But I’ll skip over the tears and cursing.
The red-tail is one of the commonest hawks — some rabidbirders disdain it because of that. I’m not one of them. I don’t mind common. I’llgrin just as much at a swarm of chickadees as at a Kirtland’s Warbler, andSandy never could persuade me to keep the sacred Life List. Sorry, but I justlike watching birds.
Except pigeons.
Heck, I’ll even get a grin from so-called “English” sparrows,Sandy insisted on calling them house sparrows, watching them dust-bathe indried-up puddles in the junk lots of the city, listening to their cheep-chirpcacophony from inside a bush or roosting in the ivy covering a wall.
The hawk, now, like I said, she glowed. I’d checked her out inSandy’s bird books — blocky body, streaked belly-band, white underside ratherthan the tan of the western subspecies, those trademark rust-red tail feathersvisible even when she perched. I could see all this, without binoculars, acrossthe street and up four floors to the building parapet. Uncanny.
And she could see me just as clearly.
I don’t understand this. It’s all forbidden magic, like I’vesaid five times already. They never taught us how this stuff worked in college.Somehow I ended up seeing her through her own eyes, seeing me with thehawk-sharp focus, seeing prey with a predator’s attention to detail. When Ipulled enough of my head out of hers to reach out and touch a pigeon, paralyzeone of its wings so that it fluttered helpless on the grass, I felt her attention snap to it.
And when I let the pigeon loose again, she glared at me. Uncanny,like I said. She’d known what I was doing. I wondered then, I wonder now, just who had been playing with her before Itouched her. Sandy? Some other rogue wizard, or an unknown untrained stealthwizard or witch like Cash, who loved to watch hawks and found some kind of bondwith this one, never knowing what he’d done?
But we could almost talk, the hawk and I. I didn’t hear words,but I felt her hunger, she felt my itching aching leg and curled her deadlybeak down to preen her own, she roused her wings and shook her feathers and Ifelt the quills along my arms.
And I could understand that empty man we’d found, the one whogot lost in the bond, the one who went into some animal’s head and never camehome again. I twitched and shuddered and broke loose from the hawk.
I felt sweat on my back and under my arms, not just the effortof hauling my big butt along on crutches. So easy to get caught. . . .
Get caught in more ways than one. I can hear you now,grumbling as you read this. Here I’ve just been preaching to you about MalcolmRidge, breaking laws to suit his purpose, and then I go right out and commitforbidden magic. Hypocrite, all holier-than-thou.
I never claimed to be a saint. I’ll do what I think necessaryto guard people who need guarding. No, I don’t think laws are for other people.But I’ll break a law, eyes open and knowing the penalty, if that looks like theonly way to keep my city safe. If I read things right, Sandy had murdered atleast six people. Likely seven, unless Bycheck rose from the grave. Hitting meupside the head with my own pistol and then vanishing counted as some kind ofconfession. And she’d murder more if she felt that moved her toward whatevergoal she meant to reach.
I had to stop her — stop her soon, before she killed again ormoved beyond my reach. I asked the hawk to fly to another cornice, closer to myoffice. She cocked her head to one side and then the other, staring at me as ifmeasuring her stoop to add more blood and scars to my aching head. I thoughtabout food, not the Vermont ham and fried potatoes as such, but the warm snugfeeling in my belly when I finished breakfast. I thought about pigeonsfluttering helpless on the parapet across the courtyard from my office window.
She flew. She flew down the street rather than at me, flewcloser to my office, and landed and perched and waited for my next move.
We didn’t have words, but we understood each other. I gruntedmyself back onto my crutches and limped after her.
XXI
She didn’t have a name. She didn’t need one. She just was. Her mate just was, her nest just was,the squirrels in the park and the nestlings she fed squirrels to and theseasons of nesting and the seasons of flying free just were. Self aware? Definitely. But her memories didn’t have words,just sounds and sights and tastes and feels.
I followed her, crutch-swing-foot-swing-crutch-swing, thehalting awkward progress of my lamed body while she soared free or waited. Yes,she waited. The first time, I thought it was chance. The second and the third,shivers ran down my spine. I’ve seen and done some strange stuff, but this. . . .
I saw her, she saw me, we shared the sight of each other as ifour minds used both sets of eyes. I hadn’t expected anything like this.
She knew men. Or rather, she knew a man, sharp in her hawk’s eyes. I could see him in her memories,heavy glove protecting one hand and forearm from her deadly talons, the placewhere she should land. No, she didn’t use the words. I could see these memoriesand supplied the words myself. The man gave her food. He talked to her. Hethrew her into the air and she chased and she killed.
She could fly free, she could leave, but she flew back to thatglove because she always found food there, and he caressed her feathers andscratched her head and made soft warm noises to her. She felt comfortable withhim.
I crutched along after her, crossed streets, waited on trafficand traffic lights, probably came within a hair of messy splattered death onthe asphalt because I wandered
