Chapter 3: Untamed

They had slept through the day, through the heat of the afternoon and the cool of the evening, until the sun fell beneath the trees and cast early summer shadows through the pale green filter of the trees’ young leaves. At the familiar sound of crickets—a cue to awaken—Ilara sat up. The mass of black fur and feathers encompassing her as she awoke was confusing . . . yet natural. Her head hurt, but she remembered quickly where she was and who the beast was whose warmth was a comfort she hadn’t felt in months. She lay her face back against Anthem and gently nudged him so she could escape from his cozy hold. He yawned, revealing the expanse of his powerful jaw, and lifted the wing that had been folded over Ilara to stretch it fully, the tips of its farthest black feathers catching the last beams of evening sunlight glinting over the treetops.

She slowly stood, tying her wild hair into a braid as she watched Anthem stretch his torso, legs, and wings in the fading evening light. It came as a fresh observation; he was magnificent. Like the night sky embodied, his wings glittering like a black expanse strewn with stars, his golden eyes the likeness of the autumn moon twice reflected. She petted his face affectionately and he purred in return before running off into the woods. He was probably being playful, but she couldn’t follow. Her body ached everywhere, so she let him go and sat on a tree stump. He came back almost instantly, growled softly with tilted head, and seemed to ask her to follow.

"Go on," she said. "Get some breakfast." And off he went as if he spoke her language.

Ilara gently removed the binding around her wrist to examine the damage. It was a deep purple with black web-like veins visible beneath. She tried to move the joint and found that she could—but with throbbing pain through the muscles. It had no damage to the bone, but the damage beneath the skin, in the flesh and muscle was enough that it would not heal for weeks. But a mere bruise—as she saw it—would not stop her from using her wrist. It would hurt to use her bow, but the bruise was not substantial enough, or the pain of moving it enough to keep her from archery. Archery was so much a part of her that she could not understand an existence bereft of it. Pain would not stop her.

Examining her other injuries proved the same; she was pretty banged up, but her bones were intact—the boat had been enough to prevent all manner of serious injury she might have sustained. She did not think on it, however, and merely began removing the sling she had made for her left arm.

Starting an exercise of moving her left arm from the shoulder, she found it moveable, and though tender, no longer painful. She thought Sam’s herbs had done their job well, but what she did not realize was that she had developed an unhealthy psychological ability to ignore physical pain. Her arm was as badly bruised and blackened as would prevent many from even the most casual movement, but the pain did not even register in her senses. All the years of getting hurt after stunts and hiding any signs of injury from Duard in order to prevent questions—this was a sustained result.

Her examination finished, she diagnosed herself as fully restored. She put away the cloth sling and continued stretching. Looking around the camp, she realized the lioness’ body was still lying where she had been slain the morning prior. Unfortunately she could not let it stay there; she would have to distance the dead creature from the camp to avoid pesky scavengers. But the creature was far too heavy for her to lift or pull. Anthem would have to help. She climbed the lower branches of a birch tree and waited for her beast. It felt good to climb again, now certain her injuries would not prevent her from any motions she chose.

As several quick successions of footfalls entered her scope of hearing, Anthem pounced into the clearing, a fresh kill in his mouth.

"You do speak human. I knew it," she said jovially as she lowered herself down to greet the winged lion. Her mood had been completely revitalized in the renewal of her climbing abilities.

"Venison would be better suited for supper, though, don’t you think?" she asked Anthem as he set the young deer down in the grass. "You can have that to yourself, I’ll find some fruit.
But first you have to help me." Holding a tuft of the side of his mane before he could tear into his kill, Ilara drew him to the lioness’ cold body. It seemed he understood without her needing to ask—he grasped the lioness by the scruff of her neck and dragged her away. Ilara was thankful she did not need to follow and spoil her appetite. When he returned for his meal, she left the beast to his beastly vittles and began combing the clearing for her own meal.

The air was crisp, as were Ilara’s thoughts. Things seemed clear, though she was still lonely. At least she had a set purpose at this point: she would seek a village or city and find work somehow. If she could convince anyone, perhaps she could get hired to catch a river dragon. But this seemed a bit farfetched as she reflected from her current state of mind. The likelihood of someone believing her account was about as likely as actually being able to find a dragon again and capture it.

At present she sought a raspberry bush. Wandering in wider and wider circles around the clearing where Anthem feasted on his catch, Ilara was soon out of sight of the beast. She came upon a blackberry bush and settled for it for the time being.

She picked the dark, plump berries and placed them in a fold of her tunic, which she held up for the purpose. Soon after, a falcon surprised her by swooping to the lowest branch of a maple right in front of her. It seemed to be looking at her cautiously. Continuing to gather berries, she stared at it intently. She thought it a lovely black bird and at first nothing more. As she continued to study it, she saw it had a small scroll of vellum attached to one leg—it was a courier. It can’t be . . . is that one of Wren’s falcons? she thought. Yes, the only one she had known by name, actually. "Elsu," she tried with softness to her voice, "Elsu."

