by Beth Dawkins
My talons pierce the back of a Tsintaosaurus. I roll forward, sinking my fangs into its hide. The blood tastes unlike the sweet, life-giving nectar of yesterday. It is foul and sour with a stench that coats the inside of my nose. I hear a song of discontent from one of my sisters. Another song splits the air. I pull out my fangs, and my mouth tingles. There is a sandy consistency that covers my tongue.
We need the blood. The hungry and the young will die without it. We scream out frustration until I am sure our song will attract the Qianzhousaruses who watch over the Tsintaosaurus herd. Not that they can catch us, they lack wings with only tiny arms.
That does not stop them from murdering members of the herd. We only take sips of blood, leaving the creatures alive for another night.
It is what makes us Jeholopteruses.
A male calls us away. His song is demanding, and I open my arms to the sky, flapping with the others. Sandy blood is gathered in my mouth, and I let it sit, stinging my tongue. My mother’s song joins mine. I hear her flapping beside me. She is unsteady, and her song is hungry. I hear the cry of a sister who is falling, her arms tingling and uncontrolled. Would my wings refuse to work if I had any more of the blood? My heart cries out in a song that joins the colony’s. It pierces the night like the hundreds of stars above us.
“Do not turn back,” my mother sings. “Home, we must go home.” We join her chanting.
We have no blood to share. The young ones will lick it from our chests and mouths, but it won’t be enough.
The cool dark of our home is a frenzy of activity. The others rush to greet their families. My sisters come to us but hesitate when they hear our song. “Wrong, wrong,” it cries. “The blood is tainted.”
My mother crashes at my side, and there is a sharp stab of pain in her song. I rush over to her as she straightens. One of her wings is hurt. The delicate membrane bleeds, and the little ones gather around the wound, waiting for sips.
“Get away from me,” she snaps at all of us.
“You’re hurt. I can help you,” I say.
“Why are you still here?” she demands, her voice sharp. “I have had enough of you.”
My sisters refuse to look at me. They stare at the floor and the walls, gathering little ones to them. Our father and leader is listening to a wife tell him the story of our hunt.
“Mother—”
“Am I? You are past the age to find your own family. You should fly away while you are strong, or maybe you should die in the day.” Her eyelids hang low, and she allows a few little ones to lick at her wound.
She’s never hinted at disapproval. I’ve always helped to feed the young ones on bad hunting nights, risking my own death in the daylight.
I take a step back, hoping for help from my sisters, but they stand at a distance. Their songs are silent. It is plain that they’re resolute in my mother’s decision to cast me out. Our father ignores what is happening.
I have nowhere to go.
* * *
Sunlight streams through the cave entrance. It is too bright and warm. My song is drowned out by cries of grief for those too weak to live. Suffering surrounds me as I grieve my family. My self-indulgence turns into sorrow that is edged with anger, like a pain in my chest that is echoed by the empty pit of my stomach. I was run out as if I were a brother.
The air is too hot, and the light turns blinding. The taste of bad blood lingers. I could fly into the day, but my limbs are as heavy as stones and I am tired. I climb onto a shelf, sheltering against the sunlight, and there is another body, smaller than me. She is shaking and curled around herself.
This is what happens when we don’t get enough to eat; we die.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer me, but opens her mouth for her song of hunger. I nuzzle her, getting her to cling to my body. Her mouth touches my shoulder. Her fangs sink into my skin, and the pain is nothing but a sharp release of tension.
I close my eyes and run my thumbs through the stranger’s fur. Her fangs let go. She is careful, delicate. None of us is that delicate with the herd, only one another. I huddle against her, and we sleep.
When we wake the light is dim and colony’s song is soft. The melody refuses to rise or fall as our voices melt into one sound. The words of the song say, “I am here,” and “I am alive.”
There is an undercurrent of hope. “We will survive.”
My voice rises to sing about survival. The notes fill the pain in my chest. I had not died in the day. I’d lived.
