Page 37 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER ONE

Ellie

I watch the bird.

I think it must see me, exposed as I am in the middle of the beach, but it’s too far away to tell if its eyes are focused on me. It remains still, except its head, which twitches from side to side, as if it looks at me first with one eye, then the other.

I lick my lips, taste the salt tang of my sweat. It’s hot, the unforgiving sun beating down on me. My hands slip and slide on my spear. I’m not sure I trust myself to aim it right and that bird looks big. Dangerous.

I scan upwards, tracking my eyes up the huge rocky structure.

It’s almost like the big concrete walls that surround bottom tier sectors, but too uneven to be manmade.

It must be a natural formation. A kind of boundary to our newfound territory.

It cuts across the beach, out into the water, its origins somewhere within the forest. There’s no getting round it, nor scaling its sheer sides.

Which means I can’t go any further in my search for food. In this direction, at least.

My eyes go back to the bird.

Its perch is perhaps twice as high as I am tall, a small shelf only a fraction of the way up the rocks.

There are others, wheeling overhead, their perches far too high for me to reach.

It must be an advantage, living all the way up there.

Out of reach of predators. I wonder why this bird chose to rest so low to the ground.

Perhaps it’s older. Weaker. It couldn’t make it to the top of the rocks, which leaves it vulnerable.

To me.

I advance, holding my spear out in front of me.

My feet sink and slip in the uneven sand, but I’m getting the hang of walking across it now.

Finding my balance. My shoes don’t help - blocky Mercenia issued boots that are too heavy, too solid to work well on this surface.

If it weren’t for the burning heat of the sand, I’d take them off. Go barefoot.

The bird shifts, spreading its wings and flapping them a little as it lumbers to its feet.

And it does lumber - an awkward, ungainly manoeuvre.

It caws as it steps to the front of its ledge, feet wrapped around the edge, wicked sharp claws scraping against the rock.

Its eyes are definitely on me now. I can almost feel the weight of its gaze, can’t help thinking of those beady little eyes as angry.

Angry is good. Angry means it might attack. If it doesn’t, if it just takes to the air and goes to join the others, I’ll have no food to bring back for the girls. I need it angry.

But also, the sweat in my palms isn’t entirely because of the heat anymore.

I glance at my spear - fashioned from a fallen branch and a bit of metal sheared off of the escape pod, tied together with a strip of material I cut from the sleeve of my boiler suit.

It did just fine for the crawler yesterday, but it’s not a sophisticated weapon.

I think of the knives they gave us in the slaughterhouse. Wicked sharp blades as long as my forearm. It wouldn’t be much use to me against a bird, but I wish I still had one all the same.

The bird caws again, a horrible, ugly sound. Then it launches from its perch and, with one huge flap of its wings, starts speeding towards me.

Despite my best intentions, despite my thoughts of hunting and killing, feeding the girls more fresh meat, I can’t help it. The adrenaline, the fear, takes over.

I turn and run.

I’m overbalanced by the weight of the spear in my hand, my feet twisting and turning as they sink into the sand. My boots feel heavier, dragging me down, my lungs burning as they snatch at the hot, hot air.

The next shrieking sound is right behind me and I turn in time to see two clawed feet swinging up to grab at me.

One misses my scalp by millimetres, but snags in my hair, near ripping a chunk from my scalp.

The other cuts a jagged line down my face, the pain bright and hot, but doesn’t grab anything.

I throw myself to the floor before it can crash its body into me, and the bird swoops overhead, spiralling upwards.

I stay on the ground, hoping the damn thing will circle back to its perch and leave me alone.

When it wheels in the sky and aims downwards, straight at me, I know I’m going to have no such luck. It’s obviously not in the mood to just scare me off, and I can’t outrun it. I push to my feet, swipe my hands on my trousers, and try to find a good grip on my spear.

The bird dives fast, not giving me much time to think. I know from the glimpse behind me that to attack it swings its feet up, spreading its wings wide to slow itself enough to grab. That makes it a pretty large target if I can just anticipate the moment, avoid the feet.

So I crouch, ready to leap to one side, spear raised in front of me. I blink more sweat out of my eyes as I concentrate.

Wait to strike.

