The Rise of a Legend Page 4

  “Good, good, you’ve got the shape!”

  “But I can’t get it thin enough!” she cried in exasperation. Her body suddenly contracted, and she recoiled herself. “It’s not a shim, it’s a big, fat, old lumpy thing,” she whined.

  “You had the shape, Hellie, you really did!” Hoke said.

  “You show him how it’s supposed to be done.”

  Within seconds, Hoke was stretched out to his full length, and his head was as thin as a wet leaf and very rigid. He slithered over to two rocks that were stacked atop each other in a notch in the wall and began prying at the bottom one. “With a shim-shaped head, it’s amazing what one can do.”

  “What’s amazing,” Hellie whispered, clearly entranced by her brother’s abilities, “is that he can do this while he is talking and not lose his head shape.” Within seconds, the bottom rock was free. With Hellie’s encouragement, Hoke went on to demonstrate another half dozen head shapes he had mastered — the sledgehammer, the anvil, the ax, and so on.

  I heard a flapping of wings outside the nost. “Lyze! Lyze! You in there?”

  “Oh, Da, yes. Sorry.”

  “Lyze?” Hoke said. “Is that your name?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I never properly introduced myself.”

  My father stuck his head inside. He blinked with surprise.

  “Da, meet my friend Hoke and his little sister Hellie.”

  “Well … well … I’ll be!” Da said.

  “Well, I’ll be … I’ll be,” my da kept muttering as we flew back in the breaking light of the dawn. It was a beautiful flight — the sky was tinted with an earthly pink and, just above, a soft blue began to show. Was it azure? Cerulean? Cyan? Then a low mist started to roll across the choppy waters of the Everwinter Sea.

  “What is that?” I asked my father, nodding down at the water.

  “Sea smoke.”

  “Sea smoke? Is there a fire someplace?”

  “No, lad. Some call it ‘sea steam.’”

  “What causes it?”

  “Ah, you’re a curious one, aren’t you, lad? I like that. Well, it’s caused when very cold air moves in over warmer water. The water on the surface begins to evaporate and that’s about all I can tell you.”

  That was enough to get me thinking. “Da, can I fly down there and skim the surface? I want to see this sea smoke close up.”

  “As long as you don’t get lost in it. You be careful. If it starts to close in on you, fly back up here right away.”

  My father was a bit anxious, but he was not one to stand in the way of a young and inquiring mind. So I began a steeply banking turn. I could almost feel his eyes boring into me. I was careful to angle my wings just so, in what I felt was the stylish manner that he and Mum did when they made a steep descent to our tree. Until that moment, I thought this wing tilt was dashing, but now I realized that it was very useful for sensing the different layers of air.

  Just above the sea smoke, the layer of air was cool, but closer to the water, it was much warmer. Odd, I had never thought of the Everwinter Sea as feeling warm. But I realized that it was warm only in comparison to the cold air sweeping down from the north. That must be glacier air, I thought. The droplets of moisture in the sea smoke were large and I was becoming quite damp. My primaries were growing heavier with the accumulated moisture. Well, I thought, I’ll just have to stroke a little bit harder. I felt a twinge in my gizzard as I realized that visibility was shutting down. Just then, I heard the sonorous alarm call of my da. I had done exactly what he said not to do, gotten lost in the sea smoke.

  Fear was quickly getting the best of me. I felt it flood through my hollow bones. Something peculiar was happening to my primaries. Oh, no. Kerplonken! I’m going kerplonken. Just fledged, first real flight, and I go kerplonken.7 The sea smoke was swirling all around me. Which way was up? Which way was down? If I didn’t do something soon, I’d hit the water’s surface and drown.

  Then it occurred to me; up had to be drier because the air above the sea smoke would be drier than the air closest to the sea. My da’s words came back to me: Very cold air moves in over warmer water. The water on the surface begins to evaporate. So the air would not only be drier, but colder. If I couldn’t see, I must feel my way back to safety. I stuck a talon straight out in one direction and the other in the opposite. My starboard talon felt slightly drier. I power-flapped both wings. The tips of my primaries were gripping the chill air. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know if I was flying or clawing my way out of the sea smoke, but somehow I made it.

