Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  “Not much for reading, Bry,” Nyall scoffed. “And last I checked, neither were you.”

  “Exactly,” said Brysen. “Because nothing written about those legends is true. If it were, everyone who followed their paths would’ve already caught a ghost eagle.”

  “So the fact that nobody’s written about a group taking down a ghost eagle makes you think it can be done?” Nyall shook his head.

  “You’re saying you don’t trust me?” Brysen asked. He hadn’t asked Nyall to come on this journey. Hadn’t invited him, in fact. They both knew he was only there because he was in love with Kylee. Nyall would go along with whatever she said. Brysen turned to her.

  “It’s not impossible,” she told them. “I have read all the fragments of the old stories. They contradict each other. It doesn’t mean they aren’t true, but it could mean the truth is maybe more complicated.”

  “Complicated,” Nyall repeated, looking between Kylee and Brysen.

  “The stories all talk about these great heroes,” Kylee said. “But they all leave things out, skip parts, try to make the trapper they’re writing about sound like the greatest person ever. But no one real is perfect. No one real can do everything themselves.”

  Brysen felt like her last words were aimed straight at him. She was taking his side, but somehow, he found it annoying.

  “Anyway,” Brysen added, “every trapper who’s come up here alone has died. So our chances are better if we work together. It’s pretty simple. We lure the eagle down, grab it by the legs, and tie it up—just like we do with passage hawks we want to train.”

  “Passage hawks aren’t the size of a grown man,” Nyall objected. “Passage hawks can’t snap the arms off their prey with one bite.”

  “So you’re saying you’re too scared?” Brysen spat at him. “You don’t want to be here? You’re fine to sing outside our window and argue about bird boxes, but when we really need your help, you’ve got all kinds of reasons not to?”

  “Hey!” Nyall growled right back at him. “I’m trying to protect you, here!”

  “It was never me you were trying to protect,” Brysen replied.

  “Don’t get mad at Nyall,” Kylee cut in. “He’s just asking questions. We’re all on your side. We want to help you.”

  “About time!” Brysen grunted.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kylee snapped.

  “You know exactly what it means,” he told her.

  “Well, I’m here now.”

  “Exactly!”

  “You don’t want me here?” Kylee stood. “After you asked for my help? You think you don’t need me now?” She pointed a finger in his face. “You’d already be dead if I hadn’t come after you!”

  Brysen knocked his sister’s finger away and stood up to look her square in the eyes. “I know you’re better than me, okay? You don’t have to stuff it down my throat all the time!” He yelled at her with a rage that made him shake and set her back on her heels. His voice echoed off the high ridges on either side of the Gap. It sounded like his father’s voice.

  “Don’t you dare yell at her.” Nyall stood now, too, putting himself between Brysen and his sister. “She’s done nothing but defend you since we were kids, and you’ve never shown any gratitude. You chew hunter’s leaf and fool around, and you don’t do anything to help your family. Your sister is the most amazing person I’ve ever known, and you treat her like a bait pigeon while you worship the sweat that drips from that birdnester, Dymian. It makes me sick. There’re times I want to punch your face in.”

  “Do it then,” Brysen said, putting his face nearly against Nyall’s, so close their foreheads almost touched. He’d always known his “friend” secretly hated him, was only using him to get close to his sister—just like everyone else did. She was the special one, the one with talent, the one with brains. He was just the screwup, the poor, put-upon boy they could cluck and shake their heads at, never believing he could do anything great.

  Nyall shoved him. “Maybe once I break all your teeth, Dymian’ll like you more.”

  “Maybe with your skull bashed in, Kylee will pay any attention to you at all.”

  “Don’t make this about me, Brysen,” Kylee growled. “You’re the one who got us into this. It’s your fault.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” Brysen was crying now, but his blade was out, and his rage stretched wide like wings. He wanted to smash Nyall’s face in, and his sister’s face, and even Jowyn’s face, though Jowyn hadn’t said a word and was still sitting against a boulder with his eyes closed and his fingers intertwined in front of him. Was he praying? Or was he trying to distract Brysen from his goal, trying to steal him from Dymian so he could turn Brysen into a freak like himself?

