I can tell the hunt’s going to be a bad one from the first morning. For a start, when we set out it’s raining — proper heavy, not drizzles — and at the first camp, we find all our flour’s wet. Stupid thing to bring, flour, but Da’s a traditionalist and he insisted.

For a second thing, once she comes to, the virgin won’t stop screaming. Da goes to gag her, but as he’s putting the rag over her mouth, she kicks him and runs. She don’t get far — Da’s legs are long and he can put on a pretty turn of speed when he wants.

“Come here, Tom,” he says to me. He’s all cloak blowing in the wind, and pipe, and mane of grey-black. Voice like a wizard in a story. His dignity’s a bit dented, though, by the screaming, writhing virgin he’s got by the hair.

“Let me go!” She kicks him again.

He winces and shoves her out to arm’s length. He’s got long arms to match his legs, so that works. “Get the rope,” he tells me. I slog over to the horse for the coil we keep on the saddle. “Hurry, boy!” he snaps.

Working together, we tie her to Hercules, which don’t please neither of them. Da tries the gag again, but the virgin bites him, so he stalks off along the rocky path, staying far away as he can, and leaves me dealing with the yelling. She’s all snot and weeping, too. I’d feel sorry, a bit, but she kicks like a mule; my stomach still aches from the thud of her boot.

So I’m trailing along with Hercules, who’s all doleful too because he has a struggling, screaming bundle of virgin on his back, and the rain’s thudding down like eggs, and my left boot’s leaking so my foot is wet.

Can’t help remembering the last virgin we had on a hunt. She was a cheerful sort, all blonde curls and smiles. Da paid her proper and we never had a peep from her until the end. After she vanished, no one else would take Da’s money, and in the end, we sneaked through a bedroom window and yanked this one from her bed.

I keep telling her we won’t hurt her, which is true — ’t won’t be us.

“This is an important job,” I tell her, or I tell myself since I doubt she’s listening. “These creatures are rare. Someone’s got to protect them.”

The screams redouble. She was listening. Hercules makes a face that probably matches mine, and puts his head down for a tricky bit of path that fords the stream. Don’t know how she manages to undo the knots, but when we’re halfway across, she drops like a stone from his back and goes splashing and flailing down through the water toward the forest. If she gets in among the trees, she’s a better chance of getting away, so I leave Hercules to his own devices and chase her. She’s fast, even with her hands tied, and we’re almost at the tree line when she pauses to glance back so I get close enough to dive for her ankles. She goes over with a yell and a great splash, and I pull myself up her legs, grabbing her round the waist to keep her where she’s fallen.

“It’s all right,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice calm enough to soothe. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

She twists in the water, soaked and spitting. “Oh yes? What about a thing? Is one of your precious creatures going to hurt me?”

Can’t answer that without a lie, and Mam was always very particular about untruths. Probably as a result of knowing Da. So I shrug. “It don’t take long.”

That’s what Da says, though it seemed awful long with the last one. I kept thinking of her smiling mouth making those noises: the screams, and then the rest of it.

The girl in the water heaves to try and throw me off, so I tighten my grasp, and it’s only when I’ve got her tight as tight I see she’s something in her hand. Something dark. I throw myself sideways, but her aim’s true, and the river-rock smacks into my head and sends everything spinning away to hell.

 

~

 

Wake with my head bouncing off something hard. Wrists hurt, ankles hurt. Force my eyes open, and the jouncing green earth makes me close ’em again with an oath. Where am I? I try and sort out the pain in my wrists. Tight, pressure, and I can’t move them.

No help for it. I open my eyes again. Bounce, bounce, bounce goes the ground. In and out and in and out of view. Lights burst against my eyes. Try to get my hands free, but I can’t. Try to sit up, but that doesn’t work either. Something’s pushing against my ribs. The edge of the saddle.

Right. I’m on Hercules.

Did the virgin put me here?

Unlikely. She’d have run. This has to be — “Da!” Bounce, bounce, bounce. Bloody hell, it hurts. “Da!”

At last Da’s there and cutting me free. I fall on my bum with my hands still tied together and he pulls me up by the wrists and slices the rope with his belt-knife. “Glad to see you’re awake,” he says, all sarcasm.

“Thanks,” I mutter, and shove the remains of the rope in my coat pocket. “Where’s the—?”

A rustle answers the question before I finish it, as the virgin rubs her wrists together. Her hands’ve gone white from the tightness of the rope. Looks like while I had her place on Hercules, Da tied her behind the horse and made her run. She’d have had no time to cause trouble that way. Maybe it’s the ache in my own wrists, but I feel something squirm in my belly at the thought.

“Come on, Tom. We have to hurry. No one else can capture this beast.” Da speaks over his shoulder as he strides off, his telescope plastered to his eye. Looking for signs of spoor, as if there’d be any this low or this early.

Me and the virgin scramble to our feet and get walking again, making our way across the boggy meadow to the other side of the woods. I ask her, without looking at her salt-stained face, “You all right?”

“I didn’t kill you, then.” Her voice is low and hoarse, from the screaming maybe, but all high-born poshness, too. “I was scared you were dead.”

