Their attackers were upon them a few seconds later. How could they possibly have covered such a distance so quickly? The twins leapt into the starry sky, Hichy clutching his little cat tightly against him. Despite gravity, which was stronger at the level of the earth's crust than in the world of clouds, they rose to a prodigious height, perhaps more than a hundred metres high. Their mastery of their powers had increased without them even realising it.
And yet the pack was already waiting for them at the end of their trajectory. They might have glided on a cushion of air to try to get farther away, but that would only have given their attackers more time to position themselves in the right place. Hichy formed a protective bubble of air around them and hurled a cloud of earth and stones that caught the wolves by surprise. One of them sprang at Inata, jaws dripping with saliva and howling with rage. The girl seized a large branch from a distance and drove it into the monster's mouth. It growled in pain and fell to the ground. The other members hurled themselves with all their strength against the boy's invisible dome and bounced off it. Maintaining that mass of gas was exhausting, and Hichy felt he would not be able to hold out much longer. Besides, he could not do two things at once, nor focus his power on two separate actions.
"Take over!" he said to his sister. "In the meantime, I'm going to pull out their teeth."
"All right, but hurry!"
Inata concentrated with all her strength on the nitrogen molecules while her brother ran his finger across his own teeth to get a better sense of their composition. The wolves' fangs flew out one by one. Their gums burst and filled their mouths with a mix of flesh and blood. Even so, the twenty-odd members of the pack surrounding them on all sides did not give up. It took the boy stripping them of their claws as well before they finally fled yelping.
Only one of the younger wolves remained lying on the ground, injured in the leg and unable to run. He whimpered in pain, far less because of the fracture than because his claws had been torn out. The animal wore a sort of crudely sewn jacket and a pair of trousers over his hindquarters. There was something strange in his gaze, something almost human.
"Why did you attack us?" Inata asked while Melio had drawn nearer to sniff him.
The animal lowered its head as if it understood what was being said. The twins would not have been surprised if it had started talking. Yet it only barked painfully through its bloodied jaws.
"Claws grow back, but not teeth," Hichy said with a regretful look. "But you're the ones who attacked us too. We had to defend ourselves. Do you understand what we're saying?"
The wolf nodded yes and lowered its tail even farther.
"Well now!" Inata cried. "He really does seem to understand us. Do you know how to say no?" she asked the animal.
"That's a stupid question," her brother interrupted. "If you ask him whether he knows how to say no, and he doesn't know how to say no, how do you expect him to tell you?"
"You're the stupid one, you triple idiot."
"If he answers yes, we won't really be able to check whether he knows how to say no. You have to ask him a question he has no choice but to answer no to."
"Are you even more idiotic than my brother?" Inata asked the animal.
"Very funny. You have to ask a negative question. Do you not know how to say no?" Hichy asked the young wolf in turn, and after thinking for a moment the wolf shook his head negatively. "See!" the boy exclaimed. "Not only does he understand us, he's intelligent. Did you want to devour us?"
"(Yes)."
"Oh. Well, great," the girl exclaimed. "Are you in pain?"
"(Yes)."
"Do you still want to eat us?"
"(No)."
"Do you want us to ease your pain?"
"(Yes, yes, yes)."
"If we heal you, you won't attack us?"
"(No, no, no)."
Inata placed her hands on the animal's broken leg and lined up the two pieces of bone facing each other. Then she removed the foreign matter that might infect the wound. Finally, she fashioned a bandage from a piece of cloth taken from her tunic. As for the animal's fangs, the task was much harder. They first had to gather up all those lying in the grass and find which ones matched each gaping wound best. If they acted quickly, the roots might fuse back to the gums. Inata replaced them as best she could. Perhaps one or two teeth had been borrowed from another member of the pack, but it seemed to hold more or less. When everything was finished, the animal looked soothed and no longer in pain.
"Is the great city that way?" the boy asked, pointing south.
"Stop," his sister interrupted him. "You can see he's exhausted. We'll deal with that tomorrow."
