The Bird & The Lion: (The Feather: Book 1)

by CJ Arroway

  She sat up – a grown-up who called her Evie, not Evening Star? Now she was sure he was a monster.

  ‘How is she going to help you?’ Jennet asked, arms folded and eyes measuring the space between Rachlaw and her daughter. It had taken a certain amount of persuasion that he had not come to harm Evie before Jennet had, somewhat reluctantly, given up her blade. Rachlaw turned his head briefly to look at Eisl.

  ‘Come on little Star,’ her father said, stepping around Rachlaw and putting out his arm. ‘Come and help me in the workshop.’ Evie took her father’s hand, looking back at her mother as she left.

  Rachlaw sat up straighter. ‘Jennet – do you mind me calling you that?’ She minded, he continued.

  ‘No one is going to take your daughter, you have my word. She will stay here with you, under my protection. All I want in return is the chance to work with her, to understand her condition. It will be incredibly discreet - nothing will get out, no one needs to know anything about it.’

  Jennet’s eyes scanned the room as if she were ready to take up her knife again. ‘I had two of your men here last week telling me they were taking her from me, to be cleansed – to that place, the things you do. That evil.’

  Rachlaw rocked back in his chair. ‘It’s not evil, Jennet. It’s a way to help people, but I agree it’s not right for Evening Star. Those weren’t my men and they spoke out of turn. I have sorted it out. We all want to fix your daughter’s problem, but I think I… we… all of us, need to understand it first.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Jennet said, closing the space between them, ‘is why someone like you is involved in this in the first place. She’s a little girl, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. You’re too bloody high and mighty to be looking after a little Daw girl – to be coming all the way down here because of some children’s game with flowers. What is it you really want?’

  Rachlaw leaned forward, lowering his head and placing his hand on the top of the table. ‘I want to help your daughter. And I want you to trust me.’

  Evie would meet Rachlaw four more times before the end of the following summer. Eisl had explained that Rachlaw wanted to ask her some things and that she should answer truthfully, but it seemed to her she always asked him more questions than he asked her.

  ‘Weren’t you scared when my mum was about to kill you?’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ Rachlaw half-laughed. ‘She’s not the first person to put a knife to my throat.’ He could have added that she was the first to do so and live, but he kept that thought to himself.

  ‘Why do you have a funny little dog on your clothes?’

  Rachlaw laughed fully this time. ‘It’s not a dog, it’s a lion. It’s a ferocious beast, like the lynx in your forest, but much bigger and braver. It’s my symbol.’

  ‘Symbol of what?’

  He put his heavy arm up to pull the patterned cloth of his doublet straight. ‘Sometimes I have to fight people. It’s part of my job to keep people safe. Other men fight with me and this symbol lets them know it’s me, so they can follow me in battle.’

  He paused, then put his face a little closer to Evie’s. ‘And it’s meant to scare people and make me look fierce.’ He looked at Evie’s scrunched up face as she examined the embroidery on his tunic cuff. ‘I wear a much bigger one when I’m dressed up for battle!’

  ‘It doesn’t scare me,’ Evie said.

  ‘No, I don’t expect it does.’ Rachlaw smiled.

  After they had met for the fourth time, Evie’s mother told her Rachlaw would not be back for a while as he had to go far away for important work.

  Evie would be protected while he was gone, he had told Jennet, and he would be back.

  ‘Good,’ Evie had said, when her mother told her the news. But a while came and went and he hadn’t returned, and she sometimes wondered what had happened to him and thought of the questions she hadn’t yet asked.

  Three years passed before the next meeting and Rachlaw walked into a house much colder than he had remembered it.

  ‘Jennet, it’s good to see you again. I’m so sorry about Eisl. If there’s anything I can do…’

  ‘There’s nothing anyone can do, Rachlaw,’ Jennet said, pulling the strings of her apron behind her. ‘And we don’t need charity, we take care of our own here.’ She stopped, then added quietly: ‘But thank you.’

