The Bird & The Lion: (The Feather: Book 1)

by CJ Arroway

  CJ Arroway

  The Bird & The Lion

  First published by Tewhit Books 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by CJ Arroway

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  CJ Arroway asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  First edition

  Contents

  The Home & Surrounding Lands

  The Bird

  The Cart

  The Quarry

  The Lion

  The Viper

  The Well

  The War Room

  The River

  The Weir

  The Curse

  The Bear

  The Fish

  The City

  The Tannery

  The Lion & The Bear

  The West

  The Mountain

  The Guardian

  The Raid

  The Friends

  The Captive

  The Contest

  The Jackdaw

  The Fort

  The Feather

  The Offer

  The Eagle

  The Betrayer

  The Cave

  The End

  The Earth & The Wind

  The Lake

  The Beginning

  By the same author

  The Home & Surrounding Lands

  The Bird

  When she was six years old Evie talked to a bird and her mother cried. That was when she knew she was cursed.

  That first bitter seed, watered by tears, grew in the dark until now it was a tangle of vines wrapped tight around her heart – keeping it almost safe, almost quiet.

  But today would be one of the days when it would sing. It would be brief. In a whisper. Unaccompanied. But it would sing.

  Her mother had sent her to the forest to gather coal fungus for the kitchen. She always seemed to run out just when guests were expected, Evie thought. When she returned a fire would have burned without it and the guests would be gone. ‘Oh, you know Evie, she’s gone to her forest’, her mother would tell them. And she was right: it was her forest.

  Spring had come early, but without its rain. The day was full of soft breezes and warm light and she could feel a little of both through the canopy of new beech – scattering yellow-green ripples on the carpet of last year’s leaves as they crackled under her feet. She was in her forest now, away from the paths and down in the mosses and hollows where the braken grows higher than a man’s eye.

  It was time to do magic.

  In an hour or so she would feel the shame. She knew that. When she returned she would read their looks and wonder if the others knew – if they could see it on her. She felt its mark burn so hot on her that it must show. They would read her sin like she read their scorn. But right now it was the time. And the place.

  In the hollows of the wood she could find the calm she needed to unburden her curse. In its quiet she could sense the movement of it in her blood. For those brief moments she could almost feel at peace with it. As if it belonged in this world.

  She lay back into the ground, sinking through the dry crust of leaves into a layer of moss and cold stone; breathing in the must of damp earth, scenting the rising sap and sweet decay. Above her, the treetops swayed to the hush of new leaves, parting here and there to reveal a flash of blue or a flicker of gold among the waves of green. The forest’s whisper was broken only by the soft whirr of a dunnock returning to its nest.

  For a moment she held it – the sense of all nature rushing through her. She let it build until she could feel its colour in every fibre, reaching in and out in a billion tiny, shimmering threads. The lines between her mind, her body and the forest blurred into a single, wavering point of energy. Then she sang. Her hands hit the ground together and the connection arced between them, sending spirals of leaves, earth and dry twigs rising into the air. They danced and swerved: at first in uncertain patterns like a murmuration of starlings heading to roost, then slowly forming into clear, moving pictures. A bear’s great paw fishes up a salmon, a lapwing dips and rises, Evie’s dog Betshilda runs after it, her mother–

  ‘Evie!’ The sound shattered the pictures to the ground and in an instant the vines clamped shut again on Evie’s heart, as it jumped back to the place it should always stay.

  ‘Evie – that was the best yet! Was that your mother? It looked just like her.’

  ‘Luda!’ Evie panted, awkwardly gathering herself up from the ground and brushing off the forest litter. ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that – you nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  He pulled his gaze away as she looked at him.

  ‘Did you follow me?’

  At least it was only Luda, Evie thought, and she felt her heartbeat start to drop back to a steadier pace. It was at times like this she regretted telling him. Not that it had been a choice, but at least he was a good friend. Best friends, Luda would say, which was true, not least because there were no others.

  ‘Your mum told me you’d gone into the woods. I just came to see if I could find you. I wasn’t following…’ Luda’s voice tailed off as he looked around vainly for any convenient distraction. ‘I got the afternoon off. Mr Gadd’s taken the cart to the fair in Palshaw and he said they didn’t need me.’

  Evie picked at a small twig that had caught itself in her hair. She shook out the mess of thick tangles with her fingers, glaring at Luda, daring him to make the comment she could see in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that. You can just ask if you want to come to the woods with me, but you know I hate being watched.’

  Luda started to protest, but Evie cut him short with a look. ‘I’m sorry – I called out as soon as I saw you.’ He paused, pushing down a nervous smile. ‘It looked amazing though.’

  Evie’s eyes darted around the edges of her forest hollow, before turning back to Luda. ‘Did it? Don’t say anything. I know you won’t. Sorry. I’ve got to get back.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, if you’re not too mad at me?’

  She didn’t answer, but they headed back through the new-growing ferns together.

