Leander shut his eyes against the gazes of all those long-necked creatures.
“And now we come to it, my son,” she said, crossing her arms over her broad chest. “I told you that you might prefer death to any salvation I might offer. I could not buy my people’s vengeance, only their lives. You must purchase a better end than I. When a knife is buried in your father’s chest, then I shall count myself satisfied, and you forgiven. You must swear it to me.”
He had thought that her price would be more terrible somehow, that he would not already burn with the desire to avenge this hut of birds. He felt no hesitation, only relief that he could, at the last, do something for them. Leander placed his arms over his mother, smelling her wild, sharp scent and feeling her thick bones under his hands. After all he had heard he could not swear other than this, and he murmured his assent. She clapped her hands behind his back and pushed him off of her.
“Well, then, I think the moon has risen, and you may wrap your poor sister in her skin, so she may be whole. Don’t forget to keep the skin on her, to tie it close to her, or it will be for nothing. Make it tight, for she will have to break out of it with her own strength, or not at all.”
“It is magic. You should do it, not I.”
The Witch coughed hoarsely and spat.
“I will do it. I am her mother. You will manage the grass and leaves, boy, and I will manage the blood.”
In the Garden
THE BOY STARED AT THE GIRL, HER FACE FRAMED BY AN EXPLOSION OF white stars, trailing in the sky like sea foam. Her eyes were shut; she was enchanted by her own voice, which moved back and forth across his skin like a violin bow. If she had asked him to sprout Aerie’s own wings and fly from the tower, he would have leapt from the window, if it meant she would never stop speaking.
Mesmerized by her cloaked eyes and the waterfall of her shadowy hair, he ventured once again to lie beside her on the wide stone sill, and place his head in her lap, like a young lion in a tamer’s trance.
LEANDER LOOKED AT HIS SISTER’S CORPSE, WHICH despite his long travels had not changed at all, had not even begun to rot—she still bore the same pale skin and silver hair, flawless and fair. When he put his hands on her, the flesh was cool, but it had not yet grown hard.
The Prince wrapped her in the scarlet skin as his mother told him. He made sure her hands were folded against her chest, and her hair pulled away from the sticky skin. He tucked her feet up and pulled the red stuff under her. When he tucked the last corner into itself, the whole fleshy shape became hard and round as an egg, shining like a malevolent star on the summer grass. He sat against a knotted oak, sweating.
Knife knelt on the dark grass, setting a bundle wrapped in cloth at her side. Her bones creaked like windows pried open in winter. She stroked the egg, and leaned against it, putting her arms around the thing and crooning quietly to it. She shut her eyes and the Prince thought, for a moment, that she wept—but surely not, surely not.
She pulled a long knife out of one of the sheaths at her waist and held it across her lap. She stared at the moon’s shadow on the metal. “The skin is good, my boy, you did very well. But it didn’t kill her, so it is not enough only to wrap her up in it and wait for her to wake up. Not enough. The slave never cut deep enough, never enough, and I managed to gouge myself that deeply just once. This time pays for all—deep enough to bring her back, deep enough to fill her egg with a yolk of starlight, deep enough for my girl to come home.”
Leander did not understand for a moment, being, as most Princes are, reluctant to see things which were not written out plainly before him in three kinds of ink. But when she raised her blade, he knew what she meant, and he lunged forward to stop her, but she was much faster than he, and sank the knife in her chest before he could wrench her hand away.
“Enough,” she barked, and with a horrible sawing motion, laid open her heart over the scarlet egg. The blood flowed into the skin, dark as dungeons, dark as geese eyes. And then it came, the light, first in drops and then in a sickly stream, soaking into the egg like cream strained into a glass. It became white with blood-light, and glowed lantern-bright. Knife slumped against the slick surface and slid to the grass, her body empty as a hole in the sky.
Soon, the light had drained entirely into the skin, and it was dark again, red against the shadowy grass. After a few moments, a terrible sound began to issue from the skin-egg, scratching and weeping, a muffled breathing which was getting fainter. Leander wanted to rip the egg open; he wanted to fall to the ground and mourn his mother. Caught between them, he did nothing, but watched helplessly, his feet knotted to the ground.
