Warlock

hoping the creatures would get to know him and trust him.
        
        “I think so,” Fremlin said. “But we'll see for certain when they come back. I cannot always tell when they are ready to give their confidence to a stranger.”
        
        The two dark mites returned in short order, not fifteen minutes after their release. “Which means,” Fremlin said as they soared in toward him, “that they could have been back in five minutes. After being cooped as they were, they surely took an extra ten minutes of flight just for the joy of it.” They settled on his arms with the grace and gentleness of two tufts of cotton, pecked at their shiny feathers with their red and orange beaks, their crimson face swaths seeming to ripple as some hidden muscles did some unknown work beneath.
        
        “Will you speak before the Shaker?” he asked them.
        
        Both birds cocked their heads toward Sandow, examined him with small, coal-dust eyes.
        
        “I am a friend,” Sandow said.
        
        “Weeewill, weeewill,” the Squealers affirmed in a whining imitation of English. “Heees good freeend of feethered peepoleee…”
        
        “Tell me then,” Fremlin said, nuzzling them with his face, like another man might nuzzle his lover's breasts.
        
        The creatures began a warbling, high-pitched conversation, sometimes speaking at once, sometimes one at a time. Their language was composed of trills and ripples, ascensions of the musical scale that stung the ear with their abruptness, descents of the same scale that sounded like the dying cries of animals.
        
        Sandow could see why they had come to be known as Squealers. If one did not listen closely to the fantastic intricacy of the sounds they made, one might only hear a high-pitched squeal that sometimes rose and fell but was no more than the dumb sonorous cry of an animal. But it was not dumb. The intricacy, the complex arrangements of sounds, gave indication of a language every bit as complicated as the one the Shaker spoke or the one the Salamanthe Island people spoke. Perhaps even more complicated, since the combinations of the sounds were not the only things which gave meaning to what was said. As Fremlin had told him, the musical key in which a word was spoken by the Squealers was indication of an altogether different meaning for that word, so that they had a grammar not only of syllables, but of tones.
        
        In time, the birds ceased their discourse and returned to pecking at themselves and to cooing quietly to each other and to the other pair of flyers which had been restrained all this while in their cage.
        
        “Quite a strange report,” Fremlin said, his brow furrowed.
        
        “How so?”
        
        “They say the jungle is a perfect circle,” Fremlin said.
        
        “Perfect? Have they any conception of that word's meaning in our language?”
        
        “Yes, Shaker. Of course, they speak in generalizations when they use it now. But what they mean is that this jungle before us is, to the eye, as perfect a circle as you or I could imagine. Their sight is far more critical than ours.”
        
        Sandow's heart beat a little faster, and his spine was swept its length with a shivering sense of expectancy. Ahead lay the unknown and the keys to unlock all these secret places. “It fits with what I said to the commander just before you came to us a while ago. This jungle, I am convinced, is artificially contained. For what purpose and by whom, I cannot guess. But this report from your feathered charges goes a long way toward proving my suppositions.”
        
        “There's more yet,” Fremlin said.
        
        The birds chortled.
        
        “They speak of a part of the jungle which is crystalized. They speak of trees with leaves like lacy sugar works, with boles like compacted diamonds. They speak of plants the color and the texture of crushed rubies and emeralds. They say the jungle has a diameter of five miles and that the northern mile and a half is all constructed of the most marvelous gems we might wish to see.”
        
        “They do not lie?” Sandow asked.
        
        Fremlin looked hurt.
        
        “Forgive, please,” Sandow said. “I am foolish. Of course they do not lie. What would they have to gain from it? But we must get this information to the commander. And