The Unfinished Land

Faithful Wings

THE THREE leather-clad figures in the far cage had not said a word, but as dusk settled and clouds covered the sky, bringing on a strange, smoky gloom, the woman put fingers to the corners of her mouth and whistled high and shrill, piercing Reynard’s ears. He looked at Manuel, but the old man simply maintained his patient stoop—keeping his attention on el capitán and the assembled troops. Cardoza had formed the soldiers into two columns, men with short swords, halberds, and half-pikes foremost, preparing to carve their way through the forest, toward the volcanic ridge that lowered over the north end of this beach and might lead them inland.

“He leaveth just before dark. The man’s an idiot,” Manuel said.

No thought to bringing along any of the three prisoners and their satchels. el capitán had never made it ashore on England, and that might mean he had never fought a real battle, never dealt with the necessity of planning… Or guides.

So Reynard guessed, but he was young and foolish, his uncle had informed him often enough—so how could he know? He did know that he would rather stay in this cage than accompany the soldiers. Soon both the sailors and the soldiers might quite literally run out of time, one group at sea, the other…

At the questing fingers of the glassy skins.

Reynard thought of the female face that had leaned over him in the dark, cheeks and forehead aglow like some beautiful, frightful dream. Somehow, they had seemed to share a sympathy. He caught Manuel looking at him, scowled, and shook his head. What was the old man to him? Were they also somehow connected, protected together? Not now, certainly. Except that they did share a cage.

Reynard’s legs were cramping. Manuel’s legs no doubt were cramping as well, and worse, but he did not show the pain or complain.

Twilight here lasted far longer than it did even in England. His uncle had told him that the line between night and day in the tropics was like the cut of a knife, but the farther north one traveled, the longer twilight lingered. His uncle had been south of the equator with John Hawkins, taking slaves to the Caribbean, and had vowed he would never do that again. But he had seen the tropical sun and knew how fast daylight faded. Here, the dusk seemed to last forever. Reynard had spent many evenings trying to understand the why of that, but never having been in the tropics himself, and never having asked his uncle pointed questions about the ways of the natural world seen during those slave voyages, which had so affected his uncle and of which any mention made him morose, he had never reached any conclusions.

He shifted to make room for Manuel to stretch out his legs. Manuel’s age seemed to be creeping back. His skin was like old leather, his eyes were turning yellow again, and Reynard caught him pulling out another tooth and throwing it with a curse through the bars.

“Night cannot fall soon enough,” the old man said.

The two lines of Cardoza’s soldiers vanished into the forest like snakes crawling under a bush. For a few minutes more, those left on the beach heard chopping, swearing—calls and commands—but soon all that faded.

Meanwhile, the tide nearly full, sailors pushed and pried with logs and branches to dislodge the galleon and shove it off the beach. It remained stuck fast. Digging quickly and inserting the trunks of several trees, ten men hung from the trees first on one side, then the other, and began to rock the great ship while the tide was swifting in. Others at the bow shoved, calling in unison, as the ship’s boats rowed out through the surf, hauling thick ropes from the stern. It took over an hour, well into the long, smoky twilight, but a last grumble of the hull was followed by sailors shouting with joy, waving their lanterns to get the boats to pick up those left in the shallows.

The black outline of the galleon was soon dozens of yards from the beach. The sailors and el maestro were strongly motivated by what they had suffered the night before… But could there be any kind of escape?

Manuel grumbled, “The most junior glassy skins do not enjoy tides or rivers. el maestro and the sailors are safe out there from low Eaters… but that meaneth not they are safe.”

“How long did you live here?” Reynard asked.

Manuel gave him a thin smile, not to show his teeth. “I appeared thirty when last I left, maybe forty years ago. The expedition before that, I left when I was your age, and returned older than I am now. I have lived on this isle, off and on, in total, for maybe twenty years. And off the island—maybe five hundred.”

Reynard instinctively pulled back from the old man. “Are you human?”

“Yes, boy. Very human. Perhaps more human than thou!”

Not that he believed any of this, or that it mattered in the least. Reynard was pretty sure death would be upon them all before any long, slow sunrise. The woods might reject the soldiers, forcing them to take out their frustration on the prisoners in the cages. The ship might anchor offshore, send back boats, and finish the work of dispatching them.

But then a brisk, whirling breeze came up, raising clouds of sand and gravel. Something flew over the cages with great, gritty swooshes—something that could see in the gathering dark.

“Drake,” Manuel said. “Not the one that took the dog. Bigger. I pray it is paired!”

Reynard wanted desperately to know what that meant. “How paired? In a team?”

“They drink the tap after a blunting. That maketh the young drake theirs to rule.”

And Reynard was no better informed than before! “Can you speak it plain?”

Manuel shrugged. “Thou wilt see soon enough.”

Darkness was complete, but a sliver of moon emerged and a woman’s face came gray and quick outside the bars of their cage. She was of middle years, weathered but lithe and strong, and wore leather like those in the far cage. She moved soundlessly, and in her quick survey, paid particular, frowning attention to Manuel.

“Thou hast returned!”

Manuel met her study with downcast silence.

