We break out of the pines and walk along the mixed-grass prairie. I spy a cluster of white clover.
“Hey, I think we can eat these.”
“How do you know?” Cooper asks.
“My dad taught us. We get lessons on trees and plants and soils. Lessons all about the mountains and the wildlife. There aren’t many new clover blossoms at this time of year. Those are actually good; I eat them all the time. I’m pretty sure we can also eat these leaves.”
Cooper watches as I kneel beside the patch of three-leaf clover. A few white round blossoms stick out about three inches above the leaves.
“You go first,” Cooper says. “If you keel over, then I’ll know you flunked that lesson.”
I stuff a blossom into my mouth and chew as I pluck some of the leaves off the clover. I touch a leaf to my tongue. It doesn’t burn, so I put the whole leaf in my mouth and let it sit for a moment.
Cooper watches my face. “You seem older than thirteen.”
“Everyone knows homeschooled kids are more mature,” I explain. “Yeah, these are edible.” I chew the leaves slowly. They don’t taste as nice as the blossoms; they’re kind of woodsy but not too bitter. I hand a blossom to Cooper, along with some leaves.
“I thought you were hungry,” I say.
He eyes the clover suspiciously, then shrugs and pops it in his mouth. “Needs ketchup. And a thick, juicy burger.”
“Just pretend it’s whatever you want. Like, I’m eating yogurt topped with my dad’s homemade quinoa granola with sesame seeds.”
“You’re definitely the craziest girl I’ve ever met,” he says.
“Stop calling me crazy.”
“Weirdo.”
“I don’t want to be a weirdo either. What part of me is weird?” I ask.
Cooper shrugs. “Who cares?”
“I do. I’ll be going to high school next year. I have to be normal.”
“Um, normal? You say you do bird shows, right?”
I smile. “Yeah, I’ve been helping Dad teach raptor conservation for years. When a church group came last year, I made and handed out pins of a raptor in flight, shaped like a cross. Pretty clever, huh?”
“Not. Normal.”
I sigh. I hate that I care what Cooper thinks. I hate that I even consider him to be friend material at this point. “Well, I can’t wait to go to school,” I say. “Even though my neighbor Michelle keeps telling me I’m lucky to be skipping the drama of seventh and eighth grade.”
“She’s right about that.” Cooper pops another clover in his mouth as he continues walking. I follow behind, glad he’s not looking at me.
“It’s just that I guess I want a lot of friends. I imagine being at school, surrounded by a sea of kids my age. I’ve been thinking about it so much, it’s been like a dream that’s far away. But now it’s close, and it’s scarier than I thought it would be.” I’ve never told anyone how afraid I am to go to school. “I don’t want to be the weird girl,” I say. “How am I going to make friends if I’m not normal?”
“Try not talking so much, for starters,” Cooper suggests. “Then no one will know.”
I take his cue. But as we walk, I imagine moving through the halls of my new school next year, with new friends. We’ll share funny stories about our families. We’ll laugh and joke together, and I’ll always have them to sit with. I’ll feel like part of a group that understands me.
Maybe one of those friends will turn into a best friend. Maybe she’ll like that I blabber a lot. Maybe she’s also afraid of not doing things right. Or maybe she’s sometimes jealous of her sibling whom everyone seems to instantly love more than her. Perhaps she even worries about sounding dumb in front of people, which only makes her ramble more.
The silence and the thoughts of my imaginary friends stretch on.
“I’ve always talked too much when we go to homeschooling conferences,” I say.
Cooper sighs. “That was about eight seconds of silence, but it was nice while it lasted.”
I throw my clover at the back of Cooper’s head. “If I’m so weird, then why do I know more about the outdoors and what plants to eat than you? Seems like important stuff to know.”
He waves me away like I’m a fly. We chew on the clover as we keep moving. Swallowing that little bit has me hungrier than before, but I try to feel full.
