Zadayi Red by Caleb Fox Page B

wake up, you’re always aiming that eye at me?”
    The red-gold eye glinted.
    Dahzi stirred and cried. Sunoya picked him up and rocked him. “No need to wake everyone,” she said softly. The rest of the family was in brush huts on each side of her. He wailed again.
    “You’re hungry. Okay. I’ll go next door and wake folks up and get you something to eat.”
    When she came back, she put Dahzi on a knee and fed him corn mush. “You know what?” Sunoya said to her son. “Today is Momma’s big day.” She spooned him another mouthful. “Momma and Grandmother Tsola are calling up a regular thunderstorm of change. You just watch.”
    A buzzard couldn’t smile, in amusement or otherwise, but Sunoya thought he wanted to.
    Su-Li squeezed his perch with his talons, fluttered his wings, and gave her a look. She knew he didn’t like being trapped in the hut. “So you’re hungry, too.”
    She tapped her shoulder. With one flap Su-Li landed there, and she stroked his feathers. “My guide,” she said and gave him a wry smile, “red-faced and eats the dead. You get along, then.”
    She reached for a piece of dried meat and lifted the hide door of the low hut. Su-Li waited. “Dak,” she called. The dog rumbled up for the meat. Sunoya tossed it far out the door, and the dog pounced on it.
    Su-Li hopped out the door awkwardly and took wing before Dak noticed him. Every day they went through this routine. Su-Li couldn’t be killed— he wasn’t mortal—but it wouldn’t be fun to get his tail feathers pulled out, or his wing broken.
    Back in the dimness Sunoya held up her hands and looked at them. She was feeling wild and crazy. “I was born webbed,” she said. Even alone she didn’t mention that both hands were once like that. She picked up Dahzi and shushed him. “You’re webbed. Together we’re going to change the world. I’m starting it today. I’m going to raise you to finish it. And if I mess it up, well then, the people will remember me as a failure the size of Bald Mountain.”
    Holding Dahzi, she crawled through the low door and looked up into the bright sky. Her eyes lanced up to the buzzard, his wings angled up as he glided down to the river. Thecrisp light of the early sun glinted on their black and silver undersides.
     

     
    Su-Li raised his beak from the river water, and falling drops gleamed. He took a couple of awkward steps—the ground was a graceless place—flapped his wings, let his scarlet head slide forward, and lifted off. After a night cooped up inside, winging into the air made his blood pump. The sky was his escape from the world of mortality. It was limitless.
    Su-Li spread his wing tips and arced to the left. He sliced across the river, looking down. He could do this service for Sunoya easily. With all the Galayi assembled here for the ceremony, she wanted him to keep an eye out. Gathered together like this, over a thousand strong, the Galayi were probably safe from other tribes, and surely no one would violate this sacred ceremony. But because of Tsola’s plans for today, Sunoya asked him to keep a double-sure lookout.
    Su-Li wing-flapped higher, so he could see far up and down the river. Four clusters of houses dotted the stream over a couple of miles, thick-walled buildings of wattle and daub. Sunflowers and knotweed grew on terraces, corn closest to the river. This was the home of the hosts, the Cheowa.
    Between these villages clustered the camps of the other three bands, each several hundred people. They slept in brush huts and slurped food down fast, eager to spend as much time as possible visiting relatives and friends, flirting and courting, dancing and singing.
    Su-Li sailed as slowly as he could, cruising one by one over the mountain slopes behind the camps and villages. He flapped his way across the river and lifted on the warm currents that swooshed up the mountainsides. He saw no signs of enemies.
    As he cruised over the main Cheowa village at the mouth of Emerald Creek,