181
THE BLUE FEATHER
Viviana translated Bardala’s question to the monkey, oddly,
even though the language was the same as Bardala’s, Viviana was
the only human he could understand. He responded to Viviana in
what sounded like chatter to the others, but to her it was clear
speech. He told her that there were about one thousand redeared monkeys like him. They mainly lived in the old, abandoned
stone city, which was off to the southwest, next to the bay. They
had been watching from the tops of Beech trees as the humans
came ashore, and had seen the big battle with the
Gigantoraptors. He had been chosen to come see the creatures
that had killed their enemies.
“He wants to know if we need anything. He brought us a big
bowl of different nuts from the trees on this island. Look at the
design on the bowl. It looks just like a Mayan bowl that was in an
archeological museum back on Earth,” Viviana said, holding up
the bowl for Bardala’s inspection.
“Ask him, does he have a name?” Bardala asked.
“Oh yes, he told me his name is Moka.”
“Ask him are there any people like us on this island?” Bardala
still questioned.
“No. One day everything was fine, but one night after they
saw the city full of people, the next morning there were no
people there. There were no bodies; just no one was there.
That’s all he knows. He says it has been a long time, eighteen full
moons ago. They use the biggest moon to mark time, the one we
call Ero,” Viviana said.
“Hmmm...well. Okay, I want Ronú to be on guard for an hour
and a half. Tital and I are going down to the ocean to catch...”
Bardala was telling them.