“I got a hard head,” I say, to show her things are all right. “Da’s always saying it’s made of wood.”

“Who? The collector?” Her nose wrinkles. “That man’s not your father.”

“Is too,” I insist, stung. It’s just like a posh girl who never grew up in a muddy village to go making out a boy’s da isn’t who he says. As if it makes her better than me that she’s known her da all her life.

She puts on a know-it-all expression. “Really? So is it your mother who is fair-haired like you?”

“Hair’ll darken,” I say, head down, ends of my treacherously dust-blond hair flopping in and out of my vision.

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen, about.”

“Then it’s not going to darken much, is it.” She tilts her head to one side. “You know, if your mother is native of Lucamor, it’s more likely your father’s a Nordman. The collector can’t be your father because he’s—”

“Told you who my father is. Don’t talk about it again.” I walk faster so neither of us have breath left for talking. Sinderin moths fly up from the grasses like little dark-winged omens, and I put my mind to what I’ll cook for supper, so’s I don’t think about what she said. When sun shone on Mam’s hair it glowed a bit red, sometimes, through the black. There were other kids in my village with hair as pale as mine, almost. The virgin don’t know what she’s talking about.

When Da finally calls a halt, it’s near dark. He’s picked a marshy hollow down by the river. Close enough for water, but the bugs are hanging in the air like a blood-sucking mist.

“Get the fire started, Tom,” he says.

I slap a bug away from my face, and fifty others bite my hand. “How about that place we passed on the hill?” I ask, hopeful that Da’s been lost in thought so he hasn’t noticed anywhere better than this.

“No.” He tethers Hercules to one of the spindly birches. “This dell is hidden, and so it’s safer. Make a fire, but keep it small. We don’t want the Kingsmen to see us.”

That’s that, then. I scramble up the short rise to the thicker forest of pine and fir. “Do you think they’re that close?”

He glances behind, like a Kingsman might jump out of the bog. “I know they are. All of them want the roc, but we’ll be the ones that find it.”

“What is this roc?” the virgin asks, leaning on one of the trees. She holds her hands out in front of her, like they hurt. I’d go and loosen the rope, but the tangled hair falling across her face is black as night, just like everyone else’s. Like mine’s not. I look away and concentrate on breaking the dry lower branches off the pines.

“That’s none of your concern,” Da tells her, setting his tools out on a fallen log.

“Sounds like it’s very much my concern,” she counters. “Or have I misunderstood your intentions?”

He huffs and turns his back to her. Da doesn’t like to talk to the virgins; they’re tools, after all, to attract the beasts and give us time to catch them. Can’t get too attached to tools, or you don’t use them right, he says.

She glances up at me, but I don’t want to think about Da’s intentions, so I focus on my job, not the future. When I take the firewood back down to the dell, Da’s leafing through his book. I glance over his shoulder to see the beautiful drawings he’s made of the other animals we’ve rescued. When you see those pictures, you can believe he’s right: there’s a message from the gods in there. It’s why he left his monastery all those years ago. Despite the chilly hollow, warmth settles in my chest. There’s no one else in the world like Da. No one as clever or wise or as like to find the secrets that underlie the visible world. With a sigh I turn away from the visions he sees and go to make the fire.

As I pass her, I see the virgin’s still leaning on her tree; the rope tying her to Hercules has twisted round some little branches and stops her sitting. The horse is oblivious, head down in the wet grass, making a pig of himself.

That man’s not your father, echoes in my ears, in her posh voice, and my chest clenches, anger-like. Still, being practical, you got to look after your tools, and if she gets sick she’ll slow us down, so I untie the rope.

She slides gratefully to the ground. “What’s the roc?”

I shrug and tie the rope to a low branch, then move to set the fire. There’s nothing I can tell her that won’t make things worse. Except: “They’re birds.”

“Lucamor’s already full of birds.”

I glance back over my shoulder. Surely no one can be that ignorant? “They’re big. This is the first that’s been seen in Lucamor for decades. They normally stay south, beyond the sand-reaches.” I strike the flint; sparks leap and fizzle too fast in the damp air.

“So it’s rare?” she says. “Is that what the fuss is about?”

I strike the flint again. “Sort of. There’s a legend says one taste of its liver can cure any illness. And the king—”

“The king’s youngest son,” she says, at almost the same time.

“Yeah.” The youngest prince survived the plague that killed his mother, and half of Lucamor, but only just; stories say he clings to life and if they let him out of the palace, a breeze alone might see him off. “King says he’ll pay ten thousand guilders to anyone who brings him the liver.”

“That’s a lot of money.” Her expression suggests she’s pegged us now. Mercenaries, in it for the gold.

“Da don’t want the money,” I correct her. “He’s aiming to save the roc. It’s rare, see, and special. Shouldn’t be chopped up for its liver.”

“But if it can save people’s lives…”

I shrug and turn my attention back to the fire — or the lack of it. “Lots of people in the world, he says, only a few Golden Rocs.”

