The Rise of a Legend Page 6

  We had just settled on a branch where we could best enjoy the two snows when I looked across and saw a slight bulge on the neighboring tree trunk. At first, I thought it was a gall. Galls are abnormal growths on trees caused by mites or insects, and can eventually strangle a tree. But this particular gall seemed to be shrinking instead of growing larger. All of a sudden, I realized it was not a gall, but a wilfing Snowy Owl.

  “There’s an owl in that tree across the way, Moss,” I whispered. “A Snowy.”

  “Is she clawed?” he asked.

  I glanced over sharply, but her talons were bare and she appeared to be the least likely warrior in the world. She flinched with fear, and I felt sorry for her. I had the feeling she might be an orphan.

  “Should we say something?” I asked Moss.

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Well, you’re a Snowy. She’s your species!” I’m not sure what I was thinking. It was sort of a stupid thing to say, because it’s not like there’s an etiquette or guide for each species. “I feel sorry for her.”

  “Me too,” Moss said.

  “Hi,” I said finally. It was barely a whisper.

  “Hi there!” Moss greeted her softly.

  “Me?” she answered back. Moss and I looked at each other.

  “Yeah, you,” Moss said. “There’s no one else around.”

  “You sure?” she replied.

  “Pretty sure,” I said.

  “You won’t tell?” she asked.

  “Tell what?”

  “I — I —” she began to stammer. “I’m a flyaway.”

  “You mean, you have no hollow?” Moss asked. “No mum, no da?” We had heard tales of flyaways but never met one.

  “Me mum died in a battle down in the Ice Talons.” This Snowy had a brogue I had never heard before. Nothing like my da’s brogue from the Tridents. “And me da got himself a new mate. She doesn’t like me much. So I left.”

  “Left?” Moss said. “Just up and left?”

  “Ya. She was really mean. Calls me ‘Splotch.’ I’ve had the gray scale, as you can see. Left these ugly patches.”

  “That’s cruel,” I said.

  “That’s Rodmilla,” she replied.

  “Rodmilla?” Moss said.

  “Me stepmum.”

  “But what’s your name?” Moss and I flew over to the branch where she perched.

  “Thora,” she answered.

  “Thora! That’s a beautiful name,” I said. “Where are you from?”

  “Oh, my accent. Yes. Firth of Canis.”

  “Firth of Canis!” Moss exclaimed. “I’ve heard of that. It’s way to the north. Why are you here — so far away?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but …” She hesitated. “Me stepmother made me life insufferable.” Thora clamped her eyes shut as if the very thought scorched her gizzard.

  “Where will you go?”

  “Maybe … maybe Dark Fowl.”

  “You mean to become a cadet,” I said.

  “No, a smith.” She swelled up and her yellow eyes burned bright with excitement.

  “A smith?” I asked. “A blacksmith?” She nodded. “But we were just there maybe a moon ago, and we didn’t see a single female smith.”

  Thora suddenly swelled up to twice her size. “Well, it’s about time!” she roared. After this sudden and completely unexpected outburst, Thora eyed our blunt-tipped battle claws.

  “You know,” she said. “I could make those training claws into real battle claws for you.”

  “You can?”

  “Follow me,” she said. She spread her wings and lofted off the branch. She was a lovely flier. I could tell she had a deep sense of the wind as we skimmed through the trees of the birch grove to a small, wooded glade. She began plying the crosscurrents that were blowing in at odd angles and then tilted her wings and began to wheel into a steep turn. Looking down, I could see below a dim glow through the vapor snow. We alighted on a good-sized table rock. Just beneath us was a pit surrounded by large, scorched stones.

  “What is it?” Moss asked.

  “What does it look like?” Thora countered.

  “A forge?” I replied tentatively.

  “Exactly. A secret forge.”

  “But whose forge?”

  “A Rogue smith. A Burrowing Owl’s. That’s why it is so beautifully excavated.”

  “Aren’t you afraid he might come back?”

  “He’s dead. I found his body. It was nearly gone. Ground predators, raccoons and such. But I took the remains and burned them.”

  “And he left his tools?” Moss said.

  “Yes, and they are beautifully made. He was a master.”

  “Aren’t you worried someone might come back to look for him and, well, become suspicious if you’re here and not the Burrowing Owl?”

  “I don’t think anyone knew he was here.” She lowered her voice. “I think he was an arms trader to both sides.”

  “That’s awful!” I hissed. I was astounded that someone would try to play both sides of a war. Moss and I were both silent for several seconds as we tried to grapple with this idea.

  “What do you do here, Thora?” asked Moss.

  “I practice. By the time I get to Dark Fowl, I am going to be the best apprentice Orf has ever seen. If he turns me down because I am a female, well, that’s so pathetic I can’t even bother thinking about it,” she huffed. “C’mon. Want me to turn those training claws into something real?”

  “Sure!” we both said.

  We stayed until the darkness began to slip away and the sky turned to gray.

  “Where in hagsmire have you two been?” Gilda hissed when we returned. Moss and I both blinked. We had never heard a nest-maid snake swear.

  “Don’t blink! I can swear. I can swear like the best of them. Do you two realize it’s almost twixt time?”

