:He seems like a reasonable sort,: Cefylla noted. :I suspect he’ll be reasonable in the rent he charges.:
Syrriah bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing. :I agree. But he’s not above seeing them sweat a little, after all they’ve put him through.:
Cefylla snorted. :Get thee to the apothecary, my dove,: she said. :You’ve done enough sweating for the lot of them.:
Sparrow’s Gift
Michele Lang
Loneliness stalked behind Sparrow like a shadow. At the moment, though, she was too tired to run away from loneliness or anything else. Loneliness could pounce and grab her any time, but truly, she wasn’t really alone. She’d never be alone again.
Sparrow stretched along a low divan in her little ground-level ekele, a sleeping Tis nestled against her breast. The lumpy old couch, a precious relic hauled to the Vale, reminded her of her home village of Longfall. Dust motes hovered in the air like golden sparks, catching the morning light, and she squinted to watch them dance.
The spring morning was silent, the couch was green-faded-to-gray and saggy, and yet this little hut in the heart of the k’Valdemar Vale was the most comfortable place she’d ever rested. Sparrow inhaled the intoxicating scent of baby neck, sensed his heart beating right above hers, and despite all her worries, she knew this moment, this place, as home.
Tis was four weeks old and still nowhere near sleeping through the night. His arrival had been very hard, in part because his father, Cloud Brother, had been called away on urgent Herald business just before Tis had been born. In his absence, Sparrow had been adopted by an unusually bossy hertasi named Rork, who had tended to the linens, the maternal feeding and watering. A Healer from Keisha’s temple had seen to the delivery itself.
But otherwise, it was Sparrow and Tis, alone, with Rork to attend to their material needs. And that was going to have to work for the foreseeable future.
A low rustle rose from outside the ekele, a susurration of wings beating against the thick foliage surrounding the clearing, where the hut stood a bit apart from its neighbors. The sound froze the blood in Sparrow’s veins. The last time she’d heard such an avian racket, it was from a murder of crows, come to warn her of an elemental danger.
And now they had come again.
Sparrow took one last deep inhale, fortifying herself with Tis’s scent. She slid off the couch sideways, still clutching her sleeping baby to her chest. In the last few weeks, Sparrow had perfected the contortions of a new parent desperate to keep her little one asleep.
Step one: slide to the floor, still horizontal, but able to mobilize the hard ground instead of the mushy sofa. Step two: slowly, agonizingly slowly, push up against the upholstered side of the couch to a sitting position, still cradling the sleeping baby to her heart. Breathe, check for continued sleep.
Then the challenge move. Step three: plant feet on the ground and use the (questionable) power of your legs alone to lift both you and baby to stand. Sparrow wobbled on step three, and her thighs screamed silently in protest, but she stuck the landing, and Tis slumbered on. Victory.
Gently, very gently, Sparrow shifted her arms to lift Tis higher onto her shoulder. Then she slid along the polished wood floor in her stockinged feet, in a water-bug glide she had learned kept him sleeping. Sleeping baby was the highest goal.
Well, not the highest. The most important goal, over her own life, was to keep Tis safe. The little paradise of her ekele had made his survival a much easier prospect. At least until now.
Now, surrounded by crows still unseen outside, Sparrow felt keenly the strain of her isolation. She remembered the last visitation of crows, a few years before, following her from her northern home village of Longfall all the way to the Vale, portending evil and danger.
The crows themselves were kind. But the news they had brought to Sparrow last time had brought her to her knees.
This time, she didn’t know if she had the strength to receive their message—a new mother caring for her baby alone, without her heartmate, the Herald Cloud Brother. And now that she was a mother, she felt the absence of her own parents most keenly.
Her mother had died of mountain fever years ago, and her father, Hari . . . her funny, kind, loving father . . . had died only a few months ago. His death was a gentle one, tended by Healers more skilled and gifted than Sparrow, but she grieved his passing all the same.
