Lyra Fernbrook's Arc

Chapter 11 of 18

The vines held the shutters, but the birds did not stop. They circled the tower and screamed at the seams. Lyra kept her fingers on the strings and watched the light through the arrow slits turn from gold to orange to red. Dusk was coming. She counted the bells above them on their braided cord. Three iron shapes swinging on the highest hook, waiting for her hand. When the sun touched the treetops she climbed the last stair to the crown of the tower. Dorian came behind her with his knife out. The old woman had said the bells must be played in song at dusk, not struck like alarms. Lyra set the lyre against her hip and reached for the cord. She rang the first bell soft, then the second, and matched the third to a note from the strings. The iron answered clean. The sound spread out over the trees like a slow tide. The flock broke formation. Some birds tumbled in the air as if the note had cut their wings. Others turned and dove at the open platform. A bronze-black shape came straight for Lyra's face. Dorian shoved her sideways and took the beak in his chest. He went down hard against the rail. Blood poured through his shirt in three lines where the beak had gone in and dragged. The drake shrieked and launched from the stair. It met the next bird in the air and locked its jaws on the throat. Two more birds fell on the drake at once. Wings hammered. Pollen and green scales scattered across the boards. Lyra reached for the drake with one hand and the bells with the other, and she could not have both. She chose the bells. She hit the notes again, harder, and sang the line her grandmother had hummed over wounds. The drake screamed once more and went quiet under the birds. They tore it apart on the platform in front of her. Feathers and vine and flower scales. Lyra kept playing. Tears ran down her face and she kept playing. On the fourth pass of the song the flock lifted as one body and turned north, away from the tower, away from the grove. The sky above the trees emptied. The bells rang on alone in her hand until she stopped them with her palm. She dropped beside Dorian. His shirt was black with blood and his eyes were open but slow. She tore the cloth back. Three deep punctures under the collarbone, one still pumping. She pulled yarrow from her satchel with shaking hands and packed the worst wound tight. She set her mouth close to his ear and hummed the mending tune, low and steady, the way she had hummed it once before in her stone haven. His breath caught. It held. It came again. Lyra pressed both hands over the yarrow and did not lift them. Below the tower the grove was silent for the first time in days. The drake was gone. Dorian was alive under her palms, for now, if she did not stop.