Khe by Alexes Razevich Page A

her name, to get her attention, but had no name to call her. I bent over her and folded my arms around her waist and tried to lift.
    She shoved me away. “Can’t you see I’m eating?”
    The babbler licked her mud-covered fingers, her eyes widening in concentration. Glancing around, she seemed to find what she was searching for and reached at something tucked between two stones. Grunting, she tugged and pulled, finally fell back, grinning, clutching feathery green stems.
    “No,” I cried, diving for her hand, which was full of lenrels, a plant so toxic that one bite would kill her before the shadows had moved. I shoved her hand away just before she put the lenrels in her mouth.
    “Mine. Mine,” she screamed and tried to pull her hand free, but I had a firm grip and wouldn’t let go.
    “You’ve taken everything,” she said. “I don’t want to go. Please. Please.”
    Still holding tight to her one hand, I slipped my free arm over her shoulders.
    “You don’t have to go,” I said, keeping my voice as soothing as possible. “You can come back to the cave with me.”
    The babbler stared at my face, but I could see she didn’t know who I was. “Is it time for the presentation?”
    “Yes,” I said. “It’s time. We have to go now or we’ll be late.”
    “No,” she screamed, and beat against my chest with her fists. I threw my arms up to protect my face and neck, and stumbled back. She kept coming at me, pounding my crossed arms with the sides of her fists. She pushed me hard. My heel hit against a rock. I fell on the cold, hard ground, knocking the wind from my lungs.
    The babbler turned and ran toward the cave.
    I lay still, getting my breath back. My back hurt where I’d landed on it. When I could breathe again, I struggled to my feet to chase after her. I came through the entrance to the cave’s rear chamber and found the babbler sitting with my opened pack on her lap. When she looked up at me, her eyes were clear and bright.
    “There you are,” she said cheerfully. “I was looking for the firestarter. We need warmth.”
    “The wood is gone,” I said, keeping my voice conversational. “We used the end of it last night.”
    Her cheerfulness faded. “You’ll have to go and find some.”
    I stared at her a long moment. If she saw the brown-black anger spots on my neck, they didn’t concern her.
    “You hit me,” I said.
    “Did I?”
    “You knocked me into the snow and mud.”
    The babbler nodded. “Once, when I was newly insane, I pushed an orindle out a window. The fall broke both of her legs.” She shrugged as if all of this was of no consequence.
    I sighed. There was no point in talking about what had happened. Crouching, I lifted the blanket holding my things off of her lap and set it on the ground. I fumbled through, found the firestarter, and handed it to her. “I’ll look for some wood.”
    “Good,” she said. “And something for a meal. My last one was interrupted.”
    “Do you—” I began and stopped. I wasn’t sure she could answer my question. “Do you remember what happens when a spell is on you?”
    The babbler shook her head. “It’s like being awake one moment and awake the next. In between, things happen that I know nothing about.”
    Another question nagged at me. “Do you remember your name?”
    The babbler’s sides shook with contained laughter. “I have no name. I never had a name. I hatched as a babbler.”
    I tsked my tongue on the roof of my mouth. “You said you were a weather-prophet. Was that a babbler’s lie?”
    “Of course I was a prophet. I was First in Chimbalay.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “Weather-prophets have names. I’ve seen them on the vision stage, and none was ever called Babbler.”
    The brown-black of anger flared on a few spots on her neck. She pulled herself to her feet. “I was a weather-prophet. I still am. Didn’t I tell you about the snow and the rain and the warm day that would follow?”
    I shrugged.