Zeah had often wondered at the vagaries of fate which had colluded to make him the grandfather of anyone named Augustus Dechantagne.  Having served as the head butler for the Dechantagne family for most of his life, he had known two previous individuals of that name and had known of many more.  That he might find himself connected in any way other than as a servant to any one of them would have surprised him, but now he found himself related by blood to all of them.  The first Augustus Dechantagne that Zeah had personally known had been Iolanthe’s grandfather.  He was a stuffy, heavy-set old gentleman with grey sideboards and a sour look on his face—no doubt attributable to a series of ailments from gout to cancer of the stomach.  The second Augustus Dechantagne, whose name now adorned one of several city parks, had been Iolanthe’s younger brother.  A happy and friendly young man, he had never been too far away from a pretty girl or an open bottle, and had been gifted with the good fortune to die heroically in battle while he was still young, well-thought of, and handsome.  And now here was Zeah’s own grandchild—Augustus Marek Virgil Dechantagne, a precocious boy who looked so much like his father that his mother sometimes burst into tears just looking at him.  It was odd, Zeah thought, that though he had been a servant of the other two Augustus Dechantagnes, it was this one to whom he found it most difficult to say no.

“The woods” was a strip of land along the coast east of the promontory which had been left in a more or less natural state.  Fine homes on large estates, such as the one Zeah had acquired by marrying Egeria, could be found to the west, even larger and more majestic mansions, such as the Governor’s were found to the south, and a large neighborhood of smaller homes, mostly belonging to Zaeri refugees from Freedonia stood to the east, but the woods remained a kind of nature preserve between.  And to the children’s eyes it was a mysterious forest primeval.  Zeah had taken the children on a walk through the trees many times, teaching them to identify the trees by the shape of their leaves and needles; and the birds by their call.  The woods were full of cormorants, snipes, rails, and wrens, and near the coastal edge: godwits, grebes, puffins, and pelicans.  There were also the peculiar birds which made Birmisia so strange: microraptors, caudipteryx, buitreraptors, bambiraptors, meilong, and mahakala.  There were velociraptors too, but as long as they weren’t hunting in a pack, adult humans at least were safe.

Zeah led the children along the path in a line, until they reached an area with large exposed tree roots, when he picked up and carried Terra.  Augie and Iolana followed hand in hand.  The sun filtered through the tops of the trees, creating a patchwork of sunlight across the forest floor.  They marched along until they came to the edge of the woods and to the beach just beyond.  Here Zeah set his granddaughter back down.

Unlike the coast to the west of the peninsula which was rocky, the beach here was a strip of remarkably white sand fifteen to twenty feet wide.  The children all took off their shoes so that they could feel the sand between their toes as they walked, and after a few steps, Zeah did the same.  It wasn’t long before Augie had found a shell, and then a sand dollar.  Then they were all scurrying down the beach, collecting treasures as they went.  All three children soon had their arms full, though Terra managed to drop more than she held onto.

All three children were so engrossed in their beachcombing that the rest of the world was forgotten.  It had been a long time since Zeah had been a child though, and for him the rest of the world was omnipresent.  So when a figure stepped out from among the trees a hundred yards ahead, he saw it immediately.  It was a bird, but not a skittish little beast like those they had seen along the way.  It was a deinonychus, the larger cousin of the velociraptor.  It was almost man-sized though it walked with its nose near the ground.  Even bent over, it was taller than Zeah’s waist and more than seven feet from the front of its teeth-filled mouth to the tip of its tufted tail.  It was covered in brown feathers.  Deinonychus were common, but seldom came this close to town anymore.  This one was beachcombing, and it had found what it would surely consider treasures.

“Children,” snapped Zeah, in a forceful voice he seldom used.  “To me, now!”

Iolana moved toward him without stopping to think about it.  Augie looked up at his grandfather in surprise.  Little Terra looked up, but not at Zeah.  She looked up to see the deinonychus as its head snapped to look in the direction of the man’s voice.  She let out a little squeak.  Children learned early on in Port Dechantagne the large, many-toothed birds such as the velociraptor, deinonychus, and utahraptor were not to be trifled with.

The deinonychus took only a second to recognize its prey.  It would not have attempted a grown man, unless starving.  But the young ones of any warm-blooded species were a common quarry, and two of the three youngsters seemed to have strayed beyond the protective radius of the adult.  With a quick hop to bring it up to its full speed, it ran across the sand on legs that would have looked like giant chicken legs, were it not for the awful five inch sickle claws pointing up.  The middle sized child moved toward the adult, leaving the youngest alone on the beach.  The deinonychus zeroed in on her.