Wilder (Birds of a Feather Book 1)

by Lena North

  I decided to call Mary as soon as I got to Norton and ask her if she had any news about the paper I asked her to test. If the paper was new, then the story was just incredibly cleverly written, and that I found a dead man who resembled what Vildman would have looked like was just a fluke. If the paper was a thousand years old, then… I didn’t know what I’d do then.

  When I drove into Norton I had talked myself into mostly laughing about my crazy ideas, and as Johns appeared in the distance, I smiled, remembering how I’d met Mac there the first time.

  “What the hell?” I whispered slowly because I’d also remembered Mac's voice.

  The voice that made people agree with him. The same voice that the man called Drake had in the stories.

  There were just too many coincidences to ignore so with my pulse beating loudly I hit the brakes hard and turned into the parking lot in front of Johns. I knew with a certainty that shook me to the core that there was a man who could tell me the truth. Someone who should have told me a long time ago.

  Hawker.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hummingbirds

  “Is Hawker here?” I growled as I slammed the door open.

  I was met with a stunned silence.

  “Hawker?” I repeated.

  “Hey, Wilder. Didn’t know you were coming,” Uncle Hare said from his place behind the bar.

  “Find my darn dad,” I snapped.

  His eyes flicked to the side and then he looked at me again.

  “Okay, Wilder, we’ll get him,” he said slowly, clearly trying to placate me.

  I did not feel in the least like being placated.

  “Wilder,” a voice murmured behind my back, and I didn’t have to turn around to know that it was Mac.

  “Where is Hawker,” I insisted.

  “On his way,” Mac said. “Sit down while you wait?” he asked, and I realized that he was also trying to placate me.

  I thought it over for a while and then I nodded once.

  “Whiskey,” I snapped at my uncle, but I doubted I’d get it since my request made him burst out in loud laughter.

  I glared at him, which seemed to make him laugh even harder so I turned and surveyed the tables. The man I took down on my last visit sat in one of the booths and I stomped over to sit in front of him. He blanched.

  “I’m sorry for how I acted the last time we met, Wilder,” he said.

  He was slurring, and I wondered what was wrong with the people in this town. It was a small community, so why didn’t they get the man some help?

  “How sorry, Doug?” I asked.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Are you sorry enough to pay the price for your stupid behavior?” I snapped.

  “Anything you say,” he murmured.

  Ha. I had him cornered with that comment.

  “No alcohol for a month,” I said sternly.

  Chuckles came from all around the room but when I turned to look around, their laughter died down. Wow, I thought. I must look really scary. Or maybe they knew that my father was scarier than any look I could ever give them. Then I turned my glare to the man in front of me.

  “Well?” I asked, sourly.

  He sighed and his shoulders sank a little, but he held my gaze.

  “Okay, yes,” he muttered and pushed his half-finished beer away.

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” someone suddenly called out from behind me, and I turned around fast enough to see that it was a big man with a hint of a beer gut that had spoken.

  “Doug tells me he won’t drink, then he won’t drink,” I stated clearly, and turned back to face Doug again. He had straightened, and he looked unhappy but also determined.

  “You’ll make it,” I said, and since I’d calmed down slightly, my voice was softer. “If it gets too hard, come down to Double H, and we’ll let you work it off on the cattle.”

  He sighed again, and then he nodded. Suddenly, his lips twitched with a small smile.

  “Hawker’s gonna have the time of his life with you, Wilder,” he murmured.

  “Absolutely,” I agreed, and he chuckled then.

  Mac sat down next to me and pushed a glass of tea in front of me. I stared at him.

  “I ask for whiskey, and you bring me tea?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said calmly. “You don’t need whiskey, you need tea.”

  “What I need is to find Hawker,” I said.

  “He’s on his way,” Mac replied. “Now drink your goddamn tea and calm the hell down.”

  I stared at him. Did he just say that?

  “Yeah, Wilder, I did just say that,” he said, reading my thoughts.

  He spoke with a calm patience that sounded infuriatingly patronizing to me.

  “You –”

  “Don’t,” he interrupted warningly.

  “You –”

  “Wilder.”

  I opened my mouth to yell at him, but before I got a word out, he grabbed my hand and held it firmly. His thumb caressed my palm as he leaned in, effectively blocking out everyone else.

  “Wilder,” he said again, so silently that he mostly breathed out my name.

  He didn’t use his compelling voice, I would have recognized the warm feeling deep inside me, but the way he looked at me still made my insides settle. I exhaled and realized that he was right. I needed to calm down. I wouldn’t find out what I wanted from my father if I made it into a yelling contest in front of everyone at Johns.

  “Falk,” I murmured.

  His face gentled and he said quietly, “It’ll be okay, baby. Calm down, talk to Hawker, yeah?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I would have preferred whiskey, though,” I added.

  “We’ll have that another time,” he promised and raised his hand to sweep the back of it across my cheek.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” a loud and angry voice barked out next to our table.

  Hawker had apparently arrived, and not in a happy mood.

  “Hey, Hawker,” I said.

