It’s the most he’s said about himself, and some of the puzzle pieces are falling into place for me. I’m ashamed to tell him that even though I have a supportive family, I moved into a tree house just so I could live like a raptor. Why did I do that? Listening to Cooper makes me realize I took my family for granted. Now all I want is to be with them. If we get home, I’m going back to my old room so I can hear Gavin talking in his sleep through the walls all night. So I know everyone around me is safe.
I keep my eyes on the fire, keep my voice even. “But you’re family. He must want you there. Family should be together, even though it’s hard sometimes.”
Cooper pulls his socks back on. “Yeah. Well, not as hard as finding that lousy highway. Let’s get climbing.”
I glance at Stark in the trees overhead, remembering that first time she ate from my hand. How her whole body stood erect and proud and wild. She finally trusted me.
I turn back to Cooper, feeling like he might finally be trusting me too. “Okay, you lead this time.”
Cooper picks up my pack and throws it on. A small smile tugs at my lips as we put out the fire and make our way through the shrubs. I know that after a bird starts to eat from your hand, then comes the free flying.
We start up the mountain, hiking in single file. The ridges rise in front of us, peppered with scree and scrubby brush. Loose rocks roll from Cooper’s kicked feet. I put my head down when I hear them coming so I don’t get them in my eyes.
As I clamber after him, my arm throbs with every step. My wound is much worse now that I know it’s infected. It’s burning me from the inside out. It feels like a living thing under my skin, tearing to break free. I hold my arm close to my body as we climb. I’m thankful Cooper is carrying the pack.
The path I thought I saw from the river turns out to be less of a path and more of a gutter for rainwater, with a row of crevices and shrubs growing out of it. We pick our way along, and pretty soon I notice that I’m not cold anymore in my damp clothes. In fact, the air is definitely warmer.
“I’m starving again,” Cooper says. “Feels like years since we ate that grouse.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Where is that bird of yours?”
“She’s up there.” I point above us. “Don’t worry, she’s okay.”
“It’s cool she can keep an eye on you from so high up. How does she see things so far away? Like, she was way up in the sky and just hit that grouse dead-on.”
“Her sight is ten times better than ours.” I’m glad for the distraction to talk about raptors. “She has two ocular sensors instead of just one, like we do. That means she can focus on things far away like a video camera and make it look like it’s up close.”
“Awesome,” Cooper says. “But she’s so far from you, why wouldn’t she just fly away? It’s not like she’s on a leash.”
“She stays because we’re linked. Not with a leash, but we’re connected in our minds.”
Cooper turns to give me a disbelieving glance. “Right. You’re telling me you have a telepathic bird?”
“No, just…we’re partners. In falconry, you want your raptor to depend on you to flush the game. They know you’ll let them chase it and then help them after they catch it. A falconer wants their raptor to trust them and be part of the partnership. It’s a sacred thing.”
“So can you make her catch something bigger, like an antelope?”
“Well, first of all, she’s a falcon, so her specialty is hunting things in the air. Remember? Falcons don’t usually hunt rabbits or game on the ground because they use their speed to knock prey out of the sky.” I grab at a rock crevice with my good arm and use it to hoist myself to the next ledge. “And I can’t make a raptor do anything. Sometimes Aunt Amy and I take her goshawk Tank out, and we spend hours beating bushes, trying to flush a rabbit. When one finally does flush, Tank sometimes just sits in the tree and watches the rabbit run by.”
Cooper laughs. I’m shocked to hear that sound come out of him.
“They have their own mind and do what they want to do,” he says. “I like it.”
“Well, a lot depends on their weight. If they’re keen, that means they’re at the right weight to want to hunt. And before they hunt again, they need to cast a pellet—that’s when they bring up this long wad of undigested feathers and bone. It looks like they’re throwing up.”
“Nasty!”
“They need to do it before they feel like eating again.”
“That was cool to see her eat,” he says. “Ripping out the feathers like that.”
