Sword Mountain

by Nancy Yi Fan

  “You could make the act different,” said Cloud-wing. “You could change what being a princess means.”

  They sat back, admiring the dandelions in the midst and the vast purple mountains behind them. The wind blew, and some of the seeds drifted off, toward peaks farther away.

  “I wonder where they’re going,” said Dandelion.

  “I bet to Rockbottom,” said Cloud-wing. “Look—the mountain with double peaks? That’s where Rockbottom is.”

  “How far they will have to fly?” said Dandelion.

  “It’s a vast stretch,” answered Cloud-wing.

  “And mountains in the way …,” she said.

  “They will get there,” said Cloud-wing.

  At the sound of Fleydur’s trumpet, they headed to their music lesson.

  That day, Fleydur taught Dandelion and the rest of the eaglets how to dance the schwa-schwa, a dance widespread among birds in the forests beyond the mountain range. “Row your wings forward, flip your wings back. Clap your claws!” sang Fleydur.

  They flew in loops, all the while pedaling their feet. They clapped and did a full-body feather shake. Then they dived and swooped back and forth in the air like pendulums.

  The swarm of little figures going around and around Sword Cliff became an instant attraction to birds on the surrounding peaks. Telescopes pinpointed their every move.

  Even the king was affected. Up in his tower, Morgan closed his eyes and swayed in a faint imitation of the dance. A wide grin spread on his old face. Deciding to delay his meeting with the Iron Nest for a minute more, he leaned his scepter against the wall, set his crown aside on the table, and started dancing as furiously as he could.

  “The king is late,” noted a scholar a few rooms away. Music floated into the Iron Nest as well. Two of the advisers suddenly bent their knees and bobbed in place to the tune, but just as quickly, the stern gaze of the rest centered upon them. “Sorry,” the two mumbled. Straightening, they resumed the displeased looks of academics.

  Sigrid was suffering in her drawing room. Even with the window shut, the curtain drawn, she found herself twitching the toes of her left foot to the rhythm. The music rang on in her head, and she thought the branch outside her window seemed to tap the pane in time. “I will have that branch cut,” she shouted. “No, the tree uprooted!” Her anger pounded in her ears—even her heart was beating to the song’s two-beat rhythm!

  When she stormed into the gathering of the Iron Nest, one of the birds there even had the audacity to comment on the cursed music.

  “Your Majesty,” said the courtier in a dreamy, breathy voice, “does it not make you feel … young?”

  “I am young,” Sigrid corrected grimly.

  With her glaring eye upon them, nobird in the Iron Nest dared tap a talon or twitch a feather in time to the music.

  It’s as if the whole castle is drunk, Sigrid thought, sickened. Yet these giddy eagles can hardly curb the pouring of more music.

  “What will we do for the king’s birthday?” Pudding asked Fleydur once they finished dancing.

  “Me?” said Fleydur. “I am not going to decide. I’ll teach you songs and dances and how to play simple notes on instruments, but you’ll decide what you want to show the king.”

  “Let’s get started!” exclaimed Olga.

  Fleydur led them to his tower and opened a room. “Find your instrument,” he said.

  It was a treasure trove. Brass instruments with their bell-shaped ends shone in open cases. Woodwinds, in order of increasing size, lined the walls. Books and sheets of music lay in neat piles.

  Olga, who worried that she’d sing off-pitch even though everybird assured her otherwise, found tuning forks. Cloud-wing selected an elegant black-and-silver oboe. Pudding yelped when he tripped over a drum. “If the carrot wouldn’t play for me, this surely will!” he said, and with the back of his talons slapped its skin.

  Dandelion touched this instrument and tried that one. Everybird had found something special and was tinkering with it, whispering to the others excitedly or asking Fleydur how to play what he or she had found. Everybird but her.

  And then she stumbled upon the blank music sheets.

  Dandelion picked them up carefully. She peered at the five black lines, and they seemed to her like empty perches waiting for flocks of notes to flutter upon them.

  She looked up and cried, “Let’s compose our own song for the king!”

  All the other eaglets looked at her, amazed at the idea.

  “How?” Pouldington said awkwardly, addressing Dandelion directly for the first time since her return.

