it's for you!'
Stalking into the ruined apartment, Miliana spared a glance at the steaming scars gouged into the fine wood paneling and declined to make a comment. She lifted up her hems, stepped across a tangle of broken pipes, and went in search of a fool.
She found him on the floor, frenziedly decanting a vile cherry-colored liquid into a big glass jar. Lorenzo caught sight of her, instantly tried to leap to his feet, and banged his head painfully on the underside of the table.
'It's you!'
'So I'm told.' There were times when Miliana's spectacles gave her a stare like a basilisk. 'Does Lady Ulia know you're brewing cherry fondant in her good guest rooms?'
'Um… well… yes…' Lorenzo's skills at falsehood would have done discredit to a wingless fruit fly. 'It all comes off with water!'
Miliana inspected a decayed patch of marble paneling. 'It's eating into the walls!'
'Only a bit…' Lorenzo tried to buff a scorched table-top, which began crumbling to pieces in his hands. 'No one minds. We all make a little mess from time to time.'
Catching her foot on a piece of shrapnel, Miliana yelped and fell, only to be caught in Lorenzo's arms. The girl readjusted her pointy hat and scowled down at the debris in scorn.
'What is all this?'
'A light projector! It's going to be an engraving machine-or maybe a lathe.' Lorenzo tried to kick broken pieces of steel tankage out of sight. 'I'm having trouble with the right mix of chemicals.'
'So I see.' Briskly straightening her damp robes, Miliana let the subject drop like an overripe haddock. 'Anyway-I came to ask you for some help. Do you know anything about birds?'
Lorenzo blinked in absolute incomprehension. 'Birds?'
'Yes, birds. Birds?' Miliana stuck out her fingertips and wagged them frenziedly in the air. 'Feathers, beaks, claws-birds!'
'Oh, as in avians.' The young scholar puffed himself up in pride. 'Actually, as it so happens, I am an expert on the subject.'
'Truly?'
'I am conducting a close survey of wing structures as a basis for designing my flying machine.' Lorenzo reached for a thick leather-bound volume lying on a rapidly disintegrating shelf. 'My lady-you have a specimen you wish me to identify?'
'If it's no trouble.' Miliana watched Lorenzo as he tried to tuck debris out of the way behind the drapes. 'Just leave that. I'll have someone clean it up and repair the walls.'
Lorenzo balked at this airy indication of Miliana's hidden powers.
'You can do that?'
Miliana turned about and looked at the young scholar in confusion.
'Well, of course I can do that.' The girl looked at the damaged room and shrugged. 'Anyway-it happens to me all the time.'
'Oh.'
'Yes-now come on. I don't want this 'specimen' running loose about my room unattended!'
Lorenzo gathered up his books, a butterfly net and a small magnifying glass, then struggled out into the corridors in hot pursuit of the girl.
He observed his companion as she walked, fascinated by the interplay of wistful expression, subtle line, and seething irritation. Passing by the kitchen door, Miliana stole one of Lady Ulia's fruit carts, trundling the collection of oranges, melon slices and cheese off along the halls to her tower. Keeping an eye out for passing stepmothers, Miliana opened her locks and hastily crammed Lorenzo through the open door.
'Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!''
A raucous screech joyfully heralded their entry. Lorenzo hefted his butterfly net and moved to the fore, ready to snare Miliana's wild bird. Behind him, Miliana rolled in the fruit cart and nudged the door shut.
'I'm back!' Miliana whirred her cart past the startled Lorenzo and moved out into her room. 'I brought you fruit-you know, to eat? Mmmmmmm! Yummy yummy!'
Lorenzo heard the flap of wings from deep inside the girl's boudoir. With a heroic flourish of his net, he stepped into the doorway, saw the creature sitting on Miliana's worktable, and froze as stiff as if he had walked in on a medusa in her bath.
Flapping happy wings in greeting, the titanic, silly bird rose from the table and floundered forward toward Miliana. A mixture of bright orange, golden yellows and rich flame reds, the creature's plumage smote the eyes. Cooing and cawing to itself, the bird strode waggishly forward to inspect the fruit cart with avid, hungry eyes.
In essence, the bird consisted of a long length of neck, a stubby body, and acres of glorious tail. This magnificence had then been garnished by adding a beak thick enough to sever a man's hand, and great hooked talons at the ends of cheery yellow feet. Lorenzo stared at the creature, felt the blood drain from his head; then drew his rapier and took an instinctive step to place himself between the fair damsel and the great carnivorous bird.
The movement took the feathery being all aback. The bird looked from Miliana to Lorenzo, flapped its wings in indignation, and suddenly seemed to swell up to enormous size. Feathers fluffed and neck arching high above Lorenzo, the bird shuddered with appalling rage and hissed its way across the floor.
Faced with a monster, Lorenzo crouched, desperately trying to decide whether to flee or fight. Seeing its rival cowed, the bird halted its rush and loomed above the young man, beak agape and wings shaking to and fro as it strutted back and forth in glorious majesty. Finally content with its display, the bird flattened down its feathers and waddled back to Miliana.
Lorenzo recovered slowly, like a garden snail emerging cautiously from its shell. The bird gave itself very superior airs, lowering its eyelids to look back across its shoulders in scorn.
Miliana watched the whole affair in wry silence, and then planted a fist upon her hip as she addressed the giant bird.
'Finished?'
'Nonk nonk!' The bird settled its feathers.
Without the slightest trace of malice, the bird happily sidled over to Lorenzo and inspected him from head to toe, seeming to approve of everything he saw. Lorenzo returned the creature look for look, studying it in speechless amazement. Bird and nobleman circled one another in a dizzy parade until Lorenzo pulled away and fixed his hostess with an incredulous eye.
'Where in the name of the Binder of What is Known did you find it?'
'Oh, it found me.' Miliana busied herself peeling an apple, using a ridiculous amount of concentration and crinkling up her freckled, upturned nose. 'Or rather he found me. He dropped in through the ceiling, just over there.' The girl pointed with her fruit knife at a chaotic wreck of plaster, ceiling boards, and dirt. 'I think he's been living up there in the attic for quite a while.'
Lorenzo picked his way through the rubble, cautiously climbed onto the rim of Miliana's filthy bathtub, and used the perch to see up into the attic. The filtered light showed the conical space to be largely empty, except for a great pile of wrack and rags which Lorenzo took to be the creature's nest.
'Well, there doesn't seem to be any more of them.'
'One's quite enough, thank you.' Miliana passed each of her companions a slice of apple. The bird held the fruit delicately in his beak and rotated it around and around with flicks of a hard, horny tongue. 'I've never heard of anything like him, have you?'
'No. No, not at all.' Lorenzo hoisted his reference book onto his hip and opened the cover, jamming his apple in his mouth. ''Ot do 'ou call 'im?'
The bird replied with a great, eager flapping of wings.
'Tekorii-kii-kii!
'Tekorii-kii-kii!'
Miliana peeled another apple, her brows creasing themselves behind her spectacles. '… Tekoriikii.'
'So I hear.' Lorenzo tried to take measurements of the uncooperative Tekoriikii's skull. 'There's quite an extensive cranium. Unusual for an avian, wouldn't you say?'
