Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 8. We're Not In Grave Danger

Lucy woke up one morning to find a thoroughly bedraggled Marbles tugging at her sleeve.

"Whenever you get a chance, Lucy, I could use some healing," said Marbles politely.

Lucy pulled aside her bedroll covers and inspected the hawk for damage, squinting in the blue dawn light. Marbles was lightly bleeding from multiple sharp blows to the head and neck, and some of his feathers had been yanked out and hung loosely from his wings. He was dazed and almost wobbled onto the coals of the campfire before Lucy caught him and drew him closer.

"What happened to you?" asked Lucy as she inspected him for damage.

"I got mobbed," said Marbles. "When songbirds see a weak hawk they dive bomb him into oblivion. It's the worst at dawn, when their blood is up. You'd think it's just them singing but when you hear that singing it means the birds are out to fuck or fight and apparently there was no fucking to be done this morning."

"Oh my God how many attacked you?" asked Lucy as she daubed some salve onto Marbles.

"Ummm all of them I think," said Marbles, wincing. "It's a big deal to beat up on a hawk, even a fat little bitch like me."

"Are you fat?" asked Lucy. "I mean it's not like you have huge hawk rolls or a feather muffin top or something."

"Oh yeah I am fucking huge for a hawk," said Marbles. "Several ounces overweight. I won't tell you how many but more than two. Part of the protective spell means I don't technically need sustenance. I'll get really hungry but I'll never starve to death. So I mostly just gain weight and girl hawks have a very low tolerance for any biomass that can hinder hunting. This is part of the reason why I'm cursed to be a virgin."

"You know virginity is just a social construct, right?" said Lucy, intoning a supplementary healing koan while holding out her right palm. Marbles, grateful, pressed his head forward and into her palm.

"Tell that to my balls," said Marbles.

"Hawks don't even have balls," said Opal, who had woken up, hungover, and was sitting crosslegged on his bedroll and rubbing his eyes.

"They're internal," said Marbles. "So you'll have to speak up." "Feeling better bud?" asked Lucy.

"Much," said Marbles. "Thank you."

"Hey Marbles let's go catch us some breakfast," suggested Opal. He was tempted to ask if Lucy could do something about his hangover but it seemed really petty after Marbles had just been attacked. Plus he felt ashamed because maybe he had drunk so much just to get a roaring hangover so that Lucy would lay her hand on his forehead. It was a creepy move from a creepy guy and Opal was almost glad Marbles had used up Lucy's minor healing spell of the day.

"Yeah! Let's go!" said Marbles, because he loved eating fish guts and because birds didn't bother him when he was around humanoids.

Opal unlatched the point of his hat, then reached under the brim to flip up his coal cup. A coal cup was just a small steel cup held in place by four retractable steel tines sewn into the sides of the hat. He fished a coal out of the dying fire with his frying pan and deftly flipped it up and into the coal cup. This would keep him warm down by the cold river, and the wisps of smoke from the coal would just float out of the open end of his hat. He would latch the hat back together after the coal's heat had dissipated and he'd dumped the coal lump into the river. I'm telling you this hat was tricked out. Clementine had bought the best. It had been really sweet of her. He had teared up when he had opened it.

Opal and Marbles sat by the river, waiting for something to bite. While they waited, Opal decided that maybe he could counsel Marbles about his predicament. He decided to learn a little bit more first.

"So you said that this protective spell isn't preventing you from mating?" asked Opal.

"Not as far as I know," said Marbles. "I can get really close to girl hawks when I'm aroused but they are having none of it. They are just not interested. It doesn't help that I'm also just hawkward as fuck around women," said Marbles. "The wizard had an unshakeable faith in my inability to get laid and never prepared any other spells to keep me pure."

"Hawkward?" asked Opal.

"Awkward, but you're a hawk," said Marbles. "Can't fly, can't hunt, can't fuck."

Opal sat back and thought about his own not so great track record with women. He had lost his virginity as a senior in college, to his first girlfriend (of two total), when he had been fifty years old. He had been so clueless about dating. Had always been timid yet somehow obnoxious at the same time? Overweight and underpaid. Just plain lazy. He had never even been kissed before meeting his first girlfriend. She had seen something in him though, and every year that passed he thought back about her more and more fondly. About how sweet and patient she had been, and how she had always encouraged his dreams, and how in retrospect he wouldn't have had it any other way but losing his virginity to her in his room in the dorm warren, late one Sunday afternoon after a long walk together.

"Have you tried like, engendering sympathy?" asked Opal. "Like you're a nice guy, you don't need to be this great hunter, this alpha hawk. If you play your cards right, being pathetic but accessible may comprise a surprisingly large slice of your sexual success," offered Opal. He was speaking from experience.

"OK that shit might work sometimes for humanoids but it does not fly, literally and figuratively, with hawks," said Marbles. "Hawk women want you lean, fast, and aggressive as all get out."

"Dude we can find the right girl for you," said Opal. "There's a hat for every gnome," he continued, echoing his mother, who had in her way had obliquely counseled Opal about his own intractable virginity when he had been a high school sophomore.

Just then something bit on the line, causing Opal's pole to bend towards the water. Opal looked up, but instead of focusing on the fish he stared at a big black cat across the river, which was also staring back at him.

When I say big cat I don't just mean like a big house cat, I'm talking like jaguar sized. This cat was also thickly built like a jaguar. Like big forearms, strong jaws. But it was black. I was going to say it was like a panther but according to Wikipedia a panther is a black melanistic variant of any big cat species, and this isn't really a melanistic variant of this cat's species (which has yet to be revealed in this narrative).

This cat was just black and, as I've mentioned before, built like a jaguar, but it didn't have spots. And not charcoal black--if the sun hit its thick coat you would see a rainbow shimmer like a thin slick of oil on fresh asphalt. Its eyes' irises were ice white, and faceted. Round, brilliant cut diamonds of aching, endless obsession.

Its pupils were black, and glittering. Two onyx polished tombstones in the snow. Obsidian twins unbuckled in the back of a crashed glacial station wagon. It had big paws, and like, chubby toes? Like they were webbed or something. It laid its paws out in front of him on the ground with a practiced nonchalance that hid a fatal focus, like a boxer holding out his hands to be taped up before a fight. It bent its head to lap at the river and flicked its ears back forth. These ears were lushly tufted, silken extravagances that could move in different directions at the same time, sucking in sound. The cat never took its eyes off of Opal. Not for a second.

Opal had landed a small fish and, for some stubborn hungover reason, glared back at the cat while bringing his hatchet down into the little fish's spine. The cat was unimpressed.

Opal wove a rope through the dead fish's gills and slung it over his shoulder. "Let's get back to camp," he said, still staring back at the cat. Could that thing jump over the entire river and pounce on him? Opal wasn't sure. He was not hungover anymore. He was a little afraid.

On the walk back to camp Opal remembered something from Avian Predation 101 that they'd have to at least try if they wanted to get Marbles laid.

"Dude right at the end of the Riverlands there's Hawk Mountain!" said Opal, stunned he hadn't thought of it before. "It's autumn, they all use the updrafts around the mountain to buoy them down to a warmer climate when they migrate. If there's any place where a hard-up hawk can find somebody, it's there!"

"Cool beans," remarked Marbles.