“Tomorrow?” Jing-Wei asked in surprise. She didn’t think that the cave of miracles was all that far away—particularly as fast as the great elephant was striding.
“No,” the lion said with a chuckle.
“How many meals do you eat in a day?” the eagle asked, peering down at her.
“One,” Jing-Wei said.
“Most people eat three,” the elephant said.
“They must be huge to eat so much!” Jing-Wei cried in awe.
“Well, at least bigger than you, that’s for certain,” the elephant agreed.
“Rest,” the lion said. “And when you wake, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you.”
“I’ll keep watch,” the eagle said.
“And check on our guest,” the lion said. “I don’t like leaving it alone for long.”
“It?” Jing-Wei asked, sitting up and suddenly alert.
“You are not the only guest to come into our valley,” the elephant rumbled.
“You caught a demon?” Jing-Wei guessed. The lion nodded, while the eagle leaped into the sky and flapped quickly out of sight. “You caught a demon and you didn’t kill it?”
“It is hard to talk to the dead,” the lion said.
“You can talk to the dead?” Jing-Wei said in awe.
“No, child, the LT is just being humorous,” the elephant told her.
“‘LT’?” Jing-Wei repeated.
“It’s short for lieutenant,” the elephant explained. “Have you heard that word before?”
“The king’s men, some of them are lieutenants,” Jing-Wei said, eyeing the lion warily.
“When did you see them?” the lion asked.
“They come to collect tithes for the king,” Jing-Wei said in small voice. “Once a year. And sometimes they take people, too, to the war.”
“And you don’t like them,” the elephant guessed.
“When they come, we don’t eat,” Jing-Wei said. “And the prettiest girls and the strongest boys—we try to hide them.”
“Lovely,” the lion murmured.
“You can’t be everywhere, LT,” the elephant said. “And at least they’ve still got monarchy.”
“About what we’d expect, given everything,” the lion agreed. “Still . . .”
“Like you said, ma’am, you can’t talk to the dead,” the elephant said.
“Things were better when the emperor ruled?” Jing-Wei guessed.
“The captain was never—” the lion began patiently.
“Things were better,” the elephant said. The lion’s amber eyes glowed with a fire that was quickly extinguished.
“Sleep, child, you need your rest,” the lion said. Noiselessly, the lion leaped down beside the elephant . . . and padded into the jungle. “I’ll patrol.”
“She’s right, you know,” the elephant said. “You should rest.”
Jing-Wei curled up into a ball, settled herself between the elephant’s slowly moving shoulders, and closed her eyes.
Sleep overwhelmed her and brought her wondrous dreams.
“Have you figured out where this valley is, then?” A voice echoed in her ears.
“It is about thirty klicks from our base,” another voice, the lion’s, replied.
“Thirty klicks, no matter which way, is within the treaty,” another voice—the elephant’s—said.
“If it’s to the east, that’d put it at the front lines,” the eagle’s voice said.
She was in the cave of miracles. Lights like rare jewels surrounded her, lighting ghostly images of people dressed in strange clothes. There were hundreds of them. Most looked like ghosts. Were they all ghosts?
“And our guest?” the first voice asked.
“We’re trying to communicate, but we’ve had no luck so far,” the lion replied.
“Which is odd, considering that we had no trouble communicating before,” the first voice said.
“Captain, if I may—” the eagle spoke up.
“Yes, Chief Buhari?”
“We still don’t know much about their organization, about how they communicate among themselves,” the eagle said. “It’s possible that this demon never learned our language.”
“Which means that it knows nothing of the treaty,” the captain said.
“Exactly, sir,” the eagle agreed.
“Which means we’ve got a whole new ball game,” the elephant rumbled.
“And the plan of ‘educating’ observers seems to have failed,” the captain said.
“I don’t know, sir,” the lion said. “I know it was my plan, but I think that the fact that this child tells us that the demons targeted the village witch may mean that they’ve been more effective than we imagined.”
“It’s not their effectiveness I question, lieutenant, it’s their survival,” the captain said.
“Yes, sir,” the lion said. “I see your point.”
“There has only ever been a few of the colonists we could ever trust with the truth,” the captain said.
“Sir, we never really told them everything,” the eagle said.
“I know,” the captain’s voice agreed. “But we had good reason.”
“You mean that if we told them that their best hope is to rely on the avatars of dead spacers, I’m sure they would never agree,” the eagle replied.
“That doesn’t change the fact that we’re failing,” the elephant said. “We’re down to three functionals and we don’t know how much longer we’ll last.”
“So you’re saying that we must recruit more,” the captain said. “From among the population.”
“From the witches and those we can hope to trust with the truth,” the elephant said.
“I think we should start them young, when they’re not set in their ways,” the eagle said.
“You want to start with this child,” the captain said.
“She’s the only one who’s made it here in the last century,” the elephant said. “If we’re going to recruit, she’s our only candidate.”
“Except for the demon,” the lion said.
“Yes.” The captain’s voice was frosty with disapproval. “Keeping it is a treaty violation, lieutenant.”
“We haven’t decided on keeping it, sir,” the lion defended herself.
“But until we can communicate with it, we think it’s dangerous to just let it go,” the eagle said. “After all, it knows where our base is.”
“And if we lose this, we’ve lost everything,” the lion said in agreement.
“I agree,” the captain said.
“Sir, sir!” a new voice cried out in alarm.
“What is it?”
“The girl—she can hear us! She’s about to—”
Jing-Wei opened her eyes and remembered her dream. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
“How—?” the lion said.
“Where’s the captain?” Jing-Wei asked, looking around a huge cavern that was just as she’d dreamed it. Except there were no ghosts, only the three animals. In the distance she spied a large ball of blue light that flickered to brilliant whiteness in a pattern that seemed like ripples on the water when a stone was bounced on it. She pointed to the ball. “The demon’s in there, isn’t it?”