With a great crack like the splintering of a palace column, a white hand squirmed out of the egg, clawing for purchase on its slick surface. A girl emerged, her hair strewn with shards of the crimson shell, wet and bright with egg fluid. She pulled herself up with painfully thin limbs. When she stepped onto the grass, she caught sight of her slender foot and froze. She held out her hands, staring dumbfounded at them. Then she spied him standing beneath his tree.
Aerie opened her human mouth for the first time, and screamed so loudly and so horribly that nightingales fell dead from their boughs.
She could not stop screaming. Her chest rose and fell swiftly, and her cries filled the night. Leander rushed to her and she collapsed into his arms, still staring at her hands. He didn’t think she could speak; what language could she have, after all? He whispered gently to her—it’s all right, you’re safe, it’s your brother, it’s all right—and as she began to struggle against him, he tied the remnants of the skin around her small waist like a lady’s sash. She slashed at him with her nails, gibbering and screaming. Only when she saw the body of the Witch did she quiet, and strain towards it. Still holding her fragile form, he helped her crawl towards the crumpled crone.
Aerie stumbled to Knife on limbs that she could hardly use, crying a single word that told the Prince that she knew language and more, the thing the spell was not meant to encompass—she had been awake within the bird body since her first day of life.
Aerie fell into Knife’s arms, whimpering in a low and grinding voice:
“Mama, Mama, Mama…”
They lay together on the wet earth, and Knife did not wake.
Still, Aerie would not move. Her fingers curled into her mother’s hair, Leander’s hands curled in hers. One by one, the wild geese hopped out of the door of the old hut, waddling over to Knife and the ruined egg-skin. One by one, they laid their pearly heads on her body, all finding a place for themselves on her still-warm skin. One by one, they closed their eyes, not to be parted from their mistress at the end. Knife seemed to float in a sea of wings, and each bird’s silent death took her further from her children.
Leander let go of his sister’s hand and opened the cloth bundle that sat beside the limbs which had once been Knife. Inside lay a loaf of bread, lumpy and ill-formed, an ugly reddish color baked into the crust. It was not soft, nor did it seem as though it would taste good, but Leander understood—it was his own loaf, kneaded by his broken hand, his blood and tears folded into it, over and over. It had always been meant for this morning. He broke it in half, leaning a shaking, staring Aerie into his arms and slowly pressing tiny morsels into her shuddering mouth. She grimaced, but swallowed as if starving, and he, too, ate a few pieces of the strange food, its tang bitter on his tongue.
After a long while, they walked from their mother into the moonlight.
Aerie stood at the well, washing her new hands until they bled.
Her brother approached her slowly and took her hands in his. They were slick with red, running with it, and her eyes were wild.
“Aerie, Aerie, you’re hurting yourself. We have to start for the Castle. With luck we can slip in tonight.”
She shook her head violently, dark hair still splashed with silver light, so that she looked like an old woman with gray in her black strands. Her voice was like a crushed tuning fork, the dust of a harp splintered on a
desolate shore.
“I am. Not. Going. Not there. Not to the birth-nest.”
“Knife asked us—”
“Mother!”
“Mother asked us, she made us swear.”
“You.”
“All right. She made me swear. So, I am going. Are you abandoning her now that she’s dead? It’s my father, not yours. What’s the matter?”
“Abandon her? Abandon?” She struck her chest with her fist. “My mother! My flock!”
“Yes, but this is what my flock does. The flock of Princes. We go on Quests. We make vows. And sometimes, we kill Kings. It’s our duty.”
“Not mine. You’re not my hatching. Not my duty.” She spat the last as though it were dredged from the bottom of her belly, thick with sludge. She looked at her brother, her eyes raking up and down his shape. She seemed to calm herself, to collect her mind. “You are alone,” she whispered. “I am alone. Mother was alone. It never changes. I’ll tell you, tell you why. When I was not I. When I flew…”
THE FIRST MOON-CRESCENTS STARVED ME. I HAD no Flock. I remembered Mother; I knew I was a no-bird. But I was hungry still; I could not think, I was so hungry. There were Falcons near the birth-nest. Slave-hunters. I flew after them, ate scraps from their beaks. They snapped at me through leather masks, drew blood from my wings, scratched at my eyes. I was not theirs. Not their duty. I could not fly very well yet, but I learned. I watched the seagulls and the starlings and the sapsuckers and the spoonbills: I learned to swoop and bank and speed and land.