  “And what will it be about?” said another eaglet.

  They drifted over. “Well …,” Dandelion began explaining. They leaned in a circle over the music sheet. More eaglets surrounded them, all listening, their heads bent together.

  The door to Fleydur’s room banged open. Every eaglet turned from the music sheets to stare at the stranger who stood in the doorway.

  “Look at his uniform!” Cloud-wing whispered to Dandelion. “He’s from Rockbottom Academy—he must be the admissions officer.”

  The officer didn’t even acknowledge Fleydur or explain his presence. He flipped open a ledger and began to read off a list of names—the birds who had passed their examinations. Instruments lay forgotten in their talons.

  Cloud-wing’s beak dropped open as he heard his name. A few around him leaped up and tussled one another in their celebration, but Cloud-wing sat still, beaming. Dandelion watched it all, more curious than ever.

  The boys pumped their wings into the air and mimicked the whistling sound of an object falling in a long arc: “Wheeeeee. Ka-boom!” they shouted. It was the chant of the Rockbottom Academy.

  “That’s right, sirs!” said the admissions officer. “We are going to take you softies apart, pound you to bits, and rebuild new eagles up from the rock bottom!”

  Chubby Pouldington did not get into the academy, but he didn’t care. In fact, he looked relieved.

  Fleydur declared the lesson over, and the eaglets left together, still excitedly discussing the acceptances to Rockbottom Academy and Dandelion’s idea. Most took their new instruments with them, but Cloud-wing, after an anguished deliberation, returned it to Fleydur, as did several other Rockbottom students.

  “You’ve been to Rockbottom for a school visit. What’s it like?” Dandelion asked Cloud-wing eagerly as they flew down the staircase outside Fleydur’s door. “It is really that tough?”

  Cloud-wing grinned. “We’re not allowed to leave the school for the first year. Every day is grueling. There are hardly any fires, and the water’s freezing. In the winter months, to take a bath, you jump into a snowdrift and use a hunk of ice to scour the scales of your legs like it’s a pumice stone.”

  “Ouch!” Dandelion said. They had arrived at the courtyard, where Dandelion had seen him practicing martial arts before.

  “Aye, it’s a torture institution,” said Cloud-wing solemnly as he walked over to collect his armor and equipment. “The walls are granite, and the perches in the dormitory are steel bars set in little alcoves in the wall. The cook there, he’s a murderous fellow! Peels potatoes with a sword. And the guards are notorious; they’re not there to keep trespassers out. They are there to keep us in.”

  Cloud-wing drew out his claymore. “No singing. No painting anymore. No laughing, I expect.” As he gazed at his reflection in the burnished blade, his voice changed. “But when I return, when I come out, I’ll be a warrior!”

  Cloud-wing pranced across the courtyard, brandishing his claymore.

  Dandelion felt a pang of sorrow and envy. Life at Rockbottom seemed like a series of secret rites and rituals. She had a gold circlet on her head and gold acorns on her collar, but the gold seemed dull compared with that flashing steel.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Dandelion gasped. Cloud-wing stopped, sheathed his claymore, and turned back to her a li
ttle breathless. He lowered his eyes.

  “I’ll be plunged into a new place. Like you when you first came,” he said. “All the things I’m used to, so many birds I know … gone. A different mountain, a different world.”

  “But you’ll keep on being Cloud-wing,” said Dandelion.

  “Like you will always be Dandelion,” he said.

  “Good luck, Cloud-wing,” she whispered, unable to say the word good-bye.

  “Thanks,” he said. He paused, looking at the ground. “I’ll write letters. Tell you all the news. And you are a warrior, too. A different sort of warrior.”

  She gazed at the hazy mountaintops in the distance, at the slopes of Sword Mountain below, and held her candle tightly.

  Dandelion would stay here, a warrior against those eight of the Iron Nest who opposed Fleydur and everything he stood for. She would be strong, even with Cloud-wing gone.

  And the lazy bird said to the old witch, “Give me a magic potion to cure my bad memory!”

  “Why, when physical punishment will work like a charm?” She laughed. “Indeed, indeed!”

