The Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters

by Brooke Bolander

  Sometimes the Prince would drop by to see her, a train of hangers-on and court subjects trailing behind him like a raggedy tail. Almost all of them wore masks affixed to the backs of their heads, for the Prince said this was the height of fashion out west. He liked to ride her around the courtyard while the others watched, and even had a special saddle made for the purpose. She allowed this humiliation, though it cost her much in patience and pride. Her sisters and her home — oh, they were worth it, it and a thousand other miseries. Patience before the lunge. Love for her pack and caution nipped mosquito-sharp at her neck whenever she was tempted otherwise.

  The only bright spots were when the Princess came to visit. She was surprisingly clever for a mammal, and sometimes the two of them would talk. She, too had been sundered from her sisters, carted many leagues from her father's woodland kingdom to marry the dull-eyed Prince. They wanted her to make sons and embroideries. All she wanted — all she had ever wanted — was to live by herself somewhere in a deep dark forest, with a nice garden patch for her spells and a rabbit for her stewpot and absolutely, positively no neighbors. This dream had been taken from her, snatched from her jaws before she even had a hope of swallowing. Now she was ringed round by people, day and night, never allowed to be alone. Her life was saddled beneath the weight of the Prince and his needs. He never washed up after himself. He had no initiative. It was her job to think for him, her and his advisors, and the advisors were as empty-headed as skulls in a bramble.

  “Why do you linger here when no-one could stop you from being on your way?” the Princess asked once. “You speak so fondly of your sisters and your old home. What keeps you in this place?”

  Ceecee did not answer. She wanted to — wanted to ask flat-out, wanted to trust someone, wanted a sister to rub her snout against affectionately — but she could not bring herself to. Not yet. And o, best beloved squeaking among the eggshells, that hesitation would cost her dearly!

  For one night the Princess did not bring her the evening meat. A stranger was sent to tend to the task, as happened on occasion. Lulled to dullness by weeks of uneventful boredom, she did not smell the sleeping powder folded within. She gulped it down with a toss and snap. Drowsiness like nothing she had ever felt soon thickened her litheness to slow mud. She turned three times before falling into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  When she awoke, her claws were capped with beeswax, her jaws were fettered with an iron muzzle, and the doors of her stall were bolted and double-bolted with lock and chain.

  Back in the forest, the leaves were starting to turn orange and gold. Soon it would be moulting season, the season of slow blood and deep nests, and still Ceecee had not returned to her sisters. The pain of her absence began to fester into worry.

  LLLLLLLLLRRRR, said Betty, snapping a mosquito from the air.

  SHHHHHHHRRRRL, agreed Allie. Something had definitely gone amiss, for there was no puzzle devised by any ape that could confound their clever sister-small for this long.

  Shadow-strong and fast as thought, the sisters sprinted to the edge of the wood. There they bobbed and tarried, scenting the air, worry tugging at their ankles. Many a longing glance they threw over their shoulders at the dear forest — its mossy fallen logs, the thickets full of rabbit and doe, the hot springs where mud bubbled warm like a kill's insides. It was a good place, and the pull of it was strong.

  But the call of their lost sister was stronger. As the moon rose and the first nightingale sang, they slipped away together down the man-path, leaving the forest behind.

  In an unlikely turn of events, the Prince had done something not a single soul in the court foresaw: Taken initiative and come up with a complex plan. It wasn't terribly complex, to be sure, and of no great importance to anyone but himself, but even those who had doubted him before said this was a turning point, the first really king-like action he had ever undertaken.

  At some point the Prince had decided — all on his own, with no suggestions from anyone — that he would like to make Ceecee a permanent part of the court menagerie and his own personal mount. More shocking still, he had foreseen the fact that she might object to lifelong servitude, and — perhaps with poor Sunspot's fate somewhere in his memory — saw to it that she was drugged, muzzled, and chained first. Everyone was very proud of him. They told him so, often while patting him on the shoulder and making cooing noises like prideful parental pigeons.