  And who was Brysen to think that boy a freak? He was the one covered in scars, the one who loved the wrong people and made crazy promises and followed phantoms into the clouds, and the one who would never do anything in life worth remembering and he’d fail and fail and—

  “You all need to take deep breaths right now.” Jowyn’s calm voice sliced through the riot in Brysen’s mind. “The eagle is nearby. It’s in all of your heads.” He looked at Brysen. “Whatever thoughts you’re thinking are not the truth of you. None of you. Look at one another. See one another. You’re more than what you’re feeling right now. You are more than your worst thoughts. These thoughts are no more solid than a cloud. Remember that. You have to remember that, or it will tear you apart one by one.”

  Brysen saw the boy’s calm, and it infuriated him. He didn’t need to be lectured.

  “Prrpt,” Shara chirped.

  “Shut up!” he yelled at her, raising a fist. Shara flinched, and the blood left Brysen’s face. He nearly fainted, had to hold himself steady. He would never hurt Shara. Could never. This wasn’t him.

  He looked up at Kylee, her face twisted with anger and hurt, and that wasn’t her, either. She was tough and loyal and had smarts and gifts to spare, and everything she’d done had been for him. And Nyall was loyal and fun and generous, and he never shrank from a fight. He was here now.

  They were both here now. With Brysen. For Brysen.

  The ghost eagle couldn’t plant thoughts in their minds; it could only distort what was already there. But like Jowyn said, they were all more than their worst thoughts. Maybe there were pieces of truth in everything they’d just yelled at one another, but only the most jagged pieces. No one was only the sum of broken things inside themselves. Anyway, what were breaks if not openings?

  “I’m sorry,” Brysen said, and felt his thoughts clearing, the act of apologizing helping him feel the truth of the apology. “That … that’s not what I think about any of you … not really.”

  Nyall nodded. Reached a hand out. Brysen flinched at the motion, but Nyall just squeezed his shoulder. “Same,” he said. Kylee didn’t say a word, just embraced her brother, held him tight.

  “I told you I wouldn’t ask you to speak the Hollow Tongue,” Brysen said to her. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t need you. I do need you. I always have.”

  Kylee wiped her eyes. “I wish I could speak the right words to do this,” she told him. “But one thing I learned from the Owl Mothers is that it’s dangerous when I can’t control it. I don’t know what I might make the eagle do if I tried.”

  Brysen was, in a way, relieved. He’d come to capture the eagle himself, though no one had believed he could—not Goryn or the Owl Mothers or Yves Tamir—but he was going to. They were going to.

  He felt a grim determination, a swell of pride, and he had to wonder if that was the eagle’s trick, too. Was he deceiving himself into confidence? Was the eagle guiding him straight into her talons?

  It didn’t matter. It had to be done. He had to do it. Dymian’s life was on the line, and all of theirs, too, now. He was responsible, and he would not fail. He picked up Shara.

  “For this to work,” he said, “we’ll need bait.” He held Shara against his chest. Her soft feathers w
armed his hands, and he could feel the delicate flutter of her heart beside his. He clarified: “Human bait.”

  30

  “I’ll do it,” said Kylee.

  “I’ll do it,” said Nyall at the same instant.

  They both looked at each other, each wanting the other to back down.

  “No.” Jowyn stood and came to Brysen. “I have to do it.”

  “You led us here,” Brysen said. “But I can’t let you do this. I’ve cost you enough already.”

  “‘Cost’?” The boy shook his head. “This isn’t the market. What I give, I give freely. When I saved your life, I bound myself to you like a falcon to a falconer. I’m not tethered; I choose where I fly. And this is the only way it makes sense.” He looked around the group. “You three are all experienced in trapping birds of prey. I’m no falconer—I haven’t held a bird on the fist since my childhood in the Villages. I’m no use to you when it comes to pinning the eagle down. But I’ll stand out in the darkness. I make a great lure.”

  “A lure?” Brysen looked him up and down. As the sun dipped below the high mountain range, darkness purpling the Nameless Gap, he saw Jowyn’s point. His bright white skin did stand out.