  —FROM A STORY IN THE BOOK OF HERESY

  16

  PACKAGES OF TROUBLE

  Fleydur,” Dandelion said a few days later, after a music lesson, “is there a martial arts school like Rockbottom where a girl like me can attend?”

  Fleydur shook his head. “Why, Dandelion?”

  “I want to be able to defend myself and those I love,” Dandelion said, thinking of the scars from her healed archaeopteryx wounds. Though hidden from sight beneath her feathers, they ached in the night sometimes and intensified her nightmares. “The moment I first saw Cloud-wing and his friends practicing swords, I was fascinated. I wouldn’t be helpless if I learned to wield a sword, would I?” she said, and she touched the candle that she always carried in her pocket. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered her mother and father in their little cave.

  “I can teach you, Dandelion,” Fleydur said.

  “Really, Fleydur?”

  Fleydur looked off in the distance. He was very still. “I believe I may have the right sword for you.”

  He led Dandelion back to the castle, where he retrieved a parcel wrapped in leather from his room. Inside was a very plain sword. The blade was webbed with scratches and chipped in one place; the hilt was stained dark with the imprint of a clenching claw. But Dandelion saw the strength of the steel, the sturdiness of the hilt, and the keen edge of the blade. Though it was well worn, it was ready to be used for years to come. Dandelion’s eyes widened in delight.

  “Go on, hold it,” said Fleydur, excited as well.

  Dandelion grasped the hilt, wrapping her talons around the clawprint. She lifted the blade in the air.

  “Sweep the sword down like this.” Fleydur made a motion. “That will block an opponent’s blow.” Frowning with concentration, Dandelion tried to mimic Fleydur’s movements, and Fleydur nodded in approval.

  “It’s so different from the swords Cloud-wing and the others have,” said Dandelion. “Where is it from?”

  “It’s the original sword of Wind-voice, the hero also known as Swordbird,” Fleydur said. “I traveled with him. At the end of the archaeopteryx war, when Wind-voice earned the Hero’s Sword, he said to me, ‘I no longer have a use for this blade. It’s a common but reliable sword, nothing special to a stranger, but priceless to the right bird. I entrust it to your care.’ So now, Dandelion, I give it to you.”

  Dandelion held the sword reverently. “Thank you, Fleydur!”

  Since tradition frowned upon girls learning to become warriors, and since Sigrid frowned upon Fleydur and Dandelion, they went down to the valley to train in the weeks that followed, where Sigrid could not see.

  “Carry these stones up that cliff,” said Fleydur on the first day. “It’s important that you grow strong enough that holding the extra weight of a sword won’t affect your flight.”

  That evening, sore all over, Dandelion was greeted by a falcon courier delivering a short letter from Cloud-wing. It read:

  Dandelion,

  How are you? After a hard day at Rockbottom, I can’t sleep because everybird’s snoring in the dormitory—and it’s far from musical. Missing Sword Mountain already.

  Cloud-wing

  She wrote back:

  Cloud-wing,

  We miss you, too. Fleydur’s agreed to teach me how to wield a sword! Learning swordplay is harder than flying! When I returned to the castle, Olga told me I looked as if I’d been tripping over ankle ribbons all day. We laughed, all right. At that moment a few words, simple words, came to me that are perfect for the king’s song.

  Dandelion

  The next week of training was harder. Fleydur taught Dandelion how to hold her sword so she would not clip her feathers as she flew and how to time her wing beats between strikes in combat. When he demonstrated, his blade whistled through slivers of space between his wings.

  “This is absolutely essential,” said Fleydur solemnly. “Fancy flourishes mean nothing if you cannot make your sword a part of you.” Fleydur gave her a dull wooden sword to practice with at first.

  Dandelion gulped. “Do accidents happen often to beginners?”

  “If they are too afraid,” he said. “If you lose yourself to doubt and fear, for only a second, something could happen. Remember, you are in control.”

  After days of watching her attempt to strike with the wooden sword, Fleydur finally picked up Dandelion’s steel blade. “Try now,” he said, but Dandelion saw his guarded expression. He worried for her safety. Even so, Dandelion knew that this was a gesture of love. If Dandelion was to wield the weapon safely, he must dare to let her face the danger.

