Chapter 141: The Father Could Not Lift the Chick

A muffled chick call came from under the male, and he could not lift his breast high enough to clear its beak.

His outer leg pushed once against the warmed stone. The ankle flattened. His brood fold rose on one side, then dropped before the chick found air beyond his feathers.

Pava moved toward the brood rest.

An open beak stopped her.

He had no strength to stand, but the warning still stopped her outside striking reach. Pava remained crouched with both hands empty while the small call came again from beneath him.

She watched the brood feathers tighten and release over the chick. Her right hand lifted whenever the call thinned, then returned to her knee before crossing the male’s reach. Wanting to intervene made the stillness harder, not wiser.

"If he folds lower, the chick cannot feed or breathe cleanly," she said. "If I put my hands under him, he may spend what he has left fighting me."

A blow landed on the braced notch from the female’s side of the silver.

Her beak could enter the feeding reach. Her body could not. She called to the chick, waited for the male’s answer, and received only the scrape of his breast over stone.

Jiang pushed himself off the folded hide.

His numb leg failed under him. Pava caught the hide before he rolled from it, but Jiang planted his good foot against the floor and dragged his breast toward the brood rest.

"No," Pava said. "I have reached my daily allowance for patients entering mouths and holes."

Jiang kept crawling toward the brood rest.

Every sensible part of him wanted the hide. Warmth still lived in its folds, his shoulder binding had begun to pull loose, and the green afterimages around Pava’s hands had not settled. The chick’s muffled call came a third time.

His beak found the edge of the male’s stone.

A warning strike landed against Jiang’s crown with too little force to turn him. Jiang lowered his head and stayed outside the brood fold.

Pava stopped behind him. She slid a second warm hide along the floor and left it within the male’s sight. "Take the cloth, bite the penguin, or do neither. Those are the choices I can offer without making this worse."

He watched her hands withdraw.

Then he looked at Jiang.

Jiang pressed his good foot into a shallow cup and set his breast beside the adult’s wet flank. He left room between their feathers and waited.

A small click came through the brood fold.

Movement came from the male first.

His flank settled against Jiang’s. Part of his weight crossed through the contact, heavy and shivering. Jiang’s injured shoulder complained at once, but the male’s brood fold lifted far enough for a small beak to appear.

No borrowed heat followed the contact. Jiang had spent that help already. He held the adult with ordinary breast, bone, and the one foot that could still find stone, feeling each exhausted tremor arrive through feathers the male had chosen to share.

Pava breathed out through her nose. She pushed the warm hide against Jiang’s sound side without touching either adult.

Across the notch, the female lowered her head until one eye found the opening.

She gave a low call.

Against Jiang’s breast, the male answered. His note broke near the end, gathered itself, and returned in a shorter shape. The female changed hers around that break instead of repeating what he had lost.

Two-moon silver pulled free of the feeding groove.

Silver slid beneath Elen’s forked brace and crossed the floor in front of Valea. Moonlight followed it, thin at first, then broad enough to reveal webbed-foot scars beneath the stone dust.

Kedra stepped back before the light reached her injured wrist. "That road already tried to eat my carrying board."

"It wanted the shape you and Aylin were sharing," Valea said. She knelt beside the first scars without putting a hand into the light. "This is lower."

More webbed-foot cups appeared.

None could have held a human boot. They curved around three forward toes and a rear point no sensible emperor penguin possessed, though Jiang had become painfully familiar with his own.

Brinn lowered her empty green mask to the floor. "Paired returns."

The words made her glance toward the rubble over Tideglass. Her own return had become a wall that carried Tir’s hand and Elen’s glass but not her body. She let the look last, then turned back to the female waiting under two moons.

Aylin looked from the cups to the female beyond the notch. "You said that in Tideglass."

"Ninebell sent two living travelers toward the same bell from different moons. Tideglass caught the arrival if the pair kept answering." Brinn touched the stone beside the silver, not the light itself. "We used the high throat. The low road belonged to birds."

Hest looked at the rubble where the human carrier throat had been. "The high throat belongs to several tons of stone now."

"Then do not stand in it."

Again, the male tried to raise himself.

His outer foot slipped. Jiang took more of the flank weight and felt his bound shoulder grind beneath the wrap. The chick’s beak vanished, but the brood fold did not close as low as before.

Pava crawled to the side of the rest. "He cannot walk a paired road."

"He may not have to," Brinn said.

Kedra’s face hardened. "That sentence usually ends with someone else carrying the cost."

"The road has already chosen two ends. Look."

Silver had reached the male’s flattened feet. It did not take them. One moonline curved along the edge of his brood fold. The other continued beneath Jiang’s supporting breast and stopped where their shadows touched.

On the far side, moonlight gathered beneath the female.

Her body remained beyond the wall, but both feet had become visible through the feeding slit as black shapes over pale stone. The silver did not open around her shoulders or build the buried adult seam. It waited at the webbing between her toes.

Aylin crouched at one outer edge. Old cuts across her palms had opened under the Bellmaw chain work, so she used her forearm against the stone instead of her hands.

Kedra took the opposite edge with her sound hand. Her swollen wrist stayed clear of the center.

Moonlight pressed cold through Aylin’s sleeve. Kedra’s fingers shook once around the stone lip. Pava pushed folded cloth toward each woman, but neither could lift from her edge long enough to take it. Valea tucked the cloth beneath their forearms instead.

"Separate shadows," Aylin said.

"Separate people," Kedra answered.

They bore down on opposite sides.

Between them, the middle stayed open.

Silver ran beneath the brood rest, crossed Jiang’s good foot, and disappeared into the wall beside the braced feeding reach. Beyond it, the female called again.

His answer barely moved his breast.

That broken answer was enough.

Low foot cups opened under the wall, one after another, until their moonlit path reached the female.

She looked through the notch at the chick beneath her mate.

Rookery voices moved in the dark behind her. Some answered the low road. Others continued their own calls beneath the two moons, unaware that one returning mother had reached a choice no colony could make for her.

Then she lifted one black foot over the first cup.