Fledgling pdf download

And yet I remembered nothing about this place. I recognized nothing except in the most general way—animal pens, fields, burned remnants of buildings. So why would I expect to find food here? How had I known to come here? Either I had visited here before or this place had been my home. Had my injuries come from the fire that destroyed this place? I had an endless stream of questions and no answers. I turned away, meaning to go back into the trees and hunt an animal—a deer, I thought suddenly.

The word came into my thoughts, and at once, I knew what a deer was. It was a large animal. It would provide meat for several meals. Then I stopped. As hungry as I was, I wanted to go down and take a closer look at the burned houses.

They must have something to do with me or they would not hold my interest the way they did. I walked down toward the burned buildings. I might at least be able to find something to wear. I was not cold. Even walking in the rain had not made me cold, but I wanted clothing badly. I felt very vulnerable without it. I did not want to be naked when I found other people, and I thought I must, sooner or later, find other people.

Eight of the buildings had been large houses. Their fireplaces, sinks, and bathtubs told me that much. I walked through each of them, hoping to see something familiar, something that triggered a memory, a memory about people. In one, at the bottom of a pile of charred rubble, I found a pair of jeans that were only burned a little at the bottoms of the legs, and I found three slightly burned shirts that were wearable.

All of it was too large in every way—too broad, too long Another person my size would have fit easily into the shirts with me. And there were no wearable underwear, no wearable shoes. And, of course, there was nothing to eat. Feeding my hunger suddenly became more important than anything. I put on the pants and two of the shirts. I used the third shirt to keep the pants up, tying it around my waist and turning the top of the pants down over it.

I rolled up the legs of the pants, then I went back into the trees. After a time I scented a doe. I stalked her, killed her, ate as much of her flesh as I could. I took part of the carcass up a tree with me to keep it safe from scavenging animals. I slept in the tree for a while. Then the sun rose, and it burned my skin and my eyes. I climbed down and used a tree branch and my hands to dig a shallow trench.

When I finished it, I lay down in it and covered myself with leaf litter and earth. That and my clothing—I folded one of my shirts over my face—proved to be enough of a shield to protect me from sunlight.

I lived that way for the next three days and nights, eating, hunting, examining the ruin during the night, and hiding myself in the earth during the day. Sometimes I slept. Sometimes I lay awake, listening to the sounds around me.

On the fourth night curiosity and restlessness got the better of me. I had begun to feel dissatisfied, hungry for something other than deer flesh. That was how, for the first time in my memory, I met another person. I had discovered a paved road that led away from the burned houses. The road I was on led to a metal gate, which I climbed over, then to another, slightly wider road, and I had to choose a direction. I chose the downslope direction and walked along for a while in contentment until I came to a third still wider road.

Again, I chose to go down-hill. It was easier to walk along the road than to pick my way through the rocks, trees, underbrush, and creeks, although the pavement was hard against my bare feet.

A blue car came along the road behind me, and I walked well to one side so that I could look at it, and it would pass me without hitting me. I knew that because I recognized it as a car and found nothing surprising about it.

But it was the first car I could remember seeing. I was surprised when the car stopped alongside me. The person inside was, at first, just a face, shoulders, a pair of hands. Then I understood that I was seeing a young man, pale-skinned, brown-haired, broad, and tall.

His hair brushed against the top of the inside of his car. His shoulders were so broad that even alone in the car, he looked crowded. His car seemed to fit him almost as badly as my clothing fitted me. They were noise. After a moment, though, they seemed to click into place as language. I understood them. It took me a moment longer before I realized that I should answer. Yes, I am all right. Yet it seemed that I knew how. God, how old are you? I looked down. In all, I had killed two deer.

And I did have their blood on my clothing. He stared at me for several seconds. Do you have family or friends somewhere around here? Where are you going? Where was I going? Where would he think I should be going?