  Gilda began flicking her forked tongue, sniffing. This is the way snakes pick up scents. “You’ve been near fire, haven’t you?” She narrowed her eyes, coiled up, flashed her fangs, then hissed, “Don’t you dare lie to me!” She was absolutely fearsome. My gizzard seized. I really thought that she might turn her head into a hammer and smash us to smithereens.

  “All right!” I said. “But you must promise not to tell Gundesfyrr — please!” Her eyes glittered. She nodded her head.

  “We have to really trust you on this, Gilda,” Moss said. “For in telling you, we are sort of — no, not sort of — really breaking a promise.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, suddenly contrite. “I wouldn’t want you to do that.” Her coil, which had been piled high, shrank suddenly. She was literally unraveling. “Oh, no, no. Trust is all we have in a civilized world. If we cannot trust each other, we have nothing.”

  “You really don’t want to know?” I was dumbfounded.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said in a firm voice that brooked no argument.

  I tipped my head to one side to study this curious snake.

  For the next several nights, Moss and I went to the secret forge to watch Thora refashion our training claws into true battle claws. Gilda always covered for us. She never asked questions, but one could see her almost savoring the scents that clung to our feathers. And indeed, there was a touch of envy in her eyes. She so clearly sought adventure beyond that of stalking the vermin in our nest.

  Both Moss and I thought Thora was improving as a smith before our eyes. She had had a rather brutal way with the hammer in the beginning, but she became more adept in wielding it and delivering small, very precise strikes, the kind that make the sharp cutting edge of a blade, or in this case the edges of our battle claws. Getting rid of the blunt tips was the easy part, but honing the edges was difficult, especially considering there were no Kielian snakes around to finish them off. To achieve the sharpest edge possible, she had to heat and reheat the claws numerous times. It was fascinating to watch the claws go through the shifting spectrum of color. In the beginning, the metal was cool gray, but as it heated, i
t became a dark red, then an almost translucent orange, and finally yellow, the color indicating the greatest heat.12 At certain points, the claws were withdrawn from the fire and hammered. Then, once again, Thora would put them back into the flames. The reason she had been in the birch grove the night we met her was to collect the papery bark of the trees, as it was excellent kindling.

  We loved our visits to the secret forge. The memory of those is incised in my mind’s eye. The forge was in the center of a circle of fir trees, and we would perch on scattered rocks or a large stump, upwind of Thora’s fires. As the night darkened, the flames grew brighter and Thora’s hammer struck the anvil faster and faster as our training claws became instruments of death. Sparks swirled up, enveloping Thora in a cocoon of radiance. Above, the crowns of the fir trees sifted the light of a nearly full moon.

  On the fifth night, the claws were finally finished.

  “Now, you two listen to me,” Thora said, and suddenly she seemed much older than her years. “Use these well. Don’t be stupid. And here’s something else.” She reached for a botkin.

  “What’s that?” I asked, peering into the small bucket that collier owls used to collect coal.

  “Caps,” she replied.

  “What for?” But as soon as Moss asked the question, it dawned on us. Our fathers had left us with blunt-tipped training claws, not fighting ones, not razor-sharp battle claws. Any grown-up who saw these would be furious. We were considered too young to wield such deadly weapons.

  “Thora, we don’t know how to thank you,” I said.

  She hesitated a moment before replying. “I know how,” she said, and cast her eyes down shyly. “You can come back. Come back and visit me.”

  “Of course!” we both said.

  “I was afraid that when I finished your claws, you’d stop coming. That’s why it took me so long. I’m — I’m so alone here.”

  “Come back with us,” I said. “To my hollow.”

  “Or mine,” Moss chimed in.

  “No. No, I can’t. I have to stay at this secret forge.” She cast her eyes toward the dying flames. “I have to practice.”

  So we did come back, from the time of the lintla schnee through the full glorious nights of the astrilla schnee and then into the time of the krepla schnee, the blinding snow.

  Toward the end of the blinding snow, we returned from visiting Thora one evening to find Gundesfyrr quite excited. She was almost bouncing up and down on the nest.

  “It’s rocking. It’s rocking!” she exclaimed. “The egg is rocking!”

  I was suddenly very frightened. “Oh! Is that bad? What does it mean?”

  “It’s not bad at all. It means the chick is about to hatch.”

  “Really?” I was overwhelmed with excitement. Until now, that egg had been the most boring thing in the world. “Get off. Let me see!” I shouted. Gundesfyrr lifted one leg delicately and tipped sideways, supporting herself on her starboard wing so I could have a peek beneath the bald spot on her belly. The egg was jiggling just the tiniest bit and, every once in a while, it acutally rocked.

  We waited through the night, me driving Gundesfyrr mad with my questions. Every two seconds, I asked if the egg was rocking again; I was hopping from one foot to the other.

  “Quit jumping around so much,” Gundesfyrr scolded.

  “I’m — I’m not jumping. I am inspiring her … him, whoever!”

  I even made up a little song to entice the chick to come out.

  Jump, jump!

  Bump, bump!

  Wouldn’t it be somethin’

  If you just started thumpin’.

  A little crack is all you need,

  No wider than a tiny seed.