  “I can be very alluring.” Jowyn winked. Brysen hadn’t seen that joyous glimmer since the Owl Mothers had expelled him. It was an odd time to be making jokes, but everyone managed fear in their own way.

  Brysen consented. They didn’t have much time, so he asked Kylee and Nyall to use some flat stones to dig three shallow pits for hunting blinds. When the time came, Jowyn would stand in position in the center between them. It was an old method, older than any fancy nets or snares. This was how the first falconers had caught birds of prey to tame. They’d dig pits within arm’s reach of a wounded bait pigeon, and when a hawk or eagle or owl descended to kill the pigeon, they’d grab it by the ankles and wrestle it to the ground, then tie it up with a length of spider-silk rope and haul it home to begin the training. It was a good thing hawks didn’t hold grudges, or the first falconer would never have tamed the first falcon.

  “You must really be fond of him,” Jowyn interrupted Brysen’s thoughts, while Kylee and Nyall grunted through the effort of digging shallow pits in the rocky ground. The boy offered one of his befuddling smiles.

  “What?”

  “This Dymian person,” Jowyn said. “You must really care for him to give him this kind of gift. A little songbird would’ve been easier.”

  “Are you making jokes?” Brysen smiled back. “Right now, when your life is in my hands?”

  “Our world weighs a feather; our world weighs a stone,” Jowyn recited with a smirk. “Make the world you’ve wanted, or take the weight alone.”

  “Aaaaand … now you’re a poet?”

  “All romantics are poets,” Jowyn replied, and he looked at Brysen without blinking. “You are, too.”

  He held Brysen’s gaze for way too long, until Brysen broke the stare, feeling his skin spark like the windblown embers of a campfire. It was an unfamiliar burning from an altogether new direction. He snuffed it out as quickly as he could. “Yes,” he said. “I’m very fond of Dymian.”

  “Well then, we better get to it,” Jowyn said as the others finished digging. He pointed at Brysen’s hand. “You’ll need to use that, I suppose?”

  Confusion turned to clarity when Brysen realized he was holding his blade. “Right,” he said. “Yeah … uh … you’ll need to look wounded. There needs to be … uh…”

  “Blood,” Jowyn said. “I know.”

  The boy rolled one of his pant legs up to his knee, and Brysen bent down, taking Jowyn’s leg in his hand. The calf muscle was thick and strong, bright white against Brysen’s dirty fingers.

  “Do it,” Jowyn said. “Don’t worry. I heal fast.”

  Brysen nodded, took a deep breath, and then sliced the blade across Jowyn’s skin. Jowyn winced, and the thin line across his white skin turned red, and the red began to flow. It flowed over Brysen’s fingers, down the calf to Jowyn’s ankle, over his foot. It covered Brysen’s fingers. He remembered the taste of it and shuddered.

  Jowyn’s hand was suddenly on top of his. He looked up.

  “Go,” the boy said gently. “Just make sure you don’t go far.”

  Brysen nodded. He stood up, sheathed his blade, and retreated to a boulder far up the icy slope, where he’d set Shara. He picked her up again and set her in a deep crack in the boulder. He put his finger out in front of her, and she pecked at it. He moved it, and she pecked again.

  “You stay hidden,” he told her, as if she could understand him. “I’ll come back here for you, but you fly if you need to. You fly away if you need to, okay?”

  He looked at her intently and she back at him, thinking whatever thoughts floated through the mind of a tired hawk at the end of a long day.

  He smiled at her, then settled into the shallow blind Kylee and Nyall had dug for him.

  Jowyn looked up to the sky, feigned a weak leg, and waited in the open, stone-faced.

  The spider-silk rope felt smooth in Brysen’s hands as he prepared the lasso and then lay down with it resting in front of him. He covered himself over with dirt. Kylee and Nyall watched him from their own holes, ready to jump when he made the first move. It all rested on him now; their lives were bound to his boldness. They trusted him, and he trusted them. That was real. Whatever else the eagle showed him, this was real.

  Full dark had fallen over the gap. Above, the stars winked bright; they crowded the night sky for a view, whirling and turning in the passing dark. One would fall, blazing, every now and then.