The black bird looked directly at her and swooped down from his perch to land near her feet. "You are Elsu, aren’t you?" she imbued comprehension to the incognizant creature as she reached gently down to untie the scroll. As soon as he was free of the scroll, Elsu lighted his previous perch, a position of observation, as Ilara unrolled the missive. On it Ilara read words she could hardly believe she saw:

Dearest brother or sister,

I send this letter out with a prayer that it shall find you. I shall press upon my falcons that I wish for you to receive this, but I cannot be sure that they shall obey.

I know that by doing this, I am defying Duard and his direct order. However, I feel I am somehow right to do so.

Ilara gasped and drew a hand to her lips, every blackberry she had gleaned falling from her tunic to scatter over the ground.

Perhaps it is as Father Andrew said. We need to regard Deus’ will as higher than Duard’s when it comes to moral decisions. I think it is thus with this. If it isn’t, my heart will at least be at peace in the knowledge that I have attempted to contact you.

If you fare well or poorly, please let me know. Pen a reply on the back of this parchment and reattach it to the falcon’s leg. She or he shall return to me with your message, of that I am certain.

Your loving sister,

Wren

Tears came to Ilara’s eyes as she read her younger sister’s name. Wren! She had made contact! Of all the siblings, Ilara would never have guessed Wren to be the one to defy one of Duard’s commands. But Wren was always the glue that held the family together; it was fitting that she would not give up that purpose in banishment.

All hunger was lost to Ilara as she realized the opportunity she had just been given. She ran to her pack to retrieve the flint she carried to start a fire, and the single chunk of charcoal she had brought on a whim. Her favorite dagger was useful in sharpening it to a point once a small flame was going for the sole purpose of seeing in the now dark clearing. With the charcoal she wrote Wren a reply on the back of the vellum.

Dearest Wren,

Her heart flowed into the greeting and the words that followed.

I long to see you. My thoughts grow darker each time I think of the others. I wish I could speak to them all and know they are all well. It would ease my mind, as your letter has done for my thoughts about you.

The idea to attempt to send more than one letter via Elsu entered her mind and she remembered she could use aspen bark for the purpose. Fortunately aspens were common in the forest. Ilara went on with thoughts of Sam, Daelia, and Taerith in the forefront of her mind. She might be attempting too many at once, but it was too great a temptation to pass up. I’ll make them brief, she rationalized and continued her letter to Wren.

I am sending letters for Sam, Daelia, and Taerith with Elsu. Please forgive me if your bird is fatigued upon arrival, but I am hopeful he’ll succeed.

Thank you, Wren. Thank you for risking this for us.

Fondest love, Ilara

She had gathered three strips of the white bark and written the next three letters as she sat in the clearing, her back to Anthem. The first letter was to Sam, thanking him for the healing supplies she had already used up in the incidents of the past two days. The next to Taerith, whose understanding and insights she had missed since the loneliness had set in. Each question her heart asked without hope for answer drew her memory to his wisdom. And finally she wrote to Daelia—the most difficult letter of the four.

Daelia’s companionship had been the most difficult to release. In her first week of travel, Ilara had several moments of mistakenly relying on Daelia’s presence. She was used to solitude, but only the kind that was of short duration, with the promise of seeing her siblings again. When she had returned from such retreats in the past, she and Daelia were inseparable while together. During that first week of banishment, Ilara finished the supply of bread Daelia had given her and her immediate response was, I’ll just get more when I go back. The mistake was always caught immediately. She would hear herself saying it and a suffusion of fresh disappointment would enter in. There would be no going back.

Even as she made the deliberate motion to write to her closest sister, the pang of permanent separation made her thoughts difficult to frame in words. Every attempt to form a sentence was drowned out with the unrealistic desire to see Daelia again. With purpose and deliberation she avoided most speech on the subject. It would do no use. Instead she briefly related the loss of the riverboat and the remnant of it she kept on her person. She asked Daelia for news of her welfare, as she had her other siblings, and when the small sheet of bark was filled, she reluctantly signed her name.

Surprising her with its seeming anticipation of her intent, Elsu had followed her to the clearing. As Ilara finished and looked up, she saw the falcon perched very high in a cypress tree, looking down in perfect stillness. She whistled to it as she stood rolling her delicate letters and calling "Elsu" with as much coaxing as she could, but the bird did not budge. Finally it dawned on Ilara that Anthem had finished off the deer and his attention was as steady on the falcon as was hers. He began to crouch and unfold his wings with deliberate smoothness and his wild nature shot clearly to her mind.

