Aria Blackwing's Arc

Chapter 16 of 24

Aria was still at the mending when boots hit the porch. She knew the sound of him. She set the needle down and slid the bar back. Derek stepped inside with a pack on his shoulder and a bundle of tools and boards under his arm. His coat was dusted with road grit. His arm was stiff but not bleeding. He set the pack down and looked at her the way a man looks at a room he was afraid he wouldn't see again. "You're early," she said. "I walked fast." She went to him and put her hand on his chest and felt him breathe. Then she stepped back and looked at what he had brought. Nails wrapped in cloth. A coil of rope. Fresh boards. A small saw and a hammer. "There's more," he said. He glanced at the doorway. "On the porch." She followed him out. A wooden crate sat by the step. Inside, a hawk stood on a folded sack. Russet feathers, gold along the breast, one wing held tight to the body. The bird did not flinch when she leaned close. It fixed its yellow eyes on Derek. "A trapper in the village had it in a snare," Derek said. "He was going to kill it. I traded him for it." "With what?" "Half the oats." She looked at him. He shrugged. "It watched me the whole walk back," he said. "When I set the crate down to rest, it didn't try the door. It waited for me to lift it again." Aria knelt by the crate. The hawk turned its head and studied her, then looked past her to Derek again. Its gaze went to him and stayed. "It has chosen you," she said. "I don't know what that means." "It means it will heal faster if you are the one who feeds it. It means when the wing knits, it may not leave." She carried the crate inside herself. He tried to take it and she shook her head. "Your arm." She set the hawk near the fire, away from the owl and the raven. The hawk watched Derek cross the room. They worked together on the wing. She held the bird. He steadied the feathers while she set the bone and bound it. The hawk did not fight them. When Derek spoke low to it, the yellow eyes half-closed. Later she stood at the fire with him. Three birds now. A hawk that would answer to him and not to her. Boards and nails for another pen, another perch, another wall. "We'll need more room," she said. "I brought enough to start." She looked at the hawk, then at the door they had barred so many times. The sanctuary she had built for small wounded songbirds now held a hunter. And the hunter had come home with the man she loved. She picked up the hammer and handed it to him.