  The Princess was as blindsided by all this decision-making as the rest of the court. She had no idea it was coming until she arrived at the stables to find Ceecee snarling and snaking beneath the Prince's saddle, a furious quicksilver rainbow bound in clattering iron. Seeing his betrothed, the Prince waved and pointed downwards.

  “Look!” he said. “I made a real choice, just like you're always asking me to!”

  The Princess staggered back as if struck. She caught Ceecee's glittering yellow slit of an eye, and what she read there chilled her blood to pudding. Stay calm, I'll figure this out, she tried to say in a look.

  Then she excused herself and spent the rest of the day in thoughtful, panicked solitude. For if the Prince had gotten the knack of making decisions, that signaled her own freedom's doom. In a man of his nature, it was almost worse than being incapable of making any decisions at all. She stayed in her study scrying until well after dark. When the moon was high and the crickets loud at their revelling, she slipped back out to the stables, a lantern in her hand.

  Ceecee was not asleep. She lay curled in a feathery heap in the floor of her stall. Already there were welts and bare spots among her snout plumage where the iron muzzle had rubbed.

  “I'm sorry,” said the Princess. “I didn't know he was going to do this. I didn't see it coming.”

  Rrr, said Ceecee.

  “He didn't outwit me,” the Princess snapped, “he accidentally figured out how to stitch two thoughts together to make a third. But all that is beside the point. Listen.”

  Ceecee didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

  “In my room, there is a scrying vessel, and in that scrying vessel I have seen your sisters, slipping towards the castle along the old road. They are coming to save you. If they kill the guards at the gate, more will come, with pikes and arrows and swords, and both of them will die.”

  All Ceecee could manage in response to this news was a low moan of misery. Her claws were dulled and her jaws held fast. Even if she escaped, how could she possibly help them? Perhaps sensing her thoughts — for again, this good mammal had many talents — the Princess raised a hand.

  “You cannot help them,” she said. “They cannot storm the castle by force. What they need now is stealth. They need trickery, and they need an ally to help them.”

  And here she smiled, with her flat, dull teeth. No beautiful curved sickle of bone, that smile, but it held its own kind of danger.

  You cannot help them,” she repeated, “but I can.”

  They came running, her sisters, striding-slipping-sweeping down the man-road like the shadows of leaves in a gale. They whistled and fluted hunting songs as they ran, and villagers bolted their doors and pulled their shutters and slammed their chimney flues shut with a bang. Mules spooked and carts overturned. Cheeses rolled and apples bruised. Human children in their beds awoke wailing from nightmares where they were hunted through tall grasses by yellow-eyed wisps of smoke. Cats and dogs apt to wander the lanes late of nights vanished, never to be heard from again.

  And still they raced on, veering neither left nor right, following a call in their heads and hearts as the moon sank and the sky turned pink as a flayed ribcage. On towards the horizon, where the spires of the castle loomed black.

  Almost to the drawbridge they were, and the world growing lighter every moment, when a figure stepped out to intercept them. This was easily dealt with; as one they launched themselves at the woman, claws extended and teeth bared and oh, to kill was sweet! Through the air they sailed, beautiful to see in the mo
ment before the blow.

  A word rang out, a sharp, sudden, unexpected command.

  HRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST!

  In mid-leap they suddenly stopped, tumbling to earth like shaken fruit. Allie was first back on her feet; she scrambled back upright with a hiss of confusion.

  “Listen,” said the Princess — quickly, for at that moment, her life hung by a thread. “Just listen. I know where your sister is, and I have a plan.”

  Witches have many spells, my hatchling. Some of these you may have heard of, and many more may have escaped your snuffle, for you are young and the inside of your shell is damp yet. Spells to tempt the rabbit into the snare. Spells to make the flowers grow. Spells to make bones stand and sing their true names, to see the future in the spiral of a tadpoles's insides and the past inside a mosquito's last meal of blood. Shape-changing spells. Songs to sicken and songs to heal.

  Spells of glamour.

