The wind tore the silver sheet out of Aylin's hands.
She caught one corner before it struck the colony. Silver cracked overhead, and its hard flash sent three adults stumbling over their own feet.
Black-Crown charged across the ice.
Aylin dropped flat and dragged the sheet beneath her chest. The adult stopped close enough to drive its beak into her face, then spread its flippers between her and the nearest chicks.
"I know," she rasped. "I disliked that too."
Jiang tried to stand and found his left foot still belonged to last night's pain. It folded under him. His belly hit the ice, and the sling twisted until the cloth bit into his open shoulder.
Excellent. Stranded in a killing wind, threatened by a bird, defeated by one foot. His return to the fantasy world had improved nothing except the scenery.
Another gust shoved loose snow under his breast, where cold had once felt clean in this body. With hunger gnawing and blood in his wrap, it grew teeth.
Aylin's fingers had lost their color. She tucked them beneath her arms, silver trapped under one knee, and looked toward the dark mass of penguins.
At their backs, the huddle had closed around its own.
The colony's caution made brutal sense. Aylin had fallen out of a broken sky, and he had brought a voice that crawled beneath chicks. Trusting either of them would have been a poor survival trait.
Survival still required a windbreak.
He struck the packed snow beside Aylin with his beak, then pointed toward the low ridge behind them. One tap for attention. Two along the ridge. He leaned his breast into the wind and tilted his head toward the sheet.
Aylin watched him repeat it.
"You want a wall?"
Jiang gave one hard tap.
Relief loosened her mouth. "At last, a problem that respects hands."
She crawled to the ridge rather than risk standing. Jiang pushed the bundled sheet after her with his beak. Its torn edge tasted of cold metal and old smoke.
Aylin folded the bottom into the snow, packed both palms over it, and breathed cool essence through the cloth. Frost joined silver to the ridge without the green-black stain Gredudande left behind.
The wall rose no higher than Jiang's back. That was enough. Wind struck the bright surface and climbed over them.
Jiang pressed against the sheltered side. His feathers settled. Aylin curled behind him, keeping her weight off his bad shoulder, and slid her hands into the warmth along his flanks.
He tolerated the indignity because her shaking eased.
Also because she had hands, and hands were currently making an excellent argument for continued friendship.
For several breaths, the plan worked.
Then the colony moved.
Beyond Black-Crown, the change began. An adult on the windward edge stepped sideways and vanished into the dark bodies. Another took its place. That motion traveled through the huddle in small turns, each bird giving ground while the whole group drifted toward Jiang's wall.
He had seen crowds move around barricades. A gap opened. People cursed, squeezed through, and kept going.
Penguins had no gap.
Adults at the front met the silver and stopped. Birds behind them kept shuffling downwind. Bodies pressed breast to back. A chick disappeared between black legs, leaving one flipper beating above the feet.
Jiang's shelter had become the end of a funnel.
Black-Crown struck the sheet. Its beak slid off the silver, and the impact drove the front birds tighter together.
Aylin saw the trapped flipper. "Break it?"
Jiang hit the snow once.
Before she could pull her essence free, an adult on the sheltered side stepped away from the warmth.
Its right foot left an uneven print. The outer toe bent across the others and dragged a short hook through the snow. The bird shouldered between Black-Crown and the wall, found the packed seam with its beak, and tore out a mouthful of frost.
Under the strain, Bent-Toe's bad foot slipped. The adult dropped against the silver.
It rose and struck the same place again.
Jiang named it Bent-Toe because he needed something better than the bird currently correcting his stupidity.
As another shift swallowed the chick's flipper, Jiang shoved himself away from the sheltered side.
Aylin caught the rear of his sling. "Your shoulder."
He snapped his beak toward the trapped chick.
Her grip opened at once.
Jiang drove with his right foot and slid beside Bent-Toe. The wall's frozen base lay at beak height. He hooked the lower edge, braced his breast on the ice, and pulled.