  Rachlaw nodded. ‘Is Evening Star–’

  ‘She doesn’t want to be called that now. Just Evie.’

  Evie stepped in from the yard at the sound of her name. ‘Yes? Oh it’s you. Mum said you were back.’

  She turned her back to attend to some business she suddenly found she had with her mother’s stitchwork on the table.

  ‘Hello again Evie – you’ve got tall! I was just saying to your mother, I’m so sorry about Eisl–’

  ‘Why? Did you kill him?’ Evie snapped without turning her head.

  ‘No of course–’

  ‘Then what have you got to be sorry for?’ She had turned to face him now, and he saw her face had taken on more years than he’d left her. ‘Go and be sorry for something you did, I’m sure there’s plenty.’

  ‘I’m sorry that he’s… he’s gone. He was a good man. And I’m sorry it’s taken rather longer than I thought to get back here.’

  Evie didn’t reply but sat down at the table with her back towards the entrance where Rachlaw still stood. Jennet nodded for him to move in and quietly took herself outside as he crossed the small room to sit across the table from Evie, waiting.

  ‘I don’t have to talk to you, you know,’ Evie snarled eventually. ‘What if I don’t want to? Are you going to send me to get cleansed? You can if you want, I don’t really care. You can’t force me.’

  ‘I don’t want to force you to do anything, Evie.’ Rachlaw spoke gently and pulled his chair back slightly to create more distance as he leaned forward.

  He waited a moment until he saw Evie glance up at him, then quickly look down again.

  ‘When I met your mother for the first time she asked me why I was interested in helping you. I told her something I thought you were too young to know then, but I’ll tell you now. And if you still don’t want to talk to me then I’ll respect that – but please hear me out.

  ‘I don’t want you to be cleansed. I don’t want anyone to be cleansed. I’ve seen magic, Evie, and it’s not what you think it is. I mean, not what I thought it was anyway. I think I can help you. And others like you. I’m working with some people – important people – to try to make things better for you. For all of you. But I need your help, I need to know more – I need evidence. Not everyone wants what I want and it must be done carefully.’

  ‘Are you cursed?’ Evie fixed his eyes with hers.

  ‘No. No I’m not’

  ‘Then how do you know what it is? How can you possibly know? Do you know how much it hurts? How it builds up in you until you think your skin is going to burst to let it out, but you have to let it out no matter what, even if it makes you feel wrong? Do you know what it feels like to know everyone you know would hate you if they knew the real person you are? Do you know what it’s like when your own mother is so ashamed of you she–’

  Rachlaw went to speak: ‘She’s not–’

  ‘No you don’t. You don’t know how bad it feels when you do let it out. When you hurt people you care about.’

  ‘Do you hurt people with magic, Evie?’ Rachlaw’s heavy brow creased.

  ‘Do you hurt people with your sword, Rachlaw?’ Evie spat back.

  Rachlaw shrugged slowly. ‘I want to understand. That’s why I need your help. If you don’t want to give it, I respect that and there will be no consequences for you, I will keep my promise to protect your secret. Just think it over.’

  Evie stared at the table. Then at the floor, the thatch of the roof – anywhere but Rachlaw.

  He stood to leave, ducking his head down to keep it from the low thatch of the roof. ‘Please think it over. I’ll wait to hear from your m
other.’

  He smiled softly and turned towards the door. Evie shook her head. Then her chest heaved a shuddering sigh and tears started to swell, breaking into a steady roll down her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t even know why I’m crying,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t care if you go – I really don’t.’ She stopped to wipe her nose with her sleeve. ‘I just want to talk to someone.’

  So they talked. About her father, about the curse, about the forest, about a world where magic wasn’t locked away, about shame and regret.

  It was little over a year later that Evie showed Rachlaw how she talked to the bird.

  ‘Of course I don’t actually talk to them, that would be ridiculous. Birds and animals can’t talk. Can you imagine: “tweet tweet.” “Oh, what’s that? You say my hair looks like it would make a nice nest? Why thank you Mr Bird”.’

