The Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters

by Brooke Bolander

  Down that long, red hallway on the uppermost floor — through a bedroom stuffed with toys and fancies — past a table laden with sweets and a wardrobe stuffed with beautiful unworn dresses — and now she's bursting back out a final door into the cold night air, pushing through delicate lace draperies onto a wrought-iron balcony caked with snow. There, just ahead, stands the Princess Annalise, youngest of her doomed family, blonde ringlets already going limp from exposure to the wind and the wet.

  She looks down her upturned nose at this ragged invader — the newspapers wrapped around her feet, the soot on her cheeks, her dress in stained tatters. Below them, the battle rages on; there's more fire now, gunshots, screaming of all kinds in all octaves. Smoke billows out the windows, filling the room behind them in a roiling gray cloud. The princess is obviously frightened — and who wouldn't be, considering her situation — but she hangs onto her composure with a determination that would at least be admirable in someone who understood pain.

  She locks eyes with Mara, disdainful, taking a step back so that her back is braced against the balcony's railing.

  “Who are you?” she asks. “What do you want with my family?”

  The question is so coldly oblivious, it makes Mara's fists clench. She sucks in a deep breath beneath her hollow cheeks, her ribs like ladder rungs and her empty, aching void of a stomach.

  “Everything,” she says. “To stop being cold. To stop being hungry.”

  She takes another step forward. Annalise presses farther away, her own delicate hands balling into fists. They circle one another like wary cats.

  Hsssst.

  The second-to-last match goes out. Everything — balcony, battle, princess — suddenly vanishes like smoke up a chimney. Mara is alone in a snowbank just outside the palace gates, three dead matches in her fist and one left in the basket at her feet.

  She's soaked through and wet to the bone. Ice has formed on her eyelids, weighing them down. She tries to stand, willing herself upright, but for some reason, her legs refuse to obey. Through clawing at the iron bars, she manages to pull herself to a standing position, although it costs her most of the skin on her naked fingers. She stands there, clinging to the cold metal like it's Grandmother's trouser leg, for a hundred years of winter before the blood sluggishly remembers how to run through her veins and her legs go back to bearing weight, if clumsily. She wobbles and wavers like an old man leaving a saloon at closing time.

  The snow is flying fast and thick. Above her, crouched like some bulbous, phosphorescent toad, the palace squats triumphant, hale and whole and untouched, its gilded inhabitants warm in their beds. There will never be a day in their long lives, or the lives of their descendants, where they have to worry about a thing. They sleep on stolen land beneath stolen feathers. They eat and take, and they have no need for matches or match girls.

  See me, she says to the palace, squinting up through the snowstorm into its blind windowpane eyes. Look at me, you big ugly thing.

  Somewhere, a church bell tolls 3:00 AM. The palace pays the tiny figure no mind.

  See us. See us or we'll throw down your gates and trample your gardens and take back everything you've stolen, if it takes a hundred attempts and a hundred lifetimes.

  If the palace were a sow, it might roll over and crush her beneath its pale bulk. Being only a building, it doesn't move. As it has for a century, it just sits there lumpen on its foundations, an eyesore stooping to conquer.

  Mara is so tired of fighting. She leans her full weight against the fence, too exhausted even to cry.

  One match left, says Grandmother's voice from somewhere inside the fog behind her eyes. Might want to light it and see what happens.

  What Mara wants, more than anything, is a warm blanket and hot stew and all the things those girls inside the palace take as their birthrights. What she wants is to be left alone. But she sighs, feeling suddenly as though she's done this a thousand times before, and she reaches into the basket dangling from the crook of her arm — has it been there this entire time? — and she pulls the final match from its snug, wicker nest. It seems to weigh as much as a telegraph pole.

  Hssht.

  Nothing happens. No visions drop like painted backgrounds. No figures rise to lift her from the snow. The palace doesn't crumple in on itself; the vengeful ghosts of all the royal family have wronged stay in their graves. Mara feels no surge of warmth or revolutionary fervor swelling in the marrow of her bones. There is just this moment, suspended between midnight and dawn, and the flame at the end of a matchstick. What she does with it is entirely up to her.

