The Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters
Page 24
The stag-man steps forward, a flint knife in his hand. Whistlecage closes her eyes and plays.
Why the girl does what she does next will remain a mystery to her all the days of her legendary life, throughout all of the alchemy that will change her from a mudlark to a great leader of people. Maybe it was hunger, she’ll consider absentmindedly as she plays for a curious circle of onlookers, a half-hearted child’s hope that a dried-up old bone might somehow stop her belly from growling. Maybe I just wanted something to eat.
Or perhaps, she’ll sleepily ponder on the morning before the ambush, nestled close to a best beloved who will drown facedown in the mud — perhaps it was something else.
Maybe, she’ll think to herself, fluting the badger sow’s glory-song at the head of a charging, desperate band of ragged survivors, dancing her way between explosions and shells that land howling like the hounds of Hell — maybe it was Anonymous. Maybe the Land sent me this song and the instinct to play it. Maybe I am Her awakening.
But before the girl becomes a woman who becomes a revolution — before any of these other things can happen, for good or ill — she lifts the bone flute to her lips and breathes a single curious note.