The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,19

The harling had been abandoned here deliberately. So what was wrong with it that the tribe would expose it like this? Everyhar had been so excited about the hatching – too excited, in Ulaume’s opinion. Tentatively, he picked the harling up, holding it beneath its arms. It squirmed in his hold, uttering a series of trilling calls, like those of the desert birds, the little hoppers that pecked insects from the scrub. Its legs dangled and kicked. It expressed a robust cry, like a command.

‘Shall I eat you?’ Ulaume said again and snapped his teeth at the harling.

In response, it laughed, or perhaps it was just another animal sound. Ulaume knew he could not kill and eat the child, but what else could he do with it? Just walk away? He put down the child and stood up. It would be difficult enough to feed himself, never mind a helpless harling and yet it was impossible to ignore the instinct inside him that clamoured to protect the infant. It was a gut deep, ferocious feeling, all teeth and snarls. Must be a female thing, Ulaume thought, but it didn’t help the situation. The coyote was circling the pair of them, her head low, her tongue lolling.

‘No meat for you either,’ Ulaume said, and considered picking up another stone.

The harling, who’d been lying on its back, scrambled onto its belly as Ulaume spoke and before he could blink was crawling at preternatural speed towards the loping coyote. Small stones were thrown up in its wake.

‘No,’ Ulaume said, reaching down to grab the harling. He couldn’t believe the child could crawl this fast if it had only hatched hours ago. What are we? he thought. Animals? He thought of calves and foals, which could walk virtually as soon as they fell from the womb.

The harling adeptly avoided Ulaume’s hands and he stopped trying to catch it. It seemed to know what it was doing. The coyote was standing absolutely still, her ears pricked. The harling halted a couple of feet away from her and Ulaume could hear it sniffing the air. Then it advanced once more and, reaching the animal’s side, groped upwards with tiny hands. It pulled itself to its feet, gripping the coyote’s fur.

Ulaume shook his head in delight and surprise. ‘So, the next best thing to being brought up by wolves,’ he said. In that moment, he thought he had found a kindred soul.

The harling had nuzzled into the coyote’s belly and had begun to suck milk from her noisily, while the animal stood passively, allowing it. If Ulaume had instincts, so did the child, an instinct to survive so strong, it coloured the air around it pure gold. So strong, it knew about mother’s milk, even though, in the normal scheme of things, it would never have tasted it.

Chapter Four

On the day that Cal returned to Saltrock, the air, the very earth, writhed with omens. Pink-edged grey clouds clustered in the sky at mid-day, lightning stitched through them that never hit the ground. The sun was a gloating eye, peering blindly through the boiling heavens. A group of crows attacked a calf and pecked out one of its eyes. Dogs howled as if a full moon soaked them in lunatic radiance and had to be tied up, while cats fled to the rafters in the attics of every completed house and crouched in the spidery shadows, hissing, their fur erect along their spines. Ghosts walked the rough main street of the town, although only a few hara could see them.

Seel put all this down to the strange weather, although Flick knew better and believed that Seel did too. He wanted to say, ‘It’s coming, whatever it is,’ but Seel wouldn’t hear it. He was clinging with all his strength to a mundane life, as if Wraeththu life could ever be that. Flick pitied him. Hara wanted to go to the Nayati and pray. They wanted ritual, to appease the gods, but Seel wouldn’t hear of that either. He marched around the small town, growling orders, inspecting work, his hair livid in the peculiar light. Orien did not emerge from his dwelling at all.

Ever since the episode of Orien’s trance, Flick had felt as if life was on hold. He could barely breathe sometimes. After their argument, Seel had made a great and obvious effort to be less grouchy, but the strain of it was clearly wearing him out. Everyhar was terrified and didn’t know why. Hara approached Flick,