The last time she had seen him, Hari had reached for her swelling belly and rested his gnarled, arthritic farmer’s fingers against her skin. “Little mother,” he whispered, his old nickname for her. “Take care of you, as well as the one within.”
It was easy then to nod and agree, if only to ease Hari’s passing. But now, his words and her agreement took on the aspect of a sacred oath, one that she had difficulty keeping.
Sparrow slid past her encroaching thoughts and reached the securely fastened door, leading directly outside to the lush, blooming Vale. She leaned off-center, then stretched out her left arm to unlatch the latch and pull the door open. Her heart pounded so hard she worried it would wake Tis, the galloping fear of it.
The door creaked, and Sparrow held her breath and glanced down at him. Tis stirred in her arms, his little face scrunched up, ready to cry. Then he burped, sighed, and settled back to sleep.
Sparrow started breathing again. Better for him to sleep through this next part, if she could manage it. She drew the door open wider, and her fear jolted into shock, then wonder.
The thick vines and shifting emerald canopy of trees reaching far above her head were dotted with crows, thick as currants in her mother’s long-ago showbread. They waited for her to appear, swinging easily in the branches even as the greenery swayed under the weight of all of their graceful, coal-black bodies.
The spring sky shone blue, pure azure, behind them, and Sparrow took a deep breath and focused on the clear sky above them all, vaulting high above whatever trouble had brought the crows to her door once again.
“Hello again,” she whispered across the threshold. Sparrow did not have the Gift of Mindspeech, or sending, or the other graces of Hawkbrothers or Heralds. But she did have manners, and she knew better than to fear the messengers instead of their message.
How she wished that her heartmate Cloud Brother were here. She missed his silent strength, his gentleness. And in this moment, she also desperately missed his ability to pass into the clouds, to commune with spirits of the air. With Cloud Brother by her side, she would have been able to speak with the crows, and fly with them as well.
But she and her sweet little Tis were creatures of the earth today. And the creatures of air had come to her, not Cloud Brother. Somehow she would have to receive their message another way.
Hesitantly, she stepped out onto the pathway of black flagstones outside her ekele, her stockinged feet soaking up the morning warmth of the dark stones. She looked up at the horde, holding her new baby, and couldn’t help smiling.
They were as magical as dyheli, as Karsite firecats, as Companions. But they were as common, as ordinary, as Sparrow herself. An ordinary kind of magic—her kind. Her brother and sister crows. Come to see the baby and bring her all the news.
One by one, they hopped down the length of woody vines and branches, fluttered down on black-dusted wings, until they clustered around her, at least fifty crows, bright-eyed and shiny black. They cawed and murmured to each other, but quietly, as if they didn’t want to wake the baby either.
The largest crow, the size of a red hawk, alighted on the domed roof of her ekele, and Sparrow turned back to face him, only a few paces away from where she stood. Her white shift caught the wind and fluttered like a sail.
He tilted his fine dark head, opened his graphite-black beak in a bird-smile. Sparrow hugged Tis to her a little tighter . . . the crow was magnificent, but still his untamed boldness unnerved her.
Sparrow heard a soft rustlin
g behind her, but she didn’t dare take her attention away from the crow. With a mother’s honed intuition, she sensed the creature approaching meant none of them any harm, and instead the rustle carried within it a quality of unhurried but definite purpose.
:Are these winged creatures irritating you, my dear?:
Sparrow’s eyes watered with relief. Rork. He possessed an uncanny ability to appear whenever her hands got too full . . . she would never have made it this far without his help.
“Not at all, my friend,” Sparrow said. “I know these visitors have come bearing news, but I can’t understand them. By any chance, could you?”
Rork laughed, a low scratchy burble of amusement, and Sparrow’s heart leaped in hope. Sparrow had no Mindspeech, but Rork certainly did. Perhaps at least he could receive the message the birds had carried to Sparrow from outside the Vale.
