The melody follows him under, into the dark. At first, it is Aria’s voice lullabying him to sleep as she used to in the nest they shared as winglings. It cradles and soothes him, rebuffing ill memories and promising safety. Rest.

Within moments, though, it swells with grandeur far beyond Aria’s range. This is another voice entirely, and it pounces upon him with his name in its mouth, declaring it in utter delight.

“Arc!” the voice trumpets with swooping brass bellows, boisterous and unapologetic. “Arc Wildspeech!”

It has substance, this song, and it tumbles him about like a fox kit at play. There is no fear, no sense of danger, and Arc laughs with the song, batting his hands at it as if he could smack the unseen force rolling him here and there.

In response, it scoops him, gripping his body and soaring up on frenzied strings as fast as wings. A forest materializes below, unrolling an unending carpet of green in all directions. Treetops reach toward him, swaying in greeting.

Down! The plunge steals his breath as the music whoops, veering between branches so close that leaves brush past above and below, but not so much as a twig strikes him.

“Arc Wildspeech!” the music rumbles with drums, laughing delightedly with the crash of cymbals. “This is Arc Wildspeech. What a skyte! What colors in his life! Where to put him? Here?”

The music swirls around a nest with three speckled eggs in it. Robin eggs, Arc realizes.

The song chuckles at itself. “No, no, she’s got enough of her own to look after. Here?”

It drags Arc closer to the ground, poking around the roots of a nearby tree. “No good. This comes down in the next storm. Here?”

Arc turns his head to see a bramble bush. After a moment, the music sighs, “Not beautiful enough for such a moment. No one will find him there. Ah!” Just beyond the bramble bush is a thick cluster of appleberry vines in their first flowering of the season. “Perfect.”

As Arc watches, an egg emerges from the music to a chorus of bells and chimes. The shell has the faintest orange tinge and it is set among the vines with a flourish.

The notes wane, dropping to a thoughtful, meandering bass. Vines are lifted and wrapped tenderly around the egg by unseen hands as a flute pipes softly over the egg.

“Arc Wildspeech. My skyte! Hear the hearts of my creatures. Speak and they will listen. Tend to their needs.

“Arc Wildspeech, bearer of unspeakable grief, take from me a heart audacious enough to tame the skies and survive the depths.

“Arc Wildspeech, for the burden to come, not one day without companionship. Not even this day.” And as these words ring in the air, a second egg is produced. A white shell with pale lavender speckles that settles down next to the first and is wrapped just as carefully. Stringed instruments shiver haunting tones over this second egg, but for that moment Arc cannot understand what it says.

“Arc Wildspeech.” And here, the music ceases completely for a breath, the silence spreading out like a ripple in a pond.

“Arc Wildspeech.” And here, Arc senses the attention of the music turn away from the eggs and fix on him. His knees and heart shake together as he realizes the moment he has always dreaded is upon him.

Before he can draw breath to plead his case, the softest chime of a bell breathes past his cheek. “Arc Wildspeech. Your heart suffers a loss today. I grieve with you. Even so, not one day without a face to see you. A voice to speak to you. A heart to beat near yours.”

Slowly, Arc’s knees steady. He stands bewildered. Where is the reprimand? Where is the demand for accounting? What loss?

But it is only a moment, and then the trumpets sweep him airborne again, twirling him skyward with rapturous, unbridled pleasure on a fleet of brass horns. His dismay is swept aside as that delight takes hold in him and laughter shakes him from head to toe, filling and sealing up the crumbled places inside as he is spun up into the blue eternity. Higher. Higher. Higher…

----------------------------------------

Just below the surface of waking, Wildspeech lingers, reveling in the luxury of overflowing rest. A silly grin stretches his cheeks back to his ears. His fingers twitch, rolling strands of moss and straw between them. Stroking large clumps under his body. Blankets, soft and silken, shift and slide along his skin as he stirs. It can’t be his nest, the body impressions fit wrong.

But he is not alone. A velvet hum coaxes his eyelids open.

Aria’s chair faces him, but her head is bowed, her black hair running unbound down both sides of her face. Her hands meet and clasp over her knees, the fingers massaging opposing knuckles as she croons a wingling’s song about tweaking a meadowlark’s tail.

“I like that one,” he sighs.

The lullaby ceases as her head snaps up. There are shadows under her eyes. “Arc? Bone Weaver!” She leans forward, then twists around to call over her shoulder. “Bone Weaver! Remara! He’s awake!”

Arc rolls his head around, taking in walls of packed earth lined floor to ceiling with woven-root shelves, each crammed with jars of dried berries and string-bound stacks of bark. Bundles of herbs and flowers hang drying from the ceiling. Morning light spills in through at least four windows, coaxed open at different sizes and varying heights from the stone-lined floor. A corner of the room overflows with clay, stone, and livewood containers. In another corner, Bone Weaver staggers up from a hastily formed mound of moss.