  Something rattles against her dragging foot. A half-finished bottle of liquor left behind by some lonesome New Year reveler. She bends to pick it up, takes a hesitant sniff. It stinks like a saloon, like her barely-remembered father. Whatever's inside, it's strong, and clear, and were she to put the match to it — were she to tear off what was left of the hem of her ragged skirt and stuff it into the mouth of the bottle, were she to carefully heft the entire makeshift projectile in her hand as the flames slowly crept down the fabric to meet the noxious stuff in the bottom — it would make such a lovely blue comet as she hurled it over the fence with the last of her strength, such a fine and furious meteor, striking home through the closest window she could find.

  She watches the drapes catch, listens to the panicked cries within and without, the distant sirens already blaring. She smiles, drops her basket, and topples over sideways in the snow.

  They find her frozen outside the palace gates the next morning, spent matches spread around her in a blackened circle. They shake their heads, disgusted at the wanton violence of the underclass. Look, they say. This was Mara, the rotten granddaughter of a rottener revolutionary. Even their children are corrupted and liable to lash out for no good reason at all. What will it come to, in the end, with such a nest of vipers stirring dissent?

  Look, say the matchstick girls, the wives in the breadlines, the hungry and cold and exploited. Look. Her name was Mara, and she was the granddaughter of a revolutionary, the daughter of warrior queens. If she could do it, why not us? If a dying girl could light a match, how hard must it be?

  Their whispers, running through the crowds, sound like the faintest crackle of flames.

  It's the last evening of the year, as bitterly cold as bones in an ash-heap, and the snow makes blue hummocks of familiar landmarks up and down the avenues of the great capital city, all the way to the rusted remains of the palace gates.

  The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat

  Once upon a time, long, long, long, long, long, long, ago, there were three raptor sisters, hatched beneath a lucky star. They lived in a wood together, they stole sheep and cattle together, and all in all, there was no tighter-knit hunting pride of matriarchal dromaeosauridae between the mountains and the sea.

  The oldest was called SKRRKITTTT, which, roughly translated into something human vocal cords can pronounce, means Allie. She was oldest by approximately six minutes and cleverest by her own assessment. Second to claw free of her shell was RRRKIISH, known henceforth as Betty. She was quiet, good at sneaking, and fond of the way fireflies buzzed and glowed and crunched in one's mouth when snapped up on a balmy summer evening. The last to emerge — the others had considered setting upon her egg before it finally began to crack — was SSSSSS, or Ceecee. She was the smallest of the three and the most dangerous for it. Her favorite thing in all the world beside her sisters was raw woodsman.

  Happy was the trio — oh, aye, happier than liver and shrieks and the final pounce, warmer than blood and sun-drenched stone. But happy makes for a short story, love of my gizzard, and an uneventful one to boot. Let us set a snare in the path for our three beautiful raptor sisters. We shall give him a headful of hair as golden as a stolen egg's yolk, skin as pale as a hatchling's tooth, and eyes of a glorious ferny green. We'll hang a title around his neck — first
and only son of a king, so rich and privileged he never even bothered to try devouring his siblings in the nest — and we'll set him a-riding aimlessly through the forest on a nice plump horse, wandered off from a royal hunt.

  Now, the King's subjects knew all about this particular forest, and avoided it like the plague, and if the Prince had thought to ask them they could have easily told him why this was so. If you know a blessed thing about royalty, however, you'll have already guessed that he had bothered doing no such thing. He blundered across fields and through open gates like a stunned sheep, never stopping to consider whether it was allowed or advisable.

  He rode by peasants toiling in the fields wearing masks on the backs of their heads and thought, “how quaint and fashionable! I shall have to have one of my own made!”

  A little further still and he came to the edge of the settled lands, where the villages were ringed with stockades taller than steeples. “What an overreaction!” he laughed to himself. “The wolves and the bandits in these parts aren't that spry, surely?”

