Venus Rising by Flora Speer Page B

bird is. Why don’t we
both think about Dulan, and digging a grave near the other ones,
and see what happens?”
    Only a day before, Narisa would have
protested that what Tarik had just suggested was against
Jurisdiction law. But Dulan’s story had changed her thought
patterns until she could not believe there had been any evil, or
any danger to the Jurisdiction from the settlers who had come to
this planet. She thought about Dulan, about the eleven telepaths
who lay somewhere near, of Tula, the only other one whose name she
knew, and of Dulan’s mate who had gone before. Dulan deserved to be
buried with them. She scarcely noticed that Tarik, standing behind
her, had put his two hands on her shoulders. The bird watched them
both.
    After a few minutes the blue wings opened.
The bird flew to a low hill covered with bushes, and perched on top
of it, looking back at them.
    “Of course,” Tarik exclaimed. “High enough to
be out of reach of the waves in a bad storm.” He moved toward the
bird, his hands still on Narisa’s shoulders, pushing her along
before him. The bird flitted to one side as they drew near. Tarik
hugged Narisa.
    “This is the place, I’m certain of it,” he
cried.
    “But I didn’t do anything,” Narisa said,
confused. “All I did was think.”
    “That’s all we needed to do. The bird did the
rest. Look.” He was on his knees, pulling up a layer of weeds and
turf. “There’s a stone here with a word carved on it. Let me get
the dirt off and see if I can read it. Tula. This is it,
Narisa. We’ve found it, the three of us together.”
    She saw in his excited expression that he had
forgotten his earlier anger with her. For the moment at least they
were functioning together in complete harmony. Tarik paced out an
approximate size for Tula’s grave, based on Dulan’s height. Narisa
marked the boundaries with broken twigs she stuck into the damp
ground. They could find no sign of another grave next to Tula’s,
and the bird made no move to stop them, so they cleared away a
small bush, and Tarik began to dig a hole of similar size.
    “We will put the two friends side by side,”
he said.
    The rain had stopped, and the sun was shining
again, but the air was still very humid and growing hotter. It was
not long before Tarik was drenched in perspiration and nearly
covered with mud. When he paused for breath, Narisa took the shovel
and continued the digging.
    “That’s deep enough,” Tarik said at last.
“It’s time to get Dulan.”
    They returned to the grave site a little
later, carrying between them Dulan’s bones, which they had gently
wrapped in the coverlet from one of the beds. The bird was still
standing near the grave, but when it saw them, it flew away.
    “We should have checked the computer to see
if there is a burial ritual,” Narisa said.
    “If we find one later, we can come back then
and say the correct words,” Tarik told her. “For now, this is the
best we can do.”
    They laid Dulan in the grave they had dug.
Tarik had picked up the shovel to begin replacing the soil over the
remains when there was a rustle of wings and the bird reappeared.
In its beak was a flower, one of the yellow, cup-shaped ones Tarik
had noticed growing on a vine in the forest. The bird dropped the
flower on top of the wrappings covering Dulan.
    Narisa began to cry. She could not help it;
the tears simply came, pouring down her cheeks. She, who never
wept, who believed tears were a sign of weakness, sagged against
Tarik, feeling his strong arms holding her upright while she sobbed
uncontrollably. It was not only for Dulan’s lonely end that she
wept, but for her own family and friends also, for whose deaths she
had not allowed herself to shed a tear lest she never stop
crying.
    When Tarik lifted her into his arms and
carried her back to the white stone building, she put her arms
around his neck and her head on his shoulder, and wept like some
small, lost child. Tarik laid her on a bed in one of the