People of the Sky by Clare Bell

something else she had seen, though it was a poor pale echo of what lay before her now.
    After disembarking from the shuttle at the spaceport, she’d had to wait for entry clearance. While the bureaucrats poked their computer keys and scratched their heads about the antique aircraft she was bringing in, she wandered around the lounge area and happened upon the exhibit. In addition to the illustrations, it also contained some cases with mounted speciments of Oneway’s wildlife. Her curiosity and sense of practicality overcame her distaste and she investigated them.
    The exhibit was located, almost apologetically, in an out-of-the-way corner. It was obvious that whoever had done it would never get a job in the Galactic Smithsonian. Something about the desiccated specimens caught her eye, especially one delicately shrivelled creature perched unconvincingly on a tree limb. It looked like something an entomology student might have cooked up as a hoax. At the time, Kesbe was more than willing to guess that someone had.
    It looked like a five-foot-long grasshopper until one noticed that the middle pair of legs was missing. In place of the usual grasshopper head, the creature had what appeared to be the enlarged dried up head of a Terran sea-horse, although the eyes were recognizably compound. The whole thing looked so spindly that a good-sized sneeze would destroy it. Bugs (or something), had eaten holes in the brittle brown chitin, adding to its generally pathetic appearance. She had wondered whether it looked this dilapidated when it was alive or whether it had been mutilated by a terrible taxidermy job.
    Now, as she knelt beside the aronan, she knew that the display had failed miserably in its attempts to portray the living animal. Putting her first-aid kit to one side, she grasped the aronan’s wingspar and began to ease it back. She felt the powerful vibration from the animal’s flight muscles against her palms. Then, as she tightened her grip, the resonance went into her hands, the bones of her wrists, and up her arms to her shoulders. While she held the wing closed, she clenched her teeth to keep them from buzzing together.
    The wing jerked. Kesbe teetered on her knees, put out one hand to save her balance. Her palm contacted the aronan’s thorax. Her first reaction was to snatch her hand back, but she didn’t. She had expected to touch the cold carapace of an insect. Instead her hand sank into a mat of stiff thick bristles. They were slightly warm, something she didn’t expect. This was not the radiant body heat of a mammal, nor did the creature’s strange fuzz have the moist oiled feel and smell of fur. Its texture was similar to dried grass and a heady sage-like aroma tickled her nose.
    The youth ran around to the other side of the aronan and rolled the animal onto its closed wing. With a fierce grunt, he shoved it over. Its legs flailed near Kesbe’s face. She ducked.
    And then the aronan was on its feet, scuttling back and forth, fluttering its wings. The boy was at its head in an instant, soothing it and stroking its antennae. When it calmed down, he bent and tapped one foreleg. Obediently, the creature lifted its limb, letting the boy handle and inspect each joint, flexing it gently. Kesbe didn’t blame him, Gooney’s prop blade had thrown the aronan a good distance.
    She stood back, wondering if the youth had forgotten her. Perhaps he had, for he went over the aronan meticulously, examining legs, body and wings for signs of injury. The only damageseemed to be a few scales lost from the wings. The boy retrieved several, making sad little clucks as he tried to replace each by working it in among its neighbors.
    She stooped, picking up a small scale he had missed. It was a deep turquoise, with iridescent highlights of dark blue and emerald. In the middle, it felt solid, like a reptile scale, but the edges were finely feathered.
    Dusty fingers plucked it from her hands. The boy scowled at her as he tucked the