Sword Mountain (7 page)

T
housands of miles aboveground, the valley eaglet who had aroused the disapproval of the queen, the generosity of the king, and the compassion of the princes slowly opened her eyes. Remnants of nightmares fled from her, but she remembered nothing. Nothing, save for one sharp image—an archaeopteryx swiping stained claws at her. “
Fly, little eagle! Where will you go?
”

She didn't want to think of the archaeopteryx. Taking a deep breath, she looked around her. She was in a huge bed. Some golden eagles whom she'd never seen before loomed over her.

“She's awake!” Fleydur announced.

“Mama? Papa? Where is my candle?” Feverishly, her gaze drifted from the bandages on her wings to the faces around her.

Fleydur and Forlath exchanged glances. It was Forlath who finally spoke. “We're still searching for your parents, young one, but you're holding your candle.”

The eaglet looked down, and indeed the candle was there in her clenched claws: barely melted, speckled with globules of wax. A smile flitted across her face. Fleydur, watching, felt his heart wrench. “What's your name?”

“Dandelion.”

“I'm Fleydur; this is my brother, Forlath. You were injured when we found you, so we've brought you here to heal. You'll be all right, Dandelion. We'll make sure you're all right.” Fleydur turned to the physician besides him, who nodded in agreement.

“Thank you,” said the eaglet. She looked at her candle again. “I want to go home. When will I see my mother and father?”

“We'll find them as soon as we can,” said Forlath.

“I miss them.” Her eyes moistened. “They worked so hard so I could have a special, beautiful candle for my sky-born day.”

“Can you give me your candle to hold, so I can take a look at your talons?” asked the physician. “You've been clutching it tightly even though your talons are bleeding.”

Hesitantly, Dandelion held out the candle. “Can you put it by my pillow, please?” she said, and when the physician obliged, she laid her cheek against the candle. “It's my birthday candle. My mother and father were going to sing ‘Happy Birthday' to me,” she said.

“I can sing it now,” said Fleydur. “Would you like me to sing it now?”

Dandelion nodded.

“Happy birthday to you …,” sang Fleydur.

Weak from her wounds, Dandelion gradually fell back into a merciful sleep.

Dandelion was alone when she awoke again, her broken wings encased in bandages but her mind clearer than before.

Where am I?
she wondered.
I don
'
t remember Fleydur and Forlath telling me. This place feels too airy for the valley.
Dandelion turned her face to the evening light from the window.

A wide blue sky stretched out before her eyes, with ragged gray points below. Mountaintops.
But the clouds are all wrong
, she thought. They were below her! She was looking at them from above.

Which meant Dandelion was higher than she had ever been, ever imagined. The tallest place she knew was the home of the eagle king, on top of Sword Mountain, but—how impossible. How ridiculous! How …?

She slumped back into the silk covers of her bed, heart pounding. Gulping in lungfuls of perfumed air, she didn't have to look hard to find evidence of wealth: Gilded mirrors, marble busts of birds, and a domed ceiling painted blue filled her vision. The handles on the drawers were made of silver. The doorknob was crystal.

Before she could try to make sense of this, the doorknob on the thick oak door turned, and a female golden eagle not much older than herself stepped in.

Is she a princess?
Dandelion thought. She did dress fancily enough, with a frilly cap framing her face and ribbons tied into bows on each of her ankles. A golden brooch shaped like half of an acorn adorned her collar.

As if sensing Dandelion's confusion, she flicked her ribboned feet. “I am Lady Olga to you. My great-great-great-grandfather was a member of the court. I have seen both the king and the queen, and I get to eat caviar.”

Dandelion looked at the caviar eater, and Olga looked back, expecting her to be awed.

“This is the Castle of Sky, if you don't know. The grandest place in the Skythunder mountain range,” Olga went on. “The princes Fleydur and Forlath brought you here.”

“They're princes!” exclaimed Dandelion.

Olga sniffed. “Well, it was all very unusual, but I suppose it was a merely a gesture to celebrate their victory in the war. They wanted you to be like a regular visiting eaglet, so you were assigned a companion to keep you company and bring you meals. Unfortunately that was me.” Olga allowed a condescending smile. “Consider yourself lucky to even step one talon here. I bet you've never taken classes with a tutor of the castle. I bet you don't know how to hold a teacup properly. I bet you don't even know what caviar is.”

“I can learn,” Dandelion said.

Olga snorted.

“There must be something I can do here once I'm better,” said Dandelion, “to repay the princes who've saved me before I go home again.”

The word home was a trigger, and tears leaked from Dandelion's eyes no matter how hard she squinted. Olga stared at her. “You mean you
want
to go home?” she said, surprised. “You'd rather be home than here?” She waved a wing tip at the luxurious room.

Dandelion nodded. She knew there was only one method of getting off this precipice: flight. She wanted to fly, so suddenly and so much it surprised her. If her wings weren't broken, if she knew how to fly, she could return to her home at once.

Yet there was a fear, a fear of … of … she was afraid of flying. Or was it of falling?

“I suppose everybird likes home best, even if yours is in the valley,” Olga said slowly. “You certainly don't have to stay here. If you stay, they're just going to make a fool of you.” Olga leaned in. “A
valley
fool. You're in luck, though, because I can take you back down.”

Olga walked over to the window and slid it open. At once a fresh, glorious breeze sprang in, billowing the tasseled curtains, snapping the corners of the embroidered bedspread, and stirring the few uncovered feathers on Dandelion's wings.