  Across a muddy river criss-crossed with three-toed tracks (“What large chickens they have here!”) and over a bridge scored with toothmarks (“Do the locals never take care of these things themselves? Must it always be the gentry?”) and through a bone-littered fen (“A plague must have recently passed.”) he trotted, right up to the edge of the forest where the knobby-kneed cypress trees grew. Never for the slightest second did the Prince notice he was being followed, which confused poor Ceecee, out hunting while her sisters slept, to no end. Even the most distracted farmer or heedless young stag could feel eyes on the backs of their necks before the teeth and claws came a-calling.

  Whrrrrrrrrr? she said to herself, cocking her head askew. He smelled fine, but his lack of attention concerned her. Perhaps, she thought, he was some sort of poisoned decoy set out by a village witch to ensnare them. Plump as a partridge and blank-eyed as a bullfrog, tempting to be sure, but one could never be too careful. She decided to eat his stallion instead and consult her sisters about the rest.

  Such a long face! Don't concern yourself a feather-tip about that poor horse, shining claw of my foot's delight, for it opened like a generous man's gut beneath Ceecee's teeth and talons and not a hunk went to waste. The Prince tumbled off into the undergrowth, surprised for the first time in all his days.

  “Well!” he said, blinking on his bottom, “that was unexpected!” Others might have taken Ceecee's distractedness as a blessing from above and made a break for the high hills, but not the Prince. He watched her taking apart that stallion like a Sunday roast with slight dismay and a deeply furrowed brow, trying to puzzle out what had just happened and what might come next. “How the dickens am I going to get home now?”

  Ceecee got her fill for the time being and turned back to the issue of the Prince, almost as puzzled as the lad himself. He wasn't running. When you ate someone's horse there was usually a fair amount of running and howling and desperate screaming, the crunch-crunch-crunch of undergrowth before the shriek-snap-gurgle of their head a-twisting off its bony stalk. She couldn't very well be expected to pounce on a thing that just sat there like a lump, and she was full of horse now besides.

  RRKKKKKKKT! she said, picking bits of gilded livery out of her teeth. Definitely an unnaturalness. Her mind made up, she set off to drive him back to her older sisters. He let himself be nudged and directed all the way there with only mild complaints, still trying to puzzle out a way to get home without his horse.

  HZZZZZZZZT, said Betty, thwapping her tail thoughtfully. It had been wise to bring him back untouched, for no human safe to devour had ever blundered into their woods and not at least made a jackrabbit's best effort at escaping. What were the people plotting? Was this some sort of devilment sent by villagers tired of their predations?

  KRRRRT, agreed Allie, scratching at her neck with a back talon until rainbow rachis flew. Ceecee had once again shown what a clever girl she was. Surely this was a trap, and if they ate the shiny blank-eyed man all three would sicken. But what did it mean? Were there more coming? Was it time to find a new hunting ground?

  And that thought was a droop-feathered dull sadness to the sisters, for these woods were passing pleasant, full of sunny rocks and sandy wallows and hungry desperate farmers-turned-hunters scrounging for a poached meal. None of them wished to ever leave. They cocked their heads and narrowed their eyes and pushed their feathery heads together, each taking strength from the other, trying to think of a solution. The Prince sat in the middle of their circle unconcerned, wondering if perhaps someone from the castle would come looking for him soon.

  At last Ceecee spoke again. She knew what had to be done. Not a pleasant task, no — not a fine old flurry of flesh and fear, not a warm afternoon snout-deep in a chest cavity, this — but the only way to make sure of their safety she could send skittering from beneath the ferns of her mind.

  STTTTTKKL, she said, and the other two trilled alarms until she shushed them with a gentle hiss. To find out what the men were plotting, she would have to go to where the human pack leaders nested, and so as not to incite suspicion, she would have to do it alone.

  O, little chirplings, if you only knew how those sisters ached to be sundered for even so short a time! I rather hope you never find out. It's a thorn throbbing in the foot. It's a louse gnawing at a feather between the haunches you can never quite scratch, a raided nest in your center with not a single blessed egg spared. The sisters understood that it must be so when they thought about it, but it was almost too much to bear. They trilled and chirruped and butted heads, whistling comfort to one another. To see it would have burst your heart, and then they would have eaten what was left of you. Really, it's best for everyone that you weren't nearby at the time.

