Hannah's Hero - Ruby Dixon Page 0,96

see her smile, the indention in her cheek that flashes when she is truly amused, the soft look in her eyes when I put my mouth between her thighs. I want more nights of the little noises she makes while she sleeps, or her bossiness when she is awake.

I want a lifetime with my H’nah.

So I must go slow and do this right, so I can return to her.

I reach for a higher ledge, climbing. There is little room to throw while I am pressed against the wall, so my goal is to climb to the top, somehow distract Old Grandfather into snapping up the pack, and then jump back down onto one of the ledges and cling to the wall, using my camouflage to hide until the chakk leaf takes hold on him. I choose each handhold carefully, freezing in place when the great creature’s head turns in my direction, and remaining still until he looks away.

I am almost to the top when everything goes wrong.

My hand touches something soft and slippery. A bit of gristle fallen from Old Grandfather’s beak, perhaps. I lose my grip and then the world tilts, sliding away from me. I skid down several lengths, struggling to find something to hold onto. My searching fingers hook onto a bush and I’m able to stop from falling, even as the roots tear free from their mooring. With no time to think, I see a rocky lip on the cliff, directly below Old Grandfather, and fling myself toward it.

I land next to a boulder, rolling on my back, and then go perfectly still.

The pack I had slung over one arm thumps to the ground far below.

Old Grandfather cries out in rage, his wings spreading wide. The death-stink of him is everywhere. His eyes are full of rage as he glares down at me, and I know he sees me…but he does not attack. I wait for death to claim me, for the terrible creature to swoop down and gobble me up in a single gulp.

H’nah, I think. I am so sorry, my heart. I failed you.

But Old Grandfather cries out again. He leans in, his beak snapping, but he does not kill me.

I…do not understand.

Slowly, I sit up, letting my camouflage blend to my new surrounding. I am scratched up and bruised from my fall, but I am whole. My spear is gone, and so is the pack of chakk leaves I carried. The pack strapped to my back is still there, and I carefully untie the laces that hold it against my body even as Old Grandfather glares balefully down at me. He flutters his wings again, yet does not attack me. Curious, I glance around at my surroundings.

I am…in a nest.

It is a disgusting nest. All around me are the bloated, half-eaten corpses of slaughtered dvisti and the felines called snow-cats. The walls of the nest seem to be made from their bodies, from bones and bits of fur and whatever else the sky-claw brought from its mouth. In the center of this, right next to me is not a boulder as I thought, but a mottled egg.

Old Grandfather is a mother.

No wonder he will not leave. He…no, she is nesting. That is why she will not abandon this valley.

I stare at the egg in a mixture of wonder and horror. Instinct tells me to roll it out of the nest, to give the world one less sky-claw. I glance up at Old Grandfather again, and the creature leans down, snapping her monstrous beak at me. She rears back before she can reach me, though, and I realize the snapping is a threat more than a real danger. She is afraid of hurting her egg. She will not touch me while I am next to it.

When she snaps at me again, I duck down behind the egg once more. A quick glance over the ledge shows me that I am halfway to the ground here. I could drop to the snow and if I manage to roll my weight properly, the fall will not break anything.

If she does not snatch me out of midair first.

I must remain calm, I remind myself. Think before I act.

She snaps at me again, her jaws clamping on the air so swift and so hard that I feel the breeze of it against my face. I would fit inside that massive gullet and she would swallow me without a second thought.

I must be faster than her…or smarter.

I glance around