  Brysen felt like he was waiting out the night inside a grave.

  He wondered, darkly, if this ghost eagle was the same one that had killed his father. Would it remember him? Or maybe these thoughts were just the eagle in his head again. He let them pass. He would think of them like Jowyn said: clouds drifting by with no more weight than air. He had to keep his focus keen and sharp, so he’d be ready when the eagle came.

  If this was a grave he waited in, it was one he intended to climb out of.

  31

  They waited in the dark, apart, but intent on one another. Just after the moon had started its slow arc to the opposite horizon, Jowyn tensed like he’d seen something in the sky, and he glanced toward Brysen’s dugout. When nothing happened, he half laughed at himself and his nervousness, startling at shadows.

  And then the shadow fell, screeching.

  “REEEEE!”

  The ghost eagle swooped just over Jowyn’s head; its body was large as an ox with wings wider than a man’s height. The boy ducked to dodge, but the eagle didn’t strike him. It flew up again and was lost in the dark. Brysen followed its flight by the stars that vanished in its shape, the void it carved in the sky. It came around, dove low, but then, instead of taking Jowyn where he stood, landed in front of him.

  Jowyn fell backward, jumping out of the way, and the ghost eagle stood where he had been. At its full height, the ghost eagle was taller than a horse, with two black legs thick as tree branches. The eagle was a shadow made of flesh and claw.

  Before Brysen could spring from the hunting blind to grab it, the eagle snapped its head around and stared straight at him, spread its wings wide.

  “REEEEEE REEEEE!” the bird screamed, and every hair on Brysen’s body stood on end. The cry was so high and horrid, it could’ve cracked the stars. He wanted to dive forward and snare the beast, but his legs wouldn’t move. Panic seized him.

  Coward, the eagle seemed to say.

  Coward, he heard in his father’s voice.

  The ghost eagle settled its wings, lowered its head, and stepped toward Brysen’s hiding spot. Its massive talons crunched the ice and stone. In the eagle’s face, Brysen saw bright blue eyes, ice-on-the-mountain eyes. His own eyes. His father’s eyes.

  “Move!” he shouted at himself, and finally, breaking the trance, he sprang from his hiding spot and dove straight for the eagle’s glistening black
beak in a shower of dirt. The eagle raised a foot to strike him, eyes dark as onyx once more. Just then, Nyall and Kylee sprang from their holes on either side, behind the eagle’s back. It saw them instantly and reacted just as fast but was already standing on one foot. In trying to launch over them, it tilted itself to the side.

  Nyall’s full body weight slammed into the bird, knocking it over, while Kylee wrapped her arms around its wings as it tried to thrash free.

  Brysen was on it a heartbeat later, the loop of his lasso sliding over its feet and pulling tight to lock its legs together, but the eagle jumped and slipped the knot before it tightened. It threw Kylee to the ground before rising into the air and whirling on them, beating its wings, snapping at Nyall so he had to roll away. It turned on Brysen, settling in front of him with wings open wide and harrying him backward up the slope away from Kylee and Nyall. Stones slid out from under him, scraping his hands raw on the icy slope until his back hit a boulder and he and the eagle were alone.

  He was trapped. It snapped its beak, and he dodged left. Snapped again, he dodged right. Its breath smelled like blood and meat, its feathers like ice and fire together. With a lunge, its beak caught the edge of his ear, sliced a notch into the thin flesh, but missed his skull. His quick moves learned in the battle pits were the only things keeping this game going.

  And that was what it was to the ghost eagle: a game. For the bird of prey, the hunt had already ended. It was just toying with Brysen. He thought of Shara pecking playfully at his fingers, playing their game. She was able to hurt him but chose not to. The eagle met his eyes now, locked gazes with him, and he knew this was the same game but with a different conclusion. The moment the eagle decided to kill him, he’d be dead. That was how this game would end.

  He looked down the slope to his sister, hoped she might summon the Hollow Tongue, might find the right word to save him, because at that moment he felt the most basic, most ancient of animal desires, free of pride or shame or jealousy: The eagle was going to kill him, and he did not want to die.