by Lena North
“He was three years younger than me, and it was clear from the day he was born that he’d be the one in our generation that had the connection to the bird. I didn’t mind. Didn’t want it. They named him Oskar, although we never called him anything but Oz, and when the bird showed up, we knew why. Osprey. We’d had many kinds of birds in our family, but never an osprey.”
“Are you listening, Bird?” I asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “Would hear better if you open a door, though.”
I got up and opened the doors leading out to the back porch and winked at her. She was sitting perched on the back of a chair just outside.
“Bird will hear better like this,” I explained when the others just looked at me in surprise.
We were approaching summer but it was early in the day, and it was in no way warm outside.
“You’re Oz’ child alright. It’s just like him,” Aunt Bee sighed, and Sven chuckled.
“It’s strange how it’s hereditary,” he said and continued talking about his brother. “Oz liked being outdoors more than anything. He liked climbing and skiing. Hiking, parachuting, mountain biking. Rafting. Anything that involved adrenaline, and he was there.”
He paused and looked straight at me.
“I’m not a coward, Snow. He didn’t know fear. There’s a difference.”
I nodded, understanding that difference all too well.
“He and that bird of his, always off doing crazy shit. Cuts and bruises all over, broken bones, concussions… I thought Ma would have a stroke more than once, and Da did what he could to curb the worst antics, but it rarely worked. He’d shoot them that grin, the one which lit up a whole room, and tell them in a million words how what he was about to do made sense.”
Uncle Sven suddenly took hold of his wife’s hand, and she watched him with her owlish, unblinking stare.
“I’m not good with words,” he muttered.
“You’re doing just fine,” she assured him.
“Ma used to say that I got the important ones, and he got all the rest,” Uncle Sven shared with a small grin that was mostly a sigh.
The grin faded as he turned to me, though.
“Then he met your mother.”
Oh.
“She was amazing in so many ways. Stunningly gorgeous. Funny. She followed Oz into every crazy stunt and challenged him when no one else could, but she had a temper. You remember that part.”
“Yeah, Uncle Sven,” I said quietly. “I remember.”
“Did they fight a lot when you grew up?” Nick asked when we stayed silent.
“All the time.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Mostly it was about stupid things, and it didn’t mean anything. It was as if they liked the arguments. I always knew when it was for real, though. I learned to get out of the way then.”
“For real?” Sven asked.
“There was someone else,” I whispered. “I heard Mama talking about her all the time. Saying that she shouldn’t have married Da because she wasn’t his first love and couldn’t compete, no matter how hard she tried.”
I hated knowing this about my father, and it tainted my memories of him.
“His bird,” Aunt Bee said. “You’ll live with it too,” she added, and when I looked up at her in surprise, she’d turned to Nick.
“I know,” he said calmly. “I’ve known that all along. Not a problem.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you talk to your bird every day?” Olly rumbled.
“Yeah.”
“You tell her secrets like others would share things with their friends?”
“Well, yeah?”
I didn’t understand. Both Olly and his mother had links to birds so he would know this.
“I don’t. Not like that.”
“Wh –”
“Me neither, Snow,” Aunt Bee said. “We’re all friends with our birds, love them in many ways, but it’s more like a working relationship. We talk with them, and they with us, but they rarely get involved in everyday life.”
“Oz’ best friend was his bird. She loved him endlessly, and he loved her the same way. Your mother was jealous, and she couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t be jealous of an animal, so she lashed out about other things instead. Invented other women when there were none. By the time he died, it was so bad he couldn’t smile at a female of any age.”
Oh. I hadn’t understood that. I’d thought Mama was right, and that Da was flirting with other women.
“She didn’t get that this was the way it had to work. Didn’t want to understand that how he connected with the bird saved his life, and hers, more than once.”
“Snow’s bird does that too,” Nick said. “They work together, as a unit. Without the bird, she’d be dead by now.”
“I like good guy,” my bird chimed in, with a definite smirk. “Good, good guy.”
I looked down at my hands and thought about what they had told me. It was my memories they were changing, and I needed a little time to adjust.
“I think I’m a lot like my mother,” I confessed.
The three Harpers immediately started laughing.
“Hell, no,” Uncle Sven said. “You’re so much like Oz it’s ridiculous.”
“But –”
Was I?
“When Jinx called your dude hot, what did you feel?” Olly snorted out when his laughter had died down to a quiet chuckle.
“Pride,” I confessed, too embarrassed to look at Nick. “I also felt smug, and a little condescending because sure, she has Dante and he’s beautiful. But don’t you see? She goes to bed each night with gorgeous, but I go to bed each night with smoking hot.”
“Jesus,” Uncle Sven grunted. “You didn’t have to elaborate.”
“Your Ma would have clawed Jinx’ eyes out for saying something like that about her man. We all knew that, and it was becoming a problem, mostly for me. I worked with him, and she hated that.” Aunt Bee sounded resigned but straightened her back and continued determinedly. “Do you know how the group around Hawker Johns works?”