I focus again on our goal. I was more certain yesterday, but now doubt plagues my mind. I turn it over and over. The highway has to be there, but we’ve gone so far now—what if there’s nothing? I keep hoping that the GPS was just a bit off, and that the highway is only slightly farther than I thought. That we’ll see it over the next hill.
I stumble, then struggle to steady myself. If it’s beyond the next hill, we need more than clover for the strength to get there.
I’d like to talk to Cooper about where the highway is, but he has already accused me of not knowing where I’m going. If he’s right, my family is in big trouble.
Stark’s talons tense on my shoulder, and I snap to focus on my surroundings. Cooper has already seen something and motions for me to get down. He raises a finger to his lips for silence and crouches in the grass.
I scan the direction where he’s looking, across the prairie to our left and on to the foothills and buttes beyond that.
Cooper points to something in the grass, and I strain to see. Could it be a game bird? He hefts his stick in the air, taking aim. Does he really think he can spear one? Imagining eating a grouse makes my mouth salivate. I reach for Stark just as Cooper explodes from his crouch. He runs full tilt with his arm cocked back, holding his stick. It sails through the air. Two ring-necked pheasants lift out of the shrubs and squawk as the stick lands harmlessly beside them.
Stark launches herself.
“Ho, ho, ho,” I scream, just as Aunt Amy does with Tank. But it’s too late. Stark needs time to get height. She circles me, and her head swivels, watching for my lure. I fling my arm toward the pheasants.
Cooper races after them as if he can catch them by hand. They gain elevation.
“No!” He drops to his knees.
As I watch the pheasants take flight, Stark tucks her wings in close to her body and then slices through the air. She misses the first one but crashes into the second with a flurry of feathers. She drops with a few feathers clutched in her talons. The pheasants keep going.
“Stark!” I race toward where I saw her plummet behind a pile of rocks. “Please be okay.”
The look on her face is so full of reproach, I almost crack up. She’s disgusted with me. As if it were my fault they got away.
“Gah!” Cooper screams, dropping his face in his hands. “That was so close!”
“Yeah, but did you see Stark hit it? She’s so smart!”
“Smart? She missed!”
“That’s how you learn. Let’s try that again!”
We set off to look for more birds. With both of us on a mission now, and Stark following in the air, all three of us are on the same team for once.
“Stark has to have a good pitch—she has to be high in the air—before we flush those birds up,” I tell him. “Falcons fold their wings and drop out of the sky to catch their meals. Gyrs can also chase down prey, but Stark doesn’t have that kind of endurance yet. Falcons like Stark use their feet to swat prey out of the air. I once saw a falcon take the head off a duck in midair.”
I teach Cooper to dog for Stark, but he seems to be a natural at stalking. He’s quiet and focused. He even saw those pheasants before I did.
So when we both see the grouse hiding in the grass, something ancient shows through our shared look of excitement. There’s a reason everyone can see movement out of the corners of their eyes. We’re all hunters, after all, born with these instincts. Maybe it takes a desperate need for those instincts to be awakened.
With Stark flying circles above me, and the wide-open prairie all around me, I feel like I can share in her wildness. I’m actually hunting with Stark! The thought
brings a smile to my face as I tilt it up to see her progress. I can barely see her now. She’s a speck in the sky.
“She’s almost a thousand feet high. She’s learned so fast. A falcon needs confidence to stoop such a pitch!” I cover my mouth in excitement, then remember what we’re doing and peel my gaze off Stark. “Now! Flush the game for her.”
Cooper throws his spear toward the grouse in the grass, and they launch noisily into the air. I whistle.
“Ho, ho, ho!” I scream.
Stark tucks and stoops. She becomes a white streaking missile. All I can do is stare and hope. My eyes follow her down, down. She’s building speed in her descent, dropping at nearly two hundred miles per hour.
I hold my breath. She smashes into one of the grouse. Feathers explode like a bomb, and both birds plummet to the ground. I race toward them. Cooper whoops with triumph and follows me.
I crest the incline she fell behind and see a fierce new hunter with a hen clutched in her talons. She’s panting with a comical expression of shock on her face. It’s as if she’s saying, “Why is this hen not dead?”