  The soft sunlight pulled out the little colour in Luda’s face as they walked out of the forest. He looked even skinnier and paler than usual Evie thought, and she wondered if his masters were still feeding him as well as they worked him; though she knew they treated him better than most. She said nothing and they headed down the hill towards the village.

  ‘Did you get the fungus?’ Luda broke the silence.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The coal fungus, your mum said…’

  ‘Oh, damn!’ Evie stopped for a second and put her hand to her face. ‘Come on, let’s find some. There’s a big dead ash over by the old quarry top, there’ll be some there.’

  She glanced back to where Luda was still standing. ‘You coming or what?’

  The Cart

  When her daughter was just six years old, Jennet knew she was already lost.

  She was the only child she’d been able to give Eisl, before the river took him. She would often think of the night when she had told him; how his kind, hard face had softened with the promise of something beautiful
, still unknown. They had watched a familiar light in the sky that night – a light that seemed to shine brighter than they’d ever seen it before, and they knew it was a sign. So they called her Evening Star.

  It was a name Evie hated. A name that marked her out. Her father called it tradition; a mark of her Daw ancestry. Evie called it an embarrassment, old-fashioned, a caricature.

  ‘You might as well have called me “Jackdaw”,’ she had told them when she had just turned 10.

  ’Don’t you ever use that word,’ her father scolded her. Jennet still remembered how his face looked then – even now, though she only ever saw it once.

  But they called their daughter Evie from then on and three months later Eisl was dead.

  On a day in a summer, when the roads were baked hard and she was still called Evening Star, Jennet took Evie to watch one of the other children ride out of the village and they never saw him return.

  They joined the crowd on the narrow, rutted street that led out of Uish; among the spitting and shouting that followed the boy on a small, priest-black cart as it rolled out towards the empty road.

  Evie knew the boy; he was about her age, and she liked him. She only saw her mother cry three times – when Eisl died, when the bird listened, and when the boy left.

  The Quarry

  ‘I think someone’s taken it all already,’ Luda shouted from behind the grassy bank on which the huge, riven trunk of an ancient ash tree lay.

  ‘I’ve found a bit – it’s enough to get a couple of fires started anyway. It’ll have to do, I guess.’ Evie hopped up on the trunk, to where she could see Luda closely inspecting a length of gnarled grey bark half buried in the ground.

  He dropped the bark and clambered up to join her, looking at the dull black nugget she held in her hand, no bigger than a blackbird egg. ‘Yeah, that’ll have to do,’ he laughed.

  Evie dropped herself down and sank into the grass, her back against the fallen trunk. Luda followed with a theatrical leap that almost caused him to lose his balance and topple forward. Evie did her best to hide her laugh.

  He sat beside her, dropping his back against the tree just a little too hard, so the impact knocked a single, sharp pop of breath from him. He smiled awkwardly, the creases at the corner of his mouth deepening to thin dimples.

  ‘Want some of these?’ she said, holding out a small handful of silvery-grey strips she had pulled from the soft leather bag on her belt. ‘It’s just some dried fish mum still had, it’s good though.’ Luda shook his head, then watched Evie as she broke off a piece and ate it.

  A bumblebee was bouncing between the dandelions in the grass in front of them and Luda casually picked up crumbled pieces of bark from where he sat, to throw in its direction. Evie glared at him. He saw a small stone and tried his luck with that. A flick of the wrist and it skimmed the grasstop, landing on a yellow flower top at the same moment the bee did.

  ‘What did you do that for? You killed it. Why would you do that?’

  Luda pulled up his hands below his narrow chin. ‘I didn’t mean to – I didn’t actually think I’d hit it. I’m a terrible shot.’

  The bee twitched its broken body helplessly, one wing stuttering to lift itself. Evie stretched out a leg and brought her heel down to end its suffering.

  ‘You threw it at him, so you meant to.’ Evie pushed Luda’s arm hard enough to draw a wince from him. She suddenly stood up.

  ‘Where’s the sun?’ Evie said, more to herself than anyone else, glancing up at the tree tops to spot its glow through the canopy. ‘Come on, we’ve got time!’ Luda still had his eyes in the trees as she turned on her heels, half-walking, half-running towards the well-used deer path that led away to the highest point of the wood.

  ‘Hang on,’ Luda called, scrambling to his feet. ‘Time for what?’

  Evie turned her head, still moving. ‘Keep up with me and I might show you some magic. Just a little mind.’ She grinned and narrowed one eye and before Luda could pull himself up from his slouch she was gone.

  Luda knew he couldn’t keep up with her, but it wouldn’t be for want of trying. She vanished into the cover of the trees and he was up and sprinting to follow, cursing as a branch caught his collar and scratched his neck. He dabbed his hand to it, pulling it back to see tiny spots of blood speckle his palm, but he pressed on through the twisting path.

