Thus absorbed, I overshot the branch. My wings slapped at the air, a second tree was narrowly avoided, then the ground slammed into me.
I lay stunned, a feathery bundle staring up at the distant interlocking canopy. The forest floor, with its shifting shadows, felt dangerous in a way that it never had as a man. Any manner of beast might be stalking closer on gently padding paws, ready to sink sharp teeth into the clumsy, grounded morsel I’d become.
Shaking off dirt, and definitely not in a panic, I launched myself and, flapping frantically, managed to seize a branch. Time for practice.
“Herrrraaaaooo,” I squawked, vibrating the cords of my elongated neck. “Hehhh, hehh, heerraooooa. Healllrrooo. Hello.”
Did the sorcerer understand what he’d done in granting me this form? I’d had the misfortune of encountering Strix vultures in the aftermath of battles, picking at whomever had bad enough luck to be lying around dead, and laughing in their voice.
My hope, carefully nurturedawayfrom the twig-limbed sorcerer, was that Strix mimicry didn’t start and end at malevolent chuckling. And, after days of frustration, progress was beginning to show.
“Heelllrraaaoo, mah, my nnnennnnnaaa naewk, my nayme is Camraahhhwk.” I shook my bald head, talons shuffling along the branch. “Hello, my nahyme is Cameroawn and I betrawyed humanity!”
Alright, so maybe I wouldn’t use that line.
It took a few more days to get the consonants down, in between prying at the ribcages of rotting deer and pointedly ignoring the odd construct that loped through the woods beneath me. Once I had a good grasp on vowels, my first point of order was returning to the sorcerer to bother him.
He wasn’t on the battlements, casting his daily spell to renew the fog. Inside, then.
The castle windows, which had proved too narrow for my muscular man-body, suited my bird form perfectly. I wriggled through the aperture and, dislodging dust with each flap, began my hunt through the various lonely corridors.
The rooms that served as storage for bizarre metal objects, I ignored, as they had never in my time here been occupied. The dust lay thick and grey, with the only sign of life being exploratory vulture footprints from days prior.
I considered checking the cavernous library, with its imposing rows of shelving, but he’d gottenso angrythe last time I fluttered in. Couldn’t disturb his precious texts. If the mad sorcerer was in there, I’d have to wait for him to exit of his own accord.
After a few dead ends, and a surprisingly tricky descentdown a spiral staircase (I ended up hopping, rather than risk the tight space with my wings), I found him. The sorcerer sat shaving branches by a roaring fireplace, a stack of stripped wood piled at his feet. He rose to leave as I flapped in for a landing, forcing me to take off again and follow his imperiously retreating form. We arrived shortly in the castle’s kitchen, where small humanoid constructs rolled dough and stoked the flames of a brick oven. Herbs hung from the rafters, tickling my back as I swooped to avoid them.
Plucking a handful of fresh scones from a tray, Merulo leaned against a wall and gestured for me to land, which I did with an extravagant flap and shuffle. I didn’t bother trying for a scone. Not that I had any teeth left for Benedict to examine, but the sorcerer was clearly baiting me with some other torturous scheme in mind, and rabbits were good enough, thanks.
“Why a vulture?” I squawked as he chewed. “Honestly, I’d rather be an eagle. One of those brutes could nab me right out of the sky, if it wanted, and I’ve seen how the other birds respect them. Lovely feathers, too!”
I braced myself, anticipating shock, and yes, even begrudging admiration for my new vocal abilities. Instead, the sorcerer continued his slow mastication, a slimy sneer settling over his face.
“Why a vulture?” I asked again.
“An idiotic clown bird,” Merulo spat. “A virtue-less animal that feasts on refuse. I think it’s quite appropriate.” He bit aggressively into the scone.
“Did a vulture fuck your mother or something?” I squawked, then ducked as a high-velocity baked good flew past my head.
“Now, how come you’re so scrawny, if you’ve got all this food to chuck around?” I asked, and caught the next hurtling scone in a talon grab that was more luck than skill. Cackling to myself as only a Strix vulture could, I flapped from the room before the sorcerer could do anything more.
It took a couple of too-tight turns and some scuffed flight feathers before I found a window to squirm through. It was only then, out in the open air, that I realized nothing had pursued me.
Settling atop a battlement amid swirls of white fog, I ate my scone in peace. I pinned it with a taloned foot, prying with my sharp beak, until the inner bread, warm and fluffy from the oven, was at my mercy. Between beakfuls, I shat carelessly down the castle wall, another smeared white gob to join the rest. A construct flapped by, and I mantled my wings warily about the scone, but it didn’t so much as glance my way. If any started trouble, outmaneuvering them would be simple; these half-alive constructs flew with less grace and intelligence than an arthritic sparrow. Less certain, however, was my ability to outpace them, as something told me that mud and leaf wings didn’t tire like flesh.
A shiver of dread put my feathers on end.
“Why should he be mad? He’s the one who fucked me over,” I grumbled, then winced, hoping the construct circling some distance below hadn’t caught my words.
Another swallow, then I was off again.
It took some questing wing flaps to find the billow of a thermal. Soaring high, I returned to my musings about that hypothetical mage. ‘Limited’ was the best descriptor for my magical knowledge. ‘Humble.’ Children from all but the mostisolated homes had their magical reserves tested at an early age, and I, like the majority of humans, had exceedingly little. I could barely levitate a pebble.
Even for those born gifted, magic had harsh limits. A wellspring of set size existed in each person. That power could be siphoned out, either in small trickles or roaring torrents, but once drained it did not replenish. Hence the tendency toward magical miserliness. When every good deed sucked you dry just that little bit more; when on some fearfully anticipated day, you’d speak a spell only for it to crumble on your lips, leaving you with fading memories of a power that once came like breathing . . . well. It meant that finding someone with not only the magic to shift my form, but the willingness to expend that precious resource on me would be difficult, to say the least.
I myself had been drained as a child, in a standard Church tithe. What scarce, pitiful magic existed in me had been extracted for the construction of a levitating cathedral. And not just mine—they’d gathered a group of local children for the ritual. An Elder gave us the words along with directions for how to void our power. As a choir we’d chanted and been rewarded with an impossible sight: a heaping mass of stone becoming light, tearing free from the earth that still gripped us.
One girl fainted, and my nose had bled, but mostly I remembered the wash of relief at never having to memorize those strange words again. Magic was a burden that all but the most gifted or wealthy disposed of in childhood.
