A Cast of Falcons

by Steve Burrows

  Domenic knew all this, and understood it. But he recognized that it meant that life, or even Damian himself, would never give him another chance to help his older brother. More than once since Damian’s departure, Domenic had told Lindy of his fear: that he would never hear from his brother again. She respected Dom too much, cared for him too much, to pretend that it might be otherwise.

  Unless. She typed in one more URL with flying fingers, tapping impatiently on the desk as she waited for the laborious, interminable load from the server.

  “Are you coming to open this thing or not?” called Domenic impatiently from the other room. “I’d like to know, even if you don’t want to.”

  “Soon,” she called. “Pour us a drink. We can drown our sorrows. Or have a toast. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  On the webmail site, she entered the username: spoon_bellied_sandpiper. She paused. This was the last one, the last of five universal email sites she had used to set up a free email account. The name, she was sure, Damian would try. They had even joked about it. Almost. But the password, that they had never discussed. The cursor blinked its interminable patience from the empty box below, impassive, indifferent. Feel lucky? Take your chances. I’ll give you three tries. Password:

  It could only be one thing. Surely? One shared, identifiable word that bound the brothers together. One word that would capture all that Damian was; his lovely sense of irony, his playful nature, his affection for his brother. She had chosen it so carefully, given it so much thought. But would Damian think to try it? Would he dare?

  She hesitated a second before hitting the enter key after typing in the password: Domino.

  The screen seemed to freeze for an instant, as if somehow aware she was holding her breath and wanting to draw out the moment. She closed her eyes for a second, not daring to look. And then the pixels melted and reformed, and before her was her prize. There were no messages in the Inbox, read or unread; nothing in the Sent folder either. But she knew there would not be. The one item she had been hoping for, praying for, would not be in those folders. It would be in the Drafts. And it was. A single message, two days old, no recipient, no subject.

  My guess? Big envelope.

  It was all she needed. A single thread, a tenuous lifeline that could bind two brothers together across the world, across any divide. A way for Domenic to hold onto his brother. A way he did not even know existed. Yet.

  “This is crazy,” called Domenic. She could hear him tapping the envelope against his chest as he approached the office. She quickly shut down the computer and spun in the chair to face him, just as he entered the room.

  “Trying to heighten the tension?” he asked. He was holding the envelope in one hand and cradling two glasses of wine in the other. He passed a glass to her, but whipped the envelope away from her as she reached for it.

  “You look as if you already know what’s in here,” he said. He was smiling, just a little, as if the very possibility of good news was all he needed for now.

  “I really don’t,” said Lindy. But whatever it was, she knew it could never be as important as the discovery she had just made. The discovery she would share with Domenic when the time was right.

  She set her wine down on the desk beside the closed up laptop. Domenic held his own glass aloft, ready for a toast.

  With a sigh for dramatic effect, Lindy took the envelope from Domenic’s outstretched hand and, drawing a deep breath, she opened it.

  The Gyrfalcon

  The Gyrfalcon (pronounced jer-falcon), Falco rusticolus, is the largest falcon in the world, and arguably nature’s most lethal hunter. In summer, the birds inhabit the circumpolar regions, breeding in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Russia, and Canada. In some areas, Gyrfalcons share habitat with Golden Eagles, and despite being physically dwarfed by their formidable neighbours, Gyrfalcons will readily engage in spectacular aerial battles with eagles over territory. In winter, the search for food will often send Gyrfalcons south, and this time represents the best opportunity for most birdwatchers to catch a glimpse of these outstanding birds.

  Despite the remoteness of its natural habitat, the Gyrfalcon has had a long association with humans, due to its hunting prowess. In twelfth-century China, Gyrfalcons were used for hunting swans, and the Liao emperor imposed an in-kind tax on some of his subjects, payable in Gyrfalcons. It is claimed that the Gyrfalcon tax was one cause of the Jurchen rebellion, which caused the fall of the Liao Dynasty. In Western medieval falconry, the Gyrfalcon was considered the preserve of kings, second only in the raptor hierarchy to the eagles of an emperor.

  Gyrfalcon ecology has not been extensively studied, but research in Canada suggests climate change may be disrupting the predator/prey relationship between the Gyrfalcon and the Willow Ptarmigan. Population peaks for the prey species may be disappearing from the natural cycles. As a top predator in the food web, Gyrfalcons are also one of the species most at risk from the increasing accumulation of contaminants, such as chlorinated hydrocarbons, that are turning up in Arctic ecosystems.

  Though many Gyrfalcons are responsibly and legally bred for the falconry industry, the mythical appeal of this magnificent predator means that there will always be a market for birds illegally taken from the wild, and this trade remains perhaps the greatest threat the wild Gyrfalcon population faces today.

  Copyright © Steve Burrows, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other­wise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Allison Hirst

  Design: Laura Boyle

  Cover Design: Sarah Beaudin

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Burrows, Steve, author

  A cast of falcons / Steve Burrows.

  (A birder murder mystery)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-3214-8 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4597-3215-5 (pdf).— ISBN 978-1-4597-3216-2 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8603.U74745C37 2016 C813‘6 C2015-905453-2

  C2015-905454-0

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

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