  Take a feather the rainbow sheen of oily water. Sing a song of apples and barley and hearth ash across its length, wrapping every barbule with burlap and lullabies, each ratite with human dullness and human cares. When the song is done and the feather well-swaddled and fairly a-shimmer with mundanity, take it and wave the little object from snout-tip to tail-tip, until hunting stripes and emerald plumage and yellow slitted eyes crouch unseen behind conjured ape-shapes of cambered crones. No hunters here, say the bread-bakers and candlestick-makers on their way to early market. No sickle-clawed memento mori pair cutting furrows through the high wheat. Just a couple of grandmothers on their way to the castle, baskets of apples and quince and rosemary dangling from their elbows like broken-backed prey.

  “Good morning to you, old mother!” said the guard at the drawbridge. “Are those apples for the King?”

  The first old woman looked down at her basket, then back up at the guard.

  “YES,” she said in a loud, croaking voice. “FRUIT FOR THE SHINY APE KING'S FLAT TEETH.”

  “MAMMALS LOVE FRUIT,” her sister added, nodding emphatically.

  The elderly were often saying such things, so the guard took no mind. He waved them on to the front gate, where a second guard loitered.

  “A fine day for a stroll, eh, aunties?” he said. “Are those quinces for the cook?”

  The second old woman cocked her head and fixed the guard with a thoughtful stare. For some reason he found this deeply unsettling; some voice in the deep depths of his hindbrain hooted for him to run.

  “COOKING,” she finally said. “YES. HUMANS EAT BURNED THINGS. LIKE RATS.”

  “SQUEAKING,” agreed the first sister. “SQUEAK SQUEAK. CRUNCH. THEY CRUNCH SO GOOD.”

  And then the two of them laughed. Every hair on the guard's neck and arms remembered it had once belonged to a small furry squeaking thing and tried to climb as high as it could go. He waved them hastily on into the castle, where they passed plump toddling children and ancient arthritic dogs and bare-bellied donkeys tethered fast to hitching posts. What there wasn't a lot of around was cats. Glamour never worked on cats. They saw right through the Princess's spell, recognized the kindred hunters beneath, and found pressing reasons to be elsewhere.

  “Need a hand with those baskets, mams?” asked a passing stableboy, eyeing the apples with interest.

  The oldest of the sisters snapped her head around to face him in a way that would haunt the lad every time he thought about it, eventually driving him to a life in the priesthood. Humans are very soft and spook easily. One brush with fangs in the dark and they bruise like dropped peaches, never understanding that life is a series of extinction events barely avoided.

  “NO,” she said, wiping drool from her lips. “FOR THE PRINCE'S SOFT TENDER STOMACH. FOR PLUMPING.”

  “SOFT,” echoed the second. “UNPROTECTED.”

  The Princess used her time wisely, as she did all things. She went to the key room, where many keys hung like iron teeth from many jagged hooks. No-one guarded the key room's vaults, for the King had never landed upon a reason to appoint a watch there (not so emptyheaded as his son, the King, but still not the sharpest claw in the toe) and many in the court had benefited from his thoughtlessness on this matter. How much worse this would grow under the Prince someday was not something the Princess intended to wait around and find out.

  She met no-one in the hallway, not that anyone would have questioned her if they had. She was considered more or less ornamental by most of the Prince's advisors, but a princess is still a princess, not to be questioned face-to-face.

  Down the great stairway and out to the stableyard, where Ceecee's two sisters waited still wrapped in their glamour.

  “SISTER!” said one. “INSIDE!” And indeed, from inside the stable came a most pathetic whistling and trilling in response.

  “INSIDE!” repeated the other, throwing herself against the oaken door with a crash. Several grooms glanced their way curiously.

  “Shh,” said the Princess. “Shh, old mothers. Patience.” She unlocked the doors and they went inside, past horses screaming and spooking in mortal terror at predators they could only smell and rats fleeing like the roof was aflame. The entire stable was in an uproar. The Princess knew she only had a little time before someone rushed in to check the cause. Hastily now, she led them to Ceecee's stall.

  “SISTER!” said the first.

  “SISTER!” said the second.

