John Crowley: Beasts

“I don’t know.” He was moving within the tree, trying to extricate himself. “Of course he has always been my king. No matter how often I have failed him.” A small cry of pain. “On fooled him. Help me here.”

She went to the tree and he held out for hen to take an impossibly tiny black-palmed hand, its wrist long and fine as a bunch of sticks tied together. If he hadn’t gripped her hard, like a little child, she would have dropped the hand in fear. He pulled himself toward the opening, and she could see his long mouth grinning with effort; his yellow teeth shone.

“Who are you?” she said.

He ceased his efforts, but didn’t release her. His eyes, brown and tender behind the glasses, searched hen. “That’s difficult to say, exactly.” Was he smiling? She was close to him now, and an odor that before had been only part of the woods odor grew distinct. Distinct and familiar. “Difficult to say. But you can call me Reynard.”

The hardest work, Sten learned, was to carry the bird. Lonen knew it was hard for a boy of fourteen to carry even a tiercel for the hours required, and he wore a glove, too, but Sten hated to give up the hawk; it was his hawk, he was the falconer, the hawk should be his alone to carry. If he rode, slowly, it was easier; but even on horseback Sten wanted desperately to lower his arm. Loren mustn’t know that; neither must the hawk. As he rode, he spoke quietly, confidentially, to Hawk — he had never given him any other name, though Mika had thought of many: kingly, fierce names. Somehow, it seemed to Sten, any other name would be an excrescence, a boast about power and authority that a man might need but this bird didn’t.

There had been a first frost that morning, and the leaves and brown grass they rode oven were still painted with it; though the sun would be high soon and erase it, just for this moment it was lit with infinitesimal colored lights. Chet and Martha, the pointers, breathed out great clouds of frost as they studied the morning, padding with directness but no hurry toward the open fields that lay beyond the old stone farmhouse.

The farmhouse was mews, stable, and kennel, and Sten and Mika’s private place. Their tutor, Loren, was allowed inside, but no one else. When their father had bought the long brown mansion whose roofs were still visible to them over the ridge, he’d wanted to pull down the old farmhouse and fill in the fulsome, duck-weedy pond. Sten had asked for an interview, and presented to his father the reasons for keeping them — for nature study, a place of their own to be responsible for, a place for the animals outside the house. He did it so carefully and reasonably that his father laughed and relented.

What his father had feared, of course, was that the place could be used for coven in an attack. The sensors around the grounds couldn’t see through its walls. But he put aside his fears.

“Don’t, Mika!” Sten hissed, but Mika had already kicked hen bay pony into the proper gait. She took the low stone wall with great ease, gently, almost secretly, and quickly pulled up on the other side.

“Damn you,” Sten said. His horse, seeing its cousin take off, had gotten restless to follow, and Sten had only one hand to settle him. Hawk bated on his wrist, the tassels of his hood nodding, his beak opening. He moved his feet on the glove, griping deeply; his bells rang. Furious, but careful, Sten picked his way through the fallen place in the wall. Mika was waiting for him; her brown eyes were laughing, though her mouth tried not to.

“Why did you do it? Can’t you see…”

“I wanted to,” she said, defensive suddenly, since he wasn’t going to be nice about it. She turned her horse and went after Loren and the dogs, who were getting on faster than they.

It’s Hawk, Sten thought. She’s jealous, is all. Because Hawk is mine, so she’s got to show off. Well, he is mine. He rode carefully after them, trying not to let any of this move Hawk, who was sensitive to any emotion of Sten’s. Hawk was an eyas — that is, he had never molted in the wild; he was a man’s bird, raised by men, fed by men. Eyases are sensitive to men’s moods far more than are passage hawks caught as adults. Sten had done everything he could to keep him wild — had even let him out “at hack,” after his first molt, though it was terrible to see him go, knowing he might not return to feed at the hack board. He tried to treat him, always with that gracious, cool authority his father used with his aides and officers. Still, Hawk was his, and Sten knew that Hawk loved him with a small, cool reflection of the passion Sten felt for him.

Loren called to him. Across the field, where the land sloped down to marshy places, Chet and Martha had stopped and were pointing to a ragged copse of brush and grapevine.

Sten dismounted, which took time because of Hawk; Mika held his horse’s head, and then took up the reins. Sten crossed the field toward the place the dogs indicated, a thick emotion rising in him. When Loren held up his hand, Sten stopped and slipped Hawk’s hood.

Hawk blinked, the great sweet eyes confused for a moment. The dogs were poised, unmoving. Loren watched him, and watched the dogs. This was the crucial part. A bad point from the dogs, bad serve from Sten, and Hawk would lose his game; if he missed it, he would sit glumly on the ground, or skim idly around just above the ground, looking for nothing; or fly up into a tree and stare at them all, furious and unbiddable; or just rake off and go, lost to them, perhaps forever.

Hawk shifted his stance on Sien’s wrist, which made his bells sound, and Sten thought: he knows, he’s ready. “Now!” he cried, and Loren sent the dogs into the bush. Hawk roused, and Sten, with all the careful swift strength he could put into his weary arm, served Hawk. Hawk rose, climbing a stair in the air, rose directly overhead till he was nearby as small as a swallow. He didn’t rake off, didn’t go sitting trees; it was too fine a morning for that; he hung, looking down, expecting to see something soon that he could kill.

“He’s waiting on,” Mika said, almost whispered. She shaded her eyes, trying to see the black neat shape against the hard blue sky. “He’s waiting on, look, look…”

“Why don’t they flush it?” Sten said. He was in an agony of anticipation. Had he served too soon? Was there nothing in the copse? They should have brought something bagged. What if it was a grouse, something too big…? He began to walk, steadily, with long steps, so that Hawk could see him. He had the lure in his pocket, and Hawk would have to come to that, if he would deign to, if…

Two woodcock burst noisily from the copse. Sten stopped. He looked overhead. Hawk had seen. Already, Sten knew, he had chosen one of them; his cutout shape changed; he began to stoop. Sten didn’t breathe. The world had suddenly become ordered before his sight, everything had a point, every creature had a purpose — dogs, birds, horses, men — and the beautiful straight strength to accomplish it: the world, for this moment, had a plot.

Both the woodcock were skimming low to the ground, seeking cover again. Sten could hear the desperate beating of their wings. Hawk, though, fell silently, altering his fall as the cock he had chosen veered and fled. The other saw cover and dove into a brake as though flung there; the one Hawk had chosen missed the brake, and seemed to tumble through the air in avoidance, and it worked, too: Hawk misjudged, shot like a misaimed arrow below the woodcock.

Mika was racing after them. Sten, watching, had missed his stirrup and now clambered up into the saddle and kicked the horse savagely. Loren was whistling urgently to Chet and Martha to keep them out of it. The woodcock wouldn’t dare try for cover again. It could only hope to rise higher and faster than the falcon, so the falcon couldn’t stoop to it. The “field” — Sten, Mika, Loren on foot, and the dogs — chased after them.