  ‘Hang on – wait for me!’ he yelled after her. ‘I’ve cut myself, I’m bleeding – it’s not fair. Don’t go so fast.’

  The path ran up steeply, thick roots giving a foothold in the soft earth. Whips of tree branches bent and snapped back as he pushed them aside, following the sound of movement ahead. He stopped where the path leveled out and turned across the slope. Evie was standing at the top of the steep drop where the old quarry began, above the hermit’s cave and the pools where they had played as pirates when Eisl was alive. She was as still as the stones.

  ‘This counts, I got you! You’re too fast.’ Luda stopped, resting his hand on Evie’s shoulder as he caught his breath. And then he saw it too.

  The quarry was carved from the side of the wooded hills many centuries ago – long before the Daw, or even The People, had come to this land. The useful stone was exhausted now, but the forest had never reclaimed this place, and Evie and Luda stood at a window in the trees. The narrow valley floor opened up below them and beyond that the river wound out of sight behind the natural buttress of the Black Hill and its dark stone border tower.

  From this window the back of the common fields could be seen, just around the edge of the wooded slope that hid the rest of the village from view. A soft west wind was blowing and a veil of white smoke, tinged with black, was draping itself out along the furrows and contours of the field.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Luda said, shading his eyes from the low spring sunlight that picked out the smoke haze. A single plough stood tilted in a half-finished furrow, the tethered ox lazily picking at weeds in the unturned ground.

  ‘We’ve got to get back,’ Evie said, her gaze fixed on the smoke-filled field. ‘Something isn’t right.’

  The forest wasn’t a playground now. The trees and bushes that Evie had brushed her hands through on the way now hid the paths she needed. The acrid smell of burning was seeping into the woods, a thin haze of smoke picking out columns of light that filtered through the treetops to the ground.

  She was running – faster now. Past the fallen ash, past the spot where a short time ago she had conjured her moving pictures; between trees, under and over fallen branches, until she reached the path that led out of the forest. And someone else was running up it towards her.

  ‘Evie, Evie! Is that you? Get away. Run. Please girl, run!’ He was almost in the trees and now she could see it was Elmet, Mr Gadd’s eldest son. His face was pale as the anemones that painted the ground at this edge of the wood, and half-darkened with black soot which ran with the water from his eyes. Evie’s chest tightened and squeezed out the little breath the run hadn’t taken. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘Is Luda with you?’ She could see his hand shaking as he propped himself against the trunk of a young oak that stood beside the path. He swallowed heavily. ‘You’ve got to go girl, now.’

  Evie’s eyes darted between him and the path to the village, and Elmet read her.

  ‘No!’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t. You can’t do anything. Get Luda and get away from here.’

  Evie feigned a step back, then made to sprint past him and down the path towards the village.

  ‘Stop! Evie. They’re down there. There’s too many of them.’ He barred her way with a stiff arm, dropping it as she tried to duck under. ‘We have to run. Is Lu–’

  The name died on his tongue as his head flicked back then suddenly forward, leading him fast down to the ground to bury his face in the thick mat of leaves and dirt. The arrow, protruding from the base of his neck, stood almost vertical from the forest floor; a cruel black sapling watered in blood.

  Now other figures wer
e on the path, and they were not from the village. Evie froze for just a second, then she was running again. Luda saw her coming and her face told him this was not the time for questions, this was the time to keep up with her.

  ‘Just run Luda. They’ve killed Elmet,’ Evie panted, grabbing Luda’s arm as she forced past him, pulling him to a running start.

  Luda ran – glancing back over his shoulder, half-stumbling in the effort. ‘Killed him? What do you mean killed him? Where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Evie said, trying to catch her breath enough to speak. ‘But we need to find Rachlaw.’

  The Lion

  The first time Evie had seen Rachlaw he was sitting in her father’s seat with her mother’s paring knife at his throat. She noticed two things about him: he was not afraid, and he did not look at all how she thought a monster would.

  ‘That’s the trouble with monsters,’ Rachlaw had said softly as they spoke later that same evening. ‘They don’t look how you’d expect them to. You, for instance, are far too friendly-looking.’

  ‘But I’m not a monster – you are.’

  Evie’s world was full of monsters in those days. Monsters in the well, in the hob, under the bed. And monsters who would come and take her if she showed anyone her curse.

  She had done that, and now Rachlaw had come, so he must be a monster.

  ‘I think your mother thought that too!’ Rachlaw laughed, leaning forward in the wooden chair that creaked uneasily under his heavy frame. ‘And I’m still not sure she’s completely convinced I’m not,’ he added, in a playful whisper that made Evie wince.

  ‘Rachlaw is a good man.’ Her father was standing by the workshop door, a little behind Rachlaw where he could keep himself in his daughter’s eyeline. ‘We’ve spoken and he’s going to help you – help us – with the…’

  ‘I’m going to help you with the little hiccups you’ve been having,’ he said. ‘Well, we’re going to help each other, Evie.’