She has the catching and holding instinct, but the killing must be practiced. In the hen’s struggle to escape, it whips Stark with flapping wings. The falcon clamps her elegant toes around its head. Cooper moves past me, toward Stark.
“No!” I yell to Cooper. “Let me do it. You need to be careful taking prey from a falcon. There’s a technique to it. You have to carefully switch the game for her share. It’s called ‘making in.’ ”
I make in like I’ve seen Aunt Amy do after Tank catches a hare. I approach Stark on the ground. “Good girl. That was good.”
My heart pounds; I’ve never actually done this part before. I have to reach carefully so Stark doesn’t feel like I’m stealing from her. Her trust in me would be damaged. As the grouse flaps, I grip its neck in my hands.
“Thank you,” I murmur, and I pull the neck apart until it stills. Feeling it with my own hand is even more humbling than when I watch it being done. This part usually makes me sad, but now I understand why we say “Thank you.” I understand the respect I’m giving this hen that has given its life for ours.
Stark is busy plucking feathers. Now that the grouse is dead, I help Stark break into the meat by reaching with two fingers and poking them through the thin skin of the sternum. Then I pull my fingers down toward the feet, ripping more skin away and exposing the heart and the soft, squishy, red liver. As Stark digs in, I help pluck her prey’s feathers, reinforcing our bond. She will feel like we’re sharing the meal this way.
I ready my sleeve around my left hand like a gauntlet and tear off a leg. I hold the foot between my fingers and pick Stark up like we’ve done at home. Once she’s busy tearing at the meaty part of the thigh, I make a trade. In one smooth motion, I slide the grouse out of her sight and, acting casual, stuff it up the back of my shirt. Only then do I breathe. It is done. We’ve made our first kill together! I may not be old enough to be an apprentice falconer, but I feel like one right now.
I straighten and turn to find Cooper right behind me.
“That was the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen!”
Our eyes meet, and I see my own feelings mirrored back at me. We stand there a moment, just grinning at each other.
“You like breast meat?” I ask.
His grin gets wider.
“Here.” I hand the grouse to Cooper. “Take the breasts out; Stark will have the rest. We’re all going to eat!”
“Um.” He continues holding it at arm’s length. “How exactly do I do that?”
I roll my eyes. “I’ll show you in a second.”
I turn back to Stark. “You are a hunter.” Her instincts have awakened too. She fixes me with her stare. Her huge dark eyes study me before she bends over the leg again.
“Who’d have thought that bird would be good for something?” Cooper seems to have recovered enough to be his charming self. “I’ll make a fire so we can cook this baby.”
When Stark has finished her meal, her crop is full and looks as if she’s swallowed a baseball. I press my cheek to hers. “Thank you, Stark,” I whisper. The words are not enough for what she has given me. Life. The energy to keep going.
She tilts her head until she’s looking at me upside down. I laugh and clean her beak with my thumb and forefinger. She nibbles on my fingers, but I know she won’t bite with meaning. She’s fed, and it’s social time now. I’m happy to watch her feak against my sweatshirt—a sure sign she’s content and relaxed.
My arm hurts holding her, so I raise my hand, encouraging her to move. She leaps off and flies over Cooper as he collects firewood from the nearby trees. She lands on the very top of a ponderosa pine, and her weight sags the tip a little. Even though she sits way up there, we are an inseparable team. My heart squeezes as I watch her white silhouette sit proudly against the blue sky.
“It’s burning!” Cooper says as he raises the meat back out of the flames. We impaled it on live green sticks that Cooper sharpened to points with his knife. Smoke wafts up, carrying a mouthwatering aroma. I help him rotate the sticks, and we watch the smoke drift along the edges of the trees, staying at shoulder height until it dissipates.
“We’re going to attract cougars with this cooking,” I say. “Better eat it now.”
“What do you mean, cougars?” Cooper glances behind us. “As in the animal?”