  At the end of the lesson, Dandelion flew over.

  “Fleydur,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Swordplay is as much about training the mind as it is the body, isn’t it?”

  Fleydur’s face became radiant. “Exactly!” he cried. “It is the most important thing of all.”

  That evening, Cloud-wing sent his reply.

  Dandelion,

  How is your sword training? I wish I could be there myself to watch and cheer you on. They may not admit it to anybird, but lots of the boys here were howling and crying when they first started to hold swords!

  We had frost on our windows this morning, and it looked just like dandelion seeds blown from far away. Thinking of home, I started to sing the song Fleydur taught us, but the older boys shook me by the shoulder and asked if I was delirious!

  Cloud-wing

  Dandelion chuckled.

  Cloud-wing,

  Next time you duel a bird, you can burst into song—your enemies will be so shocked, they might drop their weapons. Wouldn’t that be a new strategy? Fleydur’s Singing Troops!

  Swordplay is as much of an art as music, after all. Today I howled a bit, too, but I hope someday I can reach Rockbottom level. I wonder if I could disguise myself as a boy and go to tryouts? Would I be admitted?

  In Fleydur’s class, everybird’s practicing our special tune. The king’s birthday is almost here. I can’t wait to perform, but I wish you could be with us at the Castle of Sky, too. On that evening, open your window and listen carefully. We’ll be singing as loud as we can.

  Dandelion

  When Dandelion entered the classroom that evening, everybird was seated, but there was no sign of Trangharhad. Instead, in the front of the classroom, over the fire, hung a covered cauldron.

  “Is he cooking something for us?” asked Pouldington.

  The cauldron bubbled ominously.

  At that moment, Tranglarhad strode in, a paper-wrapped package in his claws. He placed it on his podium, then rummaged in his suitcase and pulled out a large fork. When he looked up, nearly all the class was leaning in, trying to guess what was in his package.

  The owl tapped the podium with his fork. “On your perches, now. Class begins!” Instead of talking about the package or the cauldron, h
e pointed the fork at the Book of Heresy and said, “Take out some paper and get ready to write down what I read. We will begin with a philosophy lesson. Page 295, ‘On the Structure of Society.’ ‘The pragmatic gentlebird might speak of equality. But actually to him, bias is beautiful, prejudice popular, discrimination divine …’”

  Tranglarhad droned on for five minutes, but every eaglet in the classroom listened to the fire and the cauldron and wondered about the package. They were so curious they could barely stay where they sat. Dandelion made a sloppy attempt to write down what Tranglarhad said, but she couldn’t focus and did not know what she wrote. Finally, when Tranglarhad finished reading, Pouldington raised his wing and blurted, “What about that cauldron over there? And what is in that package, sir?”

  “I was just coming to it, Pouldington,” said the owl. “Now I hope you paid attention to the passage I just read. Because you will have to recite it another day.” Tranglarhad picked up his package and walked to the cauldron. He licked his beak, drinking in the fear of his students.

  “I am all about fairness, opportunity, and wealth,” he said pleasantly. “I have in my possession several pennies. You are entitled to one if you fail to recite your passage; however, you must fetch it with your own talons.”

  There was a moment of confusion.

  “You’re paying us to not learn our lessons?” Pudding was incredulous.

  “Correct,” said Tranglarhad. He grabbed the lid of the cauldron and lifted it with a flourish, dropping a coin in. Crackling pops of heated oil sounded like explosions in the room. “It is my sizzling lose-and-gain philosophy.”

  “Lose?” whimpered an eaglet. “Gain?”

  Tranglarhad unwrapped his package, showing to the class two plump sausages. With great care, he skewered them onto the prongs of his fork and then, quite suddenly, plunged them into the pot of hot oil and held them there.

  A beak-watering smell permeated the room. It was in stark contrast to Tranglarhad’s next words: “You may lose some sense of touch, some skin definitely, from this ordeal. But, oh, you gain an unforgettable experience, and if you are lucky and your toes are not fried to crisp brown sausages, you are the owner of one cent.” Seeing the sausages done, Tranglarhad lifted them out of the oil. “I am sure everybird will recite quite well after a few lessons. Simple, yes?”