With a knowing wink at Reynard, she moved to the other cage. A brief conversation followed, and the visitor returned to the darkness.

“That would be Anutha, I think,” Manuel said. “Last time we met, she was but a girl. She acteth now like a scout.”

“You know all these people?” Reynard asked.

Manuel shook his head sadly. “Some have been born since I left.”

The three in the far cage arranged themselves as if preparing for a tumble, and the woman whistled loudly, summoning a second gritty wind. Something big landed on their cage and lifted it from the sand, then dropped and split it open.

Reynard raised his head to see.

“Keep down!” Manuel shouted. The clouded moon brightened to show wide, transparent wings descend over their own cage, and in similar fashion, it was careened and plucked open by darting, shining black arms—thorny, jointed arms with strong, scissoring claws. Manuel rolled free of the bars and across the shingle. A broken bar gouged Reynard’s calf and then he, too, was free, but under another broad shadow, another pass of the sparking claws, he flattened again and his face fell into a lick of wave.

Something very big and black folded broad cathedral-window wings along a long, slender body as it settled on the shore a dozen yards off. The head was extraordinary—a cubit or more across, with two long, wide eyes like doubled melons covered with jewels, and a pinching, cleaving mouth that opened and closed in three parts. Reynard was sure the creature was watching them. It leaned over to suck at the water, then spread and flapped its wings, hopping then rising and blowing sand until Reynard covered his face with his hands.

Only then was he grabbed and lifted by his underarms—with hands, not claws. “No fuss, boy,” said the one Manuel called Anutha. Scraps of wood lay all over the beach. The three from the other cage surrounded them, and with Anutha’s help, Reynard got to his feet, limping, half blind, and saw four more people approaching from down the beach, not Spanish—dressed in leather like the others, and also carrying satchels. The window-winged beasts had flown off and could not even be heard.

“Dana, have you all you need?” Anutha asked the woman in command of the first three, who had summoned these beasts with her whistle. Manuel looked upon the woman called Dana with profound respect, then held up two fingers. “Two!” he whispered. “She is paired with two drakes!”

“They took our tools and put them in a chest,” Dana said. Her male companions quickly found the chest some distance up the beach, broke the lock with a twisted horseshoe from around the cold forge bricks, opened the lid, and in brighter moonlight, held up three satchels.

“All here!”

Anutha nodded approval. “Now we go.”

Helping Reynard and Manuel, the group quickly pushed into the woods on the southwestern verge, opposite where the soldiers and el capitán had gone. The branches rubbed and rustled around them, and a breeze, following the tide, moaned through their leaves. The trees seemed to have their own opinions about these intruders, limbs reaching out to touch and welcome the ones that wore leather and carried satchels, other limbs whipping at Reynard and Manuel with disdain, raising welts.

“Halt!” Anutha called. Between the grit in his eyes, the whipping of the trees, and the final darkness, Reynard could barely see her. He felt something cold and wet and looked down at his feet. Ocean poured into the woods, rising to his ankles, then to his knees. Far behind, through the forest and into the hollows and crevices of the mountains beyond, came a kind of deep sigh, as if the land itself was breathing, and on the exhale, dropping the shore deeper into water. That breathing tide was already high enough that the galleon might actually make it past the breakers! Somehow, as much as he hated Spaniards and feared the warriors who had threatened his Queen, that possible escape seemed a grand thing, a triumph of their kind against the strange land they had found…

And it meant his own escape might be possible, as well.

Then, from where the ship had been tugged out to sea, they all heard distant, frantic voices. They looked out through the branches with mixed awe and fearful sympathy. The calls began as shouts of warning, then rose in terror, followed by screams of agony. Some of the voices seemed to come from high over the water, as if men were being lifted hundreds of feet into the night—and dismembered, their cries ending abruptly.

“Sailors on the galleon,” Dana said, clinging to Anutha. She pulled from her satchel a softly glowing knob on a stick, which brightened as she spun it in her palms. “They kept us from our duty, and now they suffer.” She tapped Reynard’s shoulder, then Manuel’s, and they all moved up a wooded rise and away from the lapping waters.

“The town’s in danger,” the beardless boy said. He was younger by a couple of years than Reynard, his round brown face topped like a watch cap by thick, coal-black hair. As he rummaged through his satchel, his eyes took a wily slant, and when they moved on, he handled himself with almost strutting confidence.

Manuel warned, “I know these soldiers. They will strike soon.”

Anutha surveyed the combined parties: two from Dana’s captured group, older and experienced, and four newly arrived, two of late youth and full of confidence, two more quite young and perhaps untried. And of course Manuel and Reynard, capabilities unknown. “There are not enough of us to make a difference,” she said.

Dana made her decision. “No time to walk to town and back and drop these two off. They will come.” She pointed out the narrow path through the trees, leading down to another portion of the beach.

“Big year for drakes!” the beardless boy said, smiling excitedly at Reynard as they exchanged places in the line. Reynard studied the restless trees, touched his wounded leg, and made quick appraisal of his chances of fleeing—and living. Slim at best. Besides, he was fascinated by the group’s task.

