14.05
“There,” Evan said.
He flew over and beneath me, until he was just beneath my chin. He angled himself differently, and I followed. I could look straight between his wings and follow the line of his back and beak to the hag’s place.
I peered forward, but I only saw trees and shadow. My eyelashes were frozen, and I didn’t have the hands with which to rub at them.
“I’ve been over here, but I haven’t visited her,” Evan said. “Get too close and you run into hawks and other things in the trees. Apparently there are some huge spiderwebs in the summer. Big enough to catch a sparrow or a cat. Aaaand now that I say it out loud, I’m pretty sure they were making fun of me.”
“Who?” I asked. I had to speak louder to be heard, even with proximity. I wasn’t sure if Evan had the same issue with the wind rushing past his ears.
“The locals!” he said, matching my volume. “Lesser spirits and junk! Like those two cats at the Behaimses place. I’ve been busy, trying to figure out what’s what and what’s up. Only so much you can find out while flying around, you know?”
“Yeah.”
We were close enough that I thought I could make out the building. There were no lights on, so to speak. There was smoke coming from the chimney, but the branches of the trees seemed to catch the smoke, and keep it from reaching the sky.
It wasn’t frozen in time. Were we approaching the point where we were outside of the town?
Or was she there, stoking the fire, keeping it active by being active?
“It’s like the movies. You got the awesome badass cop, that’s me, here, and he has to fork over the dough to get the deets, right? Except I’m giving real dough, or french fries, or whatever. Token worship or sustenance. And they fib to me? Jerks!”
“I wouldn’t rule out anything,” I said.
“We’re getting close,” he said. “Might want to go lower.”
“Lower?”
But he was already descending. The air ran past him and off him like he was much larger, buoying me up, but with him disappearing, I naturally lost altitude. I didn’t flap to stay up, but dove down just a bit, following.
“Closer, closer…” Evan said.
“To?” I asked.
A shrill cry cut through the air.
Dark forms lifted from the woods.
“That,” Evan said. “Hawks, I think.”
“That wasn’t a hawk cry.”
“You’re such a bird nerd!”
“It wasn’t,” I said.
“Okay, well, whatever they are, they pop up whenever you fly too close.”
I could count twelve, and my vision wasn’t that good in the dark. I could only guess at how many there were total.
Croaking bird calls. Crows, too?
I could make out distinct silhouettes beneath us. Dark winged shapes rising from the woods. They didn’t flap, but kept their wings spread, gradually rising, much as I was gradually dropping.
“Turkey vultures,” I said. “Turkey vultures and crows.”
“Vultures? Okay, whatever. They’ve come after me a few times. Sucks. Sucks more if I’m so high up I can’t dodge through trees. But I have you, now.”
“Right,” I said. I carefully looked back and down, in the direction of the others.
“Going to be freaking awesome to have someone to fly with,” he said. “Someone to keep the monsters off my back. I mean, what’s the worst they can throw at us? You beat a dragon!”
“I didn’t beat it,” I said. “I grazed it. A light scrape on the wing, to discourage, if nothing else. It might have come after us, if the giant had let it.”
“Uh uh uh!” Evan said, “Theatrics! Words are important! You beat a dragon! And now-”
More buzzard cries joined the others. Shrill, piercing. I couldn’t blame Evan for likening them to hawk cries.
With every few seconds, the number of cries increased in number.
“Okay,” Evan said. “Lots of them.”
There was practice involved here. Demesne, perhaps, or whatever the old woman did that fell in that ballpark.
I dropped lower, while Evan stayed just beneath me, shielded from above by my size, wingspan, and mass.
The cries of birds were picking up, one starting before the last had finished its croak or shrill scream.
The first ones to take to the air were now starting to get closer to us.
“Turning back,” I warned him, as I dipped my left wing lower. “Left turn.”
“Roger roger.”
Wouldn’t do to turn and leave Evan to continue soaring forward, without help or protection.
By the time I’d pulled a u-turn, the birds were at eye level with me. Crows flapped, while the vultures simply kept their wings spread. Not coming straight at me, but still rising. Each turkey vulture had a featherless head. It looked like their heads had been skinned alive. Red, grisly, without much flesh stretched over the bone.
“Eugh,” Evan said.
An entirely different problem from the dragon, this.
Evan seemed far more confident in my ability to handle this problem than I was.
He hadn’t been there when I’d been swarmed by Pauz’s collected animals.
Being swarmed was bad. Being swarmed while still in the air was worse.
“Back to the others,” was all I said.
It took about a minute before the birds reached the right altitude.
They descended on me. Five pounds each at most, they hit me in twos and threes. Landing on me, or flying just over me and pecking, scratching, gouging.
“Fuck!” I spat out the word.
They picked at the fabric.
Attacking me like I’d attacked the dragon.
“Um,” Evan said.
One pecked at my leg. I steered myself upward, ascending and slowing down at the same time, and kicked the bird before it could react.
There wasn’t much I could do about the others.
“Into the trees!” Evan said.
“Can you help me dodge?”
“I can try!”
I dove. Evan shifted, swerved, and landed somewhere inside my chest cavity.
Who hadn’t dreamed of flying, once? Peril aside, being able to just drop from seventy-five feet up in the air to the point where I was very nearly touching the ground?