Page 61 of Red Boar's Baby

“You think he’d betray us? We’re his only chance of getting out of here alive, hurt as he is.”

“I’m not going to take the chance if I can help it, no. In fact, let’s stash the gun separately from our clothes. Wolverines have a keen sense of smell, so we may as well not make it too easy for him.”

They undressed in the deepening twilight. By now enough of the light had gone from the sky that Costa could just barely make out the pale movements of her limbs.

Diana laughed quietly.

“What?”

“Finally got your clothes off, and I can’t even see you.”

Costa moved a little closer to her. “You can touch me.”

He was aware of Diana moving closer in the near-dark, and felt the swift brush of her fingers, first on his upper arm, then sliding across his collarbone and down his chest. The night was growing swiftly chilly, but his shiver had nothing to do with cold.

“You’re very ... furry.” Her voice sounded thick as her hand moved across his chest, brushing against the thatch of hair.

“Good for keeping warm.” He touched her arm cautiously, barely making contact, moving his palm down her silky skin.

She let out a soft little gasp. The awareness of their shared nakedness was a palpable thing in the dark between them. Costa felt her sway toward him.

And then she jerked away. The hand lifted from his chest, leaving him feeling the night air’s chill acutely in that spot.

“I’d better go hunt up a lizard or two before they all go to to ground for the night.” Her voice was breathless, and he was aware of a swift movement and then the skittering footsteps of a roadrunner darting away.

Costa sighed.

This is going to be torment.

He shifted. The cool night air was suddenly comfortable, filled with tantalizing smells. Costa moved around a little, getting used to his shift form, and picked up the gun in his mouth. He trotted uphill a little way, navigating mostly by smell and sound, and found a place to stash the gun where he figured that Farley would, at least, take longer to find it than in the pile of human-smelling clothing they’d left behind.

There was swift movement near his leg, a flurry of wings, and a light weight landed on the bristled hump of his shoulders. Costa would have smiled if his mouth had been set up for it.

Instead, he grunted and set off into the night. He could smell the water Diana had mentioned, as well as the tempting scent of the green things that grew near it.

After a little while, Diana hopped down and ran alongside him. By daylight they must have looked like a ridiculous pair, the odd couple animal buddies in the latest Disney animated feature.

But it was very nice to have her there, as he got used to the scent and sounds of her as a roadrunner. And he accepted her presence as the oblique gesture of support that it was.

CHAPTER20

It was a long night.Diana spent part of it hunting, although roadrunners were mainly sight predators, so trying to do it at night was difficult and nerve-wracking—especially since she was aware that other wild creatures would be out and about, many of whom had a sharper sense of smell and a more acute ability to hunt at night than she did. There would be foxes, and owls, and bobcats. She ended up spending as much time as possible near Costa in the awareness that few predators likely to be found in this terrain would mess with a full-grown wild boar.

She caught a couple of lizards and a small snake by using her human mind’s knowledge of where small, cold-blooded animals were likely to be found at night. She took the snake and one of the lizards down to Farley, dropping them off near his drowsing bulk, and then scurried off to eat her lizard at a safe distance. Her human awareness of what she was eating warred uncomfortably with her roadrunner sense that raw, torn-apart lizard was delicious.

She hoped Costa was having a better time with his diet of roots and grubs, but doubted it.

They spent the last part of the night sleeping in a patch of brush near the spring, Costa lying in a great snoring heap while Diana nestled down in the crook of his leg and relied on his protection and warmth. As dawn washed the stars out of the sky, she rose from the still-sleeping Costa, tilted her head and ran her feathered cheek along his leg. Then she darted to the spring to drink and scurried down the hill to have a look at the crash site again.

It was exhilarating racing along in the cool of early dawn. Now that she could see, she was less worried about predators; almost anything she spotted would probably run away if she shifted human. She raced down the hillside, enjoying the speed and strength of her roadrunner body, almost managing to leave her worries behind.

Almost.

The fire in the wreckage had burned itself out the previous evening, fortunately without setting anything nearby on fire, and now the scorched hulk of the plane created a baroque sculpture in the growing morning light. Diana circled it. The fire had torched off the spilled aviation fuel, and what she smelled now was mainly charcoal and burned oil. Nothing useful seemed to have survived the wreck; any survival supplies that had been in the plane were charred beyond use.

She flew up to sit on top of the burnt-out fuselage. From here, in the light of the rising sun, she had a good view of the trail they had left through the sand, veering and tilting, with broken-off pieces of the plane striking sparks in the morning sun. Looking at it from here, she couldn’t help being amazed any of them had survived.

Also a darn fine piloting job, if I do say so myself.

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