“Is this on me, too?” The wind knives into my face and sends my hair whipping against my back. The birds whistle and clack overhead. “Maybe they haven’t seen us. Maybe?—”
“Aline—”
The metal birds dive down and I flatten myself against the lioness’s back. “They’re coming!”
Ardruna races into a grove, zigzagging around the tree trunks, until she finally comes to a stop, ears perking. “Can you hear them?”
I turn this way and that, trying to see something. “I don’t have a lioness’s hearing.”
“No speed, no heightened senses. You won’t last long here.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Listen…” she starts.
A crash. A whistle. Another crash.
A metal bird flies through the grove, its beak and wings cutting through the slender trees, branches and leaves raining down.
“Shit. Let’s keep moving,” Ardruna says, “we should find a cave, their wings can’t cut through rock?—”
“Ardruna, stop!”
“Why?” she snarls.
“We can’t outrun them, can’t defeat them like this.”
“So we stay and die?” she hisses.
“No. I have an idea.”
“Now? Are you serious?”
“Stop talking.” I rub the crease between my brows. “The river, the horses… Calling something by its true name, figuring out its tale, reverts it to its former state. Only, these birds were like this in the tale, which helped me guess their name. What if I changed their name and thereby changed the story?”
Their story is that they were chased away from their nests. Like Medusa’s story, this is a story of creatures who were wronged and turned against their aggressors, remaining dangerous and aggressive forever after—and who can blame them? You lose your trust when you’ve been abused that badly.
But sometimes the wound can be healed. It takes time. It takes initiative. It takes kindness and a helping hand. In this case…
“Stymphalians,” I whisper.
“Will you hurry this up?” Ardruna cries as more birds crash through the trees. “We are running out of time!”
The birds used to live in the marshes, but they were chased away and took the name of the lake they now inhabit. I’m not really changing their name. I’m giving them their original name back.
They are Ares’ sacred birds. And those were… vultures? Eagle owls? Barn owls? He had many. What about ibises? Herons? Or…
“Egrets,” I whisper. “You’re egrets.”
I hold my breath.
“What in the hells is happening?” Ardruna’s ears swivel back and forth. “The sounds have changed.”
“I turned the birds into egrets.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m not. Let’s go see.” I pat her neck and she walks out of the grove with me still on her back. There, I cup my hands around my mouth. “Egrets!”
