The falconmaster

by R. L. LaFevers

  Against the wall, wobbly-looking shelves held chipped pieces of crockery and earthenware jars. Wat thought if he shouted, or perhaps even sneezed again, the whole thing would tumble to the floor. A fine dusting of cobwebs covered all.

  "Don't just stand there gawking," the old man called out to Wat. "Come see what fate has delivered into our hands."

  Wat moved over to where the old man stood. He stared down at the fallen door, which had landed on a rather large mouse.

  "Dinner," said the old man.

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  Wat looked up at him, horrified.

  "Not ours, you young fool! For your falcons. If they've not eaten in a while, they will greatly appreciate this tender morsel. Find them a makeshift nest for now, then go fix them their meal."

  Wat looked around the room. There was an old wooden bucket with a plank missing. No good for carrying water, but it would make a fine tree hollow. He picked it up and held it out for the old man's inspection. "Can I use this?"

  "Certainly, certainly. I don't care what you use," the old man said absently, his attention still on the bed he was examining. "It's been a long time since these old limbs have slept in a bed," he mumbled. He reached down and tested the mattress. "Needs new stuffing." He turned back to Wat. "Go tend to your birds!"

  The old man turned his back on Wat and began examining his pots and jars. "Valerian, skullcap, wormwood, yarrow," he muttered to himself. "Yes, yes. All here as they should be." Without turning around, he called to Wat, "Do I have to light a fire under you?"

  Wat stopped gawking at his surroundings. He carried the sack over to the bucket and reached for the young birds. Even when his hand reached into the sack, they made no noise or movement, and he feared the worst. When his fingers

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  touched them, however, they stirred and made a feeble attempt to fend him off with their talons. One at a time he pulled them out of the bag, noticing their rumpled feathers. They certainly looked worse for wear. He laid the sack in the bucket for padding and placed the birds on top of it. "I'll hurry with your dinner, I promise," he whispered.

  Wat gingerly picked up the mouse by its long tail and carried it outside. He'd never skinned an animal before. When hunting had still been permitted, he'd been too young, and now that he was old enough, hunting was forbidden. He sat down outside the cottage door, trying to figure out the best way to go about the task. He pulled out his knife and decided to cut the skin from the neck and scrape it off.

  As his knife worked on the mouse, he mulled over the last few hours. Even though he hadn't started out with a plan, he needed to form one now. He needed to pay attention and not risk the young birds further. The shock at finding this odd man in the forest had left him confused and distracted. He'd expected to find himself alone, just him and the birds together, making do with what the forest provided, living on their own. But now there was another person to be dealt with. Someone who could offer them shelter and perhaps some protection, which he liked. Someone to tell him what to do and when, which he didn't care for a bit.

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  Once the mouse was skinned, he had to decide the best way to feed it to the nestlings. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine how the mother falcon would have done this. His mind filled with the image of her, back from the kill. She had held the prey still in her talons and ripped the feathers away with her sharp beak. She would most likely have done the same in order to tear the meat from the carcass.

  Opening his eyes, he used the tip of his knife to pull small gobbets of meat from the mouse carcass. It was surprising how little meat there actually was on a plump mouse. He hoped it would be enough. It would certainly be better than nothing.

  Back inside the cottage, the old man was nowhere to be seen. Relieved, Wat went over to the little falcons in the bucket. Seeing his approach, they lifted their talons in his direction. Wat smiled wryly at their efforts to defend their bucket against a one-eyed, cripple-footed boy. He hoped it was a sign their spirits hadn't been damaged by their adventures.

  Wat sat down on the floor in front of the bucket. "Hush now. I'm just going to feed you, that's all." He held out a tiny strip of meat to the smaller one, who was hissing louder. The bird couldn't resist the morsel. He reached out with

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  his razor-sharp little beak and grabbed for the meat. Wat could see the lump sliding down his throat as the bird swallowed. The falcon squawked for more before Wat had even given the second bird a piece.

  "Not so interested in defending your territory now that I have food, are you, greedy one? Now wait your turn." He fed a strip to the second bird, who gobbled it down in the same way as the first and was immediately ready for another piece.

  The mouse meat disappeared with surprising speed. "That's it, that's all there is," Wat told the birds. Wanting to make sure they understood, he held out his empty hands to show them. Apparently disbelieving, the smaller one pecked at Wat's finger.

  "Ouch!" Wat snatched his hand back. "That's not meat! That's my thumb."

  "Thumb. Meat. It's all the same to them," said the old man from the doorway. "Besides, I can see from here that their crops are full. They've had enough for now."

  Wat leaned forward and noticed two small, pinkish pouches bulging out of the birds' throats that hadn't been there before.

  "Leave the birds and come with me. We have much to do to make this cottage ready for nightfall."

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  Once again, Wat had to quicken his pace to keep up with the old man. His twisted foot ached from the distance they had already walked, but he forced himself to put the pain out of his mind.

  "Where are we going?" he asked, trying to distract himself.

  "To collect new mattress stuffing, for one. To see what we can find to eat, for another."

