8

Getting Edgy

Below him, the iron steps clanged in urgent alarm. Nick teetered at the edge of the top step and then felt himself being pulled against the center post and the swept-back wings of Hawk.

"Nick!" Lottica cried. "Nick! What are you doing?" Out of breath and shaking from running up the staircase, she braced her brother against the post.

"I'm okay," he managed, though he was sure that was far from the truth. He looked at his sister and then below him. Only his sister was there. No neighbors. No grandparents.

"What are you doing here?" he deflected.

"I saw you carrying the drinks to the car, and then you didn't come back, and I thought you were having some trouble with Grandmother and Grandfather. I went to check but saw they were alone in their car. Then I saw you on up here. What are you doing? What were you going to do?"

"I dunno. I guess it was like one of your dead parent stories. Like I was under a spell. I was thinking about Dad and Mom and all this." He gestured to encompass the house and yard twenty feet below them. “It’s like our whole lives are down there.”

His hands came to rest on the iron hawk, and Lottica's eyes were drawn to it as if she were seeing it for the first time. Soot covered the iron statue making Hawk’s eyes appear even more determined. The words on the base of the regal bird stood out in blacker relief: Lebreima lumeinatus de Kareima.

Lottica whispered the words. “Lebreima lumeinatus de Kareima.”

Instinctively, she knew they couldn’t leave the hawk here. It had been so important to their father. They had to take it with them. “Nick, give me a hand here. We’re taking Hawk with us.”

Nick’s far-off gaze snapped into focus. “Let’s do it.” Roused into action, his hands seized the iron wings with hers and they lifted.

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Their hands flew off and the bird remained. It was fixed tight to the center post.

"Let's try rocking it back and forth," suggested Nick. They pushed and then pulled, but again their hands moved over the smooth metal without it loosening.

They looked more closely at the base of the bird to see how it was connected to support post. To their surprise they could not see the raised welt of a weld line and this puzzled them. There was no way the center post and hawk had been cast as one piece.

They considered the possibilities. Then Nick understood.

"Lottica, pull on the head, and I'll push on the tail feathers."

They shifted places.

"Ready...Go!"

Lottica gave a quick jerk and Nick slammed the meaty part of his palms into the back part of the hawk. Lottica fell against him and he stepped back to regain his balance, but his foot careened off the metal tread and slipped over the edge of the step. His leg, swinging out like a pendulum, pulled him around. He clutched Lottica’s arm for balance.

He was going to fall. Hard.

And he would bring Lottica over the edge as well, so he let go of her, feeling his backward momentum increase.

At that point of no return, teetering on the very edge of it all, Nick thought about his parents and how good it would be to see them again. His gaze fell upon his sister's eyes, and he realized how wide and blue they were and how very young his sister was.

He missed her already.

He was about to tell her so when Lottica shrieked his name.

Her cry pulled Nick back from the brink. She grabbed his arm and heaved back towards the post. With a thwang that vibrated through the entire metal column and their own spines, Nick fell flat onto the widest part of the pie-shaped step.

The siblings exhaled, recognizing how close to catastrophe they’d come. Then Nick rolled over on his back. He took in his sister, leaning against the center post, haloed by the vast blue of the October sky.

And then Nick's eye picked up an incongruity. A thin silver line had appeared just below the base of Hawk. Nick stood up and looked at it more closely. Lottica saw it, too.

"Nick," she whispered. "The hawk is facing a different direction."

She was right. Lottica grabbed Hawk’s head and Nick the tail. They pushed and pulled in unison and the heavy figure began to rotate, very slowly at first and then much more easily. Like a giant bolt, the base rose out of the center post and finally it was free. Nick grunted as he tried to lift it himself, and, even when Lottica lent a hand, they could only guide the iron raptor to a clanging landing at their feet.

Lottica smiled at her brother. "That was a piece of work. You think it was worth it?"

Nick didn’t answer. He was peering into the now open end of the center post. He motioned his sister over, and she carefully edged closer following her brother’s frozen gaze.

As she looked into the hollowed out core of the post, her eyes grew wide and shone with the same brilliance as the mysterious object hidden beneath the iron hawk, the symbolic guardian of Lebreima.