“In the wild, parents first bring dead prey into the nest. Then they bring prey that’s mostly dead, then slightly dead, then pretty much alive. As the chicks grow, they practice handling and killing.” I stop talking suddenly. I send a worried glance to Cooper. Am I being weird again? Talking too much? But he’s interested.
“Mostly dead dinner?” He chuckles. “How do they kill their food?”
“Falcons kill by fitting their tooth between the neck bones of their prey and pulling on the neck until it breaks.”
“Falcons have teeth?”
I laugh. “Um, no. I’m talking about the pointy part of their beak. It’s also called the notch. Anyway, an imprint bird like Stark misses all those lessons from its parents.”
“I never guessed there was so much to know about birds,” Cooper says.
Once we’re above the tree line, I glance behind me, anxious to discover how far I can see. The forest stretches out below us, a blanket of autumn reds and yellows. There’s only forest and the river. We have to get higher to see past the mountain and out to the other side. But I look back over my shoulder again when I notice the sky.
The cloud cover has closed in and dropped lower since we were at the river. An ominous black band stretches across the distant horizon. That’s when I notice just how warm the wind feels now as it blows my hair across my face. Such a drastic change in temperature is never a good thing. I glance at the storm clouds. The wind feels dangerous.
“Maybe we should find some shelter,” I say. “You can’t trust the weather around here. And I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
“Come on, not until we crest this ridge.” Cooper knows we need to be able to see past the mountain.
We pick up the pace, scrambling up the rock. I brace my good hand against the side of the steep sections. The rock is cold and sharp.
“So, how do people get to hunt with a raptor?”
“Well, first you have to apprentice with a falconer. I guess I’m lucky I happen to have a falconer aunt who lives across the road.” I chuckle. “Getting to hunt with a raptor is part of why I want to be an apprentice. But being an apprentice is more than just hunting. It’s a huge deal to keep a raptor. They need a lot of things, and you really have to love it. It’s kind of like an obsession.”
Cooper glances back at me, and I sense he knows what I mean. He felt it when we brought down that grouse.
“It’s not hard to love it when you see how good they are,” I continue. “And they get so jazzed. Aunt Amy and I get as pumped as Tank when he lets out this excited scream. It feels like it reaches right into your heart and makes it speed up.” Cooper grabs my hand and helps me up a steep section. He peers at the sky. “Does it feel warmer out to you?”
I stop climbing and nod. The black band of darkening clouds has now moved across the sky, as if reaching out toward us. The air feels charged. It has that hushed, expectant feel to it that usually comes before a storm.
A faint rumble of thunder rolls behind us. It goes on and on, grumbling and echoing before it subsides. Cooper stops, and we look at each other.
“Maybe we should find some shelter,” he says.
But where? We’re now in the middle of the mountain slope and completely exposed. As we stand still, thinking, a gust of wind slaps us in the face. We turn back to the rock in unison and start to clamber up the slope again.
My nerves are frayed already with all we
’ve been through. This heavy feeling of urgency hanging in the air screams through my frazzled head. Don’t acknowledge the fear. Focus. Just keep moving.
I wonder what Stark is thinking above us. She’ll sense the storm is coming. Is she worried about me out here? I thought I loved her before the accident, but now I have a whole new appreciation for her.
I just wish she could take me with her to shelter. I wish I could fly off this cliff right now and find somewhere warm and safe and out of this constant danger. All at once, I’m sick to death of the worry and fear. I would give anything to be home on the couch with Gavin, listening to Mom read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, even though I’m way too old for it and Gavin has made her read it a million times. I wouldn’t even complain when Mom sings the Oompa-Loompa songs in that embarrassing way.
The wailing wind builds and pounds against me. The loose parts of my hoodie flap against my hand. My hair lashes the side of my neck. The feeling of a speeding train behind me makes my blood rush.
“Climb faster,” I say.
Another louder rumble shakes the sky. The wind gusts harder, and I notice then that the temperature has dropped. Neither of us speaks as we concentrate on reaching the summit. I don’t want us to say out loud what we’re both thinking. This storm is gaining speed and strength too fast.
