And Anya may be more insect than human, but she was more human than bird and – whether or not she had thorns in her blood, whether or not an invisible hand had plucked and pulled and pulverized all of her until she didn’t know what was left of herself at all – she was still the most cunning thing in that damn forest.
She had all night to travel. All day to plan.
Safe and hidden in the dark shelter of a great, hollow oak, a dozen oak moths gathered on the bark around her, she planned.
The phoenix knew it was being hunted; Anya knew the phoenix was intelligent. It would be hiding, alone. Away from other birds, other pheasants, who had been scared away by the shooting in the meadow. Away from all other creatures, creatures that would coax and craft, that would lead it down paths it should never have wandered, that would show it sweet, enticing sights it should never have seen.
A hunted thing could not rest, could never let down its guard. Still, even a predator could be tricked by sweetness, by softness. And even a hunted thing, canny or not, longed for sun, for a home. Still a hunted thing must eat, craved delights rich and sweet when dull, simple fare would do.
The phoenix would eat at dawn, midday, and sunset. Midday was impossible. She needed night to prepare. The midsummer solstice would occur after the sunrise lit the sky on fire, then cooled it to morning blue.
Dawn it was.
Anya knew a thicket of black ash bordered the northern edge of Augur Meadow, beside the Warbler. Wide open space to graze. An escape route in the running water nearby. A dense thicket of trees to shelter in.
It was just the place for a hunted thing to hide. A place of safety, of comfort. Of, as much as a bird could know it, beauty.
Just the place for a predator to lay her trap.
The oak moths in the hollow tree fled, one by one, until at last, the sun vanished.
Before, Anya avoided traveling at night, but it wasn’t always possible – if a tricky quarry was on the move, or if something was onhertrail and staying still meant certain death. Johanna taught Anya her constellations, something not even her governess had done, before she taught her how to hold a gun.
She could make them out even through the indigo shade of the pine needles above her. But she didn’t need to. The stars spelled secrets to her – in her. She could feel them. They sang jagged dancing trails, a tug in the right direction, a hiss in the wrong one.
They led her, and she followed, and they did not lead her astray. They couldn’t; the stars turned steady and spoke no lies.
She retraced her steps to the patch of sunny buttercups she had seen before. First, by their scent; then, when she was close enough, by their violet-white glow. With broken, muddy fingernails, she dug them up by their roots and placed them in her bag. From the same bag, she removed her net. The one Goose had slipped. Her frame had not been secure enough, then. She had never made that mistake twice.
She worked quickly, with single-minded devotion. First, she crept into the ash thicket and found two tall, healthy saplings. She cut them down with her hatchet, stripped them of their leaves, then cut them in half. First with her hatchet, then with her knife, she filed the ends to sharp points.
As she worked, summer smells assaulted her from every direction; creamy buttercup, noble edelweiss, bitter gentian, heady hyacinth. They no longer filled her with hunger or longing. Nothing did. Even this task, though she drove at it without rest, felt rote.
Once her stakes were sharp, she dipped back into the wood and found an oak branch in the dark, then repeated her process in miniature: scraping and whittling bark and wood like peeling a potato until she had four sharp, sturdy tree nails. These, she gently hammered into each stake using the blunt end of her hatchet.
Near the water, beneath a tall ash, after marking the distance by her feet, she plunged each stake into the soft ground.
Her four stakes secured, she cut a short length of cord and tied it, end to end, to the two stakes facing the thicket where she would hide. She unwound her length of rope, then tied one end tightly to the cord. Loosely, she trailed the rope into the brush. At the right moment, she would jerk the rope, dislodging the two stakes and releasing the resting net, sending it plummeting atop the pile of roots – and, with luck, the phoenix.
She spread the net wide and tied it with twine to a frame of four sturdy sticks cut of ash branches. Carefully, she nestled the net frame onto the tree nails. She spread the leafy branches she had cut from the saplings along the top of the net, disguising it in a canopy of leaves. From a distance, the trap did not look entirely distinct from the thicket behind it.
Satisfied, she spread the buttercup roots in the grass, crushing some of them in her fingernails to enrich their peppery scent. Dropping them, she made a winding trail: from the densest part of the thicket away from her hiding place, into the meadow, then back around to the shade of the tree where she had built her trap.
The rest she piled directly beneath the net.
All through the night, she felt eyes upon her. An owl, or a bat, confused by this thing that smelled like prey but behaved like a predator. Spirits, perhaps, come to finish what they couldn’t twenty years ago.
Or most likely, the last twitch of the long, white-fingered curse, waiting for its moment, fast approaching, to pull the vines tight, sever her voice from her throat, her bones from their joints, unravel her completely.
Hurry, said the moon, said the song of the crickets, the scurry of the minks back to their dens. Time was growing short. Morning approached.
The feeling of being watched lingered as she crept into the grass in the thick shelter of the trees. As she clutched the end of her rope, wrapped it tight around her hand, ready to yank.
But as she lurked, crouched, waiting, the feeling went away. Or perhaps she forgot about it. She couldn’t say.
The wind blew from the west, tickling her wings, her antennae. When she’d first unfurled her wings, the thought came unbidden, a child’s spontaneous joy:flight. But she was too heavy; her wings were too soft, too ephemeral. Nothing more than a burdensome adornment.
If she failed, she could fly in that wind. The thought did not disturb her as it once had. None of her thoughts did. Not wondering if the moon moth craved flight the way a bird craved song. If it ever broke her heart that she could only stretch her beautiful wings for one week. If she ever wished for a better lot. Wished for anything.
