Fire and Feathers_Novelette Prequel to Moss Forest Orchid

by Shari L. Tapscott

  The hippogriff twitches a wing, snuggles deeper into the patch of mountain grass she’s bedded into, and doesn’t move again.

  I wrinkle my nose at Sebastian, sending him a silent apology. He nods me on. I extend the chain in both hands, looping it wide so I may lower it over her head. It’s going to be tricky.

  The night breeze blows, ruffling the hippogriff’s feathers, whispering through the brown grass. Again, the bird stretches. This time she brings her head up from her wing and rests it on her finely-feathered chest.

  It’s now or never.

  I take a deep, silent breath and slide the long chain around her neck. Just as it settles against her feathers, a warm glow illuminates the grass behind the hippogriff. Sebastian and I jump back, ready to run.

  The charm didn’t work. What was I thinking? Of course, it wasn’t powerful enough to stunt a full-grown, greater fire creature.

  Just as we’re stumbling back, a tiny head lifts from the beast’s side. A baby hippogriff blinks at us with owlish eyes as he tilts his head one way and then the other. He glows like a sunset—not yet as brightly as he will when he’s an adult.

  Unless he never grows to adulthood because we’ve robbed him of his mother.

  I groan inwardly. Stories of this sort of thing abound. There are tens of dozens of weak-hearted adventurers who have missed out on their fortunes because their consciences got the best of them.

  The fledgling doesn’t alert his mother. He’s too young to know we are a threat. He simply watches, ruffling his feathers and then allowing them to settle down again.

  I look at Sebastian and shrug, helpless. He nods, silently agreeing, and kneels down. He begins collecting dropped feathers. They would be worth more if they were plucked from the hippogriff herself, but we don’t dare risk waking her now. The last thing I want to confront is a sleep-deprived fire-beast mother.

  With our hands and pockets full of dropped feathers, Sebastian and I creep back the way we came. By some miracle, we reach the tree without waking the hippogriff. Sebastian holds out a handful of feathers. They let off a dull glow in the night. “These alone will fetch us a ridiculous amount of gold.”

  Though I nod, disappointment sits heavy in my stomach.

  “Come on,” Sebastian says, “we’ll see if we can find a path down the back of the cliffs that isn’t so close to the edge.

  I begin to follow but stop mid-step, this time groaning out loud.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “I left the charm on her.” We can’t leave her like that, unable to use her natural defense in the wild.

  When I start back, Sebastian stops me. “You’ll likely wake her this time.”

  He’s right. It’s one thing to lower something onto a creature’s neck. It’s quite another to pull it free.

  But what choice do I have?

  “I know how this works,” I whisper. “She’ll realize I’m doing her a service, and she’ll let us go, unscathed.”

  “Sounds like you’re getting your logic from a nursery tale.”

  I scowl at him and wrap my cloak around my shoulders. Determined, I turn on my heel and head back toward the beast’s nest. When the fledgling sees me coming, he perks his head up again. This time he lets out a peep, hoping, perhaps, that I’m bringing him a midnight snack.

  Alerted to my presence, the mother immediately sits up. Her head snaps toward me, and her eyes lock on mine.

  I’m as good as dead.

  “Hello there,” I murmur, holding my hands up as I step forward. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Lucia…” Sebastian warns from behind me. “You should have taken my token.”

  Too late now.

  “Pretty girl, aren’t you?” I take another step forward.

  Like her baby, the mother hippogriff cocks her head to the side, studying me. She seems curious, probably wondering what a silly human is doing so far from the ground.

  Just when I begin to think that I’m right—that she can sense that I mean her no harm, her eyes lock on the feathers poking from the pocket of my cloak. She lets out a horrifying screech, and I don’t need to be a hippogriff expert to know she’s miffed.

  “Lucia!” Sebastian says again, more urgent this time.

  The beast pulls herself up to her very impressive height, which—no surprise—is much taller than I am. I step back, realizing we’re far too close to the cliff. One strike of her wing, and I’ll go flying over the edge.