  “Don’t you hey me, Wilder,” he growled, and then he went on, “Mac, outside, now.”

  I straightened and was about to protest when Mac squeezed my hand, let it go and got to his feet. He stood right in front of Hawker, and I couldn’t see his face, but my father’s looked like a thundercloud.

  “We both have things to say, Hawker, but not now. You need to talk to Wilder,” he said coolly.

  “Mac –” Hawker started.

  To my surprise, and likely everyone else’s, Doug got to his feet and threw himself right into the discussion.

  “Hawker, listen to the boy. He –”

  Hawker didn’t even look at him. He stretched a hand out to the side and simply pushed Doug out of the way. I saw the hurt look on Doug’s face and knew that this wasn’t the first time he had been pushed away and ignored.

  “Hawker,” I said angrily.

  He ignored me, and so did Mac. They had engaged in a glaring contest of epic proportions, neither backing down even a little. I didn’t know who would win in a fight between them and I also didn’t want to know so I got to my feet and pushed in between them, pressing my back against Mac’s chest. He immediately moved an arm around my waist and tried without success to move me to the side.

  “You both need to stop this,” I said. “Doug’s right, Hawker. You should listen to Mac.”

  No one moved.

  “Dad,” I said softly, and that single word cut through the ugly mood.

  Slowly, Hawker tilted his head down to look at me. I thought that his face softened a little, so I got up on my toes and leaned in.

  “Are there still dragons?” I breathed into his ear, so softly that only he would hear.

  He had leaned down a bit, but at my question, he straightened again, so quickly I took a step back. Mac caught me around the waist again and pulled me into his chest to steady me.

  Hawker looked down at the arm, but he didn’t s
eem angry anymore.

  “Shit, Wilder,” he rumbled. “You give me more gray hair with each day, you know that, right?”

  I looked at him, standing there in torn jeans and a super cool, faded black tee with a blood red print announcing to the world that he was wild, as if anyone would doubt that. There wasn’t a single gray hair in his pitch black hair that I could see. He did not look old enough to be my father, and I did the math quickly. My mother was thirty-eight when she passed away. Hawker looked younger than that, but it would have made him around fifteen when I was born. That didn’t sound right.

  “How old are you?” I asked, and he burst out laughing.

  “Really, Wilder?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “How’s your foot?” he asked.

  “Wh –”

  “We’ll take a little walk,” he announced, cutting me off.

  I chuckled, because the Hawker I was getting to know was back, and he was annoying, but it was also familiar.

  “I’m on my bike, meet you at your house,” he announced.

  Then he simply sauntered out of the bar.

  “Okay,” I said to the door as it slammed shut behind him.

  “Babe,” Mac murmured in my ear, and he sounded amused.

  “You’re laughing?” I asked, not turning around because he still had an arm around me and I didn’t want him to let go.

  “Of course I am,” he chuckled. “Hawker can be a bit of a dick sometimes. I enjoy watching you taking him down a peg or two, that’s all.”

  I turned then, stepping out of his arms, to look at his grinning face. Then I surveyed the bar, and the men were all grinning just as widely. Doug pressed his lips together, though, trying to hold laughter back, but not being very successful in his endeavor.

  “Jeez,” I murmured. “Big babies, all of you.”

  That made the bar explode with laughter. Not sure what to say, or do, I just shrugged and walked toward the door. Before leaving, I turned around and pointed at my uncle who still stood behind the bar.

  “Next time, I’ll expect whiskey, Uncle Hare.”

  “Next time, you’ll get it,” he promised, but he did it laughing, so I doubted I would.

  I chuckled as I drove up to the cabin, thinking about how crazy my day had been so far. It hurt that I couldn’t call Willy and tell him, but it was a soft kind of pain and not the sharp, burning grief I’d felt before. I wondered if Gramps had known Bozo, and hoped that he had.

  Hawker waited for me outside my cabin, and we walked in silence through the trees, until we reached a clearing. There was a low stone wall, and Hawker threw a thick blanket he’d been carrying on it and indicated with a nod and a grunt that I was to sit down. At least, that’s what I thought he meant, so that’s what I did.

  Then we kept on saying absolutely nothing at all.

  “Are you going to answer my question?” I asked when the silence had stretched out too long.

  “You called me dad,” was his strange reply, but he went on immediately, “You had just started talking when I left, Wilder. Your first word was dad,” he said.

  Then he leaned his head down and stared at his feet. When he finally spoke again, his voice was hoarse.

  “It cut me into a million pieces when I left. Hurt so bad I didn’t know how to get out of bed the first weeks. Got easier eventually, but I’ve been waiting for so many years to hear you say that word again.”

  My breath hitched. It hadn’t been great, living with Mother and Paolo, but I’d had Willy. I hadn’t known about Hawker, but he’d known about me.

  “Why did you leave me behind? Can you tell?”

  “How do you know about the dragons?” he asked.

  He still wasn’t giving me any answers, but I suspected that the stories I’d read and the possibility that dragons actually had existed was somehow linked to it all, so I told him about the papers I’d found. He straightened as I shared how the two girls and the boy had told a story about the war that never ended, about dragons, prophecies and Waterfolk. About love and the prosperous times.