  They walked until they came to a place where the forest floor was covered with leaves. The old man handed Wat an empty sack. "Your back is younger than mine. Pick up these leaves we'll need to stuff the mattress."

  Wat reached up to a nearby tree. "Wouldn't these leaves be softer?"

  Long, bony fingers clamped around Wat's wrist. "No." The old man's face was suddenly inches from his, frightening in its intensity. "You must never take leaves or branches from a tree without its permission."

  "W-why?"

  "Because a tree is a sacred thing. Besides," he said, motioning with his other hand, "there is plenty here on the ground, and that is good enough for me." He let go of Wat and moved away.

  Wat stared at his wrist. The old man's touch had been dry

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  and rough ...and something else. Something he couldn't name. Wat's skin felt as if it were humming where the old man had touched it.

  Wat shook his head and began stuffing the leaves into the sack, keeping his eye on the old man as he did so.

  The old man searched about on the ground, poking the soft earth with his walking stick. Not finding what he was looking for, he moved on to try again. "Aha!" he said at last. He bent over to pick something up. To Wat, it looked remarkably like an old pig snout. "Dinner!" the old man proclaimed.

  Wat wasn't worried. "For the falcons."

  "No! Of course not. Ours. They wouldn't eat it anyway."

  Wat wasn't sure he would either. The old man looked up and saw Wat watching him. "A parsley root. It will be good boiled and mashed," he explained. He turned his attention back to the root, inspecting it closely, and asked, "Do you have any other family? A brother perhaps? Or a father?"

  Wat shook his head. "My mother never spoke of my father. Whenever I asked she grew so saddened and upset that I stopped asking. The only thing I know is that he played her false." A flutter of shame and loss quivered in his chest. His mind scuttled away from the familiar pain of that subject, looking for something else to latch onto. He

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  stopped gathering leaves as a thought occurred to him. "She did say I had a grandfather."

  "Did she, now?" The old man dropped the root into his pocket. He folded bo
th of his hands on the top of his staff and studied Wat. "And, what of him?"

  Wat shrugged. "I don't know. He lived far away, where she said we couldn't go, so I've never met him." Wat smiled. "But my mother had stories she used to tell."

  "And what did your mother tell you of him?"

  "Well..." Wat thought a moment. "Mostly that he was very old and a little mad."

  Wat glanced up at the old man. His great, thick eyebrows were drawn together in a frown. He looked both amused and annoyed. "Come," he said to Wat abruptly. "That should be enough mattress stuffing. We need to go tickle some trout. One parsley root won't fill our bellies worth spit." He turned and headed to where the shadows lengthened between the trees.

  Wat fastened his bag and threw it over his shoulder, then followed. The thicker trees blocked the sun's rays, and gooseflesh popped up along his arms. He forced himself not to shiver.

  "Do you smell it?" the old man whispered. He stopped walking and Wat nearly bumped into him.

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  "Smell what?" Wat sniffed. Something was different. He sniffed again. It smelled richer, cooler, damper. "Water?" he asked.

  "Ha! Excellent!" The old man reached out and gave Wat a thump on the back. "Splendid, splendid!" He turned and continued on his way down the path. Wat followed, feeling somewhat like he had just passed a very important test. Of what, he wasn't certain, but he didn't mind. It was a pleasant feeling.

  Before long the cheerful gurgling of a stream reached Wat's ears. "I can hear it," he ventured, hoping for more approval.

  "Well, of course you can," answered the old man, not at all impressed. "You're half blind, not half deaf!"

  Not quite knowing what to say, Wat kept silent.

  Before long, the stream came into sight. The old man held his finger in front of his lips and motioned for Wat to sit on a nearby rock. He watched as the old man rolled up his sleeves and pulled the hem of his robe up through his legs and tucked it into his belt. Wat marveled at the spindly, white legs, wondering how the old man managed to get around on them. They reminded him of old knotted alder branches.

  The old man walked down to the water's edge and

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  entered the stream without causing a single ripple. He took up a position in front of a large rock that cast a shadow over the water. He tossed his beard over his shoulder and then bent over, hands poised.

  The old man held so still it was as if he had frozen. The shadowed grays of his hair and cloak blended in with the shadows cast by the trees and the silver water as it rushed over the rocks. He was difficult to see, and Wat had to blink to make sure he was still there. After watching for a while, Wat grew bored and stretched out on the rock, flexing his aching foot. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the forest, trying to identify them all. It was a game he played often, a way to keep his hearing sharp. He heard the rustling of the leaves, grass being buffeted by the wind, the gurgling of the stream, the hum of an insect, and a loud whoop!Then a large splash. He jerked to a sitting position.

  The old man sat waist-deep in the stream holding a giant trout in his hands. "Don't just sit there gawking! Come grab this cursed fish so I can get up!" Wat hurried over and took the slippery, wiggling fish from the gnarled hands. The old man pushed himself to his feet and stared down at his dripping robe in disgust. "Must've lost my balance," he muttered. "Too old for this sort of thing, really." He squelched his way to the stream bank and snatched the trout from

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  Wat's hands. "That's my dinner, boy. Now I'll sit in the sun while you go catch your own."