  Frantic, I pull the feathers from my pocket and drop them to the ground. “See? We’re fine.” Then to Sebastian, I hiss, “Drop the feathers!”

  He does the same, but the hippogriff only narrows her eyes at the littered ground and then transfers her unblinking gaze back at me. Without turning, she shoves her baby deeper into the grass with her wing and stalks toward me. She moves like a horse, but with a bird-like curtness.

  She attempts to call her flames, but only a dim, harmless glow radiates through her feathers. Startled, the hippogriff examines her back, looking very much like a horse trying to coax a fly from its shoulder blades.

  “I can fix that…” I whisper, daring another step closer.

  The beast turns back, lets out another chilling screech, and charges me. Knowing its futile, I pull my pathetic dagger from its sheath. I roll out of the way just before she reaches me. Before I can pull myself up to my feet, Sebastian launches himself onto the hippogriff’s back.

  “Sebastian!” I scream as the creature lifts herself into the air, trying to knock my friend free.

  They circle, gaining elevation quickly, and I gape at them, utterly helpless on the ledge of the cliff. The fledgling cries out in alarm, screeching as his mother disappears from view. He toddles too close to the edge, unfamiliar with his horse-like legs. Just before he falls to his death, I snatch him back.

  In thanks, the miserable beast nips my arm and begins to flap his wings like a mad thing. I drop him back to the nest only moments before he lights up like a torch.

  The grass lights with him.

  I panic, wondering how far the fire will stretch. The summer-dry weeds catch quickly, and flames travel along the flat cliff top. I stumble to a safe area, a spot where nothing sprouts but craggy rock. Even here, the heat of the fire licks at my legs.

  From the sky, the hippogriff lights as well. Safe for the moment, I gape up at her and find Sebastian still on her back, engulfed in flames.

  “Sebastian!” I scream, beyond panicked.

  But he is fine, safe and seemingly unharmed. He must have wrestled the charm from the beast’s neck.

  The baby hippogriff, likely terrified by the roaring fire he’s started, cries out to his mother. Instantly, she dives toward the cliff, stopping abruptly enough Sebastian rolls right over her head, somersaulting into the flames.

  I scream out his name again, frantic. What if the charm isn’t enough? What if its power is draining?

  Sebastian lies motionless for a moment but finally pushes himself to his feet. He turns my way and finds me standing on my rock oasis in the flames. He runs toward me, through the fire.

  As soon as he’s on the rock, he clasps me close and yanks the chain from his neck. He winds it around our hands, locking us together, and looks at me, almost calm. “Ready to get off this cliff?”

  I nod, dumbfounded, more awed by Sebastian than the beautiful destruction around us.

  He yanks me toward the very path we came up. In our haste, I barely notice the ledge, barely notice when the trail grows narrow.

  Above us, the hippogriff lets out a shrill warning cry, and the night goes silent.

  We stop to rest on the ledge where we spotted the beast the night before. Above us, on the next ridge, the fire continues to burn in patches, but with the limited fuel, it will choke out soon.

  Out of breath and filthy, I gulp for air. My lungs ache from breathing in smoke, and I’m exhausted from two full nights spent with no sleep.

  Sebastian collapses onto the rock next to me. Our h
ands are still linked by the chain, and he slowly unwinds it. “We can’t linger. She might come looking for us.”

  Though I’m weary, I nod.

  We travel the rest of the night and just reach the forest floor when the sun rises over the horizon.

  Sebastian is a mess. His clothes are singed, his hair sticks up here and there, and his face is smudged with soot. If he didn’t look so weary and disheartened, he would easily be at his most attractive.

  We rest by the trunk of a thick tree. He holds the chain in his hands, letting it fall between his fingers and then pulling it up again.

  “It’s a shame that after all of that”—he finally meets my eyes—“we have nothing to show for the entire trip.”

  I shift against the tree until my shoulder rests comfortably against his arm. Smiling wide as I take in his disheveled appearance, I say, “I don’t know about that.”

  He gives me a skeptical look.