  I talked for a long time, and then I looked at him.

  “I met Bo and Carson today,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, and a smile grew on his face. “Like them?”

  “Love them,” I replied, and went on, “Carson’s place is in Threy. He said it used to be a garrison and that got me thinking because the main guard station in the story was called Three.”

  I turned to look into the forest. Darkness was still a couple of hours away, but there were already shadows between the trees.

  “I found a dead man in the cave when I got away from the avalanche,” I said. He pulled in a breath, but I continued quickly, “I’m so sorry, I just forgot. It sounds stupid, I know, but there was so much happening. And he had been dead for a very long time, his body had shrunk or dried, I don’t know. And his clothes were really old as well.”

  “Okay,” Hawker said slowly. “I’ll get someone up there –”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “The man who fathered one of the girls in the story, he disappeared, and they couldn’t find him. I… I think perhaps the man I found was him. His name was Vildman,” said and the name had a startling effect on my father.

  “What?” he barked out and grabbed my arm.

  “What?” I echoed.

  “We have some of our history written down, and the legends about Vildman are well known. There is a grave –”

  “It’s empty,” I interrupted.

  I was shivering but not from the cold. Could the stories be true after all?

  “Are there dragons, dad?” I asked.

  He was silent for a long time, and it looked like he was searching for the right words, so I waited.

  “It is said that a long time ago, our people could change into dragons, Wilder,” he started, and I gasped, but he went on, “Then it was decided that we should change to our dragon shapes often, to not forget. Some liked it so much they became more dragon than human. Eventually, they didn’t change back, though as time passed and society evolved, each generation became something that was less frightening to the humans in this world.”

  My mouth had fallen open, and I did not know what to say. The words holy and shit echoed in my head.

  “Crocodiles?” I whispered, thinking that those were the animals that would resemble dragons the most.

  “What? No!” Hawker protested. “Jesus,” he added, shaking his head.

  I blinked, but he continued immediately.

  “Birds,” he said.

  There was a long silence while I thought about what he said. It made all the sense in the world, but still not at all.

  “Like what?” I asked, and added stupidly, “Hummingbirds?”

  He snorted out laughter then.

  “No, sweetie. The dragon part remained strong. They became birds of prey.”

  Okay. That made more sense, but it was still totally strange.

  “Are they still around?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he murmured and stared blankly into the distance.

  “What do you do when you zone out like that, Hawker?” I asked. “I’ve seen it several times, and I don’t get it.”

  “Talk to my bird,” he replied.

  I blinked.

  “Say, what?”

  “Some of us have a connection with one of them, Wilder,” he said gently. “Stays with us all our life. We can see what the bird sees, hear what it says.”

  I blinked again. And again. This was mind boggling, but somewhere in my soul, I recognized what he was saying. I’d always felt like there was something missing. Not only because of my crappy parents but something else. A piece of me that was empty.

  “Who has a bird, Hawker?” I asked weakly.

  “There are a few families in Norton who do. One in each generation, but not always from parent to child. It can be anywhere in the family.”

  “How do
you know?”

  He looked searchingly at me and then he mumbled, “Reach out and feel, Wilder. There are five families, and you’ve seen almost all of them. Who are they?”

  I raised my brows, but then I started thinking.

  “You. Miller. Kit.”

  I looked at him, and he nodded.

  “Mac,” I continued.

  Then I thought some more.

  “There was this older dude… In Johns, both times I’ve been there. Long gray hair, sitting to the side together with a woman and a huge guy, my age, with no hair and fantastic tattoos.” I looked at my father. “Not the older man, but the other two, I think.” He looked astonished but I continued, “And Gilmore, um... Grandfather.”

  He laughed then.

  “Jesus, Wilder. You pegged every one of them,” he said.

  “Not everyone, that’s only four families.”

  His face darkened.

  “There’s one more family, but most are dead, and the only one remaining isn’t in Norton.”

  “Wh –”

  “She’s is in Marshes, Wilder. That’s where her mother came from, and when we lost Oz, she took her daughter back there. Died a few years later but Snow didn’t move back here.”

  He looked tired, and I decided to talk about this person called Snow another time.

  “What’s your bird?” I asked, and he brightened. “Hawk, right?”

  “Eagle,” he replied with a chuckle. “Ma had a weird sense of humor.”

  I laughed at that, thinking that I would have wanted to meet my grandmother.

  “Is it the same bird in all families?”

  “No. We have eagles in ours, but Mill and Kit have kites. Mac has –”

  “Let me guess,” I interrupted. “Falcon?”

  “Who told you his name?” Hawker asked sharply.

  “He did,” I replied, and Hawker jerked.

  “He did?” he asked.

  I just looked at him, thinking that our conversation had taken a strange turn.

  “Who has the bird in my generation?” I asked to change the subject.

  “You don’t know?” he asked with a small smile.

  I returned the smile because I did know, and it was a strange feeling but it also felt fantastic to know that I had this amazing, magical legacy.

  “What’s it like?” I asked.