and closed its jaws over him.
Grandma winced.
The poison of a Gila monster is greatly exaggerated. The bite is not. It clamped down on the cold-king and no power on earth could have freed him.
The cold-king sagged like a puppet with its strings cut. There was no blood at all.
Grandma stamped again, because the deathless do not die so easily. From the doorway, the roadrunner and the mockingbird looked in.
The body heaved. Around the edge of the dragon’s teeth, the flesh gaped open and something fell out.
It was a hare, but it looked unfinished. It was hairless, though its eyes were open. It staggered as it tried to walk, and its legs wobbled.
Until I finish growing back, the cold-king had said.
Not quite finished, then, thought Grandma, and launched herself at the hare.
She was old but her claws were still sharp. She struck the hare hard and rolled it over, biting at its throat.
Its flesh was soft and spongy, slick with fluid. She could not get purchase on it. It did not fight back but squirmed against her, trying to escape, leave a trail of slime like a slug over her paws.
It wiggled a little way free and the mockingbird struck at its eyes. Grandma ignored the screaming of old bones and grappled with it again, kicking for its belly.
Her claws found purchase at last, and tore into the swollen skin. Again, there was no blood. The hare’s body went limp and something feathered fought its way free from the open belly.
She did not know what kind of bird it was—some sort of water fowl, with a harlequin mask of green and cream over its face. She struck at it, tearing strips from its wing, but it was in the air before she could bring it down.
It made it nearly to the open doorway and the mockingbird slammed into its head.
Marguerite, in bird form, was barely a third the size of the fowl, but she fought like a creature possessed, battering the creature’s face with its wings, keeping it out of the air. The fowl hissed like a snake, trying to get into the canyon and more open air.
Grandma dragged herself forward. If she leapt, she could knock it out of the air—if she could even leap. It did not seem likely. Kicking the hare open had done things to her hips that would be a long time healing.
The roadrunner slammed into the fowl’s back, driving its long beak into the fowl’s neck. It went limp.
And is that all?
No. It never is, is it?
Its bill opened and the neck worked as if the corpse were vomiting. A serpent with tiny, poisonous eyes slithered free, tail whipping as it fled.
The roadrunner pounced before it had gotten three feet away. Of all the prey in the desert, it was snakes that they loved the most. It seized the beast behind the head and whipped it back and forth against the canyon wall.
Grandma sat back on her haunches, tense and trembling, waiting for the next form.
The snake’s body split open and a white egg flew out.
It traced a pale arc in the air, glistening. The roadrunner dropped the snake. The mockingbird flung herself into the air after it. The ancient horned jackrabbit lunged forward.
And the coyote with cold-moon eyes caught it neatly out of the air and swallowed it in two bites.
“What?” it said, licking its lips. “Were you going to eat that?”
The air shivered. The folds fell away as three worlds snapped back into place. The sky was blue and hard instead of hazy green. Grandma was an old woman sitting on the side of a hill, with her legs tucked up beneath her. Marguerite fell heavily out of the air and the roadrunner boy helped her up.
“Well,” said Grandma. “Well. How about that?”
The coyote sat down, looking pleased with itself, which is the natural state of coyotes.
Marguerite’s skin and eyes were brown, no longer gray and white. She reached into her mouth and pried the silver cuff out of her tongue. Her young companion, no longer feathered, spat blood. He was older than Grandma had thought. It was his wounded eyes that made him look so young.
His name was John, Marguerite told her. (Privately Grandma suspected that was nothing like his name, but she wouldn’t have given her real name to the cold-king either.) He had been captured not long after Marguerite. His people were to the south and east. “I’ll see him home,” she said, looking at Grandma, as if she expected her to argue.
It did not matter in the least to Grandma, so long as she didn’t have to deal with it. “Go into town and talk to Tomas,” suggested Grandma. “Tell him I sent you. He’ll loan you a mule.”
They nodded together and stood, leaning against each other, the only two people in the desert who knew what it was like to be tongue-cut birds.