The king’s guard ran toward him, lances raised, only to be swept off their feet by the dragon’s spiked tail or engulfed in flame. Tiras rose above the beast, wings extended, drawing Zoltev into the sky. I willed the arrows of the archers to bury themselves in his scaly skin, but the dragon was wily, his hide was thick, and he rose above the smoke, beyond the view of the king’s men, and we could only watch the haze in trepidation, eyes peeled, necks craned, listening to the battle of wings and wills above us.
Then through the hovering smoke, the Volgar Liege hurtled, wings pinned back, Tiras clinging to the hilt of the sword that protruded from Zoltev’s reptilian chest. The dragon roared, shooting flames that engulfed Tiras’s wing. With an inhuman cry, Tiras swung his right hand upward, thrusting his second sword through Zoltev’s dragon-like snout, pinning his mouth closed and trapping the flames inside him. They collided with the cobblestones, the dragon king taking the brunt of the fall, wings twisted and trapped beneath him, Tiras still clinging to the hilts of both swords.
Warriors pounced from every direction, running their swords through Zoltev’s body, ensuring he wouldn’t change and rise again.
But the king didn’t rise either.
The two lay motionless, a crumpled heap of limbs and wings, man and beast, and I heard a cry echoing across the courtyard, keening and sharp, reverberating down my throat and into my belly, lodging around my heart.
Screaming. I was screaming, just like before, the sound breaking through the rust in my throat and the walls of my mind. Then I was running and falling and running again, reaching Tiras’s body as he was rolled from the beast onto his back, victorious yet overcome.
“Tiras.” His name felt bigger than life on my tongue, and it rolled through my mouth like a growing storm. I realized his name wasn’t just in my head but in my throat and on my lips. It sprang forth and rang in my ears.
“Tiras,” I said again, calling him back with my will and my voice, demanding he answer. But he didn’t open his eyes, and his breath whistled from his lips, wispy and faint. The left side of his body was charred and black, his left wing a shriveled mass of melted feathers and exposed cartilage.
I placed my hands above his heart, avoiding the wounded flesh and the seared skin.
Wounded flesh beneath my hands,
Be new again as I demand.
Wing that withers, singed and shorn,
Heal thyself, be whole once more.
His blackened skin began to pink, and his feathers unfurled, but my body quaked, and my sight began to fail. There was blood seeping through my gown, and pain radiated deep in my belly.
I lay beside him, my head on his heart, listening to the dreadful slog, heavy and slow. If he could change, he could heal.
“His gift is strange,” the old Teller had said.
“He was not born this way,” Kjell had argued.
But my mother had prophesied his change. She’d pressed words into the air, promising fate. And on the night she died, King Zoltev had begun to lose his soul and his son to the sky.
Realization flooded me.
I could not heal what wasn’t broken. I could not alter Tiras’s gift. But if the change was not his gift, if it was not something woven into his cells and sinews, then I could take it away. I could take my mother’s words away. It was the first thing my mother had taught me. Take the word away, Lark.
I closed my eyes and focused on the day when I’d swallowed the words back into myself, just as I’d been commanded. The words on my lips, the shape of them, the weight of them, the rumble of the sound releasing from my throat as they came into being. I’d done as I was told. I’d remembered and obeyed. I’d swallowed every word, every syllable.
Curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour.
That hour was at hand. The most important hour of my life. Dawn was nearing and Tiras would not live to see it. Not as a bird or a man. The hour was at hand, and I could not afford to be silent anymore.
I pressed my mouth to Tiras’s chest and moved my lips around the shape of the word he’d become, taking it from him.
“Elgae.”
His breast was warm, and his life force lingered, but his spirit wanted to fly, fly, fly. It was the only word left, and it resisted me even as I called it back and took it away, just like I’d done to the poppet clenched in my mother’s fist the day it all began.
“Ylf.”
