Foreigner

He walked and walked, and the moon-man stumbled along beside him, muttering to himself so constantly he began to wonder if the creature was habitually that addled or somehow injured in its wits. He had found it sitting in front of a square of grass, plucking stems and talking to itself, while poking at a black box full of buttons that perhaps made sense, but about what business he could not determine.

Perhaps it was mad. Perhaps all moon-folk were—along with those furious early pursuers that had given chase and then given up.

Or perhaps they were, after all, frail and gentle folk who could not even resist the kidnapping of one of their number—

But who then loosed the clockwork machines to destroy the valley?

The moon-man was lagging farther and farther off the pace he wanted, was staggering in his steps and then fell to his knees, holding his side. “Get up!” Manadgi told it sternly, and waved his hand.

The moon-man wiped his face and there was blood, most evidently blood, red as any man’s, running from its nose—a flood of life, broken forth by the running and the climbing he had forced it to.

He was sorry for it, then—he had not meant to do it harm and still it was trying to do what he asked it, with the blood pouring down its face.

He gestured with a push at its arm for it to sit down again, and it seemed glad and relieved, bent over and pinched its nostrils shut, then began to cough, which, with the bleeding, made him worry that it might choke itself.

Manadgi tucked his hands between his knees and squatted, waiting, hoping the creature knew what best to do to help itself. It was far from threatening anyone at the moment, rather, it seemed choked, so imminently in peril of its life that he took his water-flask and offered it, hoping it would help.

The moon-man looked at him with suffering eyes, then unstopped the flask and poured a little water out on his hand, to be sure it was water, he thought, before he wiped his face with it. Then he poured a little more into his bloody hand and had a mouthful, which seemed to help the coughing.

And the moment he stopped choking, the moon-man began muttering again, the odd creature…

Not an ugly or a fearsome being, Manadgi decided, except the blood smeared on its pale face. Its strangeness made him queasy about touching it, certainly about ever using the flask, but he greatly regretted hurting it, not having known how delicate it was.

Still, for all he knew, its associates had set one of the clockwork monsters on their trail.

“Get up,” he said to it, exactly the words he had used before. “Get up.”

The moon-man immediately tried to do what he asked, without a gesture, so the creature hadunderstood a word or two. He gained his feet with the flask tucked under his arm as if he meant to keep it, and kept talking to himself as he went, a thin, uncertain voice, now, lacking all affirmation.

They were past the stricken grandmother stone. They had left the scarring of the land and they went in tangle-grass that clung to the trousers and about the ankles. There was a stream down the hill, he remembered it at the other side of a steep bank and a stand of fern, a slab of rock. That was what he intended—a cold, clean stream and a moment to rest in a more sheltered place, difficult for the clockwork machines to negotiate.

“Be careful,” he cautioned the creature, with a tug at the blue sleeve, and it looked around at him, pale, bloody-faced, with a startled expression, after which the moon-man slipped and slid away from him in a rattle of rock and a crashing of fern.

The creature never cried out. It landed at the bottom half in the water and half on the bank and never moved as he came skidding down to it in fear and fright.

He thought it might have broken bones in that fall. It lay still, and he could only think that if there had been any niche for ill fortune in their meeting he must just have destroyed himself and the aiji at once—he dreaded even to touch it, but what was he to do, or where else could he find help?

So he pulled its arm and its shoulder out of the water—and it looked at him with dazed strange eyes and went on looking at him as if its bewilderment was as great, as if its understanding of its universe was devastated and disordered as his own.

He let it go, then, and it crouched there and bathed its face and washed its neck, while blood ran away in the clean water, an omen of things, he feared as much.

But he saw clearly that he had driven it beyond any sane or reasonable limit, and how desperate and spent it was, and yet not protesting.