  My father emitted a long, low hoot — a hoot of both relief and anguish. He grabbed me by his talons and yanked me up higher.

  “I can fly, Da. I can fly now. I’m all right.”

  “I know you’re all right, lad, I know it. And Glaux knows you can fly. Never seen anything like it. You were clambering out of that sea smoke as if you were half owl and half … half … I don’t know! A snow leopard scaling the highest peaks of the H’rathghar glacier. Let’s go home now.”

  My father paused for a moment, an odd expression crossing his face.

  “And, Lyze,” he added, “let’s keep this little adventure between the two of us. Don’t mention anything to your mum. It’s not a good time to upset her.”

  We did not get home until well after twixt time. But as soon as we entered the hollow, I knew something was different. One could just feel it. Da twitched a wing tip to signal me to be quiet and then nodded and led me over to where Mum was settled on a tumble of rabbit’s ear moss and peels of birch bark. It sort of looked like a nest, but not quite. There was more down poking out from the sides.

  “Why is Mum sleeping there? What is that thing?” I asked.

  Da churred softly. “How quickly you forget.”

  “Forget what?” Slowly, the pellet dropped, as the expression goes. This wasn’t just any nest. It was an egg nest, a brooding nest. Mum had laid an egg.

  “C’mon. Crouch down a bit, and we might be able to get a glimpse of it.”

  I crouched down next to Da, full of all sorts of excited little feelings. My gizzard was hopping around like a bark beetle. I saw just a bit of something white — creamy white. That must be it! I thought. My little brother … or sister.

  “Does it have wings yet? A beak? Legs?”

  “Give it time, lad. It’s got a lot of growing to do.”

  “Can you believe it, Lyze? Tonight’s the night!”

  What I really couldn’t believe was that Moss had actually delayed his first flight to Dark Fowl to wait for me. He wanted us to fly together. But as I was standing on that branch, a wind began to blow. Something about it caught my attention. There was a low whine at its edges and, every now and then, almost a gasp.

  “Hey, Lyze, what’s wrong? Bad pellet?” Moss hooted softly. I was wilfing before his eyes.

  “No, no, Moss,” I said, looking up at him. “I don’t think we should go tonight.”

  “What? What are you saying? Not go?! Lyze, this is what we have been waiting for forever! Going to Dark Fowl! Meeting Orf and his smiths.”

  But I told him I wouldn’t and returned home.

  My parents must have sensed something was wrong as soon as I entered the hollow.

  “By Glaux, lad, looks like you’ve seen a scroom!”

  “Not seen. Heard.”

  “Heard? Heard what?” Da asked.

  “Out there, the wind suddenly shifted and it seemed to die. At first, it sounded like a mewling, like a baby animal … weak, frightened … and … and dying.” Both my parents gasped in horror.

  “I told you he had a feel for weather, Ulfa.” Da flipped his head around sharply at Mum, then back to me.

  “It ain’t a baby, ain’t no chick, no cub,” my father said. “You might as well ram a hot blade through your gizzard. It’s the Snurls, and we ain’t flyin’ tonight.”

  “The Snurls?” I asked. The Shagdah Snurl was far to the north and was said to be the hatching place of the winds. Legend ha
d it that the winds were caused by two battling sisters whose fight raked the Northern Kingdoms. Mum said legends sometimes made things more understandable. She said some owls needed stories to explain things beyond their control. “Some things,” she said, “are beyond what we can feel in our gizzards, know in our hearts, or can reason in our brains.” But now it began to feel as if the Snurl sisters had arrived at our hollow. For, by midnight, the rasp I’d heard had grown into a snarl and there was a terrible shaking of the tree. The very bark seemed to quiver.

  “Don’t worry,” Mum said from her perch on the nest. “We’re very safe here.” But I noticed that Gilda had wrapped herself around the base of the egg nest. “We must remain calm.” My mother adjusted her bandanna and sat erect on the nest. To me, she was not just a mum guarding her nest, but a commando heading into battle.

  “Don’t worry, dear. The tree won’t break. That is why Da and I chose this pine. It’s young and full of sap. A tree with sap doesn’t break. It bends with the wind, but never splinters.” But at that moment, the tree seemed to moan and I felt our hollow tip slightly. “It won’t break, I promise you,”8 Mum said, and reached out a talon to pat me.