No words, only flying, and wind like a mother.
I went to the Crows, who would not have me.
I went to the Sparrows, who would not have me.
I went to the Hawks, who would not have me.
I went to the Eagles, who would not have me.
I was alone. The geese had all gone south and there were none left to take me with them. No flock; no food. I was still small. I wandered far away from the birth-nest. I slept in the cracks of trees, in the wind off the eastern moon, cold and afraid, afraid of the Falcons, afraid of the shadow of the birth-nest. I cried in my sleep, and my tears were quiet.
There was a morning, once, when I was a year old? Two? Time is different for geese. A bird bigger than anything, bigger than a Falcon, found me up in my tree, my wings pulled up over my head. He pushed at my feathers with his warm beak. I looked up, into his eyes. They were red, orange, white—fire colors.
“Why are you crying, little one?” he said, and his voice was like sunlight on the wing.
“I am alone,” I told him, and shivered, fearing his great bronze talons.
“I am alone, too,” he said. His feathers were the same as his eyes—the colors of embers, of flames licking at green branches, and his tail was a shower of gold. “If you want to come with me, neither of us will be alone. I will teach you how to catch moles when they peek out to see the sun, and how to steal cherries from orchards without being shot, and where there are fresh wells without dogs to guard them.”
I sniffed at the cold air—but the bird was warm and crackling, and I felt no shivering clouds on my feathers. I was hungry; I did not know what a cherry was. So my webbed feet flapped against the bark and I climbed out of the tree and into the wind.
I didn’t have anything to say. All I knew about were worms and scraps of meat the Falcons dropped, and that some trees have birds already living in them. The Firebird cleared his throat.
“Are you lost as well as alone?” he asked politely.
“I… I think so. I think I had a mother once, and she sent me away, but it’s hard to remember. I keep searching for anything that looks like me. The Falcons bite me. The Crows call me names. I can’t find anything with gray feathers and webbed feet and a long neck.”
“Well, then,” he said gravely, “it is doubly important that you learn about thieving, because it would not do at all for you to starve before you find your gray feathers and webbed feet and long necks. Luckily for you, you have fallen in with a Zhar-Ptitza, a Firebird. They are the best of all possible birds, and I am the best of them. You’re only a baby, and you will need looking after, at least until the summer comes and the geese come back. For you, my chick, are a goose. At least, I think you are. I’ve never known one before, not really. But don’t you worry, little gray-winged dear, I shall tell you all you need to know. I shall tell you about my best thievery…”
CALL ME LANTERN—AND DON’T LAUGH. I WAS always gentle, and my mother thought it better to name me after a little sweet flame in a glass than a fire which eats up trees and children and granaries. Firebirds are normally not particularly social creatures, but I was always too fond of family, and I stayed nest-side far longer than other proud scarlet drakes.
I was gentle—but I was also the best thief in my flock, and I could pluck the tiniest mustard seed from the hand of a princess and she would not even know it had gone until she went to plant it in her garden. And so it was that when my cousin was sitting on an ashen nest with a clutch of eight orange eggs—quite a clutch!—and complaining of a terrible need for cherries, the brighter the better, I was begged by all to fetch her some before her sisters pecked her to death in order to buy some measure of quiet. Cherries! And only certain cherries would do, only those sweet and glossy enough to feed the mother of eight.
I loved my cousin, even if her caws pierced my ears—what hen does not have the right to demand strange things when she is at her nesting? I flew off to fetch the fruit.
Now, in a land far distant from ours, which lies in the desert, there was a Sahiba in those days called Ravhija, and her orchards were as famous as her beauty. She spent her twilights tending the trees until each of them bore fruits without blemish or brown, each sweeter than the other, glistening and heavy. I have told you I was a fine thief—but none yet had managed to steal from Ravhija, whose cleverness was as famous as her orchards. It was these cherries my cousin longed for, and so I resolved to be the first.
