Ophelia Skyfeather's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

The days after the birth ran together. Ophelia sat on the eggs and did not leave the nest except to eat and relieve herself. Her body ached in places she had not known could ache. The eggs pressed warm against her belly, and she kept them turned the way her mother had shown her long ago. Gruk came and went from the chamber on his own hours. He brought her food himself now, bread and broth and strips of cooked meat, and set the iron cup by her hand without a word. Once he crouched by the nest and put his palm flat against the largest egg. He left it there a long time. "Good," he said. That was all. But he brushed her hair back from her face before he stood, and the touch was not rough. She leaned into it before she thought. She had not been touched that way since she left her clan. She began to speak to the eggs when she was alone. She told them their father was strong. She told them the nest was warm and no one would take them from it. She told them their names, which she made up and changed and made up again. Gruk came in during one of these times and stopped in the doorway. She flinched and went quiet. He crossed the room and knelt by the nest and put his hand on her shoulder. "Talk to them," he said. "They hear." She started again, halting, and he stayed until she was done. That night he slept on the floor beside the nest instead of on his pallet. She watched the shape of his back in the dark and let herself believe it. She had a mate. She had a nest. She had done the thing she was kept for, and he was staying. Down the corridor, past two doors and a turn she could not walk to, the cook fitted a new iron ring to the largest pot in the kitchen and tested the lid. He had built the frame that morning to the measurements Gruk had given him: wide enough for three eggs at once, and long enough, if laid on its side, for a full grown harpy. He banked the coals low and covered the pot with a cloth. Gruk had told him it would not be tonight. It would be soon. In the chamber, Ophelia hummed to the eggs and did not hear a thing.