As I moved my lips against his chest, pulling the word into myself, I felt the smallest crack, a fissure, and wind whistled through my lips. Just like the poppet, Tiras was quiet, a shell of something that no longer stirred.
I’d taken his word, his final word, and drawn it into myself.
And still he lay motionless, wings fluttering in the pre-dawn darkness, eyes closed, not an eagle, not a man.
“Tiras.” I spoke against his lips, desperate to give him a new word, new life. “Tiras,” I said again, straining against the rust in my throat, wanting to speak his name into being, but there was no change in him.
I threw back my head in rage and sorrow, the fissure in my throat widening, even as I tried to reclaim Tiras from the sky, taking away my mother’s words.
Yks eht morf! I mourned, Yks eht morf!
But there was no answer from the sky. I had lost him. It was foretold, and it had come to pass.
I felt a hand on my arm and heard my name being spoken, but I would not lift my head from the king.
“Yer wounded, Lark. Yer bleeding.” Boojohni tried to pull me away.
I can’t heal him, Boojohni. I tried to make him change so he could heal himself. But he’s not a man or a bird . . . He’s both.
“What word did ye give him, Lark?” Boojohni asked urgently.
I moaned, trying to speak out loud and failing, the words like rocks against my teeth, awkward and sharp.
“The day yer mother died, ye kissed his hand. I saw ye! And ye whispered something. What word did ye give him?”
I could only stare in despair, shaking my head. I didn’t give him a word.
“Ye did,” Boojohni argued.
I couldn’t remember. I remembered my mother and Zoltev’s sword. I remembered her telling me to be silent.
“Do ye remember Tiras at all? He was just a boy. A boy on a big, black horse.”
I closed my eyes, making myself go back to that day.
“Ye have to remember,” Boojohni pled, his voice hoarse. “He talked to you.”
He’d talked to me.
And he’d been . . . kind.
He’d smiled.
And he’d told me his horse’s name.
I remembered.
It was the biggest, blackest, horse I’d ever seen—but I wasn’t afraid. I was never afraid of the animals. Their words were so simple and easy to understand. This horse wanted to run. He didn’t want to stand in the courtyard and hold still, but he did. He knew his duty. The prince wanted to run too. He was bored, and he wanted to be free of the guard around him and the fear of the people that bowed and kneeled whenever he was introduced. His father enjoyed seeing people bow. He didn’t. He wanted to run. To fly.
The prince’s eyes caught on something overhead, and his yearning was instantaneous and bright.
He wished he could trade places with the bird.
Then he looked down at me and smiled, releasing the yearning that made me hurt for him. He slid down from his mount and held out his hand to me. I took it without hesitation. He ran his other hand down the horse’s long nose.
“His name is Mikiya.” His voice was already husky and low, like a man’s voice, though he wasn’t yet a man.
I repeated the name on a whisper. Mikiya. It was a funny name, but I liked the way the word felt in my mouth.
“It means eagle,” he added. “Because he wants to fly.”
I still held his hand in mine, and my mother stepped forward to draw me back, away from the prince and his horse.
I kissed his hand, and I gave the prince a word so that he could fly away if he want
ed to . . .
Mikiya.
“Mikiya,” I said, the word sloppy and awkward in my mouth. My tongue was unaccustomed to speech. I looked up at Boojohni, desperate to say it correctly.
“Mikiya,” I repeated. “Eagle.”
“Take it away, Bird,” Boojohni urged. I pressed my lips to Tiras’s breast once more and withdrew the word I’d inadvertently cursed him with.
“Ayikim,” I breathed. “Ayikim.”
“Lark . . . look!” Boojohni crowed softly. “Look!”
The roots of Tiras’s hair became inky and rich, the color spilling from his scalp and rippling down the white locks that brushed his shoulders, until his hair was completely black once more. The broken wings that jutted out of his back began to shiver and curl into themselves like parchment engulfed in flame, disintegrating into nothing more substantial than ash. We watched, awestruck, as the ash held the shape of wings for a single heartbeat, then whirled up and away, erased from existence.
