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In the distance, across the rolling forests of Yolen,
“Dragons come in all colors, and each is beautiful and unique. But I will say, every dragon I’ve known who was leucistic in human form—granted, there have only ever been two others—had white scales to match. A metallic, shimmering white with a sheen of mother-of-pearl. It’s breathtaking.”
She was more like a white tiger, she’d been told. A symbol of two worlds. But some said with every great sign came misfortune, as proven by what had happened to her parents… “You are,” Frost said, “so wonderful, Illistandrista. I am honored to be here, with you, on this most important of days.”
First dawn struck her, and she absorbed the light. It became part of her, and the self that had been hidden within Starling these thirty years emerged, glorious and radiant. With wings, and dragonsteel of pure silver, and scales a glittering white—faintly iridescent. With the transformation, Starling—finally—felt that she belonged.
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Everyone here had an Aviar, all a variety of colors, but none were like Sak, with her black coloring and more pointed beak. As he put her on his shoulder, she leaned to the side, looking at his other shoulder. Empty. She never stopped looking. “I know,” Dusk said. “I miss him too.”
wraps. On the street outside, he could hear new kinds of vehicles passing: the kind with motors that roared like some type of beast. Gifts of technology from the Ones Above. He peered to the sky, and spotted the ship hanging there.
The aliens were growing impatient with this primitive planet full of stubborn people and valuable birds. How long would the Ones Above wait?
All this effort to create the park, to preserve the ways of the trappers, and Dusk only now realized something. Tamed displays—no matter how vibrant and accurate—could never fully capture the truth of living on Patji. And so, the only true displays were his memories.
He always did, when unfortunate enough to run across one of these things in the open ocean. He did not know what they looked like beneath those waves. He hoped to never find out.
Creatures like the shadow did not hunt by smell or sight, but by sensing the minds of prey.
He hesitated, then forced himself to get out his new mask. It was a modern device he had acquired two supply trips back: a glass faceplate with leather at the sides.
Instead he dipped his hand into the water and closed his eyes, reading the lapping of the waves to judge his position. Once, those waves would have been good enough for any of the Eelakin, his people. These days, only the trappers learned the old arts, the arts of the grand navigators from long ago. It was a mark of pride to him that he almost never needed the compass, and he had yet to encounter a situation where he had to rely on the new sea charts—given as gifts by the Ones Above during their visit earlier in the year.
Dusk fortunately didn’t need to be quite so detailed. So long as he passed shallows now and then, a modern anchor could keep him from drifting while he slept. And he knew that if he did drift too far, the compass, map, and sextant could get him back on track.
At night, birds headed toward land—and that had let him turn his course slightly. The snarl of seaweed—with a hook from some previous trapper caught in it—had been an obvious sign as well. Even the clouds could help, for green reflections on the bottoms of distant clouds meant land.
In fact, he had not landed on many of the forty-some islands in the Pantheon. At the end of his apprenticeship, a trapper chose one island and worked there all his life. Dusk had chosen Patji—an event some fifteen years past now. Seemed like far less.
Nobody knew why beasts like the shadows lived only here, in the waters near the Pantheon. Why not travel across the seas to the homeisles, where food would be plentiful and Aviar like Kokerlii were far rarer? Once, these questions had not been asked. The seas were what they were. Now, however, men poked and prodded into everything. They asked, “Why?” They said, “We should explain it.”
Patji, largest island of the Pantheon. He towered like a wedge rising from the sea, and all of the waves here bent around him. A place of inhospitable peaks, sharp cliffs, and deep jungle. Patji. King of the Pantheon. God of the Eelakin. Hello, old destroyer, Dusk thought. Hello, Father.
Frond was a heavyset older woman—a loremother who had come in from one of the outer isles last year—with a deeper brown skin than even Dusk, whose skin tone was browner than many homeislers’. She wore feathers after the traditional style, though many loremothers adopted modern costumes. He didn’t mind either way. People and society changed, sometimes for the better. He would not have wanted to go trapping shirtless, as had been traditional, but there was something about the headdress and cloak of feathers.
“He sailed only at night?” one of the children asked. “No, no,” Frond whispered, leaning forward. “There was no sun back then—only night. Cakoban the Navigator sailed, then, looking for light.”
“After Cakoban made a deal with the great winged statue, who promised to come to him when next he needed help, he escaped by sailing between the legs of the great giants of Epelli! First one, then the other, so they attacked each other in their confusion! He rode the waves of their falling clubs. And when their great bodies crashed to the ocean—dead—he had the grandest wave of all, which carried him three days across the endless sea!”
“Cakoban,” she whispered, “followed a brilliant shooting star, which led him past the cave of the terrible Dakwara, the monster child of a distant god.
Then Patji—honoring Cakoban’s courage—rose from the ocean and erupted with blazing red light, leading the way to life. A thrown ember became the sun, and Cakoban found Patji’s shores.
Sak?” The answer was nothing. Sak’s power rarely had reason to activate anymore, for Dusk was rarely in danger. Frond smiled, and touched the bird right on the forehead, scratching and whispering with a sound like ocean waves. “Guide him well.”