  They reluctantly said their goodbyes, with a swish and a snap and a final mournful hiss. When they were done, Ceecee turned to the Prince and crouched at his feet.

  RRRRRRRR, she said reluctantly. It felt a shameful thing, to allow a mammal such congress, and yet she could think of no other way.

  The Prince couldn't speak their beautiful hunter's tongue, but he knew what fealty looked like, and he knew what a steed looked like better still. Once more the heavy weight of having to make a decision on his own lifted. He climbed onto Ceecee's back, pulling her feathers terribly in the process.

  “Tally-ho, you strange beast!” he said, cheerful now that the danger of thinking had passed. He yanked a handful of her neck plumage and clapped her in the sides with his booted heels, slipping and sliding as he tried to stay aboard. “Let's go! I know the way!”

  It was a long ride back to the castle, darling ones. By the end of it, Ceecee regretted her decision to go out hunting alone that day about as much as she had ever regretted anything in her short, simple life.

  The court was more than a little disconcerted when the Prince came back missing his prize stallion. The fact that he rode a rainbow-feathered creature with cunning eyes, a snout full of sharp white teeth, and lethal claws on each bipedal foot, was also the source of much talk, but the loss of the thoroughbred was a blow to all and sundry, for he had been a stud of some renown.

  “I had plans to race him this summer,” the King said. “What a shame.”

  “I raised him from a weanling,” said the head groomsman, his face stricken. “He was more like a brother to me than a mere beast.”

  “Oh, this is not good,” whined the vizier, twisting his hands together nervously. “We were going to breed him to the next king over's finest mare as an act of friendship. What will they say?”

  “Has anyone else noticed that the Prince is riding a wolf-eyed she-dragon that walks like a man?” the Prince's betrothed said.

  Nobody bothered answering this last question. Of course they had noticed. They weren't blind. Had she noticed that the Prince had come home without Sunspot, the kingdom's beloved blood bay stallion? Obviously this was no fault of the Prince, but perhaps if the Princess had attended to him better
he wouldn't have had cause to go riding all over hill and yon. If she was so worried about the beast, why didn't she show some initiative for once and find something useful to go and do instead of bothering the men at their important matters of council?

  So while they mourned and groused and dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs of watered silk, the Princess sighed and (cautiously, for no fool was this she-mammal) led Ceecee to a stall in the royal stables, where she made sure their strange guest was comfortable as best she could.

  WHLLLL, said Ceecee. Manners, after all, were important.

  “You're quite welcome,” replied the Princess, who was also a witch and more than capable of understanding any number of languages. “Is there anything else I can provide you with?”

  Ceecee could think of nothing. She was also a little surprised at a mammal speaking her tongue.

  RLLLL? she said, hesitantly.

  “Oh, you live long enough and you learn all manner of things. Yes, you're welcome to stay here for as long as you like, although I do wish you would explain why. Please don't eat the dogs or the horses or stableboys, they're expensive to replace. Someone will bring you dinner shortly.” She gave a little curtsey and smiled a sad smile with all the feathers rubbed off. “Good evening.”

  Only a day Ceecee had been in the place where pack leaders nested, and already she was woefully confused. She made a nest in the sand of the stall and fell asleep, escaping into uncomplicated dreams of hunting with her sisters. The absence of them throbbed beneath her skin like an ingrown pinion. So deep was her sleep she didn't even notice the Prince and his subjects, grief over Sunspot spent, peering through the bars of her stall with some interest.

  As the days passed, no-one else questioned her presence in the castle grounds. She wandered where she pleased, resisting the urge to take down slow children and fast dogs when they toddled or sprinted into her path, and every morning and evening the Princess brought her a shank of lamb or beef, raw as she preferred it. It was a stiflingly boring existence. If there was a plot to hunt the sisters down it was a well-kept secret, for no hunting party was ever mustered or terrible weapon unveiled. She told herself to be patient. Impatience could ruin a hunt as thoroughly as waiting too long to spring.