attention.
“What is it?” I said, jumping to my feet to stand on a stool beside him. Hero climbed up and stood so close I could feel his warmth. Cook pointed. Through the swirls of sleet we could see a shearwater. Like a kite on the end of a string the seabird fought against the wind’s violent attacks.
“What in the tides is it doing here this time of year?” Cook said.
“Blown off course, perhaps. Or sent by the gods,” Harryet said.
“Poor thing. It should really…” Hero didn’t finish his sentence. With a flick of its hand the wind whipped the bird up and out of sight. “Where has it—?” I started but was cut off. There was a thud on the door. Harryet and I looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Do you think—?” Hero started.
“You’d better—” Cook said but I had already jumped off the stool and run to open the door. The seabird lay in a crumpled heap of feathers at my feet. I picked it up like it was broken glass and carried it to the table.
“Is it dead?” Harryet said in a voice thick with concern.
“It looks it,” Hero said.
“It is almost frozen,” Cook said, prodding it. Its brown-tipped wings were solid. Its webbed feet were ice. “Done for, if you ask me.”
“No, it’s alive,” I said. I don’t know what made me so sure, but it was almost as if I could sense the bird’s life-force flowing from its heart down to the tips of its wings.
Harryet’s bottom lip trembled and tears welled in her eyes. Both Cook and I looked at her then at each other. “Harry, you better get a blanket and put it near the oven,” I said, making my friend grin with relief. “And Hero, can you find a box or crate?”
“I’ll fetch Epoul,” Cook said.
Epoul was a healer and a xenolith from the furthest reaches of Isbis; she had short spiky black hair and epicanthic folds in her eyelids. When she arrived having fought against the wind and hail, she was hardly impressed to discover her patient was a bird. But Cook fixed her with a look that said, “Refuse and you have no heart.”
“What does it matter anyway? It means nothing if your patients are human or animal,” I said, borrowing from Cook’s philosophy.
“And Ayfra is watching,” Harryet added. “Please, please will you heal her?”
Hero was nodding in earnest.
Epoul looked at each of us, shook her head and said, “How can I refuse?” As she worked she tut-tutted, mumbling about us wasting her time and valuable resources. She tended the bird’s broken wing and compounded knitbone, rue and salt to feed to the bird daily in a paste of fish and shrimp. Then she wiped her hands and rested her fists on her hips. “I wouldn’t be too optimistic. She’s far from her flock and it’s mid-winter.”
But optimism was what Harryet did best. She shook the healer’s hand, thanking her again and again. Epoul couldn’t leave quickly enough. “I have one of Edric’s argutan with an abyss under its tooth and Odell has the runs after gorging himself on this evening’s pudding”—Hero and I exchanged a look and could barely contain our laughter—“so I had better be off.”
For the entire winter Cook let the bird nest in an old apple crate by the oven. Hero visited every day until he had to return to Bidwell Heights. Then Harryet and I continued the vigil, coming three times a day if we could. We nursed it to health until, in eiar when the air filled with pollen and our eyes began to water, the bird became restless. Cook insisted we liberate it and even the threat of Harryet’s tears would not make him change him mind. “It’s not natural for a wild thing to be cooped up like this. But if you give her a name she will come back to you, I promise.”
“Then we will call her Callirhoe,” I said and Cook was right. Every theros the bird came back to burrow in my garden. It was so reliable that Harryet, Hero and I stopped grieving its departure at the end of autumn but instead anticipated its return in spring.
Harryet, of
“What is it?” I said, jumping to my feet to stand on a stool beside him. Hero climbed up and stood so close I could feel his warmth. Cook pointed. Through the swirls of sleet we could see a shearwater. Like a kite on the end of a string the seabird fought against the wind’s violent attacks.
“What in the tides is it doing here this time of year?” Cook said.
“Blown off course, perhaps. Or sent by the gods,” Harryet said.
“Poor thing. It should really…” Hero didn’t finish his sentence. With a flick of its hand the wind whipped the bird up and out of sight. “Where has it—?” I started but was cut off. There was a thud on the door. Harryet and I looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Do you think—?” Hero started.
“You’d better—” Cook said but I had already jumped off the stool and run to open the door. The seabird lay in a crumpled heap of feathers at my feet. I picked it up like it was broken glass and carried it to the table.
“Is it dead?” Harryet said in a voice thick with concern.
“It looks it,” Hero said.
“It is almost frozen,” Cook said, prodding it. Its brown-tipped wings were solid. Its webbed feet were ice. “Done for, if you ask me.”
“No, it’s alive,” I said. I don’t know what made me so sure, but it was almost as if I could sense the bird’s life-force flowing from its heart down to the tips of its wings.
Harryet’s bottom lip trembled and tears welled in her eyes. Both Cook and I looked at her then at each other. “Harry, you better get a blanket and put it near the oven,” I said, making my friend grin with relief. “And Hero, can you find a box or crate?”
“I’ll fetch Epoul,” Cook said.
Epoul was a healer and a xenolith from the furthest reaches of Isbis; she had short spiky black hair and epicanthic folds in her eyelids. When she arrived having fought against the wind and hail, she was hardly impressed to discover her patient was a bird. But Cook fixed her with a look that said, “Refuse and you have no heart.”
“What does it matter anyway? It means nothing if your patients are human or animal,” I said, borrowing from Cook’s philosophy.
“And Ayfra is watching,” Harryet added. “Please, please will you heal her?”
Hero was nodding in earnest.
Epoul looked at each of us, shook her head and said, “How can I refuse?” As she worked she tut-tutted, mumbling about us wasting her time and valuable resources. She tended the bird’s broken wing and compounded knitbone, rue and salt to feed to the bird daily in a paste of fish and shrimp. Then she wiped her hands and rested her fists on her hips. “I wouldn’t be too optimistic. She’s far from her flock and it’s mid-winter.”
But optimism was what Harryet did best. She shook the healer’s hand, thanking her again and again. Epoul couldn’t leave quickly enough. “I have one of Edric’s argutan with an abyss under its tooth and Odell has the runs after gorging himself on this evening’s pudding”—Hero and I exchanged a look and could barely contain our laughter—“so I had better be off.”
For the entire winter Cook let the bird nest in an old apple crate by the oven. Hero visited every day until he had to return to Bidwell Heights. Then Harryet and I continued the vigil, coming three times a day if we could. We nursed it to health until, in eiar when the air filled with pollen and our eyes began to water, the bird became restless. Cook insisted we liberate it and even the threat of Harryet’s tears would not make him change him mind. “It’s not natural for a wild thing to be cooped up like this. But if you give her a name she will come back to you, I promise.”
“Then we will call her Callirhoe,” I said and Cook was right. Every theros the bird came back to burrow in my garden. It was so reliable that Harryet, Hero and I stopped grieving its departure at the end of autumn but instead anticipated its return in spring.
Harryet, of
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