By the time Cooper and I climb another eighty yards, the cold wind is howling past my ears. I claw at the rock, trying not to get blown back off balance.
We inch farther up. All I see is more rock above us. We’ve gone too far to go back down. The sky is an alarming color now. A sickly green swirls in the dark clouds. The shade reminds me of a fading bruise. The clouds build and move closer.
A gust of wind grabs Cooper and shakes his jacket. I slit my eyes in the battering wind and bend forward against the force of it.
“Cooper!” I scream. “Do you see anything up there?”
Just as I ask, a thick bolt of lightning rips the sky in half.
“Do you see any shelter up there?” I repeat, but my words are drowned out by the deafening thunder. I can feel the power of it rumbling through my toes.
My insides are jumpy with the need to get to a safe place. We cannot stay in the open with weather like this. I bite my cheek to stop from screaming. I shriek at the sky. After all we’ve been through, the storm has to change course. It has to.
Then I see the rain.
A solid, dark sheet of it moves across the river. It reaches the forest. The treetops whip around like a field of red and yellow flowers. Stark is probably down there somewhere.
I turn back and practically sprint up the slope in front of me. The rock will be slippery if it’s wet. A few drops splat thick and cold on my head. Wind drives the rain like needles into my skin. Winds like these can rip us right off this ledge. Hurl us down the mountain. Our bodies will be broken by the fall into the scree below. I cling to the rock.
“Come on!” Cooper screams above me.
I look up, squinting my eyes against the rain. Water washes down the slope, dripping off the rock and onto my head. My hair is plastered to my skull in moments. Water runs down my face as I try to see above me. There is nothing but rock and more rock. And it has grown darker. We need to find somewhere to go.
Right now. Now. Now.
More lightning from somewhere above illuminates the outline of Cooper. Seconds later, thunder rocks the earth. I can almost taste the current. We’re in the middle of it. The storm is not going around us.
With my left arm burning, I only have use of my right to climb. My clothes stick to me. Water squishes between my toes with every step. My fingers are turning stiff again from the cold rain. It cannot get any worse.
And then the rain turns to hail.
Hard pellets pound the top of my head. They pelt my body as I hunch in on myself. The ice balls appear to be growing larger with every second, making sharp tapping noises above the wind. They bounce off the rock in front of my face.
Tucking my neck in further, I wish again that I had my winter coat. I pull up my hood and cup my ear to shield it from the stinging hail. We’re so exposed here. My skin feels raw.
“Up here,” Cooper yells.
I scramble ahead to where he crouches against the side of the rock. He’s backed into the narrowest part of a V formed by two angles of rock wall coming together. It’s a shallow alcove with a low overhang above his head.
“Best we’ve got,” Cooper yells in my ear as I scoot in beside him.
He puts his arms around me when I turn to face the storm. With my back pressed against him, I feel his warmth through my shirt, and the position almost feels natural. I wonder if he can feel my heart pounding.
Cooper has his jacket off and holds it up in front of us, blocking the wind. I grasp the edge of the jacket and stretch it to reach the side of the rock. Cooper pulls it open to press against the other side of the rock, forming a shield against the worst of the hail.
The pellets slam into the backside of the coat with a flurry of noises like popcorn popping. Shrieking wind tries to tear the jacket out of my hand. I stomp on the bottom of the jacket and try to hold it down with my foot. I’m practically in Cooper’s lap. The space is narrow and small, but the rocks at our back offer protection. And with the jacket up, we’re out of the wind.
We sit together in grim silence, dripping, each holding on to our side of the jacket. I wonder if he’s noticing how close we’re sitting and that his arms are around me. Water runs off my hair and down my chin. Soon, steam rises up from us as the little space is warmed. The smell of damp bodies hangs in the air.
My hands begin to shake as the adrenaline subsides. I try to imagine we’re somewhere else, anywhere but in the middle of a cliff in a storm.