  Rachlaw laughed. ‘What do you say then?’

  ‘I don’t say anything. I listen. If you listen you can hear them – they don’t talk like in the way we mean it, but they feel the same things. They feel scared, or hungry or curious, or happy. You just listen to what they feel and they listen to what you feel and then you understand each other. It’s simple really.’

  ‘Yes, very simple!’ Rachlaw arched an eyebrow and looked up to the trees, as if hoping to see a bird he could talk to.

  They sat for a while on the hillside, listening. They were on a bank at the edge of the wood where the sounds of the forest mingled with the sounds of the village. The thin grass ridge followed the contour of the slope – disappearing into the darkness of trees and ferns at one end, joining the path to the village at the other.

  Move a few steps one way and you heard only the echo of voices from the narrow valley bottom as the ploughman geed on his oxen or a mother called her children home; the thud of hooves on hard clay or the sharp ring of a hammer on metal. The other way, and only bird song, the buzz of stinging flies and, every now and then, the bustle of the hunters and the hunted in the undergrowth looking to make it to the end of another day alive or without hunger.

  But right there, in that spot, if you closed your eyes and listened, the sounds from both directions mixed like the lapping waves moving among the stones on the lake strand, where no one can say for sure if you are on land or in the water.

  ‘Evie,’ Rachlaw dropped his voice, ‘do you remember when you were little, before I came to your house, your mum told you about monsters who would come and get you if you showed anyone your magic?’

  Evie nodded, still focussed on the sparrow sitting on her outstretched finger. ‘Uh huh. Why?’

  ‘She was telling the truth.’

  The bird flew off hurriedly to the shelter of a nearby rowan branch. Evie turned her head.

  ‘In a way at least,’ Rachlaw said, placing his broad hand carefully on the grass close to Evie. ‘There are monsters – well men, but they aren’t like us.

  ‘There might come a time when they do come. I hope not. I will try everything to stop them. But if they do, I want you to find me straight away. I don’t want you to fight them, not even to protect others. I know you are brave, but they mustn’t get you, no matter what. Promise me. If they come, I want you to find me and I want you to run.’

  Evie had promised. And now the monsters had come, and she was running.

  The Viper

  Evie knew the forest better than anyone – big as it was, there wasn’t a deer track or a hollow she hadn’t explored, nor a tree of any size she didn’t know by sight. She knew how to run without leaving tracks, and step without making sound.

  So it made no sense that she couldn’t shake the men who were following her. At the fork by the stream she’d told Luda to leave and head back to the village if he could, to get help – hoping to confuse or split their pursuers. None of them had gone after him, so she thought he at least would be safe.

  There were four of them as far as she could make out. They had never managed to close to within more than a field’s length of her, but she could still smell them on the wind – smoke, blood, sweat and a strong musk: animal-like but not any animal she knew.

  She wondered if they could smell her too, if that was how they always knew which way she had turned.

  She would just need a moment and for now the smell was gone so she might have time. She closed her eyes and knelt, feeling the warm ground on her knees and the soft crumb of the earth as she pushed her fingers into the soil. She focused her mind at a point further along the deer track and sang, as softly as she could. The leaves moved and rustled; just enough, as though someone had caught them as they ran alongside and disappeared around the bend. Then she slipped quietly the other way, deep into the undergrowth.

  The men had not been as far behind as she thought so Evie was forced to lie still, closer to the track than she had meant to but still buried deep in the thick, dark undergrowth that concealed her as well as any moonless night in the forest could have.

  The leafless, woody brambles tore at her face and arms and snagged her clothes. The nettles – small as they were at this time of year – bit at her feet and hands until they felt like they were on fire. But she was hidden.

  There were four. She had counted correctly. Four huge men. The largest was at least as broad and even taller than Rachlaw, who she had once thought must be a giant when she was small enough to stand no higher than the hem of his coat.

