Ysabet moved the end stone sideways.
Pip pushed it back.
She let it. Then she took a flat piece from the open rubble and laid it beside the ramp, farther out. She put the first stone there too, leaving a broad empty space between the wall and the bank.
The creature stared at the gap.
Chaska had gone still beside the brace. Ashaun kept her shoulder against the pole and her right hand away from her belt. The pause could not last forever; the broad slab creaked when wind moved through the arch.
Ysabet lifted the edge of her coat. The young swift stepped onto it, away from Pip’s jaw. She moved coat and bird toward the opening. Not through it yet. She let the bird see the light.
It spread its wings.
The left wing did not quite open. Ysabet could see a feather caught in dried dirt. She dampened her fingers, worked the crust free without pulling the feather, and waited. The bird tried again.
This time both wings opened wide enough to strike Pip’s face.
The creature recoiled. Ashaun made a sound that might, in another place, have become a laugh.
“Needs that space,” Ysabet said softly.
Pip touched the moved stone. It looked up toward the gray parent on the ledge. Then it picked up a smaller fragment and put it on the outside edge of the ramp.
Ysabet moved her hand away.
The next stone extended the slope rather than the wall. Pip tested it with its body, shifted it until it no longer rocked, and went for another.
They worked around the change. Ashaun braced, Chaska packed, Ysabet checked the places small feet would catch. Pip brought pieces it could carry. Twice it set a fragment upright, narrowing the opening again. Ysabet moved one outward and left the other where it served as a low edge.
The first bird walked higher than she expected. Its claws made little scratches on the stone. At the broad upper platform it paused, spreading its stiff wings while the parent called.
Then it launched.
It fell a frightening distance before air caught beneath it. Chaska took a step forward and stopped herself. The swift rose beside the arch and landed on the ledge above.
Pip ran after it up the ramp, stopped at the top, and looked down.
“No,” Ysabet said, with considerably less patience than she wanted.
It turned at her voice. Five feet gripped the stone. Behind its open jaw, for an instant, she could see how far it had come from the fish crate and how little it understood of falling.
She laid the traveling basket on its side at the ramp’s lower end. After a while Pip climbed down into it.
Getting the other young out took the rest of the afternoon.
Two came when the adults called. One refused to move until Chaska made the space behind it darker with a cloth. The smallest stayed beneath the broken shelf, exhausted from climbing a route that ended in stone. Ysabet could reach it only by lying on her stomach and guiding the flat side of her hand along the ground.
It bit her nail.
“Good,” she said through her teeth. “You’re awake.”
She brought it into the light cupped in her left hand, keeping its breast clear. Pip opened its pouch. The bird resisted the narrow opening but settled against the warmth when Ysabet lowered it onto a fold spread across the cloth.
They waited there while it rested. Pip’s forefeet held the cloth instead of the bird. Beneath the warmth the swift’s breathing slowed. A little later it ate a moving insect Chaska caught near the water and drank a drop from the spoon’s edge.
They did not send it off before dusk.
The high ledge was beyond its strength. Instead they carried it to a sheltered stone beside the new ramp, where the parent came down after the people moved away. At the last look, the small gray body sat pressed against a larger one, both almost invisible.
They camped beyond the bridge, where the old road rose clear of the marsh. Chaska grounded her frame between two rocks and laid the sail loose over it as a windbreak. Lilt rested alongside, harness still off. The scratches had begun to seal, but the longer one remained pink.
Ysabet washed her hands, fed the mouse, and gave Pip a careful portion of clay.
It ate more than it had since the spear. Then it went back to the parcel and clicked until she opened it again.
“Too much?” Chaska asked.
“I don’t know.”
Ysabet offered a smaller piece. Pip ate it and lay down. A fine tremor began along its left side.
The shriveled limb loosened.
What followed took hours. Old skin split without blood, peeling from the curled toes. Something pale pushed beneath it, too thin and bright to be a scar. Pip shivered through the growth, stopping twice to eat and once to drink. Ysabet kept the mouse in its familiar box nearby so no tiny body would be caught beneath the moving folds.
Near midnight the new foot opened.
Six fine toes spread against the blanket. The leg above them was thinner than the one they had lost, longer in its last joint. Pip lifted it uncertainly, placed it on the wool, and took weight.
Across its forehead, the white closed-door mark parted at the top. Two narrow branches opened away from one another.
Pip put its head down. Ysabet stayed beside it until the trembling stopped, with one spoonful of clay still waiting in the bowl.