Children of the Gates by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online Page B

do no harm to set up a signal an’ see what came lookin’.”
    “They set traps,” Crocker commented. “We thought we’d try one, but not for Them .”
    “You meant the hunters?” Nick was confused. After Stroud’s story of the flyers he wondered that these people wanted to pull such a menace down on them.
    “No, either the other drifters, or else the changed ones—if they were changed an’ not just born that way.”
    “We saw—or thought we saw,” Nick said slowly, “a unicorn when we were back in the woods. Was that what you mean by changed ones?”
    “Not quite,” the Vicar answered him. “We’ve seen a good many strange beasts and birds and things that combine two or more species. But such do not threaten us, and we believe they are native here. Perhaps from time to time in the past they strayed into our world to leave legends behind them. We have yet to meet a dragon, but I would not swear that none exist here. The changed ones—they are human for the most part in general appearance. It is the small details—certainly their ‘powers,’ which is the best word to use for their abilities—that betray them. The People of the Hills are very old.”
    “We stay near the woods”—Stroud nodded at a stand of trees not more than a few strides away—“because the flyers can’t get in under those to reach us. So far we haven’t seen many of ’em. They come in waves like—we’ll have a sky full of them for a few days—then they’re gone. An’ as long as we keep away from the cities we’re all right. The flyers got a hate for the cities—try to bomb ’em.”
    “Not bomb, I told you, Stroud!” Crocker cut in. “They don’t bomb. In fact I don’t see what they do—though it must be some type of raid the way they come over. Whatever they try to accomplish, it doesn’t cause any damage—none that we can see. The cities are safe.”
    “For them as wants to be changed,” Mrs. Clapp observed. “But we ain’t them.”
    Nick felt as if his head was spinning. It would seem that life here was complicated past even the many perils that now threatened his own time and space. This band, which had continued existence together as a group, displayed great hardiness and determination. Undoubtedly he and Linda had been lucky in this meeting. What if they had wandered on, on their own, to face all these threats without warning?
    He tried to express his relief at their good fortune, and the Vicar smiled gently.
    “You, yourself, have a part in your future, my boy. You have managed to adjust to a situation that might indeed have threatened your reason. We have seen the pitiful ending of one man who could not accept his transition. Acceptance is necessary.”
    Nick saw Linda and Jean coming back along the bank of the Run. So much had happened. Had he really accepted as Hadlett said, or was this all some kind of crazy dream from which he could not wake? Would there come a time when it would hit him as it had Linda, and he must make his peace with what seemed insanity?

4

    Outside the rain was falling steadily. It had begun at sunset and had continued. Nick could hear the even breathing of those asleep around him in what was now a crowded shelter. But he could not sleep, rather lay close to the door staring out into the dark, listening.
    The sound had started some time ago, very faint and far away. But it had caught his attention and now, tense, he listened with all his might, trying to separate that rise and fall of distant melody from the gurgle of the Run, the rain.
    Nick could not tell whether it was singing or music, he could not even be sure it had not died away upon occasion and then begun again, faint, far away—drawing— For, the longer he listened, the more he was caught in a net of desire. A need to answer moved him, in spite of the rain, the utter dark of the night in a hostile land.
    Sweet—low—but now and then clear and true. Nick thought he could almost distinguish words. And when that