The door bangs open, nearly clipping Bone Weaver’s shoulder.

“Take care!” Bone scolds.

“I am sorry only I heard Aria Songspeaker say that that Arc Wildspeech is awake and I need to see him please it has been three days and I cannot wait any more if he is awake my friend are you are you are you are are are…” Remara’s speech trips and tumbles over itself. Soft crackling noises underlie each quavering word.

She enters the burrow in a full set of clothing—tunic, breeches, arm-length gloves, footwraps, scarf, and a head-wrap—woven from the fireproof fibers. Only her featureless head shines out from the garments.

He breaks into a smile. “Hello my friend. Where’s your scary face?”

“Don’t make fun!” Aria scolds. “She’s done nothing but study faces for days!”

“No it is okay please,” Remara still sounds wobbly but the crackling has quieted. “It is a friendly thing to say I think he has never called me friend before hello please are you really alright?”

“I—”

“If you’ll move, that’s for me to determine.” Bone Weaver pushes past Remara, rustling murk-green wings with subtle gray and white markings, like drunken spider tracks.

He blinks. When was the last time he admired the detail on her wings?

Bone seizes his arm and grips it between long fingers, lifting it up for inspection. He gapes at the sight of his arm as she shifts her grasp along it, inching her fingers down. “Mhmm. Yes. Good. Healed up well enough. Couldn’t see it was gone until recently. Too burned. Drew the moonweave out of you for the last time this morning.”

His skin is all one color. Here and there along his arms, an unusual ripple or strange bulge protrudes, as if a careless sculptor shaped them. His hands are still bounded by rigid flesh, abhorrent and ugly, but there is not a drop of deathspill in sight.

His vision blurs as a cheek-straining smile seizes his face. “It’s gone.” He laughs at himself, but he can’t stop repeating it as tears track down his cheeks. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

“Of course it is. Lucky your arms aren’t ‘all gone’ too,” Bone grumbles. “Three days! In and out of you the moonweave goes, fresh fabric every four hours. Poulticing your skin in between. Bring you just awake enough for water and broth, then put you back asleep. Three. Days. Lot of trouble over this fishfool plan. Couldn’t even wait ‘til we were ready for the burning, no, had to go panicky screaming early. Had to dose you hours sooner than I wanted. Almost ran out of the numbing draught.”

Her words are short. Terse. But her fingers probe with utmost care and she shares the shadows of sleepless nights under the eyes. It’s a shadow he might not have seen before, and her gentle touch he would have ignored, hearing only the forbidding tone of voice.

What a change. Wonder brings laughter to his mouth, startling the others. Bone puts a hand to his forehead, scowling. “Maybe put him down for another day’s sleep.”

He plucks her hand from his forehead, covering it with both of his. She freezes, wincing, but he beams wholeheartedly up at her. “Thank you, Bone Weaver. Best I’ve felt since I got back.”

Her mouth softens a touch and she swallows. Clearing her throat, she pulls her hand back to herself. “Yes. Well. Only my duty.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

An urgency takes hold of him, and he pleads, “Bone, are they growing in?” He shifts, trying to twist around to see his own shoulders. “Will my wings ever…?”

Bone Weaver’s face twists. She spreads her hands, her voice husky and catching on odd syllables. “Why ask me, you flittwit? You think it has been done before? Ah, yes, let me just go consult all the other healers who’ve dealt with this!”

She pauses, dropping her hands. “I scoured every account this Keep’s healers left, and any notes added by Wanderers. It’s blessed rare, but there’s accidents. Skyte loses a wing, sometimes both if it’s bad enough. A hawk doesn’t see it’s chasing a skyte until it’s too late, or a skyte tries to stop a maddened animal what can’t tell its haunch from its nose anymore. If they survive, aye, the wings come back over time. Same markings, same colors.

“But it was deathspill, Arc. Who touches deathspill? Get hit with a drop, we could treat you. Fall in a puddle, we could treat you. You were lost to us for months. How long did you weave it for them?”

Her tone is unusually gentle, but the words sting. He shuts his eyes as she concludes, “Now, today, there’s nothing on your back. No accounts or legends to tell us what happens, either. Will they grow?” She shrugs her sagging shoulders, then spins on her heel and stalks off. “No knowing. Wait and see. Aria, Remara, he is well enough and I am tired. My turn to sleep. Aria should, too. He can leave. Remara, don’t stay too long, those wraps aren’t perfect containment for your heat.”

Arc’s eyes widen. “Bone’s burrow?” he whispers to Aria.

Aria nods. “She insisted it was the best way to watch over you.”

He fingers the buttery-smooth blankets mounded on him and, lying in what is clearly Bone Weaver’s own nest, he marvels at how he managed to convince himself that they had all rejected him.