  And for the rest of the night, she told me stories about the Shagdah Snurl, this incredible place that was part legend but part real, where rocks melted, sisters squabbled, and the winds hatched. I was mesmerized.

  By the next evening, our world in the grove was calm. The winds had subsided and we were ready to fly to Dark Fowl. Mum let Gundesfyrr sit on the nest so she could see us take off. From the neighboring pine, a family of Sooty Owls perched to wave good-bye and, of course, across the way, Moss’s family had gathered on the large branch outside their hollow. I always felt it was quite beautiful when Moss and his da, Arne, spread their lovely white wings, but at this moment I felt my wings, though smaller, were equally beautiful with their mottling of brown and gray and tawny feathers with accents of white.

  My heart was pounding and my gizzard a-jitter. I had been too excited to eat and, besides, I wanted to fly light. It was as if every feather, right down to my plummels, was anticipating each wind riffle and draft it might encounter. I wanted to embrace the wind, the sky, the very stars. How lucky I was to have been born a bird, and not just any bird, but an owl! For what other creature can fly with such grace, carve the wind with such elegance, and pass through the air in utter silence?

  Regard the map and you will see that between Stormfast Island and Dark Fowl there is another island, the Ice Dagger. I had studied that map the previous morning until Mum made me go to sleep. Now, with the wind coming in from the southeast, we had to take a quartering tack and fly several degrees off the shortest route, which took us directly over the Dagger. A tailwind would have made everything much easier, but Moss and I were ecstatic. For the Dagger was where the ice was harvested for the premier ice weapons — those used by the Frost Beaks, the Ice Lancers, the Ice Squires, and all the elite ice regiments of the Kielian League. As we flew over the Point of Hock, I scanned the cliffs for Hoke, but there was no sign of him. I was determined to meet up with him again.

  Not long after, my father flipped his head back, twisting it as only owls can due to the extra bones in their necks that allow us to swivel in a wider arc than any other creature. My father had not only twisted his head back, but flipped it entirely upside down. “Young’uns, you can catch your first glimpse of some harvesters near the point of the Dagger.”

  We saw them immediately: two Short-eared Owls and a Barn Owl hovering in the air.

  Our fathers began to talk about the harvesting blades they were using. “I think the Barn Owl is using a tactical planar blade while the two Short-ears are working with the standard ice chisel,” Da said. “Arne, how about we take the lads in for a close-up view?”

  Moss and I were beside ourselves and started to hoot with joy.

  “Now, lads!” My father turned to us. “None of that. Ice harvesting is serious business. One slip of the blade can be disastrous. We have to hang back and let these owls concentrate. When they finish their business, they might take a break and talk to us. But be quiet for now.”

  Arne added, “Do nothing to distract them.”

  A warm thermal conveniently rose out of nowhere so that we could soar quietly above the harvesters and observe their work. These owls were not simply magnificent fliers who did complex wing work to keep close to the blade of the Ice Dagger, but they were master craftsmen. Below the harvesters, two more Short-ears and a Barn Owl flew with what looked like slings suspended from their talons.

  “Scrappers,” my father whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “The ones with the slings. They’re apprentices to the ice harvesters. Their main job is to collect the shards as the masters sheer them off. See how carefully they watch for when a shard is about to break off?”

  My gizzard quivered with excitement. I wanted to be a scrapper. How much one could learn!

  Something caught my father’s attention. The first thread of a newing moon glimmered behind the scrim of dark scudding clouds. Suddenly, there was a sound I had never heard — a sizzling scratch in the air. Sparks flew and blood splattered the night. For a brief instant, it was as if we were all frozen in a crimson rain. And then I saw a wingless Short-eared Owl plummet toward the sea.

  “It’s an attack!” the Barn Owl cried. He drew an ice shard from the sling his scrapper carried.

  “Quick! To the ledge, lads!” Da shrieked. What ledge? I looked down at the sharp vertical blade of the ice cliff beneath me, shimmering in the night.

  “Behind the blade on the other side!” Arne rasped. They herded us to the far side of the island.

