This, of course, was what made the mad sorcerer so terrifying. He cast spells frivolously, wastefully, with lessconsideration than you’d give to preparing a pot of tea. And the enormity of his magic. How it showed no signs of waning, after decades of expensively maintained warfare! He drew from a colossal ocean of power, a single, scrawny man who could challenge God Himself.
He was an, uh,inadvisableenemy to have made for the sake of a mediocre scone.
No, I couldn’t lie to myself. It was a fantastic scone. All buttery and warm.
Glenda knew some magic-users, didn’t she? I flapped my wings idly, passing through the mist of a low-hanging cloud. She’d been bad-mouthing one last week, some ‘who does she think she is’ bog witch who’d made a hobby of calling forth undesirables and patching their scraped knees.
Well, I was plenty undesirable, and happy to wait in line!
Really, it was in Glenda’s best interest to facilitate my return to man-shape. Merulo had acted with undeniable cunning: the prophecy clearly stipulated a golden-haired knight, not a vulture. Regardless of how she felt about our less-than-ideal parting, the elf should be willing to fork over the address of this helpful witch—or at the very least scrape a map into the dirt. And if, for whatever reason, she did react poorly, I had these lovely new wings to carry me away.
Still, I wavered in indecision until an incident at the bank of a stream. Birds have little ability to suck or lap, so I drank by filling my beak with the cool flowing water, and then ducking my head back, and letting it trickle down my throat. For all that it was an unnecessary amount of labour, I did find it relaxing. So much so that I nearly missed the crunch of a dead leaf. Animal instinct shot me forward, nearly spilling me intothe stream before my wings managed a desperate downstroke. Flapping wildly, I spun in midair to see a black shuck-hound, tilting its head as though attempting a difficult math problem. It could almost be mistaken for an ordinary dog, if not for the vertebral ridges pushing through its wiry fur.
“That’s it, fuck this. Fuck the sorcerer. Fuck you,” I shouted, circling out of reach of the shuck. It sat back, watching me with lazy yellow eyes. “I’m finding Glenda. Fuck it! What’s a vegetarian going to do to me, anyway? She eats seaweed, for fuck’s sake. Fuck you!”
The hound yawned, giving me a generous view of its sharp white teeth, which just set me off again.
All this shouting proved tiring. Eventually, I ceased my wheeling and flinging of abuse, and set off to find my former friend.
I’d begun my quest rather late in the day, and the clouds soon darkened to a blood-soaked cotton. Before night fell completely, I found a tall tree to touch down on, and, with the sounds of nocturnal creatures scratching and snuffling in the woods below, I tried to sleep without fear.
The dawn song of smaller, lesser birds brought me back. With a great shuffling of feathered shoulders, I returned to the air.
It took me all morning to reach the outpost, and almost immediately I wished that I hadn’t. It hurt, drifting over those familiar streets. There’d be no more patrolling in my armour, collecting swooning glances. No more drunken caroling. No more prying for information about upcoming battles to avoid. I missed my old life, but couldn’t see any path to regain it.
Another problem: of all the people who milled through thetown, haggling over fried rabbit haunches or edging their way past the dung of carriage-beasts, none had the blue skin and silver hair of an elf.
I perched on a church spire with a great puffing sigh, and tried to think. What duties did Glenda favour, and where did they take her? Not hunting—she couldn’t bear to harm an animal, and using her physical strength to gather resources would be beneath her. Sentry duty, then, somewhere on the outskirts.
I resolved to fly diligently over the forest, until either hunger or fatigue took me down.
The sun shifted overhead, and I searched. A patch of dark cloud threatened rain, and I searched. A mean-spirited robin chased me for a time, chirping insults, and still, I searched. Just as I’d convinced myself to give up for the day and find a nice carcass to tear into, a flash of silver caught my eye. I wheeled down for a look.
Glenda sat daintily by the edge of a brook, one foot tugged by the gentle current, the other folded beneath her. A sheath of arrows kept her spine straight, her long, meticulous braid falling in among them. She glanced up as I landed in a graceless splat of feathers, her face curiously blank.
I eyed the bow in her grip. ‘How’s the concussion?’seemed a bad opener.
“First off,” I squawked. “I’d like to sincerely apologize. I acted poorly, and do not expect forgiveness.” Pure bullshit: this entire plan depended on me being forgiven immediately.
Glenda looked at me, unbothered to a degree that struck me as eerie. “I don’t know any vultures,” she said, cold and clipped.
“Well, it’s your lucky day!” I cried. “Here I am, a surprise vulture pal!”
With her lack of reaction, it felt like speaking to one of Merulo’s constructs. Slowly, she retrieved her foot from the brook, rising to her feet like a cat readying to pounce. It drove in how small I was, that even tiny Glenda could look down at me with menace.
“Promise not to get mad,” I hurried, in the alien screech of my new voice. “But it’s me, Cameron. And I am, again, so sorry for how we parted, violence is never justifiable, and—hey, hey, let’s put down the bow, eh?”
She pulled an arrow from her back and notched it at an unhurried pace. Where were the waterworks? The joys and sorrows of reunion?
“You must be wondering, ‘Hey, Cameron, how come you’re a bird?’Well, completely against my will, I was kidnapped, or rather man-napped, by the mad sorcerer. He cast some tricky magic, I fought back the best I could, blackened the bastard’s eye, even! But uh, um . . . Anyway, he knows everything about the prophecy, and this,” I raised my wings, “is his solution. Kind of clever, right? Because it’s not a prophecy about a vulture.”
“You . . . told that maniac about the prophecy. The enemy of humanity, the man who vowed to kill our God,the mad sorcerer?”
“Well yeah, I might have. The guy is a total asshole,” I confirmed. “Sadistic prick. Honestly, can’t stand him.”
The arrow flew. I snapped backward, pinned to the earth, my wing first numb, then hot with a pain that blazed out concentrically, lapping at my nerves and flesh. “Glenda, Glenda, Glenda,” I heard myself plead. “Come on, we’re friends, let’s talk this out. Glenda, NO!”
Glenda’s foot descended on my prone body, pressing too hard for my hollow ribs to handle. Almost lazily, she bent to grip the arrow’s shaft, and pulled.
