Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 44

Cooharah and Aaw sat in a rock pile in the starlight just before dawn. Cooharah watched a line of thunderheads approach, bringing the grumble of distant thunder, the first rain so far south in a decade. The bone years were ending.

The light of Brightstar was warming the land, melting the great ice floes in the north, as the teach songs said would happen.

It should have been a wonder. This should have inaugurated an age of hope, a new beginning for Cooharah.

Instead, he felt dismay.

Aaw preened her wings, as if discussing some minor thing. She cooed, “We must atone. Two lives for one. This is law.”

Last night, still unsure of the extent of their wrongdoing, it had been relatively easy to deny the voices of the ancestors, easy to flee. But Cooharah and Aaw had lived the laws since they were chicks. To disobey them would have been madness. The ancestors would cry through the spirit masks, over and over, a litany of guilt.

“I will go,” Aaw whistled. “I will take the egg. We shall atone for the oomas.”

“Negative to the fourth degree,” Cooharah whistled. “I will not live without you.”

Aaw quit preening, looked up at him, eyes bright in the starlight. “Then we give three lives for one. Our atonement will be generous.”

It seemed so easy for her to speak of death. Sometimes, Cooharah thought the ancestors spoke more clearly to her than to him. But he knew it was not true. He was the one who had stayed up at night, vainly clawing his spirit mask, trying to silence the voices of the ancestors. If he’d managed to unmask himself, he’d have become outlaw. His life would have been forfeit, should other Qualeewoohs see him.

Now he realized how impetuous he had been. It was true he heard the voices of the ancestors more strongly than Aaw. Such was the make of her spirit mask, that she heard them only distantly. But she had a firmer mind, a more obedient nature.

“Your atonement is generous,” Cooharah whistled. “Mine is not. I give my gift grudgingly.” With that, he flapped his wings, took to the air, heading south, toward the aerie of the oomas. Aaw followed. Behind them, the distant thunder snarled.