7. Holy Flapping Finch
Holy Flapping Finch
The sudden stillness of the room hung heavy in the air as I stared at the closed window. The image jolted me as if the sash had actually slammed down on my fingers. It burned itself into my memory as the moment I knew my life would never be the same.
I approached the desk that sat between the two front windows facing the dark street below. As deadly as it looked, and longer than my forearm, the dagger was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
My fingers wrapped around the grip but couldn't quite close. It was built for a hand considerably larger than mine. The polished rock’s swirling bands of deep greens rippled like water across the malachite.
There was a small line, a centimeter long, running through the stone along the edge near the guard.
At first, I thought it might be a crack, but figured it had to be just the stone itself.
And thank the stars for that, because “Sorry I broke your murder weapon” wasn't a conversation I was eager to have with Griffon.
The steel-engraved pommel and guard sandwiched my fist on either side. The guard, shaped like a crescent moon, curved away from my hand and pointed to the blade. So obviously lethal, but it looked softer somehow with the etched spiraling pattern running down the steel.
It was heavier than I expected as I tilted it back and forth, watching the reflected light dance around the room.
I wanted to run my finger down the etching on the blade, but remembered his parting warning.
It was safe to assume there were some things best admired from a distance, anyway.
Like wild animals. And volcanoes. And probably this dagger. I set it back on the desk.
Glancing at the bed, I quickly dismissed the idea of lying down. Sleep was out of the question after having my world upended so thoroughly. Instead, I pulled the desk chair over to the window facing the street and opened it to the cool night air.
The street lay empty in front of me. I rested my chin on my crossed arms and propped them on the windowpane.
Melancholy still permeated my pores, seeping out alongside what I could only assume was the stale air of nineteen years of captivity.
It smelled like old books, shortcomings, and the faintest hint of rash decisions.
It was a strange world outside the window.
The cool breeze felt foreign. It wasn’t the powerful gusts at the tunnel opening over the sea, but it chilled my skin as it caressed the tiny hairs on my arms. Air didn’t move like this in the Citadel.
With very few openings to the world, it hovered and staled in all the massive spaces.
But here, the air smelled of freedom—lingering smoke from the chimneys, combined with the sour stench of rotting garbage somewhere nearby.
A chattering coo brought my head around.
Holy flapping finch, it’s a bird.
A pigeon, to be precise. I’d never seen one outside the illustrated pages of a book.
It perched on the ledge of the next window, head tucked beneath a grey wing, a tiny foot curled against its body.
With a shake of its feathers, the little creature readjusted, claws digging into the weathered brick for stability.
I had only ever seen a bird once. It had somehow found its way into the Citadel.
Frozen in shock, I watched the pale brown and grey sparrow flapping its way along the rib-vaulted ceiling of the corridor.
It was a year after she fell from the library railing, and I was convinced my sister had returned from the stars to visit me.
Snapping out of my shock, I chased it into the library, where it landed on top of a bookcase inside one of the balcony alcoves.
And then, as if it were Sparrow listening, I spoke to it for hours.
I told her how sorry I was, and how I missed her, and how I should have been the one to fall.
Tears poured until I fell asleep, curled up on the floor.
I woke to find the bird gone. Since then, I’ve slipped back into that alcove each day, books in hand, letting the familiarity warm the edges of my solitude. But she never came back, and the thought that I might never see that little refuge again twisted my stomach.
Leaning out of the window, I studied the pigeon. Birds were sacred in Volantia. The people of this kingdom believe the Venti wind gods dwell in the breezes, and the sky above is the gateway to the Aether.
As if on cue, Auster, the god of the south wind, blew a strand of hair across my forehead.
At least I think that was Auster. To keep the wind gods from tearing the world apart, the Keeper of the Winds, the goddess Aura, allows each of them to only steer their blasts in one direction.
I’d gotten a bit turned around after our winding journey through the city.
For all I knew, I was facing north, and it was actually the god Aquilo giving me a gentle reminder that I had no idea what I was doing.
