“I’m sorry,” she said to the pale, round-mouthed birds as she fit the smallest waldo onto the drone. “I’m new at this.”
One of the babies caught sight of Momma bird’s body in the cart and tried to haul itself out of the water to waddle toward her. It was as good a place to start as any. Cara sat cross-legged on the clover and started the drone. It whirred as it rose in the air.
The first baby shrieked, hissed, and ran. Cara smiled and shook her head. “It’s okay, little one. It’s only me,” she cooed. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Only it wasn’t.
The babies scattered to the edges of the pond and bit at the drone when it came near. When she was able to get a grip on one, it wriggled out a meter and a half above the ground and fell back into the water. Cara didn’t want to hurt them, but the light was fading faster now, and she had to get them up to the nest and then bury Momma and still get back home before her parents and Xan. The time pressure made everything harder. She didn’t realize she was clenching her teeth until her jaw already hurt. After nearly an hour she’d only gotten three safely back to the nest. Momma bird lay in the cart, sightless eyes reproachful. Cara’s hands ached, and the drone’s batteries were half drained.
“Come on,” she said as one of the last two babies skittered away from the waldo and ran into the brush at the edge of the pond. “Stop it. Just…”
She reached the soft rubber claw down, and the little sunbird struck at it, biting and tearing with its soft teeth. It wrenched its head around and darted back off across the water, leaving little ripples in the dark water, and then stopping to bob on the surface and chew at its wings as if nothing was wrong. Cara brought the drone in to land beside her while she thought. The last two babies were the biggest. Faster than their siblings, and they weren’t getting tired the same way. Maybe they were big enough to avoid predators without her. Maybe they didn’t need to be in the nest.
One of the babies swam near her, chirped, and shook its fleshy, pale wings. Without the whirring of the drone to run from, it seemed placid, in a disgruntled kind of way. Its black eyes shifted around at the night, taking in the forest and the pond, the cart and Cara with the same disinterest. It was so close.
Cara shifted forward slowly so as not to startle it. The little sunbird huffed to itself, ducked its head under water, and Cara lunged. Cold water soaked into her sleeves and sprayed her face, but the little ball of squirming flesh was locked in her hands, hissing and biting. She stood up, grinning.
“There you are, little one,” she said. “Oh, you’re a pain, but I’ve got you safe now.”
Except she wasn’t quite sure what made sense to do next. She needed both hands to drive the drone and the waldo, but if she put the sunbird down, it would just run off again. The nest was low enough in the tree, she might be able to climb up one handed and reach it in. She stepped backward, looking through the foliage for a pathway that would work.
The crunch under her heel was confusing for a moment, and then horrifying. She yelped, dropped the baby sunbird, and danced back. The drone glittered on the clover, two of the vortex thrusters caved in by her weight. She dropped to her knees and reached out, fingers trembling in the air, caught between needing to put it all back together and being afraid to touch it. The drone was broken. Her mother’s drone that they couldn’t replace because it came from Earth and now nothing came from Earth. The sense of having done something terrible that she couldn’t take back washed over her—the broken body of Momma bird and the drone building on each other.
It was too much. She’d hide the drone, just for now. The case for it was still back at the house, and her mother might not need it again for weeks. Months. If Cara kept it here, where she could work on it. If she could keep it safe until there was light, then maybe it would be all right. She lifted up the drone, felt the limp ceramic clicking against itself, the sharp edges where before there had been smooth round cylinders, and knew that there were shards of it still in the clover. With the instinct of a thief, she carried it away from the edge of the pond. She shoved it under a little bush and dragged dead tree fronds over it, hardly aware that she was sobbing while she did it. It would be okay. Somehow, it would be okay.
It wouldn’t.
When she turned back around, the dogs were there.
She hadn’t heard them shamble out of the darkness, and they stood there as still as stones. Their five faces looked like an apology for intruding.
“What?” Cara shouted, waving at them with one sopping arm. “What is it?”
The dog in front—the same lead dog from when they’d been there before—squatted down, its muzzle toward her. Its legs seemed to have too many joints in them, folding together primly. She stepped toward the dogs, wanting to hit them or shout at them or something. Anything that would distract her from her misery. She grabbed the shovel up from the cart, holding it like a weapon, but the dogs didn’t react. They only seemed embarrassed for her. She stood for three long, shaking breaths, wet and cold and raw as a fresh-pulled scab, then sat down on the cart next to Momma bird’s body, hung her head, and wept. The corpse shifted when the cart rocked, its skin glistening with whatever that death wax was.
“I didn’t mean to break anything,” she said. “I didn’t want to break anything. It all just…broke, and I, and I, and I…”
The strange noise began again. Ki-ka-ko, ki-ka-ko, but instead of being disorienting, it seemed comforting now. Cara pushed the blade of the shovel into the soft dirt beside the cart and rested her arms on her knees. The dogs came closer. She thought for a moment they were going to console her. She didn’t understand what they were really doing until one of them reached its wide muzzle into the cart and took Momma bird’s body in its mouth.
“No! Hey! You can’t have that! That’s not food!” She grabbed at Momma bird’s stiff, dead feet, but the dog was already trotting away, the others following it into the dark forest and the mist. “Wait!” Cara shouted, but the ki-ka-ko, ki-ka-ko sound faded and then, like flipping a toggle, went silent. Cara stood without remembering when she’d gotten to her feet. The sunset was over, full night fallen and stars scattered across the sky above her. The two baby sunbirds grunted in the pond, little noises of animal distress. Her wrists were cold where her sleeves still dripped. She sank to the ground, lying back on the clover, too wrung out to cry. The sounds of the forest seemed to grow slowly louder around her. A soft knocking call off to her left, answered by two more behind her. A hush of wings. The angry harrumph of the sunbirds that she was still going to have to catch somehow, put into their nest somehow. Feed somehow. Everything was terrible, and she couldn’t even stop yet. That made everything worse.