Skeen's Leap by Jo Clayton Page A

look like?”
    â€œDon’t know. Anyone who got close enough to see it got eaten.” She shivered. “Mostly it lives on deer and bear; sometimes in winter, we can feel it there … hungry, beating against the wall, reaching for us.” Again she shivered, looked sick. “It sings. You go close enough, it sings to you and you go closer and it crawls inside your head and you climb the wall. In the winter, we lose a lot of children to the Hunger.”
    â€œWhy stay then?”
    â€œWhere can we go? This is our land.”
    â€œHm. Given a choice you wouldn’t go near the Wall, even on wings.”
    â€œLifefire, no!”
    â€œNor any other Min, even on wings?”
    â€œYou don’t mean.…”
    â€œWhy not? Listen, I’ve got an idea. This damp, the clouds, smells like rain.”
    â€œBefore morning. It’s the season. But rain won’t stop the Hunger.”
    â€œDidn’t think it would. What it will do is wipe out our spoor, nose and eyes neither one any good. Give us a day loose after that and Telka will be biting her own tail because that’s all she can find.”
    â€œYou don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œWhen you said it sings, you told me all I needed to know. Besides, I had a taste of that song when I came through the Gate.”
    â€œYou’re not thinking of stuffing wax in our ears. A Min tried that a few generations back when her children got caught and she went after them. It didn’t work.”
    â€œNo, not my idea. You’re more sensitive to the thing than I am. How far is the Wall from here?”
    â€œOh, about a stad, maybe a little more.”
    â€œAnd what’s a stad?”
    â€œThe distance a horse can cover at a quick walk in one hour.”
    â€œSounds rather indefinite.”
    â€œThe edges blur; it’s not important.”
    â€œHow close do we have to be before the Hunger gets dangerous?”
    Timka scowled down at hands clenched about the reins. “Half a stad. After that, the calling … the singing … you can’t break away.”
    â€œHow good are you at estimating time and distance?”
    â€œNot bad. I’m almost afraid to ask why.”
    â€œHour. I’m fairly sure what that means to you isn’t close to what it means to me.” She showed Timka the ring chron. “This is set to ship standard time. My hours. Up till now I haven’t bothered with yours—haven’t had to and it was just too much trouble. But your day is a little longer than our arbitrary ship standard, so I expect your time divisions are quite different. They usually are, planetside. So if I’m to have some general idea of what a stad is, I need your help.”
    â€œI see … I think.”
    â€œRight. Suppose I give you a start, then you tell me when you think we’ve been moving for an hour.”
    â€œYes, I can do that.”
    â€œRight.” She looked at the chron, waited a few breaths. “Now.”
    â€œGot it.”
    â€œGood.” Skeen yawned, rubbed at the nape of her neck. “Djabo! Can you listen and count time? I need to keep talking or I’m going to fall out and it’ll take a jolt of lightning to wake me.”
    â€œTalk. It won’t bother me.”
    â€œThis is something that happened to me when I was a lot younger and a whole lot rasher, before I had Picarefy—oh Tibo you baster, I hope she fries your liver.…”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNever mind. Habit I’ve got into, meaning nothing. Where was I … yes. What with one thing and another I was stranded on this crazy world, a place called Dragons Fart. Vulcanism like you wouldn’t believe. What land there was changed shape day to day, mountain into swamp, swamp into desert, desert to mountain … well, it was not a place you went for fun. The south pole had the biggest hunk of land and was fairly stable, warm enough so