“The town hath a dozen defenders,” said a pale-skinned man with hardly any nose and long, knotted flaxen hair.

“Paired to drakes,” the beardless boy explained to Reynard with a sly nod. “Just right for nasty visitors. I’ll be paired as well.”

“How do you speak with them?” Reynard asked.

“We will show you,” the beardless boy said. “Stay close.”

Dana said, “The woods are in turmoil and will resist. That will slow us.” She took the lead, followed by her two older partners. Anutha took a step back and let them pass. Reynard tried to clearly observe this hierarchy through the throbbing pain in his leg.

Anutha rejoined the line behind Manuel. “I think thou must be th’one called Pilgrim.”

“I was given that name, long ago,” Manuel said.

“Dost thou know a woman called Maggie?” she asked.

“I do,” Manuel said.

“And dost thou know me?”

“I believe I do.”

“I had seven or eight years when thou last went to sea. Now I work with Maggie and Maeve. Dana is Maggie’s daughter. And of course thou know’st Maeve…”

“Maggie’s older sister,” Manuel said. “She must be in her sixties, and Maeve, in her eighties. I hope she is well and alive.”

“Maeve is eighty-four,” Anutha said with a wry twist of her lips. “Still alive, but feeble. Thou hast kept thy wife waiting a long, long time, Pilgrim.”

Dana called over her shoulder, “There be nymphs and drakes in our future, more important than far-wandering husbands or the Spaniards they guide. Boy, canst thou travel with that leg?” she asked Reynard.

Reynard tried to stand straight. He noted that the men in the team now looked on Manuel with no small distrust. Their distrust included him, he realized, with an added twinge. “I can walk,” he said.

“I can travel, as well,” Manuel said. “But I will stay on the beach and distract the Eaters.”

Dana looked back, expression barely changed, but Manuel seemed to be confirming something for her. “That would not be in our best interests,” she said, brows pinched.

Anutha said, “I know not thy connection, but before we hand ye to the Eaters, I await Maeve’s judgment.”

This irritated Manuel. “I bring her what she needs, that which I promised long ago,” he said.

Anutha sniffed and looked away. Dana said, “That is for Maggie and Maeve to judge. For now, we move together.”

Reynard had to agree. Even if the wild, window-winged drakes did not find them, the glassy people—those all seemed to call Eaters—would return, and Reynard felt it was hardly likely they could be lucky again. So why was Manuel willing or even eager to stay behind? And then Reynard knew, as if he had understood those strange scenes on the beach for the first time. Manuel needed those visitors. They had something for him.

They brought him youth.

The procession worked through thickly twisting branches, then, reaching a stubborn impasse, split their line in two and left the difficult, narrow path to find other ways. Dana faced the boy as he limped past. “Thou think’st we let the drakes hatch to fend off Spaniards?”

Reynard was embarrassed by the direct question, though not surprised by her inflection. As a young man of no particular prominence or high birth, everyone older addressed him so. And when he spoke to horses, he gave them highborn respect, as one should, for all horses are noble. “I wis not what you keep them for. They scare me.”

“As they should. It hath been a hard year for tracking nymphs,” Dana said. “They come ashore, hang in trees or off rocks, and we boat out to find and blunt before they rise. If we blunt them, we can pair them with defenders—but split wild, they be a danger to all.”

“We saw them from the galleon,” Reynard said. “Out in the bay.”

“Maybe with thy guidance we can find them again. After the feast the ddraig môr found on that damned galleon, the wild ones already out there will fight and mate and spread their eggs in the deep waters… and next year will be far worse.” Dana used Welsh-sounding words with an old flavor, like drake mar—sea dragons. Reynard’s grandmother had often dropped into Welsh when she was angry.

The blunter’s face was calm but hardly placid. As they trooped and stumbled through a low, thorny brake, she seemed to judge him more kindly. He sensed a deep intelligence, and her strong, taut features reminded him of his grandmother so much he wished he could remember more Welsh and use it to reassure her he meant no ill. But the words were not there. Not yet.

None of the blunters hacked at the branches, however much they annoyed, as if they respected the trees and bushes that made their journey difficult, even devious—for twice Anutha had to reverse course, swearing under her breath, vowing that the trees were playing tricks again. But she seemed to feel an almost perverse affection for them, and touched a few as she passed, as if she knew them.

When the dark finally fell, Dana let the knob dim. “Stay close,” advised a small, big-chested fellow, and Reynard and Manuel found themselves bumping shoulders in the center of a circle.

“They were not touched the first time,” Dana said to Anutha.

“Why?” the beardless boy asked. “If Eaters are thieves, will they not take from anyone?”

Neither answered.

“I hope they be not thieves,” the boy finished in a lower tone.

“Doth not matter if we sleep,” Anutha said. “They are not ghosts. Eldest outside, youngest in.”

Manuel seemed expectant, almost happy. Reynard doubted he would himself sleep.

And then… he did.

And sometime in his fitful repose—

Was it a dream?

Again he saw the glowing face of his glassy-skinned visitor on the beach, so beautiful and strange—and she stroked him along the nape of his neck, and he did not care.