I sighed. At this point, the only wind god I could be sure of would be Tempestas, the goddess of storms, and Aura’s sister.
You might assume Aura could keep the sky under control.
But family dynamics were complicated, even among deities.
She often struggled to rein in her own sister, whose temper wreaked havoc in any direction she pleased.
Most corporeal of Volantia’s gods were the nymphs of the breeze, taking form in the earthly realm as none other than our feathered friends.
Birds. And a messenger of the gods, an actual nymph of the breeze, sits only meters away, rustling its plumage.
I’ve read that pigeons will affirm your path and help navigate complex emotions.
They’ve got a homing instinct, after all.
I could use that type of direction right now—it seems I’ve never been more lost.
The pigeon seemed oblivious to my presence, which was fair.
I'd been oblivious to most of this world until a few hours ago, so we had that in common.
I stretched further out of the window. The feathers around its neck looked iridescent in the faint glow from our room.
Were they like my potens lock? I held my breath as I leaned over the windowsill to get a better look.
The tip of a slipper was all that gripped the floor as I teetered precariously.
The aqua and pink of those little feathers were so like the hair I had just allowed to be cut off.
With white knuckles, I strained to hold on to the sill as I balanced myself on the ledge.
“What, IN THE BLOODY ABYSS, are you doing?”
Startled, my toe slipped from its faint tension on the wood floorboard.
I toppled forward. My eyes whipped from the now startled bird to the cobblestone street three stories below.
I fumbled with the aging wood of the windowsill.
But physics was not negotiable, and no adjustment of my grip would stop gravity from pulling my upper half over its tipping point.
The pigeon squawked and flapped wildly to lift off its own perch as I began plummeting from mine.
For a sacred messenger, abandoning me in my time of need seemed distinctly un-divine.
I gasped as my fingers slipped from the sill.
Instinctively, my arms came up to protect my head, even though I knew it would do no good.
I was falling.
In that split second, irony twisted my insides with the realization that my demise would be eerily similar to Sparrow’s. And so well-deserved. At least we'd have a matching cause of death. The family that falls together, and all that.
But the plunge to my death halted with a jolt.
I remained suspended for half a second, upside down, and then swung into the side of the grimy building. A groan escaped my lips as I bounced away again. Not because it hurt, but because my shift was now gathered just under my armpits.
The hand that gripped my ankle became two hands, and then they pulled me up and back through the window.
As an arm wrapped around my bare waist, near the underthings that I again had on display, a part of me wished I were lying broken and bloody on the pavement.
Death by cobblestone suddenly seemed like the more dignified option.
Mortification shot through me like a lightning bolt, burning up my chest, to my neck, and then to my entire face.
My feet landed on the floor. I yanked my shift down. Then those hands spun me around into the glare of none other than…Big Scary Man.
I knew his name now, but the fury that was etched into every line on his face made the name ‘Griffon’ far less relevant. He seethed with anger. My back hit the wall with a thud, the grip on my upper arms pinning me to the shiny red wallpaper.
“What in the darkened stars is wrong with you?”
Breath catching in my throat, my eyes went wide as the shock of what just happened finally settled into my bones. He towered over me. Mutely, I stood there, staring at the muscle tensing in his jaw.
He seemed bigger than he’d been before. Like in the last hour, I had somehow forgotten. My addled brain absently wondered if every time I saw him, I would have to get used to his size all over again.
“Are you really that daft?”
I gasped at the insult. “No!” I yelled back at his furious face, even though, to be fair, the evidence was not currently in my favor.
The fingers around my biceps tightened in frustration as a strangled growl escaped from between his clenched teeth. His harsh, angry breaths stirred the hair at the crown of my head. It was as if he were holding himself back from shaking sense into me.
Suddenly, he shoved me away from him. I collapsed onto the chair that he must have forced aside to reach me.
He paced erratically across the room and back again.
Glancing past him, I found the closed side window we were using like a door.
I never heard the window open, nor caught sight of him on the street below.