  "Aren't you afraid of taking his lordship's fish?" Wat asked, more than a little nervous about doing just that.

  His question was met with a snort of disgust. "Norman lords! Those brutes don't own that which lives here. These creatures belong to the earth, as they have for hundreds of years before these Normans came. Saying otherwise doesn't make it so."

  Wat thought the Thatcher family might be tempted to disagree, but he was emboldened by the old man's words, so he rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

  It took far longer for Wat to catch his trout. He tried to copy what he had seen the old man do, but there must have been some other secret to it. His sharper hearing was no help at all with the loud bubbling of the brook, and time and again his hands came up empty. When he was done, he was even wetter and grumpier than the old man had been, but at least he had his fish, even if it was small and probably the slowest fish in all of Britain.

  The old man watched Wat emerge from the stream with a spark of approval in his eye. "You don't complain much, do you, boy?" he said at last.

  Wat paused for a minute, aware of the icy water trickling

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  down his back and puddling between his toes. "I've never found it to do much good, is all."

  The old man nodded. "True enough. Come, we've still much work to do before nightfall." He turned and headed back to the cottage.

  As they reentered the shadow of the trees, Wat's damp flesh chilled instantly, and this time he couldn't help but shiver.

  A thought occurred to him. "Do you have a name, or something, I could call you ...?" His words stumbled to a halt as the old man turned and fixed him with an unfathomable gaze. Wat saw all sorts of things he couldn't recognize flicker in the depths of the man's eyes. The old man regarded him for a full minute before he turned and continued walking.

  "Well, now that you ask," he said over his shoulder, "Grandfather would do nicely, I think."

  Wat's mouth dropped open in astonishment.

  "But if you choke overmuch on that," the old man continued, walking on, "you can call me Griswold. And you'd best close your mouth before I mistake you for the trout you just caught and fix you for my supper."

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  ***

  Chapter 8

  Wat couldn't find his tongue. "M-my grandfather?"

  "Yes, your mother's father, to be exact."

  "But ...she never talked about you."

  The old man stopped again and turned around. "She didn't?"

  "Well, only once or twice. And it was as if you were part of a story that had happened long ago."

  Griswold turned and resumed walking. "And so it was."

  Wat could scarcely believe his ears. All these years of being alone, of struggling to get by, just him and his mother, and there'd been someone else all along. Barely a stone's throw away. And amid all their suffering, his mother had rarely talked about him. Did she know that he still lived here--so deep and alone in the forest? Why didn't he ever come to the village? Wat had assumed the man was dead.

  Wat quickened his pace to catch up to his grandfather. "How come I've never seen you before?"

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  "You've never come this far into the forest before," was the reply.

  "But you could have come to the village to visit us," Wat persisted.

  "I never knew you existed until a few hours ago."

  "You didn't?" That felt better somehow. As if, maybe, he would have visited Wat if he'd only known. But how could he not know?

  "I knew your mother was living in the village," Griswold continued. "Where else would she have gone? But she walked out on me, on our life. It was clear she wanted nothing more to do with me or our forest home, so I let it be. The time comes for the young to leave the nest. It was her time and I would not hold her back. Now," Griswold said, looking up at the horizon. "We must hurry so we can make ready for nightfall." He began walking faster.

  Wat's mother had just walked out, with no explanation? Had she come to hate the forest, then? Now that Wat thought upon it, she had never ventured out into it with him, almost as if she had avoided it. But why?

  Wat's questions followed him all the way back to the cottage. And while he knew they would not leave him, he tried to put them aside for the rest of the afternoon as he and

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  Griswold did what they could to make the cottage ready for the night. Besides, Wat was reluctant to do much
thinking in Griswold's presence. The old man had an uncanny ability to sense his thoughts. It was probably safest to do his thinking in private.

  His first chore was to empty the old stuffing out of the mattress and fill it with the new leaves while his grandfather, or Griswold, as Wat had decided to call him, retied the ropes on the bed. When Wat brought the freshly stuffed mattress back inside, he found the old man still struggling, his gnarled fingers fumbling helplessly with the stiff, coarse rope.

  "Here, I'll do that if you like," Wat offered.

  "Eh?" Griswold looked up in some confusion. "Aye. That would be good." He stared at his hands ruefully. "These don't seem to work as well as they once did." Wat knelt beside the bed frame and grabbed the end of a piece of rope while his grandfather went to study the door to see what it would take to get it back on its hinges.

  Just as Wat got the last of the ropes retied, he looked up to find the old man struggling to wrestle the heavy door up off the floor. Wat hurried over and grabbed one end, and together they were able to hoist it to an upright position.

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  Griswold peered at him from around the side of the door. "You're a handy bit to have around, aren't you?"

  Wat shrugged, but felt a warm glow of pleasure spread through him at being found helpful. All his life he'd been shooed away, dismissed as useless. He'd always known he could be helpful, if only someone would give him the chance. But no one ever had. Until now.

  He stepped forward and used his back to hold the heavy door in place while Griswold tried to fix the decayed hinge. "There!" Griswold said at last, and stepped back to survey his handiwork. Wat stepped away from the door and turned to look. It hung crookedly and daylight showed all around.