A female climbs down the shelf and bends her head low to the one still sheltered beside me. “You fed her?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“Thank you.” She crosses the distance between us and wraps her arms around me, and her wings press me tight. “Would you like to hunt with us?”
I take a step back when she releases me. She smells of pine and mud.
“Is she there?” a male asks, climbing down.
I take another step back, but then wonder why I am concerned.
He is small, smaller than me. His hair is lighter and with dark spots by his eyes.
“She shared her food,” explains the female.
The male inspects me. He is their leader, but different from my father. These, I believe, are his wives. He’s young, maybe even younger than me.
The colony is coming awake. The song turns towards grief and hunger. Many died in the day, and now I too need to feed. Fear of the wrong tasting blood is ripe because we all must fly into danger.
“Will you hunt with us?” the female asks.
“Yes, but we must do something different. We can’t keep drinking tainted blood.”
“There are other herds,” the male says.
We can’t look at one another, because the only other herd is too far for our hearts and wings without food. The silence between us stretches into a song of hunger.
“We should watch the herd and find out what has changed,” I offer. They are ours, and maybe we have allowed others to care for our food for too long. “The old song says that we are better than the Qianzhousaurus,” I remind them.
For the first time I will not fly out of our cave with my mother or sisters. Do they miss me? Does my mother regret what she has done? The urge to sing lifts from my chest.
“Let us go,” I say to the others, and then reach for the sky.
* * *
The first dead body I had encountered was a fallen brother. Brothers leave the nest, eager to start families and become leaders. This dead brother fell from our perch before his time and did not get back up.
A few from every nest yearn to fly too early.
His mother stayed by his side, and my mother fed her in the early morning. I remembered his mother’s song and how his eyes stayed open. He smelled of blood, food, and had no song to sing.
We are creatures of song and sky, blood and pain.
I cling to a branch overlooking the herd. They gather by their watering hole while three Qianzhousaurus approach. Their tiny hands run across the herd’s flesh. The herd has lost their fear of the predator’s talons. There is a kind of beauty to the systematic cycle of birth and death between them.
The male at my side sings of life. The song is about only taking what we can use and letting the herd live longer. We are benevolent predators.
Other Qianzhousauruses come; one has something around its neck. They pass it around, spreading it on their tiny hands. It smells sharp, acidic. The Tsintaosauruses cry out in protest but let them rub the powder into their feathers.
Our song changes because we know what it is. “The Qianxhousauruses are trying to poison us,” we sing for those who are coming.
But we don’t have to drink from the herd.
“We drink from the Qianzhousauruses,” I say, my hunger curling in my stomach.
“They will kill us,” says the wife.
I shrug. “Some, but if the colony drinks from the herd many more will die. If we drink from the Qianzhousauruses more will survive longer. They have struck the first blow against us. We have to strike back, and maybe they will realize that we must share the herd.”
Would my mother be proud of my idea? What would she think when she heard our song, would she hear my voice in it? My heart fluttered with hope. She might take me back.
The male at my side is the leader of a new family. Young families had limited time to prove themselves in the colony, and if we pulled this off, their status would rise.
He sent the wife back to sing our plan to the colony. “Will you join our family?” he asks.
“I have nowhere else to go.” The words escape me, and my grief rushes out in a ballad of every near sorrow.
“Your mother was a fool,” he whispers and nuzzles my side.
I do not want her to be a fool. I want her to care for me, to hold me close. Her disfavor leaves me hungry, like the powder that stings my mouth and haunts us. I imagine her arms open to me, and she asks my forgiveness in song.
I shake the male off. “We should get ready.”
* * *
Mauve settles between the trees as the sun fades, making it easier to see. The Quianzhousauruses have finished spreading the powder over the herd. Even from our vantage the stinging powder tickles my nose. The colony is a distant song. I can almost make out the words in their melody.
“Now,” I command and lift into the air. I want to be the first to strike. If I perish, the others will still follow. They might ignore the song of the wife we sent, but they will not ignore three songs.
