Elaine Goes Bird-Watching (excerpt)

By the time Elaine had finished summarizing the job she'd undertaken, her mom simply sat there with a hand over her mouth.  “Are you sure you're ready, Elaine?” she asked.

Elaine nodded in response.  “I know, I know,” she said, “a hungry animal is one of the most dangerous kinds.  But that's just it...it must be desperate to go through the lengths it'd have to in order to get to the Ceartas cattle.  And to clean out the place so thoroughly, too!”  The soldiers had been rather tight-lipped on the way back home, but it was a long enough carriage ride that she'd been able to squeeze a few details out of them.  Combined with what she already knew about animal behavior patterns, it was more than enough to put some educated guesses together.  

“Is anyone going with you, honey?  If you're all alone and something happens to you...”

Both Gustavs stared expectantly at the two Ceartan soldiers seated opposite them at the dinner table, only for them to deflect it.  “We're not goin' with her,” one of them said, his hands waving defensively in front of his chest.  “We're...we're city guards!  We were only sent out here by our Siorraidh to post the notice...then it's back to patrols!”

Elaine rolled her eyes.  “As much as I'd like for you to patrol your useless behinds by the pastures around this thing's feeding time...I think I'm on my own for this one, Mom.”

“This is no suicide mission, ma'am,” the other soldier assured her.  “Elaine's duty need only go as far as to report the animal responsible for the cattle slayings, and point a hunting party in its direction.”

Elaine's mom shook her head.  “You don't know Elaine like I do,” she said simply.

“I'm not letting some animal kill me, Mom,” Elaine argued, standing up and pacing toward the window.  “I can do this.”

“Not alone, you can't.”  Ms. Gustav turned to the soldiers.  “When do you need Elaine to report?”

“Any night she can, but ideally tonight,” one soldier answered, though Elaine didn't bother to turn and check which one.  “Especially if she doesn't want anyone beatin' her to the reward.”

“If you're going to Ceartas by carriage...she's got time to do one last thing for me.”  Elaine turned when she heard the sound of her mother's cane thumping along the floor toward her.  As soon as she did, though, her attention was being pointed right back out the window.  “The hill we live near...do you remember the bedtime stories I used to tell you about it?”

Elaine gave her mother a confused look, but decided to hear her out.  “About Frida, the bravest little birdie?” she asked.  “Sure, but what's that got to do with anything?”

Ms. Gustav chuckled softly.  “Honey, if anyone can keep an eye on you, it's Frida...just as she did when I was out on adventures at your age.  Or, at least, one of her children could.”

“Those stories were real?”  Elaine turned to ponder the stories, but another question had her on her heels, spinning back around.  “You named a bird Frida?”

“Well, it was really Vrida, but you always said it like Frida, so I went with that.”  Reminiscing about the past had left Ms. Gustav with a wide, warm smile, which she kept as she explained herself.  “When I was younger, I came to this island and charmed a big yellow bird with a beak like this.”  She took one of her hands off her cane to hold up, her index and middle fingers crossed over each other.  “When I decided to settle down and raise you, Elaine...I thought Vrida might want to do something similar.  This is the only place in the world I've seen birds like her, so I brought her here.”  With a sigh, she added, “Were it not for the people around here, it'd have been a fine place to raise you too, with the animals normally being so docile...”

“Hey, great story time, mom, but we've got things to do, remember?”

Ms. Gustav glared at Elaine's foot as it tapped against the floor, but said nothing about it.  “Those little seeds I always put in your trail mix...I know glide rats and such like them too, but take a bunch with you.  Vrida's flock should love it.”

Elaine nodded and almost ran immediately to the seeds, but stopped and gave her mother a hug first.  “Love you, Mom,” she said softly.  “I can't wait to tell you about this adventure.”

---

The trek to the hill wasn't terribly long; in fact, Elaine had passed the spot her scarf had been caught on a tree not halfway there.  The real challenge, she soon realized, was not the journey itself.  The whole time she ran there, she'd had time to think about the description her mom gave her, only to realize she'd truly never seen any big yellow birds with crossed bills.  Perhaps they lived on the hill, or perhaps their usual home was out in the fields, or worse, in Radsla Forest, a place near Ceartas her mom never seemed to stop warning her about.  Even if her mom had released Vrida on the hill, there was no guarantee she'd stayed there, or stayed on the island at all.

Elaine squeezed the grip of her wood splitting maul.  She had decided to take it with her now, rather than risk forgetting to bring it with her on the Ceartas mission.  Its very existence was keeping her focused at the moment, its weight deftly reminding her of the weight of the duty she'd signed herself up for.  “Hopefully I can get this done as quickly as Mom thinks I can,” she muttered to herself as she pressed onward.

She knew she'd get the best view overall from the top of the hill, so that's where she decided to beeline to.  The travel also gave her time to realize that she'd be looking up in the trees an awful lot.  Unless Frida's species was completely unusual, that's where it would build its nest.  Unlike her shopping adventure, she was making sure to avoid distractions and repeat everything she knew in her head as she went, so she wouldn't forget.  Next time she dropped by Terry's shop, she promised herself, she'd be getting some sort of journal to keep all this straight instead.

Desperate for any other clues, Elaine sat in the shade of a bush on the hill, mulling over the old stories on her head.  Frida, the bravest little birdie, as her mom had always introduced it, had had plenty of fantastic adventures in those bedtime stories.  Sure, they'd been spun as fun little yarns to give something Elaine to fall asleep to, but if they were based on a real creature, perhaps there was some other truth hidden within them.  “Frida lived in a tree covered in needles,” she recited from memory, “and enjoyed solving puzzles.  Her favorite puzzle grew on the trees, and was filled with food...”

