Ysabet wanted to close its mouth.
The wish was so strong that her left hand had already moved before she stopped it. Pip stood with all six feet braced, producing a thin sound that made the boards tremble. Clear fluid ran down its neck. Behind the note, through the bond, came a pressure like a stone pushing upward inside her breast.
“Pip,” she said again.
The creature’s nearest eye flicked toward her. Its throat kept working.
She sat on the floor.
Dust struck the backs of her legs. She put her damaged right hand palm upward on the boards, close enough to reach and far enough that it need not retreat from her. Her fingers would not lie straight. The smallest two curled toward the sky like dead twigs.
“Here.”
The note faltered.
Below the shed, the drake wheezed.
Pip turned back toward it. The sound swelled, lost its pitch, and became a painful scrape. Ashaun swore under her breath. Chaska started toward the door, perhaps to find the young animal, perhaps simply because standing still was unbearable.
Ysabet shook her head once.
She could not make her hand a command and still call it an invitation. That left her sitting while the creature hurt itself. She counted two breaths. Three. She had no useful confidence left by the fourth.
Pip took one dragging step toward her.
The note broke completely. The sound from the quarry came through, raw and irregular. Pip’s loose fold fluttered around the tear. It lifted a front foot toward its throat, stopped, and put that foot against her palm.
Ysabet did not catch it.
She waited until it lowered its weight into her hand. Then she slid the clean cloth beneath its neck. It shuddered so hard that the boards tapped under its feet.
Chaska knelt on the other side. “What do you need?”
“Water. The small cup. Nothing in its mouth.”
“Minerals?”
“When it wants them.”
Ashaun went outside. In a moment the quarry answered her boots with a charging rush. She came back slowly, having walked only far enough to make the adult move toward the far side of the nest.
“The little one breathes better when its head is turned from the dust,” she said. “That can help for tonight.”
“Don’t keep doing it.”
“I wasn’t planning to marry the beast.”
Pip lifted its head at the sound of her voice. A bubble of clear fluid formed along the tear and broke. It made no note.
They carried it home on Chaska’s folded outer coat. Ysabet walked with her good hand under one end, Ashaun supporting the other in her right. Pip was small enough to carry but too frightened to be held against a moving chest. It watched the quarry until the trees hid it.
The mouse was still in its resting box in the kitchen. Gevren had replaced its water lid and added a pinch of seed. Pip moved toward the familiar smell as soon as they set it down, then stopped when the torn tissue pulled.
Ysabet brought the box closer. The mouse emerged, nosed the cloth beneath Pip’s neck, and went straight to the seed stuck on its forefoot. It ate without appearing to notice that the evening had gone terribly wrong.
That helped more than Ysabet expected.
Suth examined the tear by lamplight. She did not touch the raw edge. “New tissue,” she said. “Not built for a sustained note.”
“Will it heal?”
“If it rests. If it eats. If it doesn’t do the same thing tomorrow.”
Chaska had gone very still.
“What?” Ysabet asked.
“The same thing tomorrow,” she said. “We were going to ask it to show us the pitch.”
Nobody answered.
Outside the window the wind changed. A loose slat in Gevren’s shutter sang, horribly out of tune. Chaska stood up so abruptly that Lilt lifted her head from the yard.
“We don’t need it to sing,” she said.
“I know.”
“No. I mean we already heard it. I can cut notches by ear. Suth knows the birds. You know when the young drakes breathe better. We have enough people to be wrong in different directions.”
Ashaun glanced at the shutter. “A reassuring arrangement.”
Chaska took a charcoal stub and began drawing on the kitchen wall before Gevren could provide an alternative. Three hollow stakes. Different lengths. A cord turned around a peg. Two arrows showing how the wind could pass.
Gevren opened his mouth.
“You may wash it off when the birds hatch,” she told him.
He closed it again.
Pip watched the moving charcoal. One front foot rose. Ysabet shifted her open hand beneath it, and this time it rested against her crooked fingers without trying to make a sound.
She stayed on the floor while the others argued about the angle.