Free The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King Page B

clothing. He retrieved his cap from a branch, slapping it against his leg before pulling it onto his hair, then climbed onto the dirt track to stand, hands on hips, grinning at the dying flames. He looked like a village lad at a Guy Fawkes bonfire; I half-expected him to gather some branches to toss on.
    “Ha!” he barked again.
    Then his head turned to find the three of us and the beard parted in a wide grin, which seemed remarkably full of very white teeth. “Who knew this day would hold such drama?” he said cheerfully.
    My brains were so thoroughly scrambled, I could only grin back at him. We watched the flames for a while—they were, in fact, remarkably interesting—until I reluctantly woke to my responsibilities and looked around me.
    Estelle was patting our blood-soaked, terror-stricken pilot on the head, comforting him instead of the other way around as I had intended. His eyes were tightly shut as he struggled for control, and I kept my distance while this strong man pasted on a deathly smile, dismissing her services when what he wanted was to curl over and howl with terror. I gave him time, and when he was restored, I approached.
    Estelle had sat down on the bedraggled fur. She was holding the tea-cup in one hand and an acorn-cap about the same size in the other, scowling between the two. I shook my head in wonder: I’d been in charge of this small life less than twelve hours, and I could already feel an ulcer coming on. How did parents survive?
    I dropped to my knees beside Javitz. His face was contained, his left hand clamped around his upper thigh. Fresh blood oozed around thefingers. The once-white scarf had all but torn free, but I did not think this patch of roadway was the best place in which to examine his injuries.
    A pair of dirt-coloured boots came into the corner of my vision, and I said, “He needs a doctor. Is there a town nearby?”
    “No!” Javitz protested. “If there’s a town, there’ll be police.”
    I glanced upwards to see what impression this statement had on the bearded man—expecting, perhaps, that a man who reacted to flames with childish glee would be childish in all things—but his raised eyebrows spoke of a mind quick enough to put together the situation. Although he did not seem alarmed.
    “Three master criminals fleeing the law in an aeroplane,” he reflected. “I have fallen into a Boy’s Own adventure.”
    His voice. I peered more closely at him, trying to see beneath the herbage. He might look like a resident of the wilderness—a charcoal-burner, perhaps, or a rat-catcher—but he sounded like an Oxford don.
    I opened my mouth to pursue this oddity, but a small groan brought me back. Focus , I told myself: Your brains have been knocked about and all the world looks odd . “His injuries want attention,” I repeated.
    The hairy man dropped into an easy squat, and a pair of surprisingly clean hands gently pushed aside the larger man’s blood-stained fingers. He looked into the pilot’s eyes and asked, “The bone’s not broken?”
    “No,” Javitz answered through clenched jaws.
    “This didn’t happen here.”
    “I was shot.”
    The green eyes travelled from Javitz to me and over my shoulder to Estelle, who had turned her back, literally, on the adults and was laying out a tea-party, supplementing the porcelain cup with acorn-caps and leaf-plates. He frowned, then jumped up and walked around to face her. She raised her head, and the green eyes went wide.
    I found I had got to my feet and taken a step towards him, but he did not notice. Slowly, he lowered himself to his haunches. I watched, uncertain, as the two of them studied each other for the longest time. I could see his face clearly, but I could not begin to guess what he was thinking. He studied her face as if its features contained a message coded just for him.
    Eventually, his gaze shifted, and he turned to scrabble at the leaf-mould, a small noise that startled my ears into noticing that the