Home, perhaps. Was it important for this stranger to think that I had a home and was going there? I went around to the passenger side of his car and opened the door. Then I stopped, confused. I closed the door and stepped back. He leaned over and opened the door.

Get in and wrap up. Yet I wanted to get into the car with him. I felt almost as hungry for conversation as I was for food. A taste of it had only whetted my appetite. I wrapped the blanket around me and got into the car. I can take you to a hospital. Then I knew that it was a place where the sick and injured were taken for care.

There would be a lot of people all around me at a hospital. That was enough to make it frightening. Did you run away?

Get tired of home and strike out on your own? The doctors there might be able to help you. Then why did the idea of going among them scare me so? I looked at him and suddenly believed that he meant to deliver me to a hospital anyway, and I panicked. I unfastened the seat belt that he had insisted I buckle and pushed aside the blanket. I turned to open the car door. He grabbed my arm before I could figure out how to get it open. He had huge hands that wrapped completely around my arm.

He pulled me back, pulled me hard against the little low wall that divided his legs from mine. He scared me. I pulled away from him, dodged his hand as he grasped at me, tried again to open the door, only to be caught again.

I caught his wrist, squeezed it, and yanked it away from my arm. I put my back against the door that I had been trying to open. He nodded, still rubbing his wrist. Your choice. I turned to try again to get the door open.

And again, he grasped my left upper arm, pulling me back from the door. His fingers wrapped all the way around my upper arm and held me tightly, pulling me away from the door. I thought I could break his wrist if I wanted to.

He was big but not that strong. Or, at least, I was stronger. And he did smell good. Breaking his bones would be wrong. I bit him—just a quick bite and release on the meaty part of his hand where his thumb was.

Then he made another grab for me before I could get the door open. None of them seemed to work. That gave him a chance to get his hand on me a third time. I ducked my head and licked away the blood, licked the wound I had made. He tensed, almost pulling his hand away. Then he stopped, seemed to relax. He let me take his hand between my own. I looked at him, saw him glancing at me, felt the car zigzag a little on the road. He frowned and pulled away from me, all the while looking uncertain, unhappy.

I caught his hand again between mine and held it. I felt him try to pull away. I licked at the blood welling up where my teeth had cut him. He made a noise, a kind of gasp. Abruptly, he drove completely across the road to a spot where there was room to stop the car without blocking other cars—the few other cars that came along.

He made a huge fist of the hand that was no longer needed to steer the car. I watched him draw it back to hit me. I thought I should be afraid, should try to stop him, but I was calm.

He frowned, shook his head. After a while he dropped his hand to his lap and glared at me. I looked at him and saw that he was looking intently at me. Which is weird. How do you do that? He smiled. A moment later, I bit hard into the side of his neck. He convulsed and I held on to him. He writhed under me, not struggling, but holding me as I took more of his blood. He tasted wonderful, and he had fed me without trying to escape or to hurt me.

I licked the bite until it stopped bleeding. I wished I could make it heal, wished I could repay him by healing him. He sighed and held me, leaning back in his seat and letting me lean against him.

And why the hell did it feel so fantastic? I felt pleased, felt myself smile. That was right somehow. He would have a place to live. If I could go there with him, maybe the things I saw there would help me begin to get my memory back—and I would have a home.

I need to find out who I am and what happened to me and. The word stirred no memories. You bite. You drink blood. He grimaced and shook his head. Super jailbait. Who else have you been chewing on? In fact, I killed two deer.

He looked confused again, worried, but he held me against his body and nodded. I want you with me. What do you want to be called? I licked at his neck a little more. Then what? Hid the rest in a tree until I was hungry again. Ate it until the parts I wanted were gone. How did you find dry wood for your fire? A tool?

I bared my teeth for him. He looked afraid. He started to push me away, then got that confused look again and pulled me back to him. I licked at his neck again. He raised a hand to stop me, then dropped the hand to his side. He had been a student in a nearby place called Seattle at something called the University of Washington for two years. His father had been disgusted with him and had sent him to work for his uncle who owned a construction company. People will live in those houses someday.