A slight groan escaped Elaine.  She could picture the tree she was looking for now, with its seed-filled cones and green needle-like foliage.  But those trees would be easier to spot in winter, when they kept their needles while all the other trees were bare.  It was too early for the leaves to even change color, though, much less fall out of Elaine's way.  

Shaking her head, she stood up and began searching randomly as she tried to remember other details from the old stories.  Ms. Gustav had always made different funny voices for her characters, and Frida's words had always come out in short, loud bursts.  Elaine could hear a lot of birdsong on the hill, though.  Chasing that by itself seemed foolish.  She stored it away, however, thinking that it might help if she somehow chanced upon two kinds of birds with twisted beaks.

“Duh...other birds!” Elaine said to herself,  She worried that “have you seen this bird” might be a difficult concept for any animal she might find up here, but there was no sense in searching alone.  Rather than ask a bird, she decided to bring it up to the first thing she saw, a long-necked little mammal rooting through the grass.  Its slender body wobbled as it rose on its hind legs to face Elaine, already captivated by her power.  “Hey, neighbor!” she cooed, squatting down to its level.  “I'm looking for a bird that's kind of big, with a beak like this.”  She held out crossed fingers, hoping the thing could figure it out.  Before she could ask the question proper, the creature turned around, vanishing into the brush.  “Wait up!” she called out.

Before she could stand back up, she felt claws pressed into her back.  Between her layers of loose clothing and her quick reflexes, they failed to break the skin, but Elaine still gave out a surprised yelp.  Another one of the slender creatures jumped down from her back, eyeing her as if it were innocent.  “Friggin' vessgifts!” she shouted, readying her splitting maul.  The head of her weapon was as big as her target's head.  Though she hadn't been harmed this time, she knew all too well from past experience that these things were prone to thievery, and their claws were steeped in venom.  She still had a scar on her tricep from a vessgift claw, and as a girl, that wound had made her sick for three days until she finally managed to overcome the toxins.  Two more vessgifts appeared, eyes on Elaine.  In response, she hefted her splitting maul, hoping to menace them away.  “I swear I'll splatter you freaks!”

As she moved around, her clothes swayed with the momentum, and she moved with the flow of the wind, dancing with the loose leaves as she flicked her maul effortlessly at the ground.  The vessgift she'd been aiming for scurried away from the impact, prompting Elaine to twirl around, keeping an eye on the others in case they tried anything funny.  Indeed, one had, scurrying toward her legs in an attempt to climb her.  He was dissuaded by a swift kick; as soft and furry as Elaine's boot was, the foot inside it meant business.  The vessgift slammed into a nearby tree, stunned for a moment before it came to its senses and left.  “You better run!” Elaine shouted after it as it disappeared into the grass.

It was only after one of the three remaining vessgifts lunged for her waist that she realized what their plan was.  “Guys...!”  She fetched the bag of seeds from her waist, and sure enough, their eyes followed it hungrily.  “This is bird food!  Besides, aren't you a little big to live off this stuff?”  She wouldn't know; as dumb as trying to pet a vessgift had been, she'd smartened up after the attack to the point of avoiding them altogether.  

Remembering the attack gave her an idea.  The vessgift in the past had been aiming for a metallic button on her cuff.  The people of Tuathanas had mocked her for ditching that harvest festival to go muck around with the animals, but it'd taught her a valuable lesson.  She struggled with the seed bag, eventually using her teeth to rip the brass clasp free from the fabric.  Sure enough, rather than the bag itself or the seeds within, it was the shiny bit they'd been lunging for.  “You dopes,” she scoffed, flinging the clasp as far away as she could, taking the vessgifts with it.  

In the process, however, some of the seeds had spilled on the ground, attracting yet another animal.  This one, however, was even smaller than a glide rat, and seemed singly interested in the seeds.  She stopped and watched as it ate, too out of breath to fight it over what was supposed to be bird food.  Judging by a bird swooping in and snatching the rodent, however, it seemed to have done its job regardless.  Elaine could hear the power in its wings as it turned its dive back skyward, a single flap to correct its course that bent the grass as if she'd stepped on it.  “Whoa...”

This bird didn't match Ms. Gustav's descriptions of Vrida, but Elaine didn't care.  This bird was huge, with a wingspan almost as wide as Elaine was tall.  She reached out to it with her powers almost immediately, not even trying to capture it, only keep it there to study.  Its body was covered in reddish-brown feathers, with black wingtips and a white head.  It landed on a nearby branch, eyeing Elaine with suspicion as her powers tugged at its mind.  Linked as she was, she could feel its satisfaction at having snatched that rodent, the taste of blood still fresh within its beak.  Elaine made up her mind then and there; instead of spending too much time looking for a specific bird, she could just beseech this one instead.

“Hello,” Elaine greeted it, interrupting its feeding.  It turned to face her, its wings still firmly at rest.  “Sure was a yummy treat you found back there, huh?  Well, you've got me to thank for that.  Trust me...”  Elaine hoisted her splitting maul as she continued.  “...you'll get all the meat you can eat if you hang out with me!  In fact, there's some dead cattle I'm sure you could pick at that I'm headed for tonight.”

The great raptor sat there under Elaine's spell, as she fed it images of the rodent it just ate, and the livestock it'd be free to pick apart.  She'd already picked a name for the bird, snipped from another story her mom had told her, this one a bit less kid-friendly than Vrida's morality lessons.  As she flung an arm to one side, offering herself as a perch, she shouted a command to the bird.  “To me, Velgr!”