Aria Blackwing's Arc

Chapter 15 of 24

The bars were in place. Derek was gone. Aria stood with her back to the door and listened to the cabin settle around her. The owl blinked from its perch. The raven scratched in its box. She had been alone here a hundred times before Derek came. It had never felt like this. She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart was going too fast. She counted the beats and could not slow them. The path to the village ran through open country and then through the brush where she had heard something follow her. Derek was walking it now with a knife under his coat and a wound in his arm not fully healed. She told herself he would be back by dusk. She told herself she had done this walk alone many times. Neither thought helped. She had grown up steady. She had lived years in this cabin without one person to miss. Now her hands shook when she tried to hold them still. She moved because standing was worse. She went to the owl first. She lifted it from the perch and checked the splinted wing. The bone was knitting clean. The round golden eyes watched her without blame. She fed it a strip of meat from the jar and set it back. She knelt at the raven's box. The baby raven opened its beak and cheeped. She warmed a bit of soaked bread and fed it from her finger. The dark down was filling in along the shoulders. In a week it would try to hop. She stroked one finger down its back and felt the small heart tapping under the feathers, fast and steady, the way a bird's heart was meant to be. Her own heart slowed a little. Not much. Enough. She understood then what had changed. She had built this place for wounded birds. She had let a wounded man in and told herself he was another patient. He was not. The cabin held two birds and an empty chair by the fire, and the empty chair was the loudest thing in the room. She wiped her hands on her apron. She went to the window and lifted one shutter a finger's width. The yard was empty. The tree line was still. The light was already tilting toward afternoon. She let the shutter drop and barred it again. She would not stand at the window until dark. She would tend the birds. She would keep the fire. She would learn to carry this new fear the way she carried the old ones — with her hands full of work. She sat down by the raven's box and picked up the mending she had left three days ago. Her fingers were steady on the needle. Her heart was not steady, and she accepted that it might never be steady again while he was out on the path.