I am not a small bird, nor are my colors inconspicuous. It is a handicap in my profession, but I use it as well as I can. I easily hopped a low brick wall as the sun closed up its deep blue talons, and the last loyal flash of light hid my plumage from any wandering eye. My tail trailed on the soft red soil as I crept, half fluttering, half walking, through the rows, looking for a tree bright enough to hide me. I passed persimmons, apples, limes and pecans, pomegranates, figs and oranges, tangerines, pears and apricots, avocados like fat emeralds and plums like purple fists. All thick with juice, nested in glossy green leaves, swollen to full size, though surely it was impossible for them to fruit all together, and side by side, though some loved frost and some a burning sky. And cherries, there they were, cherries big as a giant’s knuckles, and redder than my own self. I clipped off bunches as I passed, holding them in my gullet like a mother stork storing up fish for her chicks. I swooped up high to snatch the best fruit without breaking the ceiling of leaves and being caught. I was a glimmer of gold in the green, quicker than a blink. It is an easy, practiced grace, and I promise, my bedraggled dear, to show you how to do it.
But I had to find a place to hide until it was dark enough to get back over the wall without Ravhija spying me. And only certain trees will do—in the way of natural camouflage, the Firebird is sadly lacking. But as providence would have it, at the very center of the orchard was the most extraordinary tree I had ever seen. It was made for me; it matched me in shade and fruit, as if that tree had grown me in its branches, and dropped me onto the wind in some distant autumn beyond memory.
It was a pumpkin tree.
Or so I surmised, though all other pumpkins I had known grew from vines sprawled on the earth. The trunk was a deep orange gourd, twisting and winding around itself, tapering from a thick, fat base tangled with sprawling golden roots up to a spindle, deep grooves in the flesh of it gracefully spiraling, up and up. Branches spooled out here and there, yellow and pale green at the tips, each thick as a waist. The whole thing was strung with vines of
red and gold, and from these swung massive pumpkins like lamps, each glowing as though it contained a tiny flame. The whole tree was a festival, sparkling in the center of the fabulous garden like a dancing woman in the center of a dowdy crowd which could only stand still.
I flew to it like a lover. This tree would hide me, this tree would keep me safe, this tree was so bright that in it I would be as a little brown sparrow. It seemed to burn like the flaming trees of my own desert, yet the light was soft and kind, and the tree was not consumed. No gardener could find me in all that gold. I circled its trunk in delight, and then up to the pulpy peak—but a pain sparked through me, a terrible rip which sent me tumbling from those perfect limbs. I was afraid that I would spill out of myself, that I had been cut open by some wicked trident. I fell—such an ignoble thing for a Firebird!—I fell into a snarl of glimmering roots, and when the daze passed from my eyes, I saw before me two perfect feet, green as new shoots.
Ravhija bent at the waist, leaning down to me, twirling a long, ruby-colored feather, still tipped in dark blood, in her slender hand. “And what, pretty parakeet, do you think you are doing with my cherries?” she asked sweetly.
Ravhija looked just like the pumpkin tree. Her hair fell to her ankles in twisted ropes of wet, pulpy orange, and she was clothed in wide, dusty leaves that clung to every inch of skin, spreading around her face in a wide collar. Her face was ruddy, shining like cut squash.
“Why would you go to such trouble for a few cherries? Cherries can be bought anywhere. Why do you come to steal from me?”
I blushed, as much as a Firebird can blush when we are already half crimson. “My cousin craves cherries—she is at nest with a clutch of eight, if you can believe it—and your fruit is famous. Of course I could buy it, but then I would never be able to say that I stole it.”
Her elfin forehead furrowed, and she straightened, still holding my feather against her hip. I stumbled to my feet while she looked up through green lashes at the marvelous tree. She stood that way for a long time, as though she and it were locked in private consultation. Finally, she spoke, her voice all spice and honey and sweet, thick juice.
The Orphan's Tales Page 16