“She’s your mother?” I asked the bird beside me. Whether it understood or not it bobbed its head and chirped.
The large bird brought her beak a few inches from my face and stared me down. She was large enough to tower over me and I wanted to run very, very badly. Suddenly a warm, comforting feeling spread through my chest.
Do not fear her, a voice said.
I locked eyes with the bird, and her pupils constricted momentarily before relaxing again. I sheathed the dagger and slowly brought my hand up to stroke the baby-soft feathers beneath her beak and she chattered uncertainly.
“I hope these will never change,” I said.
A face flashed behind my eyelids; a woman whose porcelain skin glowed almost white against her blonde hair. Her eyes were Demon blue and she whispered to me. She knows what you are.
“What am I?” I asked, focussing again on the bird in front of me. My question hung on the air as Ethan emerged from the cave in alarm.
“Ava!”
I held out a hand to him but didn’t shout as the beast grew agitated at the new presence. She turned, extended her enormous wings and screeched at him, digging her claws into the ground. Foolishly I did the first thing I could think of and leapt in front of her, raising both hands. My voice was as soft and reassuring as I could make it and the beast eventually calmed. She looked from me to Ethan and clicked her beak irritably. With a deafening caw and one thunderous flap of her wings the bird took to the sky and faded into the distance.
“What was that about?” Ethan asked.
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said. The smaller bird pressed against me again and fluffed my hair as the other sat and waited. “Judging by the size of your mother I think it’s safe to say that you two will be lords of the sky one day though. Isn’t that right?”
A haunting melody sailed across the sky as the mother called them and the younglings took to the air, repeating their beautiful song until they faded from sight.
“You really can’t help attracting trouble, can you?” Ethan scowled.
“I wouldn’t call them troublesome,” I said, fiddling with my braid. “After all, they helped me find you when I was lost.”
“I meant I’ve never seen her act like that before.” Ethan thought to himself for a moment. “In fact, I’ve not seen her at all. Not clearly.”
“She did try to maul me in the beginning if it makes you feel any better.”
“I can’t say it does.” He ran a thumb gently down my braid. “Though, it does make you all the more curious. Unlike any Gnathian I’ve known.”
“Perhaps I’m not as normal as I thought I was,” I said, averting my gaze.
“You thought you were normal?” I punched him lightly on the arm and he laughed. He picked up my boots and continued. “I don’t know what you think your dreams have been showing you but you’re fine, Ava. You’re weird and a little bit messed up in the head, but who wouldn’t be if they’d had an upbringing like yours?”
“Excuse me?” I scoffed.
“That came out wrong – I meant considering your customs, it’s natural to think that unusual behaviour compared to other Gnathian women is due to a genetic abnormality.”
“Ethan, stop. It’s not going to sound right whatever way you say it,” I laughed.
“Just be thankful you’re Gnathian. Endless lives like ours aren’t as fulfilling as you think,” he said.
“How so?”
“You have a time limit. Putting aside external factors, you know roughly how long you’ve got to live. That makes you enjoy your life properly: to have fun; make love; raise a family to cherish and remember you before Oemis comes for you at the end.” He wore something I’d never seen on his face before as he spoke – jealousy. “Mistakes or triumphs, they’re all memories to be valued or learned from. When there’s no specific end you forget to remember.”
“Ethan, you’ve already done plenty of those things. You’ve loved. You’ve known loss. You can still have a family-”
An awkward silence hung between us.
He shook his head. “Eldryn are infertile,” he said shortly. “It stops us from passing shreds of our gifts along and mutating the bloodline. Even Demons find it hard to conceive. Willow got lucky.” He answered my question before I’d asked it. “My only purpose is to hunt Berserkers and once that’s gone I don’t know what else there is.”
I frowned. “That’s quite a selfish way of looking at things.” My attention was grabbed by a small, white butterfly. I walked after it and continued. “To think of all the people that died too young or for too stupid a reason makes me sad that that’s the way you choose to see your life.”
He followed after me. “It’s easy to say something like that when you don’t know the story behind the reason.”
“It’s contradictory to say something like that when you’ve never offered to tell it.” The butterfly landed on a branch above us and disappeared. “Where did it go?”
I yelped as Ethan’s strong hands grasped my legs and hoisted me up onto the first rung of the tree. “I’ll show you,” he said, handing over my boots.
I pulled them on in a hurry while Ethan traversed the tangle of branches above us. But he’d forgotten that I grew up in the woods, learning how to move with little noise and climb trees to escape danger and hunt game. Even with a dress on I was fast, much faster than he’d anticipated as I was suddenly level with him. My body twisted through branches and I felt his eyes on me. It took everything I had not to stare at him back as I imagined the beauty of his form.
“I keep forgetting that you aren’t as fragile as you seem.” Ethan helped me onto the final branch and we sat, huffing to catch our breath.
“I would have beaten you had I been wearing trousers,” I chuckled.
“You can dream.” He leant against the mesh of vines behind us, pointing out at the silent valley. My heart fluttered at the sight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
HUNDREDS OF RADIANT ashen flowers blanketed the treetops. They grew with such density that they blocked the sparse garden floor from view and made the canopies glow. I sat closely beside Ethan on the curved branch and studied one of the flowers. There was a faint, grey vein that bled through the delicate petal before the colour collected in a murky black tip and six large petals, each of which held two black dots in the centre of them, one circled around the other. The smaller petals framed the eye of the flower like the upturned skirts of a festival gown.
“They’re pretty,” I said, cupping my hands around the nearest bloom. “Do they not close at night?”