  I turn toward him, so we’re standing face to face. Slowly, watching him carefully, I step close and slide my hand over his shoulder, brushing my fingers on the back of his neck, just below his hairline.

  His eyebrows jump, and he swallows, looking a touch disconcerted. “Lucia—”

  Before he can continue, I dangle a perfect, white flight feather in front of his nose. Even in the dim light of the forest floor, it glows gold. “I told you I’m good.”

  Sebastian’s eyes go wide, and I can’t hold back my grin.

  “How?” He takes the feather in his hands, holding it like it's precious, and turns his gaze back on me. “Lucia!”

  Laughing, I step away from him, reclaiming the feather, and twirl it in my fingers. “It was stuck in the neck of your doublet.”

  Yanking my cloak, he pulls me into a tight embrace. My heart nearly seizes. Laughing, he lifts his head and begins to say something, but he trails off when he realizes his lips are only a breath away from mine.

  “Lucia,” he says quietly.

  Just when I think he might kiss me—just when I’m trying to decide if I’ll let him, he plucks the feather from my hand. “I don’t trust you with this.”

  With a hint of a smirk on his face, he brushes past me, feather in hand, heading back the way we came. I blink after him, wondering if I imagined the whole thing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Let's Be Adventurers

  Since we’re nearly broke, and I would like to eat sometime in the next week, we agree to sell the feather to a fine goods shoppe in Teirn instead of taking it to Sebastian’s grandfather. It’s too bad. I would have liked to have seen the sour look on the old man’s face when he was forced to admit I did something worthwhile. He hasn’t been kind about my scavenging ways.

  Teirn’s a pretty city, one of the prettiest in all the provinces of Kalae. A lot of the elderly nobles reside here, some only during the winter months when the southern city is most pleasant, but others year-round.

  Along with the older crowd, people our age mill about, browsing shoppes, talking, coming in and out of fancy restaurants that smell like paradise. The young men wear clothing very much like Sebastian’s—long dark jackets in black or gray or brown and doublets in equally subtle colors. The girls are in velvets, silks, and swaths and swaths of a gossamer fabric I have no name for. In the heat of the day, most of them wear their shoulders and necks bare. Here in the southern provinces, even the nobles spend their afternoons in the constant sunshine. The fairest girls are golden.

  I feel shabby and poor. I know I’m not bad to look at, on a good day I’d consider myself pretty…but not after traipsing through Eromoore’s mucky forest for days. Sebastian glances at me and frowns, and I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.

  One of the girls spots Sebastian as we continue down the flowerbed-lined walkway that’s off the street, out of the way of the carriages and farmer carts that roll through the city. She nudges her friend, and the two giggle to themselves. The first girl whispers something to one of the young men she’s with. His eyes land on us, and he nods.

  My stomach knots, and I attempt to look at anything but them.

  The man walks toward us, his gait easy and loose. With a smile that’s half apologetic, he stops in front of Sebastian. “Are you new to Teirn?”

  Sebastian mimics the young man’s manner. Lightly, he says, “We are, yes.”

  “I’m Gerard, of the family Render.” He says it like it should mean something to us, but I have no idea who he is.

  “I am Sebastian Thane, and this is Lucia.”

  “Of the Reginae Thanes?”

  “That’s right.”

  The man doesn’t even spare me a glance to acknowledge my existence. “Please excuse the intrusion, but my sister is hoping you’ll join us. We’re about to go to the sea. The first of the white whales are back for the season, and we’re going to charter a ship to see if we can spot one.”

  “I’m afraid we are on an errand, but thank you for the offer. Perhaps another time.”

  Undeterred, Gerard grins and nods toward the group. Several eager pairs of feminine eyes stare back. Finally, he glances at me before looking at Sebastian. “Send your maid on your errand and come with us. Even if you don’t take a liking to my sister, I promise the company is excellent.”

  I suck in a tiny gasp, one Gerard would never notice, especially from someone so beneath him. His words sting, though they shouldn’t. I know I’m not an equal, but I’ve never felt this insignificant.