When they woke up, the twins discovered that Melio had made himself a nest beneath the wolf's belly and curled up against him. Was it because his fangs were still too painful that the bigger of the two had not yet crunched the smaller one? By passing through all the directions of the compass rose, the wolf indicated the direction of the Celestial capital to them, and they resumed their route all together.
Except for the little ginger cat, who gorged himself on rodent meat of every kind, eating quickly became an omnipresent concern for Hichy and the wolf, who joined forces to hunt a hare. The animal got his share of the raw meat, while the twins devoured the rest after roasting it on a spit. When they had lived in the clearing, Hichy and Inata had never lacked anything. They were now realising everything the Golem had done for them, tending the vegetable garden, caring for the animals, and hunting without cease. Finding enough to survive has been an obsession for the vast majority of living species since the dawn of time. Only the most privileged and wealthiest beings have the possibility of freeing themselves from that ceaseless quest.
Though they had managed to survive in the forest, resources here were not freely accessible. The fields, the domestic animals, the cereals, the fruits and vegetables belonged to wealthy owners, and taking enough to survive from nature amounted to theft. By what right could someone declare that a piece of this land belonged to them? As for working to earn a wage, the children had no idea what they could possibly offer in exchange for a few coins, all the more so since it was impossible for them to reveal their magical powers without risking arrest by the Celestial army.
"Damn, a checkpoint!" Inata said, jolting her brother out of his thoughts.
"That's completely stupid. We just have to cut through the fields and go around it," Hichy replied.
Two Celestial guards had stationed themselves across the road. Aside from the peasants with pig noses, they had not yet met anyone. Hichy was about to leave the road when the wolf stepped in front of him. The boy took a step forward, but the animal began to growl.
"I think he's trying to tell us something," Inata said.
"So now all we have to do is play the yes-and-no game," Hichy replied.
Communication is not easy when one may use only two words, but there have been those who managed to write a book with nothing but the blinking of one left eye as a means of expression. By means of a long game of questions and answers, the wolf succeeded in explaining to them that the Celestial army used utterly impassable electromagnetic barriers. There was no other way through than to submit to their inspection. Turning back, moreover, would immediately have aroused the guards' suspicions. The only option, then, was to continue on as naturally as possible, as though they had nothing to hide. If they wanted to reach the great city, they would have to accept the rules that applied there, with their magic remaining well concealed.
The agents of the Celestial police force were decked out in augmentation systems that made them look like robots. They wore helmets, exoskeletons, and suits of a black deeper than anything they had ever seen. Even the twins' cat eyes could not capture the slightest glimmer from that material, which absorbed everything like a black hole.
"Please submit to an identity check," the two guards said in perfect unison.
Hichy shuddered at the thought that beings every bit as human as they were hidden beneath those suits of armour, just as their father had been manipulated and forcibly enlisted in the Celestial army. Physical and technological augmentation seemed far more like mental diminishment than anything else. The twins and their two companions submitted to the Celestial guards' scan.
"Citizen Hichy, Class C," they said, still in a single voice. "You are authorised to pass. Citizen Inata, Class C, you are authorised to pass. Feline animal Melio, Class F, your masters are authorised to take you along. Canine animal Darok, Class E+, you are not registered to any master and are considered a wild animal. You are therefore not authorised to pass."
"Class C!" Hichy exclaimed. "And what next? And why is my little Melio only a Class F? That's humiliating."
"Be quiet, you triple idiot," his sister said through her teeth, pinching him.
"And besides, we're not going to leave... Darok behind us."
"Sorry, but the rules are explicit," the Celestial agents said. "Every animal must be registered to a master in order to cross this boundary."
"How do we do that?" the young girl asked.
"Any registration may be filed with an accredited agent. You will then be responsible for the acts committed by that animal and will have to answer for any offences committed by it, such as rummaging through bins or biting a citizen or another animal."
"Oh dear. It isn't Darok who worries me, but rather Melio," Inata said. "And where can we find an accredited agent?"
"Right in front of you. We are accredited."
The helmets of the agents of the Celestial force emitted a few clicks, and they moved aside to let the children, Darok, and Melio pass.