Fog wrapped the canyon like wet bark—close, slick, hard to shake. Bracken?Hollows woke into it with work hands and quiet voices. The seanchai beat a slow pulse to pace the mist: hush in, hush out. Apprentices checked mirror poles, lifting each by two fingers so straps wouldn’t rattle on cedar. (two fingers down) hush; (mirror flash) once; (open hand, no?blade) no hunt. The Convict traded needle tea for twine and mended a sling. Exythilis stood still while a child braided a lichen twist into its crest—an offered sign of trust. (palm touch) keep, the Convict said.
Exythilis answered with a dry talon scrape: kept. Two nights earlier, a salvage crew set nets and a cage on a rumor. At dawn today they came back with the cage crushed and giant talon prints stamped deep in river mud, headed where no one wanted to follow. The hamlet didn’t cheer; they cut their words to fit the work. (palm out) bad sky, the seanchai signed, and apprentices moved two poles a hand?width to change how light fell. The Convict cleaned a wire cut on Exythilis’s forearm; the alien watched the bead and clot with its usual care—color, flow, stop—one more problem to solve. “Careful,” the Convict said. “Careful,” Exythilis echoed, fitting human sound to an alien throat. Calloway smelled panic and paid to quiet it. He hired a desert hunter —clinical, equipment first, capture alive.
No speech, no show: lenses rolled in cloth, clamps in oil, surgical wraps, and a face that didn’t spend ex-pression. Sheriff Muir met him at the tent flap. “No bodies,” Muir said, because the town would hold him to it. The hunter blinked once—agreement or contempt—and asked for access, lists, and quiet lanes. Calloway nodded like a man signing a treaty with a knife. The fugitives answered with misdirection. Exythilis pinned mirror thorns —small foil tags—at thigh height along a fern throat so cameras would catch glare and depth would read wrong. The Convict hung reflective tags to hum like sloth herds in a breeze. He banked coals in three pans for heat ghosts and masked human scent with willow and cedar. (open hand, no?blade) tools, not men, he said. Exythilis tapped twice: debt remembered. They marked three stones with mixed script—Ogham for KEEP, alien spiral for WRONG WAY —so a confident tracker would choose the bad branch. Ryn couldn’t stand patience. At dusk he took two bikes into a fern gully, and engines spoke a language the canyon punishes.
The first trip line kissed fairing and turned balance to a dance; the second was algae slick as glass. A bike yawed and went over; Ryn’s shoulder met rock, his mouth met nettles. The dogs cried confusion at oil and fern. Hark said nothing and fixed the boy—a fast wrap, barbs out, breath steady. (palm out) bad sky, he tapped. Pride bled fast; the lesson stayed. By nightfall the hunter had taken Gearrow’s measure: who paid, who prayed, and who preferred neither in writing.
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He refused Calloway’s liquor and audited his kit under a lamp—clamps aligned, optics clean, legal seal ready if he needed the town’s help by force of paper. Muir signed nothing. “We do not break ourselves to save a purse,” he said, to everyone and no one, and he tightened the search cordon one post at a time. Rumor moved faster than drones when fog carried sound sideways. A black skiff cut low along the eastern rim where no trader wastes fuel. Bracken?Hollows sealed shutters and smeared clay into the door seams.
Apprentices practiced (two fingers down) hush until the gesture lived in bone. The Convict walked the lanes and retied two cords that wanted to sing. Exythilis stood at the edge and tasted metal in the air—the faint tang of skiff exhaust a long way off. (chin tilt upriver) forks two, the Convict said. lights survey, Exythilis returned: map made, plan set. They redistributed food because fear burns calories like cold. The Convict cut oats with nettle and a handful of serviceberry dried on a roof; kids got fat, adults got lean. Exythilis rinsed its crest and set the lichen twist back in place with careful hands—the way you re?arm a trap. (open hand, no?blade) no hunt, eyes only, the Convict told the apprentices. The seanchai chalked the double?breath rune a second time at the lane head so panic—and law—would see it. Near midnight the hunter walked the line Muir drew and found the places where men thought like men— straight, fast, certain. He circled those on a mental map. Three things he did not know how to read: the alien spiral cut beside human marks; a vulture wheel that arrived early and left late over one draw; a heat source that breathed but never moved. He smiled without showing it. Tools solve men, he believed. Tools solve prey.
He would change his tools. The fugitives slept in turns. Fog closed like a fist, opened like a hand. On the stone they left (two fingers down) hush, walk soft, no hunt for whoever might come—human, law, or other. When the skiff rumor reached them as a cold line along Exythilis’s hidden palate, they moved. (chin tilt upriver) go, said the Convict when the last lamp died to clay. forks two, said Exythilis —talon on rock, number on bone. The canyon would pick its predators. They would pick their tools.