  Sebastian stiffens, and he draws himself up taller. “Lucia is not a maid or any kind of servant.”

  Gerard’s eyes flicker to me again, really looking for the first time. He frowns, and then his smile returns anew, this one more a smirk. “You may come as well. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? See the whales? Make some new…friends?”

  His tone is both patronizing and boorish.

  “Ech.” Disgusted, I shove past him, purposely knocking into him with my shoulder. I no longer feel inferior. In fact, I no longer care at all.

  After saying a curt, but passingly cordial “good day, sir” to the young man, Sebastian’s at my side, grinning as we pass the rest of the group. They stare at him, stunned. He nods a greeting, but neither of us slows.

  Once we are past, he laughs. “You don’t know who you just shoved, do you?”

  “No. And I cannot say I care, either.”

  “Henrietta Render is the ruling head of Montaview, and Gerard carries her husband’s name.”

  Blood rushes from my face, and I grow cold. The royal family resides in Tiern, the capital city of Kalae, in the heart of the province Tanrith. Each of the nine provinces has a ruling duke, all of who are subject to the king’s authority, but Montaview is the only province currently ruled by a duchess—the king’s sister, Henrietta. Who apparently is in some way related to Gerard.

  The man I just snubbed.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  Sebastian shakes his head, still amused. “It won’t affect me. It’s a large family. I doubt he’s any closer to the crown than I am.”

  My stomach squirms. It’s not that I don’t know Sebastian’s noble—how could I forget after all?—but I try not to think of it. Sebastian’s grandfather is uncle to our province’s ruling duke. He goes to court for celebrations; he’s on the king’s council. He’s important, and therefore Sebastian is important.

  And I…am not.

  Suddenly, I stop in the walkway, upsetting a pair of elderly women who cluck at me as they walk by. “Why are you here? You should be at home, playing chess or…watching whales or some such.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You know how grandfather feels about idleness. Do you really think he’d let me play chess on a summer afternoon, in the middle of the week, no less?”

  Sebastian’s worked in his grandfather’s shoppe from the time he was little. He goes with the crotchety old lord to inspect their farms, horses, mines, and the plethora of other investments his family owns.

  But that doesn’t explain what he’s
doing with me.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Sebastian nods, suddenly serious. He gestures me toward a bench in the shade. Next to it, a charmed fountain bubbles brightly, its water slowly shifting from blue to green to purple and then back again. Fish swim at the bottom, unconcerned that their home changes color every few minutes.

  “Why do you scavenge dragon’s lairs?” he asks once we sit.

  I shake my head, giving him a weird look. “You know why.”

  “Humor me.”

  Crossing my arms, I lean back. “I don’t want to raise chickens all my life.” I bite my lip, wondering if I should admit the rest. I’ve never said it out loud. After a deep breath, I continue, “And Mother started talking about marriage. She said I was old enough—that I should have married when I turned seventeen. She began playing matchmaker, and I knew I had to get out before she promised me off to some farmer. I don’t want to spent the rest of my life…trapped with chickens or pigs or cabbage.”

  Sebastian frowns. “You never told me.”

  I shrug, unable to meet his eyes.

  “Who were her prospects?”

  “Laith, Red, Connor.”

  “I’m not even on the list?” Sebastian asks, mock offended. “The pig farmer? But not me?”

  Though he laughs, he looks put out. I peer at him, curious why that is. “Of course, you weren’t. Because you are you. And I am me.”

  “Yes, you are.” He says the words quietly, his green eyes soft in the shaded light.

  I clear my throat when an emotion I have no name for sinks its claws into my heart, making me lightheaded and nervous. “We have wandered far from my question. You were making a point—get on with it.”

  “Like you, I want to make something of myself, do something useful—just as Grandfather has done. Just as my father did.”

  Before he died all those years ago.

  “What you said to me in the shoppe is true,” he continues. “Scouts and adventurers bring in all kinds of wondrous things, and they have stories. They’ve lived. I’ve held artifacts so valuable, you can’t even imagine. But I’ve never found them myself, never left the comfort of Grandfather’s estate to look.”