Remara sidles closer, each step taken with care. “Arc my friend are you really well?”

He props himself up on one elbow and asks, “Would you show me that face you’ve been practicing? I’d like to look you in the eye to answer.”

Stroke by stroke, features carve themselves into her face. The eyes are no longer simple dots. He can make out the rough outline of eyelids and two concentric circles within that look like parts of an eye. In the middle of her face, a peak juts out where a nose should go, and below that is the beginnings of lips that slope out from the face.

Grinning, he turns to Aria. “That practice helped. A lot less scary.” Refocusing on Remara, he answers, “See for yourself.” He holds up his arm, spreading his fingers wide. “I’m well. It’s gone. I’m sorry you had to hear my screams. You may never understand, but these were worth it to me.”

She stops at the side of his nest, her tendrils hanging at her sides. He reaches out and takes her glove. Not all the fingers are filled, still, and several tubes hang limp in his palm. “Thank you. I owe you much,” he says.

Her mouth stretches out from side to side, then curves up just a little too high and not quite at the right angle. The effect is bloodcurdling, but he grits his teeth and keeps his face still. “Maybe I can start by helping you… practice your face more.”

At this, her face snaps back to its former simplistic lines and she laughs, a glorious chime that rings throughout Bone Weaver’s home.

“About sleeping?!” Bone yells, half-conscious on her mossy mound.

Grimacing, Arc carefully sits upright. “Bone’s home… she has a ground-level one, right?” At Aria’s nod, he gestures at the door. “We should go. I have so much to tell you both. Remara, we’ll join you outside in a moment.”

Remara bobs her head, beaming like the sun, and bounds out the door.

A cupful of dread trickles into Arc’s newly livened spirit. Still, he turns to Aria, catching her sleeve before she stands. “First, a moment with you. We haven’t really spoken… since.” He waits as she resettles. “I have some nerve back, and I have to ask. Aria… were you all glad I lived outside the Keep? Was it just my own head, or did you all quietly agree?”

Her lips twitch, parting and closing a few times. She unfolds her hands and reaches over. Those beautiful, ethereal fingers that fade to transparency at every edge brush his lumpy, bounded flesh. She shudders, but curls her fingers firmly around his.

“We didn’t know what to do,” she murmurs. “Looking at you, there were so many questions. No answers. How could this happen? Why? What did it mean for you? Was it something we had done wrong? What could we do to prevent it?” Her voice drops lower. “Some have argued we must strike back. After you returned, some of our Wanderers left specifically to study human weapons.”

Arc is aghast. “Nobody told me.”

“It is a divide. A disagreement with no resolution. They turn to me and Mel Songspeaker and ask every month, ‘What is the Maker’s heart?’” She raises and drops her shoulders. “Only twice has it been different. Every time I seek the Maker, I touch a joy I cannot contain, a freedom of existence I cannot comprehend, and a self that knows itself too firmly to ever be budged. Except twice, it was as if it had inverted into a grief…” The sentence dries up. She shakes her head, swallowing. “Not enough words.”

Remara’s admonishment echoes in his mind, “Whenever I am near you Arc Wildspeech the melody all around you mourns.”

“But that does not tell us what to do, or how to help you, or what…” her fingers tighten around his. “What it means that you don’t have wings. We don’t understand what it means. It doesn’t happen. It must mean the Maker’s favor is somehow removed.”

It cuts him deep to hear, but the pain doesn’t overwhelm him. He sees in her eyes the same shock and bewilderment he has endured since that day.

She continues, “We have always loved you, always mourned for you. Sometimes it is easier if you are not there, but the empty place where you were… it haunts us all. We… I have wanted to bring you home so many times. Every week I tell myself what to say when I hand you supplies, but I would open the door and it was barely you. You would not look at me. You crouched as though I would hit you. I thought… perhaps you resented that I still had wings. Still had favor.”

He bows his head. He can’t deny it.

“And I couldn’t say any of it. I thought, I can at least bring supplies, but maybe it would be better if I left you alone, like you wanted.” Here, she pauses. “Arc… did you want to be left alone, or was that only my own thoughts?”

One corner of his mouth curls. “Yes. No.”

She squeezes his hands.

The twisted half-smile drops off his face as he says, “Aria, you said ‘this doesn’t happen’ but soon as you saw me, you had to know. I got out, but for every one of me there’s twenty—maybe even more—who don’t. Some few get free and come back. What then?”

Her face twists. “I don’t know. I’m supposed to know. Mel Songspeaker and I are supposed to help the Keep find an answer, but we’re just as lost about it.”

He reaches a hand up, but stops it just short of her cheek. She looks at it for a moment, then nestles her face into his palm. His fingers stretch back and stroke her hair.