Rork stepped forward into Sparrow’s line of vision. Tall for a hertasi, iridescent and plump, he was the closest to a grandparent little Tis had. She had only known him for a short time, but Sparrow had already surrendered her worries to him and his no-nonsense, bossy ways.
It had been a long time since Sparrow had had an elder around to boss and spoil her. She embraced Rork’s calm mastery of all domestic arts, despite her own cooking and cleaning prowess. And now, she hoped he could decipher the urgent visitation of the crows.
Rork opened his beaky mouth, his dewlap flapping in the breeze, his jewel-like scales catching the morning sunshine. All Sparrow could hear was a low snort through his nostrils, but despite her lack of Gift, she sensed the hertasi and the crow were engaged in a deep and intense conversation.
Finally, after a long, wordless interval, Rork closed his mouth and swallowed hard enough for Sparrow to see. His eyelids blinked up twice, from under his bright amber eyes.
:We are all in danger,: Rork said, matter-of-fact and no-nonsense, as usual.
But his voice shook in her mind.
Sparrow startled, looking up at the crow on her roof. He tilted his head and stared deeply into her with one bright, shining eye. At the edges of her thought, Sparrow felt an insistent tug, an urgent calling of need.
But she could not translate that urgency into words. She could not answer that call.
“Thank you,” Sparrow said. She could not receive the crows’ message, but she appreciated their effort and care all the same. Sparrow had learned better than to regret her lack of Gift, because all gifts came attached to sacrificial burdens. But she hated to be rude, and not being able to speak her friends’ language seemed an inadvertent kind of thoughtlessness. She couldn’t help her inability to speak, and she knew the crows understood her lack.
The crow reached along his powerful back, and plucked out a long tailfeather. He hopped to the very edge of the sloping domed roof, and gingerly Sparrow reached up a hand, her other arm still cradling the sleeping Tis.
The crow released the feather, and it danced haphazardly through the air, tossed about by the fair breeze. Despite its meandering path to earth, Sparrow managed to catch the feather in her trembling fingers.
It was still warm from the crow’s body. She waved it at him, then tucked it behind her ear. “We will try to stay safe,” she said, though she was pretty sure the crows could not understand her, any better than Sparrow could receive their message. “Thanks again for the warning.”
The crow hopped higher onto the roof of the ekele, then beat the air with his powerful wings and ascended into the sky. In a whirling cacophony of calls and black wings, the host of crows rose in a swirling column and coalesced into an inky, winged cloud, one that tightened and flew above the canopy of flowering trees surrounding Sparrow’s little corner of the Vale.
With a final echoing call, they flew away. And with their passing, all the nervous tension passed out of Sparrow’s body, as if her vitality chased after them on their unknown trajectory.
She staggered back to lean against the doorframe of the ekele, and Tis stirred in her arms. Sparrow watched them fly away, and part of her wished she could fly with them, part of a great, unstoppable host.
But most of her was grateful to live on the ground, with her little, homely comforts surrounding her. Raising a newborn was hard work, and impossible from a lofty height.
Now that the crows had gone, the day seemed almost ordinary once again. “What was that?” she asked Rork. “How are we in danger?”
But Rork wasn’t able to tell her anything more substantial. His Mindspeech was powerful and clear, but the message from the crows was meant for Sparrow alone, and without Cloud Brother by her side, she could not properly decipher it.
:I could not get the name of the danger, the details. They warned me of the Heartstone. The Heartstone, imagine it! From all I can tell, the Vale is protected, all is well. But you and the baby . . . well. Something big is brewing, like a storm. The crows wanted you to know the danger is serious and is real. Be alert and on your guard.:
A cold shock of recognition shot down Sparrow’s spine. Before Cloud Brother and his Companion, Abilard, had departed for Herald business in Haven, he had hinted at trouble here at home, too, and in similar words.
Sparrow had known better than to ask why they had been called away. But Cloud Brother had warned her nevertheless. “The council at Haven is being convened because of a waver in the Heartstone here,” he told her. “In a number of the northern Vales Heralds have sensed similar disturbances.”