Pain ran from his shoulder into his neck. The silver stayed fixed.
Bent-Toe tore another notch. Jiang jammed his beak into it and twisted. Aylin scraped frost away with both hands, though each movement left her fingers slower.
The frozen seam broke.
Wind punched through the opening and folded the sheet around Jiang's head.
He fought blind beneath cold metal. His flippers could push, his beak could cut, and neither could grab a loose corner. The wall he had invented wrapped him like unwanted dinner.
Aylin dragged the sheet off. Bent-Toe struck the weakened ridge with its breast.
The packed snow collapsed.
Adults poured through the opening in a rolling shuffle. Black-Crown spread its weight over the place where the chick had fallen. A cream-marked face rose between its feet, dusty with snow and furious enough to peck the nearest leg.
The chick was alive.
The huddle kept moving.
Bent-Toe could have stepped into the warm space it had opened. It stayed on the exposed side until the cream-faced chick reached its flank.
The chick gave a brief high call.
Bent-Toe answered with a deeper song, and the cream patch under one eye gave Jiang a label for the smaller bird: Pale-Cheek. They moved together, close without becoming human in his mind: chick and parent, each known by the other.
Only then did Bent-Toe join the turning edge.
Jiang lay among the wreckage of his plan while fresh blood warmed his wrap.
Aylin gathered the silver into her lap. "You built a door in the road."
He looked at her.
"A very useful door," she added. Her damaged throat made the kindness sound sarcastic, which improved it.
Jiang tapped his beak against the collapsed ridge. His mistake. He knew.
From under the huddle came a long adult call.
Every nearby head turned.
The voice carried one of the identities Jiang had heard during the night. It rose through solid ice without breath steaming above it, perfectly preserved and badly timed.
Bent-Toe paused halfway into the moving group. White-Nape answered from beside the cream-faced chick, leaving room after its own beat.
The buried recording entered that room.
Birds stopped with their bodies turned across the wind. One exposed adult tried to push inward while another moved the opposite way. The whole turn tangled.
Jiang filled his chest before instinct stopped him.
Calling would give Gredudande another living voice to wear. Worse, Black-Crown already watched his beak.
He let the breath leave without song.
Aylin followed his stare to the ice. "It is using them to hold the huddle open."
Jiang pointed his beak toward the silver, then away from the colony.
This time she frowned before acting. Good. He had earned doubt.
Together, they dragged the torn sheet beyond the huddle's downwind path. Aylin folded it low around a shallow hollow, leaving both ends open. Their shelter protected two bodies and promised nothing to the moving birds.
When the copied call came again, Jiang watched Bent-Toe.
Bent-Toe let the copy die unanswered, bumped White-Nape with one shoulder, and stepped into the space the huddle had opened. White-Nape moved after it. Their cream-faced chick vanished between them, and the birds behind resumed their patient turn.
No command had fixed them. One bird had chosen the next step, and another had accepted it.
Jiang lowered himself behind the silver with the lesson lodged somewhere more painful than his shoulder.
The wind softened near dawn.
Shapes came over the white distance, walking from the direction of the sea. Chicks spilled from the warmer center in a ragged line, each high call searching among the adults.
Bent-Toe pushed out of the huddle.
Pale-Cheek followed, calling so hard its whole throat shook. A returning adult with a narrow white seam up the back of its neck answered with a slow opening beat.
Jiang named it White-Nape as it hurried across the ice and met Bent-Toe beak to beak.
Begging, the chick pressed beneath them.
The returning adult opened its beak, strained, and brought up nothing.
A hard swallow ran down its throat before it tried again. Pecking at the empty mouth, Pale-Cheek persisted until White-Nape turned its head away.
Another family met farther down the line. Another chick begged. Another parent had crossed the ice with an empty crop.
By full light, the returning adults stood among their young with no fish smell on their breath.
Under Jiang's belly, Gredudande carried every hungry call toward the sea.