Bird Wings

Chapter 3

(Part 2)

After he'd brought her back to the cave from the clifftop, Hawk gave Wren some of his own clothes to change into and disappeared for a while. She ate more of the food he had brought and sat musing over the contrast between how she felt now and the previous day.

By the light of day, Hawk seemed much more like the boys she had grown up with in the village than the monster with strong hands who had dared her to attack him with his own knife. Apart from the wings, everything about him felt so utterly human, so completely familiar. She had treated him in much the same way she would have any boy near her own age who had gotten on her nerves, completely disregarding the dramatic imbalance of power between them, and even most of her fear. The way he had reacted to her had been so normal too! He'd acted frustrated, exasperated, amused, but nothing she'd done had pushed him into scaring her again. How strange. His laugh from earlier rolled around in her mind. It had been such a human thing to do.

Besides the wings, the strangest thing about Hawk were his eyes. There was something undefinable and haunting about them; in a way it made him look like he was watching the world from somewhere very far inside. Other boys seemed almost too big for their bodies sometimes - their personality would exude loudly out of them and fill whatever room they were in until Wren wished they could learn to take up less space. By contrast, Hawk's personality seemed very small. His body radiated nothing, as if it didn't house an entire soul. Only his eyes showed a sliver of the person - but Wren found she didn't really like looking directly into them. Besides the conflict between them, she found his eyes hurt her somehow. That was when she felt in the most danger of sympathy.

To distract herself, she went nearer to the entrance and sat on a rounded part of the rock in the sun. It felt odd to wear boy's clothes. She missed the way her skirts felt like her own personal blanket when she sat. Thinking of things she missed, what was her family doing now? Did they think she was dead? And Cobin, what was he thinking at this moment?

She really didn't know Cobin that well. He had come to the village a little more than a month before to replace their retiring blacksmith, and nearly every one of the eligible local girls had been immediately smitten with him. He was good looking, hard working, and friendly. The fact that he was new had made him fascinating, and Wren and many of her friends had quickly lost interest in anything other than the handsome new blacksmith.

It had felt like the best day of her life the first time he had greeted her by name, and that had only been superseded by the time he gave her a piece of scrap iron he had hammered into the shape of a W. Nothing more important had ever happened to her; nothing else had ever made her feel that special. Cobin began to visit her occasionally, and she walked on air.

He was in a hurry to be settled, and there was no reason for either of them to wait. Wren's life had become a rosy coloured blur. She was going to be married! This desirable stranger had shown up and swept her right off her feet before she even knew what was happening. She was living in a storybook.

Wren snorted at that thought. She was certainly living out a story now. She was a princess in a tower, even guarded by a dragon. Was it likely that anyone would try to come and save her?

Hawk had never bothered anyone before this. Things left unattended had gone missing, children scared each other with wild tales, people avoided looking up when they faced the cliff side - that was the full effect he had had on their lives. Now however, he had taken one of their own. Perhaps some of them had gotten a good look at him and knew he was no large bird. Would the fanatics finally convince someone to climb the cliff face and do away with him? As important as Wren personally considered herself to be, she knew logically that her family and neighbours would probably consider her lost forever. The cliff was very steep, and they wouldn't want to risk another life for one that was most likely already over now anyway. She wanted to imagine that Cobin would at least try to go after her.