Dandelion looked at her bandaged, broken wings. “Take me home,” she said. She looked out the window. The sky was a vivid royal blue, and stars were emerging.

Dandelion was lying inside a gigantic wicker laundry basket, secured in the folds of sheets, her candle tucked by her side. “Olga?”

“Be quiet, will you?” said Olga. She and another eaglet, who also wore half a gold acorn pin, held the handles of the basket as they flew out of the castle courtyard.

“Olga, just one thing, please!”

“We're not turning back.” Olga's voice turned malicious.

“No. Can you fly a little higher? I want to have a look.”

There was a pause, and then Dandelion felt the basket starting to rise. Below, she could see the dark smudges of the forest and the castle, too. How beautiful it was, with majestic stained-glass windows that showed silhouettes of birds moving behind them. In a level field lower down the mountain, she saw eaglets playing lacrosse under the lantern light.

“She's so heavy!” shouted the other eaglet to Olga. “Come on, let's put her down on a ledge and rest a moment.”

They chose the top of a small slope. Dandelion saw that Olga looked unhappy and frightened. She handed Dandelion a crust of bread and a flagon of something warm. Soup. “Eat,” she said. The other eaglet whispered something in Olga's ear and slipped away. Dandelion gripped the warm bottle of soup, a sickening feeling dawning upon her. She choked down the soup and didn't have to wait long for what she feared would happen.

“Wait here,” Olga muttered, her eyes elsewhere. “That eaglet, she has cold talons. She doesn't want to fly down in the dark. I'll be back soon, I'll get somebird else to carry you with me.” She smoothed her frilly cap and lumbered off into the night, and Dandelion heard the sound of her rustling ankle ribbons fade.

Has she abandoned me?
Dandelion wondered. Somehow it didn't seem unlikely. With her wings bound to awkward splints, she could not get anywhere by herself, so she would just have to wait for Olga to come back.

Dandelion craned her neck to look around. Uphill, she could glimpse the lights from the castle. Below was a steep outcropping, and she could make out the abodes of well-to-do eagles. All were out of shouting distance.

Sighing, Dandelion leaned back in the basket and watched the stars. A gust of wind picked up in the mountain, and Dandelion held her candle tighter, wondering whether anybird would find her.
I wish I was with Mama and Papa.

Suddenly the stars lurched in her vision. She realized that that her basket was moving, sliding ever so slightly on the slope's loose rocks. Dandelion's first impulse was to get out, but when she sat up, the splint of one wing jammed into a gap in the weave of the basket, sending the basket careening.

“Ah—!” Rolling on a bed of pebbles, the basket picked up speed, and Dandelion could only grip the edges in terror. She was indeed heading for a drop-off.

She heard shouts of alarm from some eagles who appeared below her on the slope, but as they hollered, she zipped passed them. They pumped their wings to chase after her speeding basket. A golden blur pulled ahead of the group.

Whack.

Something stopped her basket abruptly. Dandelion looked over her shoulder. A lacrosse stick was hooked onto one of the handles.

“Nice catch, captain,” some eaglet said in admiration. “Best save ever.”

Talons pulled the basket to a flatter patch of ground. The lacrosse players gathered around Dandelion. The owner of the lacrosse stick was an eagle whose plumage was not the usual brown, but so light that it was tawny.

He and the other birds gawked at Dandelion. She realized that with her bandages she resembled a mummy in a casket, but when the eaglet with the lacrosse stick laughed, it was a friendly sound.

“Great Spirit, some fight you must have been in to get that look. To think you almost broke more bones,” he said to Dandelion, flashing a grin. “I'm Cloud-wing.”

“Thanks for saving me,” said Dandelion, smiling weakly. “I need to go home.”
To the valley.

“Definitely,” another eaglet spoke. “We can give you a lift. What quarter do you live in?” He pointed his beak at the mansions in the distant cliffs.

Could they possibly think I'm one of their own?
Dandelion thought. “I'm not a noble,” she said. “I didn't mean to come up here.”

Silence.

“A valley bird!” one of Cloud-wing's teammates cried out. All the eaglets except Cloud-wing suddenly backed off. They sneaked looks at one another, beaks hanging open.

“How did she get up here?” one muttered.

Cloud-wing turned to look at that bird. “What does that matter?”

Then there was a fluttering of wings. Olga landed on the cliff, followed by another eaglet.

“Sorry for the wait,” she said to Dandelion breathlessly. She turned to the eaglet she'd brought. “Come on, let's go.”

The lacrosse team stepped back, unsure of what was happening.

“Olga!” exclaimed Cloud-wing. “You know this eaglet?”

“Oh, hello there.” Olga smoothed the ribbon on one foot with the toes of the other. “She's Fleydur's eaglet. I was assigned to be her companion.” Striding over, she gripped a handle of the basket. Her friend lifted the other one.

“Then you're supposed to make her feel welcome,” said Cloud-wing. “Why did you take her outside?”

Olga braced herself to fly. “She's homesick,” she explained. But just as Olga was about to leap into the air, Cloud-wing raised his lacrosse stick and barred the way.

“You can't do this,” he said to them.

“Why not?” said Olga, taken aback. “I'm trying to help, is all!”

“You left her stuck in that basket on the slope, don't you know? The basket almost slid off the edge. That was dangerous! You don't know what you're doing. You don't even know where her home is, and her injuries are not healed,” Cloud-wing cried. “She can't survive on her own like this.”