“Yes?” I said and shook my head at the same time.
I kind of knew that they used their birds for surveillance, but it sounded like she meant something more.
“They all have roles in the group,” Sven said. “Leader, enforcers, intel, sniper, coordinator…”
I nodded as I translated the roles easily into people as he spoke, knowing instinctively who did what. Hawker was without a doubt the leader, Olly and probably Miller would be the enforcers. Aunt Byrd was doing intelligence, Mac was the sniper and Wilder coordinated.
“Kit?” I asked because he was the one I couldn’t peg into a role.
“Back-up,” Olly said.
“For everyone?” I asked.
Wow, I thought. It took some serious talent to be backup for them all.
“Yup,” Olly confirmed. “Something is missing in the group, though. Has been since we lost Oz. Do you know what he was?”
I thought about my wild father, and what he would have done. It came to me almost immediately, but I didn’t want to say it out loud, afraid that saying the words would make it all too real.
“He was the scout,” Nick said calmly.
“Yeah,” Olly sighed. “I remember watching him leaving before everyone, camouflaged, packed with gear and going into the situation at hand to get the lay of the land. Then he came back, reported to Hawker, fought him on his plans when it was needed.
Lay of the land. Wilder had told me that this was what she wanted me to figure out on the Islands. Did she know about my father?
“It’s remarkable, Snow. Climbing, diving, leaping off all kinds of shit. Running up walls and jumping fences. Sneaking into buildings. Most of your life, you’ve trained to be Hawker’s scout, and you never had a clue. We talked about it sometimes, and he said to let you continue on your own. I wanted to bring you b
ack here, but he said no. Said you were better off in Marshes and Prosper.”
I took a firm hold of Nick’s hand, and he squeezed it.
“Breathe, babe,” he murmured. “You do what you want to do, and only that.”
I exhaled and looked out on the bird outside.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Is it something we should do?”
“Don’t know. Maybe,” she said, and added, “Is there a difference compared to what we already do?”
She had a point. Being a part of Hawker’s team as a scout would mean doing the things I already did, although with a purpose. That would be better than doing it to run away from my demons. I would have to tell them why I’d taken so many risks, though. They should know the truth.
“I didn’t train to be a scout,” I told them with a sigh. “I did it because my insides hurt too much. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe and I had to find a way to forget.”
Now we got to the hard part.
“You were in Prosper, celebrating something,” I said to Sven. “You, Hawk, Mill and Da.”
He nodded, and there was suddenly pain in his eyes, but I barged on.
“You were drunk and noisy, so you woke me up when you came home. Mama was yelling at everyone, but you were all laughing and telling her to calm down. She did, and I peeked from upstairs to see what was going on. Da was stumbling over to start up music, and she was laughing at him…”
I swallowed as I remembered how I’d sat there at the top of the stairs, smiling as my inebriated father had swept Mama into his arms and how they had swayed to the music.
“They were dancing. Laughing. They were so happy, and I destroyed everything,” I whispered.
“How’s that?” Olly asked, which earned him a frown from Nick but the calm question gave me the courage to go on.
“Bird heard Hawker and Miller talk about the night as they walked away. Someone had been naked, and there had been lots of women throwing money at Hawker. I didn’t understand, but she said they were giggling like little girls. It sounded silly, and I didn’t think. I told Mama the next morning.”
“Idiots,” Sven muttered when I didn’t say anything else. “We swore we’d not talk about that night. Knew what it’d do to Oz, and Hawk wasn’t happy about it either.”
“They didn’t know my bird was there. If she doesn’t want to be seen, no one will see her.”
“You mother got upset?” Nick asked.
“What do you think?” I asked back, and he winced. “Pulled Da out of bed to scream at him. He tried to calm her down like he usually could, but she was furious. He started shouting back at her, but then he saw me. I was crying, and he calmed down immediately. Pulled me away from it all and said we’d just wait and she’d cool down. I asked if we could go skiing and he said yes.”
“Stupid, crazy fool,” my uncle said. “I told him to come to our place, sleep it off on the couch. Told him he was too hung over to ski. He just laughed it off, said he’d be fine.”
“He wasn’t,” I added. “He was sick when we got up on the mountain. And tired. We were on our way down when he turned to smile at me, and one of his skis got stuck in something. He bounced to the side, and I thought he’d manage to get control of his skis, but he didn’t. He went over the edge and into the ravine.”
Tears had started to run slowly down my cheeks, and Nick used one of his big hands to wipe them off.
“Honey,” he murmured.
“It was my fault,” I said calmly. “I sent the bird for help, and she went to Miller. Da’s bird went too, and Mill worried when they kept screaming and circling his house, so he came. I was down in the ravine then, with Da. He was alive when I got to him. Said he loved me. Said he loved Mama. Then he died.”
“You climbed into the ravine?” Aunt Bee asked. “They found you next to him, and we all thought you fell too.”
“No. I skied some of it, then I climbed.”
“The drop was almost vertical…”
“I had to get to him,” I said quietly. “I had to try to save him.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Olly said, focusing on the one thing that hurt too much to think about.
