Part One
The End Begins
1.
Endling
Long before I heard the word, I was used to being last.
I was the runt, the youngest and by-far-and-away smallest of my seven siblings, which meant I was the last to drink, the last to eat, the last to be protected.
As the lowest-ranking member of our dwindling pack, I accepted my place without resentment—much resentment, anyway.
It was, perhaps, only fair. My failings were many, or so I was often told.
I was too young to be clever, too small to be helpful.
My feet were large and clumsy. They tangled when I ran.
My coat was untidy, my manners dreadful. I once ate an entire leg of anteleer before my rightful turn.
I was curious to a fault. I wandered too far and wondered too often.
I was, in short, a disappointment at my only task in life, which was to do my best, like all dairnes, to stay quietly alive.
Those days, you’d have been as likely to pet a unicorn as you would to sight a dairne.
Our packelder, Dalyntor, white muzzled and frail, liked to speak of a time when our ancestors roamed in great bands, hundreds of dairnes at a time, across the Nedarran plains. At night they would form into family groups, gathering around to prepare wild grasses and berries, or perhaps cook the stray badger or cotchet.
But all that was long ago. Now there were just a few of us left in our part of the world, a single band of four families cowering together, meek as mouselings.
Hiding from humans, those most unpredictable of predators.
Hiding from the sun itself.
Some said there were more dairnes far away, living in mountain caves or on distant islands. Some said those sightings were the result of misguided hope. Dairnes were often mistaken for dogs. We share many physical similarities.
Dogs, however, lack opposable thumbs. They can’t walk upright. They aren’t able to glide from tree to tree. They can’t speak to humans.
And dogs aren’t—forgive me—the sharpest claws in the hunt, if you catch my meaning.
In any case, whether there were more of us or not, Dalyntor feared we would all be gone soon, slaughtered for our warm and silky fur.
Like the Carlisian seal, hunted by humans to extinction.
Or the red marlot, devastated by disease.
Or the blue-tufted ziguin, wiped out when its territory was destroyed in the Long-Ago War.
It seemed there were many ways to leave the world forever.
We didn’t want to believe our days were numbered. But here is what we did know: once we’d been many, and now we were few.
My parents feared I would be the first among us to die when trouble came, and trouble, they knew, was fast approaching.
I was small. And sometimes disappointing.
But I knew I could be brave as well. I was not afraid to be the first to die.
I just did not want to be the last to live.
I did not want to be the endling.
2.
A Visit from Some Butterbats
The end began not so long ago, the day some butterbats came to visit.
It was early afternoon when I first heard them. I tiptoed past my sleeping family, nestled together like one great animal.
Dairnes are not night creatures by nature, but we no longer ventured out until the sun was long gone. We feared the giant cats called felivets, who hunted at night. But we feared poachers and the soldiers of the Murdano, Nedarra’s ruler, even more.
Still, I was restless. And I was sure I’d heard something just outside the door: the air, moving beneath wings both delicate and powerful.
My sister Lirya yawned and opened one eye. “I’m so hungry I could eat you, Byx,” she murmured.
“She’s too scrawny to eat,” said my oldest brother, Avar.
I ignored their teasing. I was used to ignoring my siblings.
It took some effort, squeezing through the door of our latest temporary home. An abandoned mirabear hive, it resembled a huge wasp nest that had fallen to earth. It was shaped like a honeycomb, with holes the size of large boulders, and glistened in the light like raw honey, though it was rock-hard to the touch. My father said the hive was made of volcanic ash, sulfur, and sand, mixed with sap from a bulla tree.
Dairnes used to fashion circle camps on the plains, or weave tree nests when we moved through forests. We didn’t do that anymore.
There were many things we didn’t do anymore. Or so Dalyntor, our teacher, the holder of our history, told us. He hinted at much more, but there were parts of the dairne story too harsh for our young ears.
Tree nests were too easy to spot, too vulnerable to arrows. Instead we moved from place to place, sheltering in caves or deep gullies, or within bramble patches in the heart of the forest. We left no evidence of our passing, no hint of nests or camps. We slept at the bases of cliffs, on remote beaches, in the deserted homes of other creatures. Our little band once spent the night in a large abandoned hunter’s lodge.
That was the closest I had ever come to humans, one of the six great governing species. Those six—humans, dairnes, felivets, natites, terramants, and raptidons—had
once been considered the most powerful in our land. But now all of them—even the humans—were controlled by the despotic Murdano.
I’d only encountered two of the other great governing species. I’d scented felivets, huge, graceful felines, gliding through blackest night. (No one ever hears them.) And I’d seen raptidons, lords of the air, carving arcs through the clouds.
Never, though, had I glimpsed a natite.
Never (thankfully) a terramant swarm.
And never a human.
Still, I knew more than a few things about humans. Dalyntor had taught us pups about them, drawing stick figures on a dried playa leaf. From him, I learned that humans have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth filled with blunt teeth. I learned they stand taller than we dairnes, but not by too much. I learned a great deal about their habits, their clothing, their villages and cities, their culture, their weapons, their languages, how they measure time and distance.
And I learned, most importantly, that humans were never to be trusted, and always to be feared.
I emerged from the mirabear hive into slanting sunlight.
The sound grew nearer, and then I saw them above the hive.
Butterbats!
There were four of them, easily three tails wide and
almost as long, with shimmery wings that wove rainbows out of the tree-filtered light. They must have thought there were still mirabears there, butterbats being great lovers of honey—and great thieves besides.
Despite the stiff breeze, they had no trouble hovering silently overhead like huge hummingbirds.
“Byx.” The voice was soft, part concern, part scold. I turned to see that my mother had joined me. She looked weary, her dark gold fur mussed, her tail listless.
“Butterbats, Maia!” I whispered.
She followed my gaze. “So beautiful. They’re heading north, I expect. It’s migration time for them.”
“I wish I could go, too.”
“I know it’s hard sometimes, this life.” She stroked my back. “Especially for you little ones.”
“I’m not little.”