“It’s okay that you don’t know. But we need to talk. Together. All of us. I’m not the last who’ll come crawling back.” A true smile returns to his face. “But I have part of the answer. I dreamed of music… I dreamed about the day our eggs were hidden.”

Aria leans forward, her eyes wide like a wingling waiting for the next fragment from a storyteller’s lips.

“A great music carried our eggs and set us down in the appleberry vines, where Stem said he found us. I knew, all through my body, this was the Maker. I was so afraid. But, Aria, the Maker let me hear the blessing given to me that day and was so gentle with me.” As he explains to Aria, he begins to understand in words what his heart awoke knowing. “There were no answers to my questions, but the Maker showed his heart to… toward me. Even without my wings. And it was not what I feared.”

Aria’s hand covers his and she whispers, “Start from the beginning. Tell me every detail.”

He uses her grip to stand, the motion setting his head swimming. “Bring me some water? And come outside. Remara should hear this, too.”

----------------------------------------

It’s another hour of conversation before Aria and Remara release him, and only then after he pleads exhaustion. It is odd to him that, after sleeping for three days, he can return to weariness so quickly.

“Healing takes strength, and you have healed a great deal these last few days,” Aria reminds him. “You’re sure you won’t rest here?”

“Bone Weaver did enough for me. She deserves her nest back.” He catches her eye. “But I’ll come back. We’ll talk more.”

Remara vibrates in place. “If it is all the same to you Arc Wildspeech I would like to come with you back to your home I can come inside of trees for short times now so I can at least see that you are comfortable in your home and maybe light your ember pit for you.”

Arc offers a tired smile. “Thank you, but I’m going to borrow someone else’s wings for speed. I’m not sure I could stand a walk back right now.”

“That is okay I know where your home is you find a bird friend and I will meet you there soon and that will give me walking practice.”

“Then I’ll see you there. Get started. I’ll still get there first.”

Remara bobs her head and waves an arm, then turns and begins a quick slog that is nearly a proper jog, but slides along the ground too much.

Once Remara is out of sight, he turns and rests his forehead against Aria’s. “I missed you. I missed your songs. I missed playing games with you.”

She nudges his forehead. “Don’t let it go so long this time. I won’t either. And come openly to the Ceremony. Stop hiding in the branches, like I wouldn’t recognize your special falcon up there.”

He snorts, then steps away from Bone Weaver’s door and cups a hand to his mouth, calling, “I need help to get home! Any lazywings hear me?”

A gust of air buffets him, nearly sending him sprawling as a tawny owl lands, chuckling deep in its throat. “Arc-one speak like Arc-one speak in chick-days. Arc-one sickness-gone?”

Beaming, Arc steps forward. The owl lowers her head, allowing him to stick his fingers in among her feathers and massaging around the eyes. “You’re up awfully early. Why’s it always you waiting around for me these days?

“Arc-one sick. Worry. Come sometimes. Watch for Arc-One. Sickness gone?”

“Yes, sickness gone. Still no wings, but maybe one day. You take me home?”

“Take Arc-one home.” She shakes her head free, then turns and crouches, waiting until he scrambles up her back and hooks his legs secure around her neck. With a whoo-hoot she spreads her wings, flapping hard to gain elevation. At the height of the lowest branches, she surges forward, quickly passing Remara’s determined form below.

Yearning tugs in Arc’s chest, and he murmurs to the owl, “Fly higher? I want to see the forest from up high.”

“Fly-low. Keep safe,” she answers.

Arc frowns. “Right. The eagle.” Unease crawls up his spine. He isn’t sure he’s ready to face the eagle properly. He needs food. Sleep. Time to sort out how to approach the eagle. He probably won’t have more than once chance to make an impression. “I’ll take care of it. Soon.”

She gurgles, twisting her body to weave between the tree trunks. Familiar landmarks spring up and past him in a blink. They are close to home. Very—

“Stop!” he calls, alarmed. “Stop, drop down there! Look!”

She flares her wings out, braking in the air and carefully setting down. Arc slides from her neck and scrambles toward an odd-looking trail, all weariness forgotten.

Feathers. An explosion of down and primaries, many stained with blood. It’s drying, still tacky to the touch. At a glance, it’s clear that these are falcon feathers.

His stomach knots as he turns to follow a bizarre drag trail, punctuated with streaks of blood and more feathers.

The trail moves in the direction of his home.

He sprints toward his tree, occasionally dropping his eyes down to confirm the track is still there.

His door is open. Bedraggled tail feathers stick out of the opening. The world around him slows to a slug’s pace as he calls for her. Screams for her. Shoves his way past the bulk of her body, crammed into a space too small for her to ever be comfortable, and kneels by her head.

Something has torn her back open. One wing bends the wrong way. Blood pools under her body but no longer flows.

Mother falcon has been dead for hours.