I took a deep breath, then another one. I wasn’t sure I’d manage to share all the details about those final months of my mother’s life, but I’d try.
“Mama broke down when they told her, you know that.”
“Yes.”
“If I hadn’t told her about that night... If I hadn’t asked him to go skiing. We would still have been happy if I hadn’t because he would still have been alive. I killed him.”
There was a long silence, and then Nick pulled me into his lap. I protested, worried that I’d hurt him but he was stronger than me, and I needed the comfort.
“Did she tell you that, baby?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
I heard my uncle exhale a long litany of ugly words.
“She told me that all the time when we were in Marshes, and it was the last thing she said, Nicky,” I said into his tee. “She killed herself, took a lot of pills, but she wasn’t dead when I found her. She looked at me and said we’d still be happy if it weren’t for me. Then she was gone.”
His arms tightened around me, and Olly left the room without a word. Aunt Bee got up quickly and followed him.
“I stopped talking to my bird when Da died and didn’t speak to her until after Mama died,” I confessed. “I blamed her for telling me about where Da had been that night and refused to answer her no matter how much she called out to me.” I swallowed, remembering how heartbroken the bird had been and how I had closed myself off. “Then she saved me. My foot got stuck in the branches at the bottom of the river, and she pulled them off me. She nearly killed herself, diving again and again, chipping off the wood with her beak and claws. We talked again then.”
“Snow.”
My name was just a soft whisper, but my eyes started burning.
“I should have told you I was sorry. I never blamed you. Not for real.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
“I can’t live without you in the world, Snow. No thank you is needed.”
“Bird…” I said, glad that I had her in the world too but not sure how to tell her.
“I know,” she murmured as if she’d read my thoughts.
“Your Ma didn’t blame you,” Uncle Sven muttered. “She was –”
“She did,” I interrupted, absolutely certain that she had.
“She was wrong,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “She was. It has taken me a lot of time to figure that out, and I wish she had asked for help, but she didn’t. I don’t know what pushed her over the edge, but she would have gotten help immediately, even without asking for it, if she’d just accepted it.”
“We found the bird that day, Snow. I told your Ma,” Aunt Bee said from the door. “Oz’ bird didn’t want to wait. Couldn’t live without him. We found her in the ravine, where he died. She must have gone high into the air and then just let herself fall. We buried her with Oz.”
“Didn’t want to wait for what?” I asked.
“When the human dies, nothing keeps a bird from passing anymore. They live as long as we do, but when we die, they become old fast. They wither away and usually die within a year.”
Oh.
“I thought I wanted to die too,” I murmured.
“I know,” Nick said. “Couldn’t let you.”
“I don’t want to anymore.”
“I know,” he repeated.
We sat in silence for a long while, and I slowly relaxed. The worst part was over, and it hadn’t been so bad to talk about it. Then Nick leaned forward to whisper in my ear.
“Of course you don’t want to die. You go to bed with smoking hot each night, don’t you?”
He was joking, but he was at the same time serious, in
a roundabout way asking me if he was worth living for. What an idiot he was sometimes.
“When I almost drowned on the Islands I figured out that I want to live. For me.” I twisted around carefully and smiled sweetly at him. “You…You’re a huge bonus, though.”
He leaned forward, most likely to kiss me but I saw him wince before he hid it and moved out of his lap immediately.
“You had a hole in your heart,” I said when he reached for me.
“Can you talk to Olly?” Aunt Bee whispered, which stopped Nick from protesting, and we turned to her. “He… All of us who have a link to a bird also has a wildness in us, Snow. You have your way of releasing it, Hawker and Miller have found theirs. For me, for my boy… We’re different.”
I remembered some from when we were children, and Wilder had told me about Olly’s reaction when Mary was kidnapped, how he’d snapped completely, maiming everyone who got in his way. I guessed that it was the difference she was talking about.
“Okay,” I said and looked out on the porch where Olly was standing.
He had his back toward us and both his hands were holding on to the rail.
“Not you,” she said and looked at Nick. “You.”
Nick got up and walked slowly out on the porch to put a hand on Olly’s shoulder.
“Where does the wildness come from?” I asked.
“The legends say that our people could change into dragons,” Uncle Sven replied calmly.
I blinked slowly.
“Come again?”
“The people in the mountains could change into dragons and the people by the waters could change into water creatures. Watermen. That’s how we protected our country,” he said. “Dragons protected the mountains, and the men in the water protected the sea. It is said that during peaceful times, the people by the water forgot how to change. The people here in the mountains, the Dreughan, they didn’t forget, but our abilities changed. Some stayed in their dragon shapes so much they never went back to being human, and over time they evolved into creatures that were more acceptable to mankind. They changed into Birds of Prey, and became eagles, kites, owls… And ospreys.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is that why we have the links to our birds?”
“Yes. We still protect our country with the help of our birds, but the wildness from the dragons still flow through our veins. Less for some, and more for others. Most for the people who are born with a bird.”