  KKKKKKKKKKLLLLRRRRRK! said Ceecee. She tried to thrust her snout through the bars only to be turned back with a clang by the iron muzzle. Enraged, she tried again and again until the air rang with the clamor. Between the noise of the panicked horses, the frantic calls of the sisters, and the blacksmith jangle of Ceecee's fury, the Princess could barely hear herself think.

  She put her fingers to her lips and let out a clear, sharp shepherd's whistle, sure to let every groomsman in the area know something was amiss if they hadn't already noticed.

  Ceecee, Allie, and Betty froze.

  “Here,” she said. “I'm coming in.” She shouldered past the sisters. One by one she dug into the great padlocks with her keys until their insides snapped and twanged open like cracked bones. When each was unlocked and the chains lay spooled in limp gut spirals across the floor, she rolled the door back and stepped inside.

  The Princess had never been this close to Ceecee before. She smelled of dusty feathers and blood, musk and rotten meat and sweet crushed grasses. She smelled like freedom, and the Princess felt a short sharp stab of longing lodge in her chest.

  Ceecee had never been this close to the Princess before. She smelled of spices and sweat and human cares, responsibility and duty and other things Ceecee only knew of in passing. She smelled like a trapped thing, a forest creature locked in a stall far away from sunlit glades and solitude, and Ceecee felt something like pity for the ugly creased face, naked and flat and already lined with sadness.

  The Princess reached up with a final tiny key shaped like a talon, fingers searching beneath feathers until she found the muzzle's lock. There was a rattle and a click and the ugly thing fell from Ceecee's snout like a pried-open oyster.

  Oh, hatchlings, the reunion that ensued! The glorious shrieking and fluting and twining of necks! The whip-whapping of tails and the flaring of plumage! The rubbing of snouts and the click-clack of sickle claws freed from their beeswax clots tapping a joyous tattoo on the floor! The horses didn't appreciate it, not one blessed bit, but I know you would have, with your clever slitted eyes and your sharp senses of scent. The strength of the pride is in the many. Split us apart and we are nothing, but together — oh, together — there is nothing we cannot bring crashing and spouting to earth.

  And so it was with the three sisters. Apart they had snuck and slunk and relied on trickery for their survival. Rejoined as a trio, they turned and flowed back through the stable like a burst dam, unafraid of anything. The Princess would have had them make their way back out with some caution, but she knew the extent of her power over them had fallen apart with the muzzle, and for that
she was glad. She followed them to the barn doors, where Ceecee suddenly paused.

  RRRRR? she said. The other two looked up at her in surprise. The Princess did as well; it was not a question she had been expecting.

  “I… I am a Princess,” she said, haltingly. “My happiness is of little regard. It is my responsibility to stay here and see that the Prince takes care of himself and more importantly his people. If he should stumble face-first into a chamber pot and drown — or decide to hunt the poor for sport, now that he's gotten into the habit of deciding things — I would feel bitter guilt over the matter.”

  RRRRR, Ceecee repeated, gently. The Princess's silence this time was lengthy.

  “No,” she said. “No, I am not happy. I do not know why I have taken this responsibility. It was chosen for me. I was told it was the right thing to do, and I allowed myself to believe what I was told. The Prince and I were well-matched, it seems.”

  Ceecee turned. The saddle was still on her back; there had been no time thus far in which to pry it off along with the rest. As she had with the Prince in the woods, she crouched at the Princess's feet, waiting. This time, at least, there was no shame in the gesture. It was an offer extended to a fellow huntress, freedom offered for freedom.

  The Princess thought about all the ways she had allowed herself to be yoked, making choices for so many others. She thought about the sweet solitude of the forest, birdsong and vine-wrap and the taste of fresh rabbit's blood on her tongue. She would never have to wear a corset, or comb her hair, or entertain anyone she didn't feel like entertaining. She wouldn't even have to wear clothes if she didn't feel like it. If villagers came to visit wishing for her blessings or curses or poultices, they could handle the sight of a crone's bare bottom or they could turn around and go home empty-handed. Every blessed stitch of it would be up to her.