“Watch,” she said, “for your shooting star.” “Trappers do not see the stars, Frond,” he said. “We have been trained not to go out at night.” He smiled in thanks, then left the park. He was finished with this facsimile of a life he’d once lived.
Eventually he put the fish away, then took out his medallion, rubbing it for good luck. It was the one his uncle had carried, bearing a depiction of the hero Cakoban, ancestor to all trappers.
Nearby in the surf, Dusk saw a corpse bobbing in the water. Beginning your visions early, my friend? he thought, glancing at Sak. The Aviar usually waited until they’d fully landed before bestowing her blessing.
Dusk continued his work. The body he saw in the surf was his own. It told him to avoid that section of water. Perhaps there was a spiny anemone that would have pricked him, or perhaps a deceptive undercurrent lay in wait. Sak’s visions did not show such detail; they gave only warning.
As he reached the tree line, he caught sight of his corpse hanging from a tree nearby. Those were cutaway vines lurking in the fernlike treetop. Sak squawked softly on his shoulder as Dusk hefted a large stone from the beach, then tossed it at the tree. It thumped against the wood, and sure enough, the vines dropped like a net, full of stinging barbs.
Before leaving the beach, Dusk paused, looking up at his corpse—faintly translucent—still hanging from unseen vines by the tree. Could he really have ever been foolish enough to be caught by cutaway vines? Near as he could tell, Sak only showed him plausible deaths. He liked to think that most were fairly unlikely—a vision of what could have happened if he’d been careless, or if his uncle’s training hadn’t been so extensive.
He could not rely on Sak too much. For Patji would try on every possible occasion to kill him.
But the beasts that hunted minds on the island were not as large or as strong of psyche as the shadows of the ocean. Dusk and Sak would be invisible to them, even with Kokerlii flying about.
There were no signs of his corpse nearby. That could mean that the area wasn’t immediately dangerous; it could also mean that whatever might kill him here would swallow the corpse whole, so Dusk trod lightly on wet stones at the edge of the broken campsite.
There were no survivors—nor even any corpses—that Dusk could see. The shadow must have consumed them. He pulled back to the slightly safer locale of the jungle’s edge, then scanned the foliage, looking for signs that people had passed this way. The attack was recent, within the last day or so.
Well, these survivors were likely dead now. He should leave them to their fates. Except…the thought of it—outsiders on Patji—made him shiver with something that mixed disgust and anxiety. They were here. It was wrong. These islands were sacred, the trappers their priests. And so, he moved beneath the dark canopy, this time trapping not birds, but humans.
They’d begun digging their first subway just before the Ones Above had first appeared in the sky.
He passed the Aviar roost along the wall, where birds could wait and chatter—and make droppings in an appropriate place. Sak didn’t need to go, apparently, because she clung to his arm when he tried to offer her to the roost. She’d been extra clingy since Kokerlii’s passing. He didn’t blame her. He felt the same way.
His corpse appeared on the tracks. Dusk paused, cocking his head. Yes, that was his corpse—something he hadn’t seen in what felt like ages. He glanced at Sak. Why was she showing him this now? Was this…a strange way of trying to cheer him up? She chirped. Alert, feathers sticking up. No, this was a warning. His life was legitimately in danger, for the first time in years.
Dusk tightly gripped the scraggly man, who…had a star tattooed on his arm? A falling star? Coincidence, Dusk thought. It was a popular symbol, considering how it had led Cakoban to these islands. Yet it still stunned Dusk, following the conversation with Frond.
A group of small, mouselike creatures crawled out, sniffing the air. Sak squawked. She had never liked meekers. Let them through, Dusk commanded Kokerlii. A moment later, he could feel the minds of the meekers. Food? the three little animals sent to Dusk. Food? It was the most rudimentary of thoughts, projected directly into his mind. He sent back calmness, and fished out some dried meat for the meekers. As they huddled around it, sending him gratitude, he saw their sharp teeth and the single pointed fang at the front. One bite was enough to kill, but over the centuries, the little creatures
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An Aviar raised around humans never quite fit back in among their own kind. The same could be said of a man raised around Aviar.
He did not, though his own dead body occasionally appeared along the path. He saw it lying half eaten in the mud or tucked away in a fallen log with only the foot showing. He could never grow too complacent with Sak on his shoulder, giving constant reminders of how Patji treated the unwary. He fell into the familiar, but not comfortable, lope of a Pantheon trapper. Alert, wary, careful not to brush leaves that could carry biting insects. Cutting with the machete only when necessary, lest he leave a trail another could follow. Listening, aware of his Aviar at all times, never outstripping
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In fifteen years on Patji, he had seen another trapper in person only a handful of times. On each occasion, they had both turned and gone a different direction without saying a word. It was the way of such things. They would try to kill one another, but they didn’t do it in person. Better to let Patji claim rivals than to directly stain one’s hands. At least, so his uncle had taught him. Sometimes, Dusk found himself frustrated by that. Patji would get them all eventually. Why help the Father do so? He didn’t want to kill other trappers. Still, it was the way of things—and regardless, this
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