Tiras’s right hand lay against his chest, the talons chipped and encrusted with blood. Suddenly the talons were gone, swallowed back into the pads of his fingers, leaving them perfectly rounded and whole once more.
“Tiras,” I croaked, begging him to open his eyes, wanting to see if the restoration was complete. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even stir.
I had taken away the word, but he was not healed.
I smoothed his chest with shaking hands, streaking it with the blood that wept from my side. I breathed a spell of healing—ill-formed words from my unpracticed tongue—calling on my mother who had loved me, on a God of Words who had given me my gift, and on Tiras himself who had flown beyond my reach.
“Close the gates of heaven and hell,
Turn him back and make him well.
Do not fly away, my king.
Jeru weeps beside your queen.”
“Bird . . .” Boojohni said, his face contorting in helplessness. “Maybe it’s too late.”
“Do not fly away, my king. Do not fly away from me,” I chanted, refusing to listen, pushing life through my hands and into the heart that no longer beat inside Tiras’s chest. Then Boojohni left me, running for help or running for cover, I didn’t know. My eyes were closed, my hands numb, and I continued to plead.
Seconds later I was swept up, embraced like a long-lost child, rescued temporarily from despair, but when I raised my eyes to the man who held me, I saw Kjell, his weary face lined with grief, his blue eyes nothing like the once-black gaze of the man I longed for. I turned my face and saw that Tiras still lay on the ground. The king had not been released from the sky.
“Let me go,” I said, the words almost unintelligible. “I took the word away, but I can’t call Tiras back.”
“She’s lost so much blood, Captain. She won’t leave him. I’m afraid we’re going to lose her too.” Boojohni was crying.
Kjell crouched beside the king, releasing me as he touched his brother’s face.
“He’s gone, Lark.” Kjell’s voice was grief-stricken, and truth rose around him.
“No,” I whispered. “He’s not. I can still feel him.”
Kjell shook his head, his throat working, his eyes bleak.
“Help me, Kjell. I am not a Healer. But you are. You are.”
“No,” Kjell whispered. “I’m not . . . I can’t.”
“Help him, and I will help you,” I said, repeating the words Kjell had said to me a lifetime ago when he believed I could save his brother. My vision was starting to swim, and I didn’t have the strength to move my lips, but he knelt beside me and put his hands where mine had been.
Listen to him.
“I can’t . . .” Kjell protested, even as he grimaced, listening. Prayer and pleading oozed from his pores.
I put a hand over his and strained to hear the song of Tiras’s soul, the frequency that would call him back and heal his broken body.
Listen, I begged.
I knew the moment he heard the tone—a tone so faint it was almost a vibration—because it began to pulse like a heartbeat, low and thready, swelling then fading as Kjell locked onto it and began to hum. His voice was gravely, untrained, and hesitant, but it was perfectly pitched.
I wrapped my mind and what was left of my strength around the timber of Kjell’s voice. I pulled the note into my head and my throat, into my chest and my limbs, swimming in the sound. I pled for health and hope and second chances, my hands pressed over Kjell’s.
When Tiras opened his eyes, eyes as deep and black as the night sky above us, I closed mine.
I awoke alone to light, warm and bright, streaming in from the open balcony doors to my chamber. The room was neat and quiet, the day beyond the palace walls serene. I listened for chaos, for the daily cacophony of life in the castle, and though I heard movement and industry, it was subdued, the thoughts and words wafting in with the sunlight reflective and soft.
My gown was gone. I stretched naked limbs and touched my side, feeling smooth skin and little else. I trailed my hands to my abdomen, to the small swell between my hip bones, and rested them there. I felt a quivering sensation—life and movement—and held my breath, wanting to hear as badly as I wanted to feel. The sensation came again—a brush, a caress, the whisper of water against the shore.
Safe.
The word fluttered in my chest. I was safe. My child was safe, and I was healed.
Safe.
But not whole.
