This time the bear got his claws into the eagle, and it was time to feel sorry for the eagle. Blood and feathers flew up—I do not know from where—and another sweep of that terrible paw sent the bird rolling across the snow, leaving a swath of red drops on the white snow.
The rolling mass of feathers would have seemed funny, if this had been a cartoon. But as it was, I think it was one of the most horrible things I ever saw. No, wait. Seeing the bird flop to a standstill, and wiggle his wings, was worse. Both wings flopped. Both were broken.
Then, somehow, it was even worse again to see the eagle stretch out his neck, drive his beak through the snow to the hard soil, and jerk his neck and shoulders. He pulled himself forward an inch. Two inches.
Three.
The bear, dripping bloody gore from his face, and bellowing in pain, rose up, teetering on one leg, clawing at the sky and screaming; and even the bear stopped in astonishment, and watched. Four inches.
Five.
The bird kept coming. He did not give up. He wanted to keep fighting.
The bear dropped to three legs, loped in one huge rolling wave of muscles and fur over to where the eagle was crawling toward him, stepped on the bird with one huge paw. The eagle was driven down into snow. I wondered why all his hollow bones were not cracked.
The eagle craned his neck around at an impossible angle and bit the bear in the foot.
The bear had had just about enough from this eagle. Taking the eagle by the neck in his jaws, the bear lashed to the right and left, smashing the eagle's body over and over and over again into the snowy, rocky soil, until there were splatters of blood to the left and right.
I cried out, 'Grendel! Don't kill him!'
My shout was loud enough to draw an echo from the Kissing Well. The voice sounded like a man's voice. '… don't kill him…' Unlike my voice, the echo was calm and soldierlike. A voice giving an order.
A second bird fell from the sky. This one was a vulture. It was more enormous than any vulture of Earth.
It had black wings and a white head.
The vulture struck, driving claws like sabers into the shoulder and chest of the great bear. It drove its beak into one eye socket and pulled out the eye in a gush of blood and vitreous humor.
The bear dropped the eagle and raised his claws to defend himself, knocking the vulture away from him.
In a flurry of wings like the snap of gale winds, the vulture returned.
The bear was battering the vulture, and was winning. But the eagle, still somehow alive, even with two broken wings, and while being trampled underfoot, raised his beak and his shivering claws.
The eagle clawed at the stump of the severed bear paw, and opened the seam that held it shut. At the same time, I saw something not almost too gross for words, but really too gross, even though I cheered and hurrahed at the time. The eagle drove his beak straight into… Well, never mind. Why don't we just say it was the upper thigh, or near there.
The bear began lumbering away. He was blinded, noseless, bleeding from jowls and groin and leg. The bear ran toward the sea cliffs with the wounded vulture in pursuit, its wings like a storm.
At the edge of the cliff, the bear tried to rise up on his one hind leg. The vulture landed on his face again. I saw the vulture tear at the bear's throat, and a splash of blood shot out. It looked like a death blow. The bear went limp but caught the vulture in his paws as he fell. They both went over. If there was a sound of a splash, I (fid not hear it.
Clutching the bearskin tight around me, I went closer to the wounded eagle, my bare feet sloshing through the snow. I was afraid to touch a wounded animal, but I knew this was something supernatural, something that had come to save me. Eagles were the symbols of Jove in myth. Maybe this was one of Boggin's servants?
I looked at him. He looked terrible.
What could I do? What was I supposed to do? I wasn't a veterinarian. Maybe I could move him closer to a fire, but I was afraid to try to pick him up. He had just bitten through a bear. What could he do to my little hand?
I tried to look into the fourth dimension, now that Grendel was… dead? In the sea? I could see the tiniest glimmer of light from my hypersphere, but then darkness closed over it again. The Grendel effect was fading, it seemed, but it seemed it might take a while to fade. How long? A minute? A day? Six months?
The wind blew by, and I shivered. Once I started shivering, I could not stop.
This will sound selfish, but suddenly I was worrying about more than just the wounded bird. Where was I going to go? How was I going to get away, if my powers did not come back on in time?
I could stand near the fire, I supposed, wrapped in the bearskin. Until the fire died out. Then what?
Gather wood? Wait till Boggin found me? I was sure that a fight to the death between two supernatural birds and a shape-changing bear monster was something Erichtho's mirror or tarot cards could pick up, even if Boggin's winds hadn't heard the noise and weren't coming to investigate. I was still on the grounds of the estate.
I reached out and touched the bird gently. He flinched when I touched him, as if my hand had hit a sore spot,
and the beak snapped in my direction. The eagle seemed to have a cross expression on his features, even though he did not really have expressions.
'Sorry!' I said. 'Oh, I am so sorry!'
The eagle looked at me as if I were an idiot. He had a sarcastic look.
'Is—is there anything I can do?'
The eagle dropped his head back into the snow, eyes sinking shut, too weary to continue withering me with his contempt.