"Anthem, no!" she said at the realization. All Ilara could think about was how important it was to keep Anthem from harming her only connection to her siblings. Her opportunity to steady him was passing, and Elsu was sitting precariously atop a tree as if his trust in Ilara was enough to stay him despite instincts. The poor bird was too trusting, and the winged lion was too wild to prevent at this point. He was getting ready to launch himself upward.

The same impulsiveness that had led to all the scars her body had accumulated over the years made itself useful as she sprinted for the crouching Anthem. Momentum and practiced muscle coordination sent Ilara in a leap at the last three feet between herself and the beast, just as his powerful back legs and wings sent him upward with a much faster ascent. Somehow her outstretched hands had grasped enough fur to give her a hold on him and he flapped harder to pull himself up with the additional weight. They went higher and higher through the trees and Ilara maneuvered herself enough to have a hold on his mane, her thighs pressing Anthem’s torso for support. He barely seemed to regard her there; he only adjusted the frequency of his wings’ flaps to accommodate her until they had breached the tree line. Ilara was balanced enough by then to see the falcon had got the better of its naiveté and was flying steadily upward and away from them.

Natural intensity made Anthem as keen on chasing the falcon as Ilara was on reining him back. Flying ever higher toward the silhouette that was the only sign of the falcon in retreat, Ilara pulled on his mane and tried to veer him off course, but it merely angered him. Temporarily distracted from his course, Anthem began a serpentine display of his agility, rotating and tumbling through the air to shake off his irritating human rider. She held tighter to him with the iron will to make him obey. "You are far from tame, you wild brute," she said in his ear as she clung around his neck in mid-spin.

When she was assured he had every intention to rear her off into the trees far below and that her physical attempts to subdue him were useless, she took in a breath and hoped another song would pacify him, feeling silly even as she began. Despite the force of the evening wind, made more intense by Anthem’s speed through it, Ilara was able to find voice. She found herself singing the same soft melody she had first used the previous morning.

She might have been surprised at Anthem’s immediate mollification, but she was the one who named him after all. As Anthem’s flight evened out into a slow glide, Ilara watched with relief, as Elsu’s tiny shape disappear into the darkness of the night.

Now on the mellifluous refrain, Ilara pushed on Anthem’s right foreleg until his response was a left turn. Then she tried the right and he responded likewise by turning left. All the while she sang she tried to maneuver him back toward the clearing, learning to push down between his shoulder blades to prompt descent.

At first disoriented, Ilara did not find the clearing until she caught sight of the smoke stream rising through the moonlight above where she had made a fire. When Anthem had glided slowly down to the clearing, he extended his hind legs toward the grass as he flapped his wings for balance and set down as softly as a horse might halt its trot. Ilara finished her repeating refrain when she had dismounted and smoothed the hair on the back of Anthem’s mane, which she had ruffled severely. The lion was purring and nudging his head against her hands.

"I’ve got you under my spell," she said to him, catching her breath. "If you misbehave again I might sing a curse on all lions." He tilted his head at her, his golden eyes incomprehensive. "Oh, would you go away for a bit? I’ll never get Elsu to come back here now." Anthem turned around languidly and sat in the patch of trampled grass where the remains of his breakfast lay. He picked at it a few moments and then got up again. He paced back and forth through the clearing as Ilara picked up the letters she had dropped in her rush to save Elsu.

Anthem got up and began crouching and pouncing near her annoyingly. One severe look from Ilara and the beast seemed to understand her unwillingness to be playful. He flew off on his own somewhere and she began to feed the fire and ponder how she could get the letters to Elsu.

An hour passed, in which Ilara gathered back her spilt berries and ate them with millet and a goblet of mixed ale. She had finished cleaning up and was waxing her bowstrings when she heard the unmistakable sound of a falcon’s cry in the distance. Dropping her work, she leapt to her feet and followed the continuing cry. The closer she got to the sound, the clearer it was, and soon she could hear wings fluttering as out of panic. Needing to go no further, she stopped when Anthem immerged, walking toward her with Elsu’s legs between his jaws. The bird was pecking at Anthem’s face and losing feathers as it flapped ferociously to escape.

"Anthem how could you!?" she screamed at the beast and he shrank down submissively as he looked into her eyes. Putting on her leather gloves, Ilara wrapped her protected hands around the frightened bird to stop its spasm as she took it out of Anthem’s loosened jaw. When it was out, Anthem ran away with his wings half up and his tail between his legs.

"Elsu, poor thing," Ilara said to the bird still secure under her right hand, its talons digging into the glove on her left. When the falcon was calmed, she slowly softened her grasp around his wings and to her shock he did not fly away.