“This is like my room at that apartment with Dad in Salt Lake City,” Cooper says. “I had a leak above my bed that would drip on my head every time they took a shower upstairs.”
“That sounds about as useful as a chocolate teapot.”
I feel Cooper laughing behind me, and it warms me. “You are so cra—.” He pauses. “You’re all right, Karma. You’re all right.”
This acceptance makes me feel as if…as if he’s really my friend. I resist an urge to lean my head back against his shoulder. I hadn’t realized the tension around us until it was gone. It’s like we’ve slumped against each other for support.
“This sucks,” Cooper says.
I sigh. “At least Dad and Gavin are in the van,” I say. “But Stark is out there in this storm somewhere.”
“Man, you’re always thinking about her, huh? I knew a girl who was wild about horses, but I’ve never met anyone as wild about birds as you. You’re falcon wild.”
I grin at his words. “I can’t imagine life without raptors. Besides schoolwork, that’s all I do. I’d rather chop off a finger than see any of my birds hurt,” I tell him. “One time, when I was seven, Dad found me camped in the mews at Aunt Amy’s with Dewdrop. He was a sharp-shinned hawk who’d been hit by a car. I’d snuck out of the house with a flashlight. Dad had noticed me missing before he went to bed, and he said he pretty much knew where to find me.”
I pause, remembering. “Aunt Amy says I have a feeling for raptors, like a natural animal sense that can’t be taught. I keep the birds calm. Even when I was young, I knew how to calm them, though I didn’t realize what I was doing. I think they pick up on our own fears. If you keep yourself thinking happy thoughts, this will soothe them.”
“Yeah, you do seem like you’re thinking happy thoughts most of the time,” Cooper says. “Even stranded out here. I’ve never met anyone like you. I can see how you’d be good at it.”
I smile a moment in shocked silence. He quickly adds, “It was cool to see you call that bird down with the thing you swung in the air.”
“I’ve always been pretty good with the lure. Lure training is like a dance with the bird. You let them get just close enough, they pivot and twist and dive, and then you pivot the lure with th
em. It’s important to get the timing right so you don’t accidentally hit them. You have to feel them moving. The birds love it. You can see it in their expressions. It’s good exercise, and Dad has let me do it for the demos since I got better than him. But once I’m an apprentice, I’ll only use a lure to call a bird down or away from danger. We train our raptors through hunting. I’m hoping to be a good falconer. It’s in my blood.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about Stark being out there,” he says. “She’s a bird. Don’t birds hide from storms all the time?”
“I’m more worried about my dad and brother,” I admit.
Cooper sniffs and rubs his nose on my shoulder, since his hand is busy holding up the jacket.
“Hey! Keep your snot to yourself.” I turn and grin at him, and he grins back.
“Your family’s safe in the van,” he says. “They’ve got more protection than we do.”
I listen to the hail. Hope shoots through me, something I haven’t felt for days. “At least they can melt this hail, and then they’ll have something to drink,” I say.
Three days. They have three days to live without water.
But this thought leads me to notice the shadows in our little fort. They’re growing, and it’s not just because the storm has made everything darker. Nighttime is approaching. How have we spent another whole day out here?
“Cooper! It’s late.” We’re going to have to spend the night. Suddenly my breath is squeezed from me as if something heavy landed on my chest. “That makes three nights. I’ve been gone for three nights, Cooper! I told Dad I’d get help!” I feel flayed to the bone.
Cooper collects me in a stronger grip around my shoulders. I push at him, but he holds on. “Shhh,” he says in my ear. “You can’t go anywhere right now.”
“And…oh, no!” I squirm, fumble behind me, and reach into my back pocket. The fortune teller is a sopping gob of paper, thanks to my journey down the river. “It’s ruined! Gavin made this!” I feel myself starting to flap around like a bating hawk. My vision narrows and focuses on the space between the rock and Cooper’s jacket. Sheets of hail rush into our cave and fling sideways like my thoughts.
Falcon Wild Page 9
