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The Dark Hour [MultiFormat]
eBook by A. M. Dellamonica
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$1.05 |
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$0.89 |
eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: A young man, long since alienated from the human race, finds himself living among the Nandieve, birdlike offworlders he has idealized since childhood.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Tesseracts 8, ed. John Clute and Candas Jane Dorsey, 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2007
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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [197 KB], eReader (PDB) [42 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [30 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [28 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [85 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [101 KB], hiebook (KML) [99 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [59 KB], iSilo (PDB) [24 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [32 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [59 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [45 KB]
Words: 8537
Reading time: 24-34 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
Brother wasn't the first crow Momma brought home, for she had loved anything that flew. If they saw a dragonfly or wasp crushed on the street she would be sharp and angry for days. She brought home sparrows, robins, even pigeons and seagulls. They often had three patients in the house, and once the count reached seven. She taught her son how to dress their injuries, what they ate and how to feed them.
They kept each bird until it healed, until Momma said, "The sky wants this one back." Then the two of them would set it free. Days after she rescued Brother, a black ball of feathers flailing in wet leaves, Momma was killed by a white riot cop. Her son divorced his species, changing his name to Oriole and taking the crow as his only family. An orphanage run by Momma's church took them in, and he lived there in silence for two years. He didn't say a word to another human, black or white, until Contact, the day that emissaries of seven alien races came to Earth, transmitting messages of friendship from their fragile, exquisite spaceships. The nuns found him outside that night, face tilted to the stars, mumbling alien words. His voice was hoarse from lack of use--like Brother, he croaked. "Yah Kurar. Sky's calling," he said, as Sister Beverly carried him to bed. * * * *Oriole woke to a mechanical drumbeat--whoosh-clank, whoosh-clank--and the knowledge that he should have been in agony. Losing shipmesh was like soaking your nerve ends in acid. That was what Union veterans said, and it had been true, though nobody told him the acid would be electrified, boiling, and laced with diamond grit. But now there was no pain. His body was quiet, almost numb, and beneath the pumping sound he could hear rustling, like feathers rubbing together. Struggling against torpor, he tried to clench his uncooperative hands into fists. Jackers had boarded his ship, torn him out of mesh, and the effects of the tearout had left him helpless to defend Corvus. He managed to lift his eyelids and saw the dark length of his arm vanishing under a gold quilt, so that for a moment he thought it had been amputated. Beyond the rise of his covered legs, two girls were standing at the foot of the bed. Panic and fury beat in his lungs--were they with the jackers or prisoners like him? Then he adjusted to the dimness and saw they weren't girls at all, but women. Nandi women. Nandi prisoners, he wondered, who'd dare? It didn't make sense. Too disoriented to think clearly or fast, he flailed with fear and his chaotic impressions--the pumping, the weight of blankets, a sound like children's voices--and his mind stirred up an answer. He'd been rescued.
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