Free Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove

grass on the meadows.
    And, when the crops came in, they flourished even before the settlers manured them with fish. “I don’t see any bugs on the plants!” Nell exclaimed. “Is it a miracle?”
    â€œAsk Father John or one of the other priests,” Edward answered. “Maybe the bugs here don’t know how to eat our crops, or don’t like the way they taste. Is that a miracle? Richard doesn’t like the way squash tastes.”
    â€œRichard is not a bug,” Nell said. Since Edward couldn’t very well argue with that, he walked off shaking his head.
    The weather got warm, and then warmer. It got muggier than it ever did in England, too. Edward had known the like down in the Basque country, but the people who’d spent their whole lives in Hastings wilted like lettuce three days after it was picked.
    An eagle swooped down and killed a child. It tore gobbets of flesh from the small of the girl’s back before flying off. She died the same way Hugh Fenner had, in other words. Even though she was already dead, Father John gave her unction while her mother screamed and screamed. They buried her next to the log hut that did duty for a church. No stonecarvers were on this new shore yet, but at Father John’s direction the carpenter made a grave marker out of the red-timbered evergreens that seemed so common here. Rose Simmons, vibas in Deo, the inscription read: may you live in God.
    How large would the churchyard grow? Edward dared hope his flesh would end up there, and not at sea for fish and crabs to feast on. Thy will be done, Lord, he thought, but not yet, please.
    Another eagle killed a sheep. That would have been a sore loss in England—not that eagles there attacked beasts so large. It was worse here, because the newcomers could spare so little. A smaller hawk carried off a half-grown chicken. A big lizard—bigger than any Edward had imagined—ate a duckling. But there were no foxes. That alone helped the poultry thrive.
    Edward chanced to be ashore one morning in early summer when a twelve-year-old told off to keep an eye on the livestock ran back into New Hastings screaming, “Things! There’s things in the fields!”
    Like everyone else, Radcliffe tumbled out of bed. He pulled on his shoes and went outside. “What do you mean, things?” he demanded.
    â€œSee for yourself!” The boy pointed to the bright green growing grain. “ I don’t know what they are! Demons from hell is what they look like.”
    â€œThey aren’t demons,” Edward said. Those two-legged shapes might be strange to the boy, but he’d seen them before.
    â€œThey have the look of something otherworldly.” Father John crossed himself, just in case.
    But Edward Radcliffe shook his head. “No, no, Father. Those are the honkers I’ve been talking about. They think we’ve spread out a feast for them. They don’t know they’re a feast for us.” He raised his voice: “We can’t let them eat our grain and trample what they don’t swallow. Get clubs. Get bows. We’ll kill some—they’re good eating, mighty good—and drive the rest away.”
    When he went out into the fields, he saw that these weren’t quite the same kind of honkers as he’d seen the year before. They were bigger and grayer and shaggier of plumage. Their voices were deeper. But they showed no more fear of man than the other honkers had. You could walk right up to one of them and knock it over the head. Down it would fall, and another one ten feet away would go right on eating.
    If you didn’t kill clean, though…A man named Rob Drinkwater only hurt the honker he hit. It let out a loud, surprised blatt! of pain. Before he could strike again and finish it, one of its thick, scaly legs lashed forward. “Oof!” Drinkwater said. That was the last word—or sound—that ever passed his lips. He flew