  “Who are they?” Moss asked.

  I could see the disbelief in both our fathers’ eyes. “Hireclaws for the Ice Talons League? B-but — but —” my da stammered. “How could this be?”

  Arne swiveled his head around madly. “They’ve never come this far west, this far into civilian air — and — and territory. This is so far from the front!”

  “Or what we thought was the front,” my father said ominously.

  “You lads stay here,” Arne replied. There was a distinct alarm in the Snowy’s eyes. This was not how our first flight to Dark Fowl was supposed to go. Not at all.

  “What are you going to do?” Moss asked. “You and Rask don’t have weapons!”

  “Yes, you do!” It was the shree of the Barn Owl scrapper, who plunged in with his sling. “Take an ice shard, you two. They’re not finished, but they’ll work. Let the owlets take these ice hooks. Don’t use them until you have to,” the Barn Owl said. “You toss the hooks. First power up and then lob them. You’ve played lob and gob, haven’t you?” We both nodded. “Same idea.”

  He was off before we could ask any more questions.

  Da looked at us. “Stay here. Don’t move. Be alert and you’ll be safe.” He swallowed. “Don’t use those weapons unless you absolutely have to.”

  And then they were gone. Thick clouds rolled in, making it harder to see. We heard terrible screeches tearing the night. The shree of a Barn Owl is one of the most gizzard-shattering sounds on Earth. But were our Barn Owls, the harvester and his scrapper, being torn to pieces or was it a war whoop? Feathers drifted lazily through the darkness. It was impossible to tell to whom they belonged: a Short-eared Owl or a Barn Owl or — and these we dreaded seeing the most — the pure white feathers of a Snowy or the mottled brown-gray ones of a Whiskered Screech.

  Suddenly, a white face rimmed with tawny feathers appeared out of the clouds just below the ledge, shooting up toward us. There was a strange mark between its eyes, bloodred, but not made from blood, a double crescent shape that talons make when tearing flesh. I realized it had been painted with a stain extracted from bingle berries. It had a terrifying impact on me, for there was something almost hypnotic about the design.

  The owl raised talons sheathed in metal. I heard the click of his battle claws extending and smelled the rank odor
of day-old vole on his breath as his beak dropped open to screech the kill chant. The claws were a whisker’s breadth from my ear slit, set to rake off half my face.

  Moss and I leaped into the air. I heard the sound of those claws raking the ledge where I was perched just a second before and then a terrible sizzle as if something hot had touched the ice. I flipped my head around. The owl was coming at me, the double extension talon on his battle claws reaching for me. And they were fire claws. Their tips glowed like the eyes of a hagsfiend, and I could feel the radiating heat on my tail feathers. If he touched me, I would ignite like a ball of fire.

  The Barn Owl was chasing us. The ice hook was heavier than I thought and my flight balance was off. I wobbled a bit at first, then recovered. A few seconds later, I sensed a new wind in my feathers. It was what I can best describe as a “curling gust.” Whiskered Screeches are small owls. What we lack in raw power, we make up for in agility. How I felt I could do this I am not sure, but I flipped myself over on that curl of wind so that I was flying upside down, or rather belly up, cradled in the gutter of a sustained gust.9 Above me, I could see the flash of the Barn Owl’s battle claws in the night. My gizzard nearly seized up because he was directly above me, but he seemed not to realize it.

  The soft white feathers of his belly gleamed. The peculiar markings I had seen on his face, the double crescent, haunted me still. I had no battle claws. I had the hook, but it wasn’t the best weapon for what I was hoping to do. But my talons were sharp. Suppose I clawed him? Without thinking any further, I thrust both my talons up at once. The impact wasn’t much, but the shock was huge. The Barn Owl squawked and tipped precariously. I saw something slice through the night, and the Barn Owl lurched. Moss’s ice hook had fastened onto his port battle claws. Moss had him tethered, and his belly was bleeding from where I had clawed him.

  “You got him!” It was Arne, Moss’s father, crying out. Blood coursed down one of his own wings, but he was flying steadily. Then my father and two of the harvesters appeared. The Short-eared harvester plunged toward the hireclaw Barn Owl with an immense ice shard and stabbed him in the belly to finish him off.