  They were men, but different to any she had seen before. Their clothes were a coarse cloth, patterned around the collar and sleeves with colours and images no man in her village would wear. The pictures were repeated on the face of one of the men – black snakes and wurms, wingless dragons intertwined with bundles of sticks and the gaping mouths of fish-like monsters.

  They carried small-headed axes fastened with a white leather, unrecognisable from any she had seen in her father’s workshop. And they wore tunics of fur-lined skin that gave off that unfamiliar musky smell that, now they were closer, also smelled of wood and water.

  She waited, barely daring to breathe, slowly letting herself melt into the branches and weeds until no one, she was sure, could tell where she ended and the forest began.

  She focused her mind again, singing in a whisper even quieter than the breeze, and the leaves rustled and moved down the deer track. The men stopped and looked at each other. Evie drew in breath to slow her heart and hoped she had done enough. One of the men slapped the chest of another with the back of his hand and pointed down the track to where he’d seen movement. The men ran on, and Evie finally breathed out.

  She waited. She wasn’t sure how long for, but the sun had long since cooled itself in the distant, unseen ocean and was resting for the night.

  The forest at night was a different place to that most people knew in the day. The sounds, the smells, even the feel of the breeze in the trees, belonged to another world that very few ever saw; only hunters or bandits, and they rarely came to this wood, where pickings for both were scarce.

  The trails and trees blend into an unpatterned maze in the dark, this deep in the woods. Any little light that finds its way to the forest floor only serves to confuse your tread more – baffled eyes laying paths that lead nowhere and hollows levelled by floors of black that vanish as they pull you down. She would be safe now, she thought.

  She knew the men had gone. It had been a long time since she smelt their odour, and the owls, who saw better than anyone in the forest darkness, were calm and focussed on their small hunting in the clearings.

  It took her several minutes to untangle herself from the thorns and creeping roots. Her skin burned from scratches, stings and bites and she could taste the earthy mulch of leaves and soil in her mouth. But she had lost them.

  She stood silent on the track where the men had chased her shadow – half expecting to hear their heavy footfall again. She needed to get back to the village, to find her mother, to find Luda – to find out what had happened. Promise or no, Rachlaw could wait.

  ‘I thought you’d never
come out of there.’ The voice was so close she felt its breath on her ear, and before she could turn or run a darkness fell over her even deeper than the night.

  * * *

  She didn’t know how long it had been dark. It was still night and she was still in the same place, so she felt it couldn’t have been long. But her head pulsed with pain and her hands were bound with a rope leading to the man whose voice she assumed she had heard. He was sitting on a tree stump; searching through a small leather pouch before pulling out a dark-red dried berry and placing it under his tongue.

  He wasn’t one of the four she had hidden from. He was smaller and slighter and he dressed much more simply, but in a finer cloth. He carried no axe but had a small sword sheath, no bigger than a sparrowhawk feather, hung from a belt at his side.

  In different circumstances she might have called him handsome, but in an oddly gentle way that made her shudder; bright, striking blue eyes and a soft mouth just slightly too small for his face.

  But the thing that unnerved her most was his smell: he had none. The other men had smelt stronger even than her own father, who she always knew was on his way back from the tannery before he had even crossed the village boundary. But this man had no scent at all – and no one has no scent at all.

  ‘I was trying to get you to hide,’ he said, answering the question he could see written on Evie’s face. ‘It was clear you’re too tricky to catch on foot in these woods – you’re actually very good, better than a lot of people who should have been better than you.’ The scentless man spoke as softly as his mouth suggested.

  ‘Who are you? What do you want? What have you done to the village?’ She rasped out the words from a dry, scratchy throat – her mouth still full of the taste of earth.

  ‘That’s a lot of questions. I can’t answer them all, little girl. The village? I don’t know, that’s not my area of expertise – you’ll have to ask those big hairy hounds who ran you to ground for me when we see them again. I do know they couldn’t find you, and that is very much my area.’