  It’s much more fun outside

  Than in.

  Now crack that egg,

  Let the party begin!

  “Oh, great Glaux!” Gundesfyrr’s large yellow eyes opened very wide. “I think you have inspired something. I feel the egg tooth. Time to get off.”

  Gundesfyrr began raising herself off the nest very slowly, very gracefully, as if she were about to softly take flight. When she was finally off, she gave a little flip of her head, inviting me to step up to the nest. “No loud noises,” she whispered. “We want the chick to be able to concentrate. This is the hardest work it has ever had to do.”

  “What work?” I asked.

  “The egg tooth. Don’t you see it poking through?”

  I peered. “That … that … that little thing?” It was a glistening bead no bigger than a dewdrop, peeking up from inside the egg. But it was attached to something that was alive. It was moving. “Is it really a tooth?”

  “They call it that, but no. It is just a little pointy bump on the top of the chick’s beak. It’s only used for this one single purpose — to crack the egg — and will drop off a few days after the chick hatches.”

  I gasped.

  “Don’t worry,” Gundesfyrr said. “I’ll find it. I always do. Broodies are good at finding egg teeth.”

  “Did you find mine?”

  “Of course I did. Didn’t I say I always found them?”

  “Is this chick ever going to get out?” I muttered.

  “It’s taking a rest right now. You must be patient. As I said, this is the hardest thing this little critter has ever had to do.”

  Twixt time was coming on. The light in the hollow had changed. I began to yawn; indeed I might have been half asleep when suddenly there was a crackle followed by a soft plop.

  “She’s here!” Gundesfyrr exclaimed.

  “Was I asleep? How could you let me fall asleep?”

  “What a charmer!”

  I gasped. She was, well, frankly, sort of a disaster.

  “Is she breathing?” I asked.

  “Of course she is. Aren’t you, sweetie?” Gundesfyrr tweeted to what I can only describe as a wet blob. “Come close, dear, take a look at your new sister.”

  I was frightened. I took one tiny step. My gizzard was fluttering like my plummels in a crosswind. Now let me tell you something. The closer I came to the nest, the more nervous I got. Something deeper was stirring — a realization. And this was it: A newly hatched chick is not a thing of beauty. But it is a thing of love. My sister, Lysa, was pure love.

  “Oh … oh …” I began to sputter. My gizzard had never been so stirred. I could not utter the words to express my joy, my admiration, my passion for this little, wet creature still streaked in the threads of blood from the yolk. She was covered with strange little swirls of wet fuzz, her bare flesh showed through, and her eyes were sealed shut and looked like outsized bumps on her face.

  Gundesfyrr gave a mighty belch and out came some partially digested vole.

  “Been saving that one for you, darling. Your first meal.”

  “Is that what she eats? Throw up?”

  “It’s easy on their tummies. She eats that along with the first slime from her eggshell. Chicks can’t really make pellets yet.”

  I opened my beak and tried to belch but only a little squeak issued forth. “Oh, dear, I don’t think I have any of that mouse left. It’s already packed in a pellet for yarping.”

  “Next time, just save some. Don’t let it go to your gizzard too fast.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Oh, yes, if you concentrate.” I must have looked very close to despair, for Gundesfyrr extended a wing and stroked me. “Don’t worry. There’ll be many more chances. This is what she’ll eat until her first insect.”

  I had a battery of questions. My beak couldn’t keep up with my brain. “When will her eyes open?”

  “Not for a while. Ten nights or more. And let’s hope at night.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, daylight is much too harsh, and it’s bad luck to open your eyes in the daylight. Nighttime is owl time.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I became insanely diligent watching over little Lysa. I was absolutely obsessed with the idea that she should not open her eyes in the da
ytime. I like to think I am a rational bird, but all reason went out the hollow when I heard this. Of course, I had no idea what I would do if she did open her eyes during daylight. Clamp my talons over them and maybe injure her by accident?

  Moss’s siblings hatched out soon after Lysa. All three were little females, much to his disappointment. “I thought I would get at least one male out of the clutch,” he grumbled.

  “Well, now Lysa can have three little girl friends. It will be nice for them. They’ll entertain each other and we can go off.” I nodded in the direction of the secret forge. What with all this hatching, it had been a while since we had visited Thora and we had promised to come back. I really didn’t want to leave until Lysa opened her eyes. I wanted to be the first face she saw. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe I had delusions of importance. But I was, in fact, her only blood relative around. Even though Gundesfyrr was her broody and still brooding her, for a naked little chick has nothing to protect it from the cold and we were getting the first of the dryflifa schnee, the kind of snow that clings to feathers. With it came very cold temperatures and some snurlish winds.

  Several nights after Lysa hatched, I had just yarped some white-footed mouse for her when I noticed a flitter beneath the skin that covered her eyes.

  “Gundesfyrr, look! I think her eyes are … are …”

  First one eye slit opened and then two or three seconds later — it seemed like forever — the other one opened and a tiny voice muttered a single word.

  “Again?”

  “She can talk!”

  “Of course she can.” Gilda slithered over. “She’s heard all of us talking for the last, what has it been? Nine nights?”