“You mean . . .” Sparrow couldn’t bear to complete her thought.
Cloud Brother reassuringly squeezed her fingers, to mitigate the sting of his words. “We suspect a coordinated attack. I have spoken to the elders in charge of attending to the Heartstone here in K’Valdemar, to protect it. All the people who need to know, already know. But until I come back, Sparrow . . . please keep this to yourself. No need to alarm all the people in the Vale.”
They spoke no more of it, and once Tis had arrived, her heartmate’s words had faded into the background. But now, Cloud Brother’s words returned with the crows’ warning, to surround the little haven she had created.
Tis squirmed in her arms, coughed and snurfled. He was going to cry in another few moments, she could tell. Either her fear had traveled down the length of her arms and passed to him through their tension, or he simply was hungry. Or cranky. Or in need of something she would need to figure out now.
It didn’t matter, she realized, half-happy, half-weepy. Danger, no danger, Mage-level danger or a dirty diaper. Sparrow was already on guard. The crows were kind, but nothing had changed for her, not really. Mothers were always on alert.
So Sparrow remained ready.
• • •
The danger came at midnight, in a form Sparrow could never have anticipated.
Mothers of newborns know the phases of the night intimately. There is dusk, the time of great weepiness and crankiness. There is early night, when the best sleep can happen, one hour of early sleep worth two hours of late.
And then the midnight hour. When newborns get hungry, and lonely, and needy. Tis woke every midnight, nursed, got changed into a fresh new nappy, and went back to sleep like a little star fading into the dawn.
And then Sparrow held him, as she did each night, and watched him sleep, watched the long shadows his lashes sent across his cheek. She held him until her arms ached, and she listened to his soft breathing, and the night was soft and full of stars and magic.
Sparrow paid for the midnight hour at 3 a.m., when Tis got up next, but she didn’t care. Midnight was her time, and she wrapped it around her shoulders like a soft velvet mantle.
The Vale was all but silent, with only the faint songs of lute frogs and nocturnal birds of paradise echoing through the trees. The crow’s feather stayed tucked behind Sparrow’s ear, nestled in her tangled hair, a talisman against evil.
She missed Cloud Brother the most in the midnight
silence; she missed the warmth of his sleeping body, the loving shelter of his embracing arms. But in a curious way, she also felt the closest to her missing heartmate in the silence of midnight. She imagined him awake in Haven, missing her too, and their mutual yearning tied them close together.
So when Cloud Brother’s spirit appeared at the threshold of the ekele, Sparrow was not all that surprised. His sending was sharp and true to life, his silver hair glowing in the moonlight, his eyes sealed shut as always, his long, slender legs encased in brilliantly embroidered trews.
Oh, he was beautiful, her heartmate. And he had come to her not in dreams but in her most vulnerable and openhearted moment, her midnight.
He opened his arms to her, and she wanted more than anything to leap into his embrace. But Tis slept on, and she knew that no matter how real his apparition appeared, Cloud Brother and his Companion Abilard remained bodily in Haven. On emergency business, business that compelled his attention both day and night.
A low prickle rose along the small of Sparrow’s back and up between her shoulder blades. If Cloud Brother came to her now . . . in this way, more vividly than ever before . . . something was truly wrong.
Tending to the sick as a girl, and immersed in motherhood now, Sparrow had learned the value of patience as a virtue. Cloud Brother’s sending was a great and frightening mystery, but the secret of it would be revealed in its own time. All Sparrow had to do was wait and not make the mistake of jumping to conclusions.
He held his arms out to her. “You are so beautiful in the moonlight, Sparrow . . .”
A lump caught in Sparrow’s throat. Cloud Brother’s words were a caress.
But they were false words.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice surprisingly steady. “Because I know for a fact you are not my heartmate.”
Blinded as a child, Cloud Brother’s only vision was the true sight of the sky plane, and Cloud Brother had never looked at her on earth in their lives together as heartmates, had never remarked casually upon her beauty like this.
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