Fuck. The past really could come back to haunt you. And slice up your lawn and steal your friends.
“Calliope! Are you coming?” My grandfather’s voice boomed across the yard.
My grandfather. I snorted. Searched the sky for Orion’s Belt and traced the collection of stars comprising my favorite constellation. My grandfather’s appearance on my roof at the end of last night’s chaos should have been the shock of my adult life. Instead, having a winged man swoop down the long roofline, land on the grass, and call me granddaughter was par for the course. My life had taken on a decidedly wild and unpredictable rhythm, and his arrival was just another beat.
Enough me time. I made my way toward the homey light and up the porch stairs, to the man framed in the doorway.
“Trouble?” he asked, holding the screen door open.
“No. And yes,” I answered. “Turns out my high school buddy, Jack, is a wolf.”
Christoph, my paternal grandfather and bird-man—no last name yet—nodded. “The Kaukonens are a good family, Calliope. I wouldn’t rush into sharing all of your secrets with him, but I don’t think you have to hold back.”
This relative, who up until two or so hours ago had been MIA my entire life to the extent I had no idea he even existed, had the rundown on my friend’s reputation. If I got as angry about that right now as I felt, what little energy I had left would go there and not where it was truly needed—toward the people waiting for me in the house.
“Thanks. I’ll take your opinion under advisement,” I said, unable to fend off the sarcasm. That’s what exhaustion and a surfeit of surprises did to me.
“You’re angry. And that’s understandable. We have all the time in the world to talk now.” His hand landed on my upper back for a brief moment before I shrugged it off. We were way too new to one another for that kind of earned intimacy.
He pulled the door tight and engaged the lock.
A quick scan of my kitchen and living room showed two other druids who’d recently entered my life, Wes and Kaz. They were head to head at the dining table with their knives and scraps of wood spread before them. I didn’t see my sons, their cousin Sallie, or Harper’s girlfriend, Leilani. Rowan was out of sight too.
“The doctor made a pot of tea,” said Christoph, his voice raspy, “and took Harper, Thatcher, and the girls upstairs.”
I turned, wanting to get a good look at the bird-man standing in the nexus of my house. He didn’t look grandfather-ish, except for the flowing white hair speckled with flecks of steel gray cascading down his back. He was a few inches taller than me and, up close, finer boned than I first thought. Bird-boned. And he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.
“I need to check on the kids,” I said, distracted by him fidgeting with the pockets of his fitted vest. “Maybe you could see if there’s anything Wes and Kaz need. Last I knew, they were going to reinforce the protective wards around the house.”
Christoph exhaled, and when he did, his shoulders lowered. He let his arms hang at his sides. His hand fisted, and his knuckles paled.
“I have something for you.” He extended his arm, his fingers curled around an offering. “Calliope,” he began.
I pulled my gaze off what he was holding and stumbled into the wall behind me. “Your eyes…”
His eyes, onyx circled with a corona of yellow, had no visible pupils.
“I am a gyrfalcon, granddaughter. And I have a gift for you. Please,” he continued, unfurling his fingers and blinking. “Take them. And wear them.”
Two rings, carved from pieces of a star-filled arctic sky, made a figure eight in the middle of his palm. They were too big around for any of my fingers.
“What are these?” I asked, knowing full well they had to be more than simple jewelry.
“You wear them on your thumbs.” He lifted one and gestured. “They belonged to your father.”
My father. My father had worn these rings. I had never been offered anything of his. I extended my arms, gave Christoph my thumbs, and gasped when the bands tightened onto the middle joint. He cradled my hands in his and cleared his throat. “I found them on the shore, in the pockets of his folded pants, the day Benôit disappeared.”
Chapter 2
Benoît. My father had a name. Minuscule flecks of ore twinkled throughout the matte black metal of the rings. My father had worn these same rings, and the metal responded to my touch. Now was not the time to open the door labeled Dad, but I couldn’t catch the tear before it landed on one thumb. Little Calliope had stopped longing for her father ages ago, and Big Calliope was about to collapse.
“Your father, like me, was born with the gift of flight, Calliope, but he was less attracted to reaching the clouds than he was to bodies of water, especially the sea.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, wiping my nose with the back of my wrist. The magical metal called to me. I couldn’t bear to take my gaze off its changing surface, and its tensile strength buttressed my shaky knees.
“Do you remember anything from when you and your mother lived with her parents in Maine?”
“I have bits of memories,” I admitted, glancing at Christoph. His head was bowed, staring at the rings’ alchemical reaction to my skin. “I’m underwater in the most vivid ones.”
“Do you remember your mother being in the water with you?”
“Yes. And we were happy.”
“And what about your father?”
I shook my head. There were no photographs of my father among my mother’s things, at least not that I had knowingly come across. I rotated my hands so the palms faced down and almost did a face-plant against my grandfather’s chest. “The only other thing in the water with us had flippers.”
Christoph took that as an invitation to