I sat up gingerly and rose from the bed, pulling a dressing gown around my body. My hair fell in rumpled waves down my back and over my eyes, and I focused on the distraction of taming it. I swept it back carefully, tucking it behind my ears, my movements slow and precise, my eyes focused inward, my mind blank, and my heart . . . racing.
If I didn’t look too closely, I wouldn’t see that Tiras wasn’t there. If I didn’t breathe too deeply, I wouldn’t feel the hollow echo in my empty chest. If I didn’t move too quickly, I wouldn’t reach any painful conclusions. And if I didn’t listen, I wouldn’t hear the silence he always left behind.
The light flickered at the corner of my eye, drawing my reluctant gaze back to the balcony, and my racing heart tripped and fell. He was there beyond the fluttering drapes, perched on the low wall, his wings extended like he’d just come to rest, the red tips and shimmering undertones catching the light.
My throat burned and my gaze blurred.
“Tiras?” I whispered, his name finding my lips like he’d never been lost. I said his name again, and it trembled there before slipping silently past my chin with the tears streaming from my eyes and scurrying down my cheeks.
The eagle stretched, spreading his wings like he meant to fly, and hovered momentarily above his perch. Then he shifted, slipping between the layers of the sky in stained glass shards of light before streaming out again, transformed. Whole. Safe and whole.
He saw me and stilled—dark hair and warm skin, gleaming eyes and a softly smiling mouth—and I gloried in him, even as I grieved. He crossed the space between us and touched my face with perfect fingers.
“You’re crying,” he whispered.
“You’re . . . s-still a . . . bird,” I stuttered.
His smile grew, creasing his cheeks. His joy confused me.
“You’re speaking,” he marveled.
“You’re still a bird,” I repeated, undeterred.
His eyes clung to my mouth, his thumb tracing the swell of my lower lip.
“I am,” he whispered, nodding.
My eyebrows lowered in confusion, and my lips pursed in question, inviting a kiss. Tiras took it, raising my face and ducking his head, kissing me with all the impatience of long separation and the devotion of long suffering.
“Tiras,” I murmured, and his kiss deepened as if he liked the whisper of his name in my mouth. For a moment there was only relief and reunion between us, though I wept even as I welcomed him home.
“I took the word away,” I cried against his lips. “But you’re still a bird.” r />
“Yes,” he whispered, cradling my face in his hands and brushing away my tears.
“I was the one who made you an eagle. I didn’t mean to. But I did. It was me.” I stumbled through my confession, wanting to kneel at his feet and beg for forgiveness, to prostrate myself on the floor in front of him.
“Mikiya,” he said gently. “I know. Boojohni told me.”
“You wanted to fly . . . I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t know what would happen.”
“I still want to fly,” he said with a rueful smile. “I can’t imagine never being a bird again. But you didn’t make me an eagle, Lark. You just made it impossible for me to be anything else.” He met my gaze. “You took the word away, and now . . . I can change.”
He backed away, his hand out-stretched, bidding me stay.
“Watch.”
With a shimmer and a shift, Tiras became a huge black wolf, tongue lolling to the side like he’d run a dozen miles.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, capturing the cry that rose in my throat.
The wolf sauntered forward, raised an enormous paw, and rested it against my belly, extending the hand of friendship. I giggled and gasped, and the wolf immediately shifted into a slithering snake with golden stripes on ebony scales.
I fought the urge to bolt to the bed and climb up on it, protecting my feet. But the snake became an ape with great sad eyes, the ape became a swan with a graceful neck, and the swan became a sloth with long shaggy arms and a shy demeanor. When Tiras morphed into a braying ass, I began to laugh, recognizing his jest.
Tiras became one creature after another with no more effort or pain than it took for me to spin a spell or wield a word. When he stood before me once again, a dark-haired king with human eyes and hands, bearing no resemblance to the animals he’d been, I finally understood.
“My father was right about one thing,” he said.
I tipped my head, waiting.