Limekiller!

It meant that not a thousand miles away, probably not even a mile away, there was perhaps an Indian ruin, and, likelier than a mere perhaps, a cache of Indian treasure: his heart gave a leap, that was and his mind knew it was, a cliche but his heart did leap: And all the while the words repeated themselves in his mind from legal documents he himself had signed and seen been stamped, All Indian ruins and mines of gold or silver and/or precious stones remain the Property of Her Majesty the Queen, Her Heirs and Assignees… and words which he had not seen himself on any documents but knew to be part of the law of the land, and not of this one small land alone but of how' many larger lands across how many distant waters, Oceans divide us, and the wild waste of seas-, never mind: the old ancient British common law and Crown unite us: in this case particularly the Law of Treasure Trove, from French trouve, Found.

He had not yet found Ella: that was what he should be thinking of: and only that.

The ring however small and tiny and ancient of days, years, centuries, cycles if not of Cathay than of The Indies and The Lands Beyond, the ring in all legal probability belonged to The Crown, as though The Crown had not jewels enough already, would Her Majesty et God bless her cetera, begrudge him, who had not even grudged the bird the other ring, grudge him, John L Limekiller, this? — precious little she had to do with the ring, anymore than had her grandfather in the comically notorious Canadian case of the exMilitia member wrho having neglected to turn in his entire uniform found himself facing the charge of stealing one pair of woolen trousers the property of his Majesty King George V.

Limekiller at the moment could not stop to figure out the legal wrongs or rights of the matter, that could wait, what could not wrait, no not for anything, wras the probability that Buried Treasure likely lay so near to hand.

. and foot.

The thick ground covering lay behind him, he was for the most part beneath the shelter of the high bush “sticks,” trees, “the sticks” wrhich had given their odd old name even in North America to areas less wild than this: something else flashed: not gold: the small red deer the Bayfolk called “antelope;” and if bison were “buffalo,” why not? There was a trail, narrow perhaps too wide a wmrd for it, but wide enough for the antelope, and the other deer called simply deer, for the wild hogs in their (sometimes) sounders of hundreds, for the panthers called lions and the jaguars called tigers; many names had at first seemed turned around and strange to him -

A vast tree stood in his wav: a ceiba or silkv-tree: immense: the trail became two trails and branched around it, Limekiller, pausing- only to consider if it mattered which branch he took, nevertheless paused. Something moved. There was no beautiful birdsong now. Now and then something gave an ugly croak. Maybe a frog. Maybe not. Something moved. Another flash.

There was a break in the bush, a thinning of the foliage as well as the trees, and he could see it now, plainly; it was a yellowhead parrot, and, as local lore said that the yellowhead parrot was the aptest to learn speech, Limekiller might not have been surprised when the bird began to speak. If speak was indeed the word. It had been just doing bird things, preening and grooming and contemplating. Humboldt, a hundred and fifty years earlier, had told the terrible story of encountering up the Amazon a parrot kept by an Indian tribe; bootv from a raid on another Indian tribe. All those latter Indians had been wiped out (no, the Old World did not invent genocide; it merely invented Writing, and wrote its crimes down); the parrot Humboldt told of could and did speak. But no one could understand what it spoke. the language of the defeated Indians had been confined to that one small tribe, there in its own green heart of darkness, and that tribe and its culture and its traditions were extinct. and only some few phrases of its lost language survived. and survived on the grey tongue of a single bird.

But surely this was no human speech which turned Limekiller’s heated skin so cold, so suddenly. The voice, if “voice” it was, was like that of no living thing which Limekiller had ever heard… or ever heard of… it was a mutter, and a nightmare mutter at that.

And, as he knew that parrots have no nightmares, and that this bird was wide awake, he could only realize that the bird was and had to be imitating some living, speaking thing. thing?

Which might not even be very far off, either.

It was not far off at all.