Forty-Eight: The Bower

  Slade bowed to her, again, and sang a response with the same melody:

  We will heed that sage advice

  And take care to be precise

  With our steps, so we’re not smashed on rocks below.

  You are regal among guides

  And we’re blessed to be allies

  With this noble soaring woman so aglow.

  Azara only nodded, and said nothing, but she seemed pleased with Slade’s response.

  “There is something,” she said, “which I feel – compelled, I suppose, to do. At times such as this. I believe I like you well enough to show you my home. I usually fly there, of course, but you four can reach it walking.”

  “We don’t wish to trouble you,” Freydis said.

  “Not at all. I would like for someone to see my nest. I put much time into it, you know, but I have few of my kind to see it. You may even enter it, if you like.”

  “Your nest? Is it – high up?”

  “No, we nest on the ground. I have built a bower.”

  All four of us were silent a moment. I was stunned that this proud being was inviting four strangers into her home, and I think Uncle Slade and Freydis and Caiside all were, also.

  “That is – an amazingly generous offer,” Slade said. “Of course we are honored.”

  He looked across at me and Freydis and Caiside. “We must go.” We did not object.

  “Follow me,” Azara said. “You will be able to see me above the trees.”

  She leapt into the air, then, and pumped her wings, and we felt the draft. She climbed above the treetops quickly and then headed up the hill. We could indeed see her easily through the thin pines. We threaded our way through them for some time, withAzara always visible above; often killing time by soaring in circles, since she flew much faster than we walked. We climbed steadily; it was not a steep path, but it was a consistent incline. Freydis and I led the way, with Slade behind her and Caiside falling back behind him.

  Suddenly Azara dropped down through the masses of branches, so quickly that I worried she had been knocked out of the air somehow. But she spread her wings easily to brake, and landed before us.

  “It is there,” she said. “Do you see it?”

  A little way further into the trees, I saw it: a structure in a small gap in the trees, built of hundreds, or thousands, of upright slender cane poles. It was simple, in the form of a circle with an opening facing us. All the poles bent in toward the middle, so while it had an open roof, its sides would have provided some shelter from rain. The poles were dried out, so the structure was the color of linen.

  But the striking thing about it, as we approached, was its yard: great masses of deep green moss were strewn about, studded with dozens of large, smooth blue stones. These were spread all around the front of the bower.

  Azara stood to our side, looking over her home with evident pride and clearly enjoying our attention.

  “It’s beautiful,” Slade said. “Where does one find these stones?”

  “Down in the river.”

  “It must have taken you many trips to bring them here.”

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  “Indeed.”

  “I was going to ask the same thing about all that cane,” I said. “Does that grow near here? I haven’t noticed any.”

  “Not particularly close,” she said. “It grows near the riverbanks, but much further downstream.”

  “So again, that must take many flights,” I said.

  “I feel it is worth the time.” She stepped forward among the moss, then, picking her way through it with her talons. For my part, I was too concerned about disturbing it all to walk through it, and the others just stood still also. Caiside looked relieved to be done with the hike, resting her forearms on her crutch.

  “We build these bowers when we approach the time of laying,” she said. “And that time is very near.”

  “That’s the ‘certain time’ you meant when you said you felt compelled to show us this,” Freydis said.

  “Yes. My mother has just passed away, you know. So it is time.”

  “You mean – you have an egg only after your mother dies?” Caiside asked.

  “That is correct.”

  “My condolences about your mother.”

  Azara showed the tiniest shrug.

  “It was her time. And it allows us to continue. As always.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by this, but she gestured toward the bower before I could think of a tactful way to ask.

  “Back when males were around, they would build such bowers to attract us. There are no more males, but those of us who remained have learned that the bowers were more about the eggs than the mates. And now there will soon be a new egg. My mother, returning.”

  The four of us all bent our heads slightly, at this.

  “Your mother?” Freydis asked. “To be born again?”

  “Hatched again,” Azara nodded.

  “You believe your child will be a reincarnation of your mother?”

  “No; she will be my mother. I will have her just as she had me, and how I had her before that, and so on. As it has been from farther back than we can remember. This is what we avivnosts do.”

  “Avivnosts,” Freydis repeated.

  “Yes. And after she is grown, I will pass away. Again. And then she will have me, and raise me. And we continue.”

  “Do you – remember your previous lives?”

  “Vaguely. I sense previous ages, my previous presences here. But what is important is raising my mother again. I will feed her, and then show her how to fly. And then how to hunt on her own. And the ways of these woods, and all the places in this world that we can fly to. And then it will be my time, and I will pass, and then she will have me.”

  Slade asked her a question in what I recognized to be a very serious tone, for him:

  “How long do you live, after your child is grown?”

  “A matter of months. Or weeks.”

  All four of us, I would guess, did some arithmetic in our heads, then; I certainly did.

  “So your mother must have passed away recently,” I said.

  “Yes. Just two months ago. It has been difficult, you know. Being without her. We avivnosts are never alone for very long.”

  “Alkonosts do not do this?”

  “No,” Azara answered. “Their mothers are not reborn the same way that ours are. Or not as obviously, at least. They live on in their families through their tales, their wisdom, their retold stories.”

  “So you spend your life – your lives – just raising one another?” Freydis asked.

  “Indeed. We do not get so involved in – adventures,” she said, with some perceptible disdain, “as our alkonost cousins. We simply care for one another. Daughter, mother, daughter. To care for the next generation: What more is there? To life?”

  The four of us made no answer.

  “Do you have children yourself?” she asked Slade.

  “I do not. That I am aware of, at any rate.”

  “Do any of you others?”

  Freydis and I shook our heads. Caiside – I am not sure if I was surprised at this, or not – nodded.

  “I do.”

  “And where is she?”

  “On her own,” Caiside said. “Grown. Working the land, far away.”

  “And have you done anything better in your life than raise her?”

  Caiside paused, and then shrugged. “That would need a very long song to explain.”

  “Very well. As for my kind, this is our calling.”

  She then walked around the front area, again, through the great carpet of moss. She looked into the bower structure itself. She turned back to us, apparently satisfied.

  “You may sleep here. You will be safe. Right where you are is fine.” She pointed a wing toward us, in our spot just off the edge of the yard.

  “I’m sure we will be safe here, thank you,” Slade said.

  “And I must ask,” she added. “Over the past year or two here, I have seen alkonosts. My kindred people. I have seen them carrying things. They allow me to get quite close to them, you know. Up there.” She inclined her head toward the sky. “I know they live out toward Wastemoor; and here you are with a Wastemoor scarf and time spent there. Would your journey have anything to do with them?”

  “Ah, well,” Slade said. “It does. Yes.”

  “Very interesting,” she said. “You must have stories to tell. But I have my mother to care for. Very soon. Good night.”

  And with that, she stepped within the cane walls and left us alone.

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