The bird swings its feet up. I move sideways, avoiding the vicious swipe of its claws. Bring the spear up as hard as I can, hitting something with a heavy clunk. The bird squawks, going in to an ungainly spin, then crashes to the ground in a cloud of feathers.

I’m breathing hard, my heart pounding in my chest. Adrenaline rushes through me, and I’m terrified and exultant in equal measure as I approach the downed bird, spear first. It staggers to its feet, but I think I’ve broken its wing.

It craws, nipping at its mangled feathers on its right side.

As I get closer, it hisses and snaps at me, but the only weapon it has left is its beak, and my range with the spear is greater.

Looking at it up close, I have a momentary pinch of regret.

It’s a beautiful thing, with brown and white speckled feathers.

On its good wing, they are glossy and shiny, probably soft to the touch.

The eyes, which seemed beady and full of evil intent before, look up at me now with intelligence behind them.

But if working in the slaughterhouse has done one thing for me, it’s inuring me to putting that light of intelligence out.

I strike with my spear, fast and as hard as I can, hoping to minimise the creature’s suffering. I know the moment it lets go from the way its wings suddenly droop.

I snap its neck to be sure. It’s not going to fly away from me, but I’d rather not have it start pecking me on the walk back.

As I’m hefting it over my shoulder, it occurs to me that maybe it had something to protect up on that shelf.

A nest. Maybe some eggs. I head back to the rock face, setting the bird and my spear down, and look for handholds to pull myself up to the ledge.

There are several, and tough little vines growing out of the rocks that cling well enough to take my weight. In a few moments, I’m up.

And face to face with a potential bounty.

A nest of six large, bright white eggs. The bird I killed was obviously trying to protect them.

I pick one up, holding it up to the light.

I remember being shown this trick as a kid by a neighbour who’d stolen eggs from where he worked in the battery farms. He intended to incubate the egg and raise himself a hen - a permanent source of extra nutrition for himself and his family.

Well, at least until the creature got too old to lay, then I guess he would have just eaten it.

His house was raided two days later. I never saw him, or the daughters he’d been trying to feed, again.

If the creature’s babies have started growing, it won’t be good eating, but if the eggs are new enough, they will provide valuable nutrition for the girls.

Eggs are made for feeding a baby chick, after all.

Lots of high energy food in them. As the sun turns the shell translucent, I see only the round shape of the yolk, no little bird growing inside it.

A triumphant grin spreads across my face.

A caw overhead breaks the moment, and I glance up at even more birds circling the top of the rock face.

Dotted up the rock face are several other nests, but these are all too high for me to reach, and besides, I can see the balls of fluff in them that suggest the babies have already hatched.

Perhaps my bird was a late starter, or she was incubating infertile eggs. Either way, it’s in our favour.

Carefully, I fill my top with the eggs, holding the hem in my teeth as I climb back down. Once on the sand again, I switch to holding my top with one hand, swinging the dead bird over my shoulder with the other and begin the long walk back.

The atmosphere back at the escape pod is heavy when I get there, but lifts when I show the girls my bounty. They help to prep the bird, and then we fashion a pan out of a hunk of metal ripped from the escape pod in the crash and break the eggs into it.

“No butter,” Sam says with a sigh as she stirs the eggs up with a stick. “No oil. No herbs. No pepper. No salt.”

“I think we’ve had enough of salt,” I say, casting my eyes over to the ocean of water we can’t drink.

Sam grins. “True. And perhaps I could have a nibble on a few of the leaves at the edge of the forest. See if any of them would do for herbs. For next time you bring us back eggs.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her I don’t think there’ll be a next time.

As the eggs cook, Sam sits back from the fire, blowing her fringe up out of her face with a puff of breath.

Despite the fact that the sun is starting on its downward journey, the air is still hot, especially close to the fire.

Sweat beads on her brow, her increasingly wild hair sticking to her face.

“This is starting to drive me nuts,” she says, glancing over in my direction with a smirk.

“I could try to cut it for you?” Rachel offers.

“No.”

The word slips out of my mouth the same moment Sam says it. Rachel blushes a shade to match her hair, her eyes dropping. There’s a bit of a wobble in her lip that I suspect has more to do with the overall situation than this particular moment. We’re all sensitive, all of us on edge.