by Mary Carol Chambers

A hint of harmony. A pulse of rhythm.

Unheeding, Kawi angled his wings and met the turbulent north wind head on. He reached wide with his broad primaries. The wind seized him, embraced him fervently, pressed his hawk form up and up, high into the blinding sky. The air here was desperately cold, cold enough to stop breath, to stop thoughts, to stop memories.

Sublime. He closed his eyes and filled his lungs, filled his very bones with the stinging cold.

He turned back with the wind. It was tumultuous, fierce, but he rode it exultantly. For centuries his challenge and his solace, this passionate wind obsessed him. He breathed it, drank it, merged with it.

At last it nestled him within a gentle thermal, where he spiraled calm above the distant terrain, the glaciers and stark white mountains, the smoke of old volcanic vents among the slopes and craters.

Then it brought him the faint ring of chimes.

Chimes! Kawi's circle tightened as he listened. Chimes, growing steadily nearer--

A sudden dread sizzled in his memory.

Chimes: the sound that carried the Shapers, his makers, on their hunt for prey: himself.

He plunged into the wind and fled.

Shapers. Kawi's makers. Parasites, minute predators who had spun together to shape world and creatures to fit the whim of their great hunger.

Kawi's insides knotted. Though it had been twelve hundred years, he remembered his last capture too well--the searing stabs of millions of tiny shards in his lungs; convulsions, the sense of suffocation. Living barbs tunneling into every fiber, wringing nightmares from his mind and panic from his gut, whipping his heart to the pace of sistaka in stampede.

When the cloud of parasites had left him at last, he'd been wrecked for weeks, in both hawk and human forms. Helpless as a hatchling, every breath a combat with pain and nausea. An experience he had no wish to repeat.

He raced with the speed of a blizzard, his instinctive terror as irrational as it was compelling. Blind flight would not save him, he knew. The same fickle wind that rushed him away, drove his hunters after him with equal vigor. Yet he flew nonetheless.

He dodged clouds of steam that rose as slow lava sidled against blue glaciers. He gained speed over a plain of fumaroles, where tens of thousands of steam barnacles clustered, fronds waving in the rising gases like prairie grass in a breeze.

For the first time, Kawi regretted his self-imposed exile in this desolation. Here, there were no Rua, no other Shenmir like himself. The Shapers would find no one else to distract them from this chase.

Kawi steered southeast, toward the living lands. He pressed his wings to beat faster, to keep ahead of the clamor that followed him. He must reach the land of Tyrna. There, other Shenmir flew, soaring from tower to tower in hawk form or hunting in the forests in human form. There, the long-fingered Rua sang within their sculpted cities. These might entice the hungry Shapers to new quarry.

Even settlements of humans, descendants of foreigners, might distract them, though Shapers rarely took interest in mortals. Kawi pressed to maintain his speed.

The chimes kept pace. Kawi's trysts with the wind now served him well; his wings had grown powerful. He flew faster and farther than he would have, had he not been so devoted. Still, Tyrna was far, even as the hawk flies, and he could not race forever.

The ringing gained dissonance as the Shapers' hunger grew. Kawi's wings ached more and more with each stroke. His heart pounded, his lungs were afire. Beneath him, glaciers shrank. The fumaroles lessened to occasional pits of bubbling springs and geysers. Trees came into view, black and green. A herd of roamdeer trekked across a patch of ice.

A wide bank of storm clouds haunted the horizon ahead. Thunder growled. Kawi's heart skipped a beat. I'm trapped--if I turn to avoid this, the Shapers will intercept me. If I fly into it, the wind will grapple me down, exhaust my strength--

But it might slow the Shapers as well. The angry wind might sweep the sound of the chimes away, the shaking thunder overpower and confuse them. They might lose his trail, and he escape at last.

He flew into the storm. Here, the wind had gone mad. Gusts grabbed and tossed him. Each stroke of his wings used all his might and all his will. He lost altitude, barely able to keep aloft at all.

A blast of wind buffeted him. His wings buckled. He tumbled, dodging one tree branch only to collide painfully with another. He crashed on the ground with a jolt that knocked his breath from his body.

Rain roared down. Kawi lay still a moment, battered by the downpour as he regained his breath. Then, with what remainded of his strength, he crawled beneath the low branches of an evergreen, his talons clutching mud and spent needles. He shook water from his feathers and ruffled them. He listened.

Roar of rain, roar of thunder.

He crept against the bole of the tree, hoping for a dry spot in which to settle. But the crazy gusts flung water upon him from each direction in turn. Wind-howls warbled above the sound of the rain like demented flutes. Above that, a high-pitched whine, at the very edge of his hearing--Not wind, as he had ever heard before. Not even an insane wind. He raised his head higher, to pinpoint the sound. The whine grew more distinct.

Then ringing, loud as alarms, right beside him. His wings shot wide--

Too late.

A cloud of clanging hunger flooded upon him. Millions of tiny shards stabbed into his face, into his lungs.

Instinctively, even without balancing, he Enfolded his winged form. His sturdier human form Unfolded in its place. Let them have this form! Let my winged form stay safe--I must not be left flightless! The Shapers scattered with a cacophony of protest. Kawi crawled from his shelter and ran clumsily, unused to inhabiting this earthbound body. His hunters quickly enveloped him once more.

They drove themselves into his lungs. He convulsed, fell to the ground, choking, gasping.

They coursed into his bloodstream. They tunneled into his flesh, releasing nightmares from his mind and adrenalin from his organs, relishing the heightened energy of his speeding heartbeat.

His muscles contracted. Cold sweat trickled on his skin, mingling with the rain.

Helpless.

The Shapers reached into his brain, triggering his change back to hawk form. They scattered momentarily as his drained human form disappeared and his smaller form Unfolded, but they regrouped and flooded his lungs before he found strength to lift his head. They began the feast anew.

No! Not my winged form! I must be able to fly! His hawk's body was exhausted, but still struggled, rowing with his wings upon the mud.

His struggle was short-lived; his strength left him. He collapsed.

Nightmares. Convulsions. The Shapers fed until this form too lay drained. Kawi lay in the mud, gasping.

At last, as their hunger was great, they left to hunt their next course.