"If you are injured I’ll have to kill Anthem," she said out of irritation. She examined his wings and the falcon seemed all right—not even bleeding, though he had lost several feathers. Walking him back to the clearing, she set him on the ground away from the fire and watched him waddle side to side and look around him seemingly paranoid. She couldn’t blame him. He was traumatized, if not hurt. She should send him away before Anthem returned, if he wasn’t too injured to fly. Calling his name once more, Elsu hopped onto her gloved hand and she thrust it upward to see his reaction. As she hoped for, Elsu flew upward and circled the clearing. She called him down again, thankful he did not seem hurt.

"You are amazing, Elsu," she said as he allowed her to tie the four letters to his legs, two on each. Before she added the one to Wren, she took up the charcoal again to add in the only and very small space left for writing:

P.S. Elsu had a scrape with my beast. He is all right, but if he is at all injured when he returns to you, please forgive me. I shall make it up to you if that is the case.

The resilient falcon seemed eager to take leave when Ilara had finished securing the last letter below the joint on his leg and bid him farewell. She watched him fly upward and into the face of the moon. Hope lingered there with her a moment and then she turned her thoughts elsewhere.

Anthem returned soon after, his head sunken as if he knew his offense. She was packed up by then and Anthem watched her from a distance as she snuffed out the flame and approached him.

"So you know I’m angry with you?" she asked the beast, her arms crossed and face serious. Anthem seemed to listen and responded with his head going lower in shame and his smart eyes darting shyly between hers and the ground.

"This," said Ilara, holding one of the feathers Elsu had shed during his panic, "is sacred. From now on, no falcon chasing! Especially not this one!"

Anthem looked slightly aware, but Ilara could not tell if he understood or if his intelligent eyes played tricks on her. To be certain of him, she took all the feathers she had gathered from where she took Elsu from Anthem’s grasp, and tied them around a stick. Waving it in front of Anthem, he seemed to liven up and focus on the stick. Taking that as playfulness, she threw it upward and to her chagrin Anthem launched upward with it and caught it in his teeth, feathers and all.

This was not something she could tell the beast, yet it was of the utmost importance for him never to attack Elsu or any other falcon again. Thus, when he landed, she yanked the feather-clad stick that represented Elsu out from his jaws and turned her back on him smugly. He nudged her back with his muzzle and she stepped further from him, now gathering up her pack with firm resolve.

"Goodbye, beast. Find a new singer, because I cannot lift voice for an unworthy ruffian." She turned and left the clearing without looking back. Anthem followed and she ignored him. Trudging forward with clomping step, she averted her face from his direction as he tried to walk beside her and get her attention. Growling plaintively, Anthem took a low flight just over her head and circled her as she walked.

"Leave, Anthem! I won’t have anything to do with one intent on killing my only contact to my family!"

Continuing his complaining groans, Anthem came to land directly in front of her with pleading eyes. Ilara stared back and thought to test him one last time. Perhaps the brute had learned his lesson.

Repeating the tease with the feathered stick, Ilara threw it and received no response. Hopeful as she picked the stick back up, she tried again, this time trying tempting Anthem purposefully to get back into a playful mood. Again he stayed his ground.

When he had passed these second and third tests, Ilara approached him and met his eyes more genially. "I’ll forgive you, brute, if you promise to carry me where I want to go. And I guess we shall see how well we understand each other when Elsu returns . . . if Elsu returns." She rubbed his fuzzy cheek and hoisted her pack onto his back. He watched placidly as she tied a rope around the pack and his torso behind the base of his wings and secured it with a complex knot.

Sliding onto his back, she leaned over his heavy mane and sang in his ear one verse of a song she knew not how she had learned,

Listen to the raven crying

All the owls wise

And solemn are the falcons flying

How they trace the skies

This led to a purring response, which Ilara could only hope meant the words to the brief melody would be an influence somehow.

"Up, Anthem," she said, pulling lightly on his mane from her position in front of her bundle. Understanding as if he was a born and trained steed, Anthem lifted off and ascended through the treetops until Ilara rubbed between his shoulder blades to stay him. Hovering just above the trees, Ilara directed him in the direction going south and eastward from Mount Wedra, which she could now see in the distance beyond what she had traversed to arrive in this forest. Anthem obeyed and they smoothly took their course. "I may yet tame you, beast," she said with a sighing smile.

When at ease, Ilara began to sing to the winged lion a soothing song she formed from nothing, which she started slowly and simply and as she sang, layered and made more complex. It satisfied her as well, it seemed, as it did the beast.

And so their tiff was ended; all was forgiven.

They sifted through the night air until dawn brought a tangerine glow to an unfamiliar mountain range directly ahead of them in the east. In drowsy circles they soared down until they landed on a low mantle on one of these mountains. After watching the warm light of the rising sun from the opposite of its rise behind the mountain peaks, casting its dulcet ruby rays over the embroidery of fields and hills to the west, Ilara and Anthem settled down to sleep. Two creatures of the night, with likeness in their manes to denote the trait, getting more and more comfortable with the company of the other.