She pulls down the back of her toque. Her neck is freezing. Who knew hair kept you warm? The snow is falling faster, the flakes becoming almost watery. It’s difficult to look through them into the distance, there are so many. Kendra comes out of the dairy barn with that boy, all bony hips and kilt. He’s got a brown bird on his fist. Milo follows them from the garage — he must be showing off the still. No rent and all the home-brew he can brew — How much brew could a home-still brew if a home-still would still brew? Too much.
He sees her watching. She tugs her toque down and he looks away first, and then toward the highway, where the school bus slows but doesn’t stop. They all watch its cautious chug through the weather: Axel from his hiding place behind the blinds, Milo from the barn, and Kendra and the boy in the pasture. Even the bird cranes its head in the direction of the highway. The boy stops, but Kendra only takes a few paces backwards to snap a photo. The bus rounds the corner toward town and disappears. Then they carry on to the forest, as if nothing occurred. Like nothing’s wrong.
Kendra and the boy don’t stop at the edge of the pasture. That’s where Kendra usually turns — she’ll walk the pasture and flush rabbits from the brush while the bird sits on the railing waiting for an opportunity. Instead, Kendra and the boy with the bird walk until they reach the forest.
A flicker of motion at Axel’s window again. With those two gone, and if Axel is inside, she could sneak back over there. The hatchling room is probably locked, but what if it isn’t? She could flip through the photos. The crap-washed cliffs in Iceland, Mexico, and Argentina — wherever that is. Maybe Axel would explain the pictures. The places. She reaches for a strand of hair to bite, then blushes. Reckless, dumb. It’s not like Axel likes her.
Kendra and the boy disappear into the trees. The boy — why couldn’t Kendra train her? Melanie pulls her toque lower — she can’t get it right, it catches on her trimmed hair and flattens it in uncomfortable directions — and follows their tracks across the field. At the edge of the pasture the snow mounds, then slants to nothing after the first few trees.
She walks through the high drift, sinking up to her waist in air pockets that surround the low branches. Snow and needles tip into her boots. From the trees comes the smell of wet cedar and rotting wood. The winter so far is mild, and the moss, soaked with melted snow, is green even through the filtered light.
She stops at the edge and stares into the clouds. Trace the flakes to their origin and she can see the height. There’s no end to the sky or the snowfall. Only white above her. She scoops a glove of snow and compresses it. The snow clings to itself, not like that sugary powder of really cold days. More like a handshake, the way the thick flakes come down, touch each other, and spiral into the pasture.
Kendra and the boy aren’t here.
What will she do now that she quit school? Keep going, she guesses. Follow them, since they’ve gone further, somewhere she can’t see.
A woods. That’s what this place is, not a forest, a woods. Trees, so many trees, thrust skyward and disappear above their branches. And if these trees are huge, remnants of even bigger trees — stumps the size of dinner tables — crumble back into the soil. Ferns, thin saplings, and a low moss that sprouts brown-green beads on threads. The forest floor is soft and damp, but not unfirm — it bends under his sneakers, as if, below the layer of needles and rotting wood, the ground might be hollow. Low brush hangs with bits of cobweb and old berries. Lola, on his hand, flashes glances into the boughs and swivels her head in a way that makes it look loose. She fans and tucks her tail to adjust balance.
“She can’t fall, right?” Dumb question. Lola has monster grip. His thumb and fingers are stuck half-curled under her feet. Well, the tightness is either Lola’s bird toes, or the stiff leather of the glove, or the cold, or it might be the jesses — leather straps slip-knotted to the brilliantly yellow legs and wound around his fingers — or possibly panic. He told Kendra about his mom. Not really told, but he gave her the card and she read it. Plus she went and told him about the white gyrfalcon. So now he’s got another secret to keep: Axel’s favourite bird is defective.
His foot slides off a root and he flails his arm. Lola spreads her wings and tugs on the jesses. The feathers around her throat raise and her beak opens and she shrieks — all he can think is, Get It Off. She flaps and jumps, but the jesses catch and she swings down and hangs from his fist.
“What do I do,” he calls. Lola thrashes. “What should I do?” Being this close, closer than close — actually holding a falcon — should be Fun Incorporated, but Lola is blurry brown feathers and yellow-fanged beak and she’s kind of horrible. She twists, and her wingbeats bring her high enough that she clips his cheekbone. He grabs his cheek with his free hand and throws his bird-arm out, stretching Lola as far away as he can get her. “Am I okay?” Doesn’t feel like blood, but — what if there’s blood? “Is there a wound?”
Kendra plants her walking stick in a cushion of snow and reaches over and jerks his arm down. The jesses momentarily slacken. Lola grabs his glove and rights herself. “A bit of feather in the face, that’s it. No wound.” Kendra purses her lips then turns her face away from him. She’s trying not to smile — he knows it.
“She was so light.” Cody bites his lip. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, lame-ass. “Heavier upside down.” The bird folds her wings like nothing happened and all’s good. Sleek, burgundy feathers at the shoulder.
Kendra unwraps the leather from around his thumb and tosses Lola into the bushes. The trees impede any real flight; Lola bumps her wings and body through the brush to a stump. “Not the best spot.” Kendra jerks her walking stick from the ground. “Branches, limited sight. We probably won’t catch anything. But it’s snowing too heavily in the pasture.” She digs out another stick. “Here.”
Kendra stabs thickets and whistles the bird along. Cody whacks underbrush a few metres to her left and hikes the slope behind her. She should talk more. She doesn’t have to wisecrack, but she could say, like, how fun the postcard was, or how she had a dog as a kid. Loosen the mood. Why did he even show her? Because she asked him how long he was staying and he panicked — he realized he doesn’t know. The bird follows them in the branches overhead.
“Quiet.” Kendra stops. So does he.
“What is it?”
“I can see your coat,” Kendra yells into the forest. And then Cody can too. The girl from yesterday, down the slope of the hill.
“Are you going to join us or just stalk us?” Kendra calls.
The girl stands there, a splash of red in the blacks and browns of the trees.
“We’re going to keep going, then.” Kendra continues up the slope. She stabs her stick into bushes as she goes.
“Doesn’t she go to school?” he asks.
“Don’t you?” Kendra veers south.
The trees break and a half-frozen creek spills down the mountain on his right. Along the edge water-sodden foliage conceals rocks and pits. Some places his leg sinks as deeply in the moss as it did in the snow in the pasture.
“This is a mountain?” He’s never hiked a mountain before and his thighs burn like crazy. The creek gurgles tea-coloured over the rocks, bending the light and jumping off the ground into an almost vertical stream.