I nod as I sink my teeth into a piece of the most delicious grouse that I’ve ever eaten, even though it’s burned on one side and undercooked on the other.
The only sounds are our chewing and our appreciative grunts. It isn’t long before we’re sucking bones and wiping our mouths. The grouse was just a puny thing, really. The whole bird must’ve been under two pounds, which is too bad because they can grow bigger than a chicken. Kicking sand on the fire, we prepare to continue our trek. The meat stopped the cramping pain in my stomach, but I’m still hungry. I grab my pack as we start out again.
I look up to see Stark leap off the tree and follow in lazy circles. I smile, a little bewildered. Falcons don’t usually follow people the way dogs do. Trained raptors used in falconry learn to hang in the sky to wait on for their human to flush game. But Stark is not trained. Even so, she’s clearly following me. My heart is full as I watch her play in the air currents, grab a breeze, ride it downwind, and rise in a thermal. The sky is endless overhead, but she comes back.
“Does it feel like something is watching us?” Cooper asks.
“Yeah.” I point. “It’s Stark. She’s staying with us.” I’m prouder than I’ve ever been in my life.
Cooper glances up before casting his gaze into the trees behind us. “I guess so.”
I try not to be annoyed with his lack of admiration. “You think the ghost of that skeleton is coming after you, don’t you? It’s seeking revenge for your stealing.”
Cooper snorts.
“Or maybe you think that someone saw you take the money, and you’re afraid they’re going to put you in jail.” I step over a delicate plant, not wanting to trample it.
Cooper rounds on me so fast, I almost fall.
“What do you know about jail? You think you’re so smart. Get over yourself.”
He whirls around and stomps away.
I follow slowly behind. My heart hammers, and I try to look calm. I don’t know what set him off, but I do know I don’t have time for this. My dad and little brother are waiting for me, and they don’t have a falcon to hunt for them.
Dad and Gavin would have eaten those snacks from the gas station by now. The three-day clock is still ticking. They must be almost delirious with dehydration. The need to get back to them is a razor cutting deeper with each step.
I pull out Gavin’s fortune teller again.
You will survive a cockroach attack, but be horribly maimed for life. A noise escapes me—part sob, part laugh.
You will become a prince’s falconer and fly all his hawks for him. If only I could go
back in time and choose this fortune. I wonder what would have happened if I had done any one thing differently. Maybe none of this would have happened.
We continue across the prairie in silence until Cooper stops and whirls around again.
“What?” I say.
“I keep thinking I hear something.” Cooper stares at the trees across from us. I do the same, searching through the gloom between the trunks.
“Do cougars stalk people?” he asks.
“They can, but they usually hunt at night. They need the element of surprise. I don’t see anything.” I peer uneasily into the shadows and then scan the prairie around us.
We’ve come more into the prairie, away from the trees. But a movement catches my eye. A squirrel jumps along a trunk, clinging to the bark. I’m glad we don’t have to worry about spearing squirrels anymore.
“Let’s just go,” Cooper says, with a last look into the trees.
As we head across the open grasslands toward a rocky moraine, the sun beats down on us and I’m glad for my ball cap. Cooper doesn’t have one, and his nose and cheeks are turning red. We’ve had no clouds or threats of weather since we started, but the constant sun can be a hazard too.
I want to ask Cooper about the jail thing. Why he acts normal one minute, then rages the next. Why does he get so angry? Where is he from, and why is that even a secret? He said he doesn’t live anywhere, but how can that be? He must have a family. Or maybe he’s an orphan. I have so many questions, but I try to be normal, whatever that is, and not ask them.
No matter what his story is, I feel it’s very different from my own. I can’t imagine not being proud of telling people I live at the Birds of Prey Education Center. At the annual falconers’ convention, when the event announcer calls my name through the speakers, he always says where I’m from, and I feel a swell in my heart as I walk out. It’s part of me and who I am.
I search for Stark but can’t spy her white form in any of the trees or in the sky. I feel a moment of panic that she’s decided to leave. I have to trust her.
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