Which was how, five years ago, she had met Hawk.
A growl sounded from the common room. Cheney, head lowered, ears flat, and hair bristling, faced the iron-plated door that opened onto the outer corridors of the underground city. He didn’t look like a fur ball now; he looked like a monster. His muzzle was drawn back to expose his huge teeth, and the sleepy eyes of a moment earlier had turned baleful. Owl rotated away from Squirrel and moved her chair back down the ramp and into the common room, where lamps powered by solar cells gave off a stronger light. Sparrow was already there, standing next to Cheney, gripping one of the prods. Sparrow was small, and the big dog, even crouched, stood shoulder-high to her. Owl maneuvered over to the door and waited, listening. Moments later, she had heard the rapping sound—one sharp, one soft, two sharp. She waited until it was repeated, then reached up and released the locking bars and unlatched the door.
Fixit and Chalk pushed through, soaked to the skin and looking like drowned rats. Cheney quit growling and took himself out of his crouch. Sparrow lowered the prod.
“He fell in the storm sewer,” Chalk announced, gesturing at Fixit.
“Then he fell in trying to help me out,” Fixit finished.
“You were supposed to be on the roof,” Sparrow pointed out, her blue eyes intense. “The roof is up, not down, last I heard.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Fixit brushed the water from his curly red hair and shook himself like a dog. Both Cheney and Sparrow backed up. “You can’t do much with solar cells when it’s raining. We switched out the collectors from the catchment system, threw in the purification tablets, and were done. Then we decided to forage for stores. Found a big stash of bottled water two blocks south. Too much to haul without help.”
“It’ll take all of us and the wagon,” Chalk added. “But a good find, right, Owl?”
“Better than good,” Owl agreed.
He grinned, then looked around. “Where are the others, anyway?
Aren’t they back yet?”
Owl shook her head. “Soon, I expect. You better get out of those clothes and dry off or you’ll end up like Squirrel.”
“I’d have to be pretty stupid to end up like Squirrel,” Chalk declared, and Fixit laughed.
“It’s not funny,” Sparrow snapped. She crossed to confront them, not as big as they were but a whole lot more unpredictable. “You think it’s funny that he’s sick?”
“Stop it, Sparrow,” Chalk said, turning away from her. “I didn’t mean anything. I want him to get well as much as you do. I was just teasing about how it happened.”
“Well, tease about something else,” Owl suggested gently. “What happened to Squirrel was an accident.”
Which was true, so far as it went. It had been an accident that he had cut himself on a piece of sharp metal and that the cut had become badly infected.
But he had brought it on himself by trying to salvage a box of metal toy soldiers that Hawk had told him not to touch.
“Besides which, where do you get off calling anyone stupid?”
Sparrow demanded.
Chalk was so fair with his pale skin and white-blond hair that he almost wasn’t there. Now he flushed with the rebuke and spun angrily back on Sparrow.
“Let it alone, Chalk,” Owl said, intervening quickly. “Just go change your clothes. You, too, Fixit. Sparrow, you go back into the bedroom and sit with Squirrel. Let me know if he needs anything.”
There were a few more pointed looks and some grumbling, but everyone did as asked. Owl was the mother, and you don’t argue with your mother. She hadn’t asked for the position, but there was no one else to fill it, and as the oldest female member of the tribe she was the logical choice.
Most of them could barely remember their real mothers, but they knew what mothers were and wanted one.
Hawk provided leadership and authority, but Owl gave them stability and reassurance. In a world where kids believed that adults had failed them in every important way, other kids were the best they could hope for.
Owl wheeled toward the kitchen, beginning to think about dinner.
Cheney was back in place between the leather couch and the game table, eyes closed, flanks rising and fall slowly beneath the thick mass of his patchwork coat. Owl watched him for a moment, wondering if he was dreaming and if so what he dreamed about. Then she angled herself into the makeshift work space that served as the food preparation area and began rolling out prepackaged dough.