The Qianzhousauruses are smaller than the herd. Their bodies are slick with back legs made to run and teeth that come to sharp points. They do not have a song but squeak and purr in a language we cannot understand.
They have feathers like the herd, but unlike them their feathers are thinner in places. I’m close to one of their backs. I spy where an old wound has left this one featherless. They must see us, but they keep walking, unconcerned as I land.
I plant my back talons into the hide for purchase. There is a high-pitched scream that echoes into the night. The colony hears it, and their song changes. They are close.
I dig my fangs into its flesh, working my bottom jaw as life-giving blood gushes into my mouth. It’s warm and savory. My mouth tingles with a pleasant spice that follows the blood down my throat. Energy fills my limbs, but then everything moves around me.
The colony has arrived and splits into two groups. One group screams over the herd in confusion, and the other splits off, diving for the Qianzhousauruses.
The Qianzhousauruses twist and turn. My head slams back. My fangs tear at flesh, aching as they are ripped out. I cry as my back talons slice the hide. Its feathers are slick with blood as I rake my talons against it, searching for purchase. The wet feathers slip away, and I start to fall. I open my wings, trying to catch the air, but I am tumbling and rolling.
My breath is knocked from my lungs as I hit the ground.
I tuck my arms in as pain slams each bone in my body. I choke and cough on half-swallowed blood. The Qianzhousaurus massive back feet slam into the ground.
I run in the tall grass, ignoring the pain that throbs in each limb. I don’t know which way I’m running, but I hope it’s closer to the herd. The colony descended; their song is everywhere, refusing to tell me the direction of home or the trees. I only have the tall grass and my own song.
The male lands before me. “This way,” he calls, and I follow.
“It is too dangerous on the ground,” I protest.
His song changes into one of amusement with a healthy dose of fear and excitement. “You have changed us.”
No, I think. “Maybe they will stop putting the powder on the herd and share.”
We grow silent, climbing the bark of a tree to watch the colony feast. I shiver once we are on a stable branch. I close my eyes, listening for my mother’s song. The colony mentions my notes, singing it over and over again, but I do not hear my mother’s song claim me as her daughter.
The male presses his side into mine, and I bury my face into his fur. The colony is saved, but my family has not taken me back.
* * *
The colony gives us a new perch. We’re the smallest and youngest family that has ever been granted a perch this high within the colony. There are two wives, counting me. The third, the one that went on the hunt with us, died on the back of a Qianzhousaurus. My note in the colony’s song turns into a hero’s melody, even among grieving families.
I climb down to the perch where I lived before, worried for my mother. I see the outline of her back and hear her song. She is leaning over one of the young ones, making sure it has a full belly.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, when she hears my song.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She would not have come to see me. My throat hurts and my heart breaks all over again.
“If I had not pushed you out, would you have saved us?”
Heat licks my belly and travels through my limbs. “Yes,” I spit. “We needed to eat; you had nothing to do with that.”
“I know you. I know you better than anyone. If I had not done what I had, then you would not be who you are now.” She stands taller, moving her shoulders back and making her wings twitch.
She is wrong. The realization is like being thrown out of the nest for a second time. She could not have known I would have thought to attack the Quianzhousauruses — I had not known.
“I made the right choice,” she insists. “I made you who you are.”
I take a step back. Forward is violence and breakdowns. There is a young one who gazes at me from behind her.
“She will never love you like you love her,” I warn the young one.
There is bitterness in my song as I turn away.
She calls to me, but I cannot go back.
My sister-wife, the one I gave blood to, licks my cheek as our mate huddles next to us. His song is tired and grief stricken, but it is also resolute, because we are together.
We chose one another, and we will make the same choice each day.
* * *
About the Author
Beth Dawkins grew up on front porches, fighting imaginary monsters with sticks, and building castles out of square hay bales. She currently lives in Northeast Georgia with her partner in crime and their offspring. A list of her stories and where to find them can be found at BethDawkins.com