As he told me a little about it, though, I realized I would have to be careful about taking blood from him. I understood—or perhaps remembered—that people could be weakened by blood loss.

If I made Wright weak, he might get hurt. When I thought about it, I knew I would want more blood—want it as badly as I had previously wanted meat. The idea of eating it disgusted me. I realized that to avoid hurting Wright, to avoid hurting anyone, I would have to find several people to take blood from. Whatever that means. This last detail seemed to depend on which story you were reading or which movie you were watching.

That was the other thing about vampires. They were fictional beings. There were no vampires. So what was I? It bothered Wright that all he wanted to do now was keep me with him, that he was taking me to his home and not to the police or to a hospital. He shrugged. Jail, maybe. I should care about that. It should be scaring the hell out of me. It is scaring me, but not enough to make me dump you.

He had let me bite him. I knew from the way he touched me and looked at me that he would let me bite him again when I wanted to. And he would do what he could to help me find out who I was and what had happened to me. He shook his head. For now, though, get down on the floor. He threw the blanket over me. After that, I could feel the car making several turns, slowing, turning once more, then stopping.

No one can see us. There was a scattering of trees, lights from distant houses, and next to us, a small house. Wright got out of the car, and I looked quickly to see which button or lever he used to open the door. It was one I had tried when he was threatening to take me to a hospital or the police. The door opened. You were trying to jump from a moving car, for Godsake. You would have been badly hurt or killed if you had succeeded.

Once I was inside, I looked around and immediately recognized that I was in a kitchen. Even though I could not recall ever having been in an intact kitchen before, I recognized it and the things in it—the refrigerator, the stove, the sink, a counter where a few dishes sat on a dish towel, a dish cabinet above the counter, and beside it, a second cabinet where my nose told me food was sometimes stored. I remembered the blackened refrigerators and sinks at the burned ruin.

But this was what a kitchen should look like when everything worked. The kitchen was small—just a corner of the cabin, really. Beyond it was a wooden table with four chairs. Alongside the kitchen on the opposite side of the cabin was a small room— a bathroom, I saw when I looked in. Beyond the bathroom was the rest of the cabin—a combination living room-bedroom containing a bed, a chest of drawers, a soft chair facing a stone fireplace, and a small television on top of a black bookcase filled with books.

I recognized all these things as soon as I saw them. I went through the cabin, touching things, wondering about the few that I did not recognize.

Wright would tell me and show me. He was exactly what I needed right now. I turned to face him again. I had no intention of hurting anyone. I felt how strong you are. I thought so. He took another breath. Why not? You let me into your car and now into your house.

There he sat down and drew me close so that he could open one of my filthy shirts, then the other. Having reached skin, he stroked my chest. I guess you really are a kid. Or maybe Tomorrow things. He took my arm and led me into the bathroom. There, over the sink, was a large mirror. He stood me in front of it and seemed relieved to see that the mirror reflected two people instead of only one. I touched my face and the short fuzz of black hair on my head, and I tried to see someone I recognized.

I was a lean, sharp-faced, large-eyed, brown-skinned person—a complete stranger. Did I look like a child of about ten or eleven? Was I? How could I know? I examined my teeth and saw nothing startling about them until I asked Wright to show me his.

Mine looked sharper, but smaller. My canine teeth—Wright told me they were called that—were longer and sharper than his. Would people notice the difference?

Would it frighten people? I hoped not. And how was it that I could recognize a refrigerator, a sink, even a mirror, but fail to recognize my own face in the mirror? A few nights ago I remember thinking that I must have been burned—all over.

My body had so much healing to do. Caught my sleeve on fire. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Home Downloads Free Downloads Fledgling pdf. Butler Submitted by: Jane Kivik. Read Online Download. Butler by Octavia E.

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