“Yes.” Her voice is tart. “It’s abundantly clear he doesn’t like people very much.”

Takes ages to get the fire burning because the ground’s wet and the air’s wet, and by the time the first curl of flame gets going, I’ve not an inch of skin that hasn’t been bitten all over by the swarming bugs. Then there’s cooking and unearthing bowls and spoons from the packs, and washing the dirty pan and bowls in the river. Da believes in purity and simple food, but porridge sticks, and when I’m done, I’m ready for sleep. Even the bugs won’t keep me awake.

I pass the virgin a blanket from the pack and take one for myself.

“Aren’t you going to untie my hands?” she asks.

“Then you’d just run away, wouldn’t you.”

She shrugs. “Wouldn’t you, in my position?”

Don’t answer that, don’t think myself into her position. “That’s why I can’t untie you.”

I roll myself tighter in the blanket so I’m warm, and concentrate on the river’s gurgling, swishing song filtering through the trees. My wrists still ache from the rope.

“My name’s Elin,” the virgin says softly.

Don’t care rests on my tongue. Not supposed to think of virgins by name. Not supposed to imagine they have one. But I’m too tired to speak.

 

~

 

The unicorns are coming. Ear to the turf, I can hear the pound-pound-pound of their hooves cutting across the earth. Light’s failing, like it does whenever they’re close, darkness closing over the sun, turning everything dim.

The waiting virgin looks over; in the low sun, her eyes flash gold. They’re wide with apprehension. Her hair — which was really blonde (it’s not often you see someone with hair like mine) — looks black and tangled in the low light.

“What’s that?” she asks, as she really did, but her voice is a strange mix of peasant and high-born. The voice of the actual virgin we used for the unicorns, and Elin’s. “Boy, tell me. What is that?”

Da answers her: “It’s the unicorns, my dear. Coming to lay their beauteous heads in your lap in recognition of your purity.”

That calmed the blonde virgin. She waited like a lamb until the ragged dark monsters crested the hill and she saw their horns, and their teeth. In the dream, though, in Elin’s voice, she laughs, and when the unicorns come, she stands and keeps her eyes on me so I can’t look away. As they feed, as Da tethers their stallion with a silver rope, still still she keeps her eyes on me. And at the last, when there’s nothing left of her but fragments, she speaks: “Remember this, Tomas.” This time, her voice is Mam’s.

 

~

 

I wake twitchy and restless at the dreaming and the way it had her name. Don’t want it to be so, but the girl tied to the tree is now unquestionably “Elin”, and not “the virgin” anymore. That’s the first time I’ve thought of a virgin by name, and I reckon she meant it to happen.

Not clear why, but I don’t like it. I stomp around the camp getting water for the morning porridge, building up the fire, scratching at the thousands of bites I’ve collected from the bugs. Go over to check she didn’t die in the night: we had one that did, once — Da bought her from a slaver and she didn’t last a week. He was furious; couldn’t get his money back. Never used those slavers again, not even this time when all the mams were hiding their girls from him and muttering in doorways. Man of principle, my da.

I don’t see her breathing, so I bend close. Maybe she’s waiting for that, because her eyes open, yellow like gold and sandstone, looking straight into mine. It’s so much like the dream, I swallow a curse.

“You awake?” Nothing like stating the obvious, but she shook me.

“Good morning, Tom,” she says, as if it’s all straight, as if we’re friends. “Did you sleep well?”

The question’s so ridiculous I can’t help but snort. “’Course not.”

She grins, a little ruefully. “Neither did I. What are those bugs?”

“Nerpherus Dalmasanus,” I tell her, showing off a bit. “They like bog land. And blood.”

She sits up and stretches, a bit like a cat, a lot like a griffin. “How do you know so much about creatures? All their formal names and histories?”

“’s what Da does,” I tell her. “He’s a zoologist. Knows all the animals, and the birds and the bugs. Reckons that if he finds enough of the magical beasts he can—”

Da snaps at me. “Tom. Breakfast. Now.”

I grimace.

“My father never speaks to me like that,” Elin mutters.

 

~

 

We strike camp right after breakfast, which means I put the bowls away dirty. It’s no good doing that — only means they’ll be a nightmare to clean before we use them tonight — but Da’s in a hurry.

“The Kingsmen will be moving fast,” he tells me, striding to the edge of our campsite and peering out at the river as I pack the blankets back into the saddlebags and heave them onto Hercules’ back. “We’re so close now. We can’t let the prize slip from our fingers.”

He sets a serious pace, striding off ahead, turning back to us only to gesture furiously that we should hurry. Elin’s back on Hercules, but it feels wrong to tie her across the saddle with her bum in the air like before, so I bind her hands to the pommel and she sits up there for all the world like a princess greeting the crowds, not a virgin going to her death. It all works fine on the flat ground, but when we get into the foothills, Hercules begins to huff and sweat, and when we climb into the mountains proper, he stumbles so often I have to stop and get Elin off his back.

“Are you going to tie me behind him again?” she asks.

I don’t like that idea. Her hands are bruised-looking from yesterday, so I shake my head. “He’s got all the packs to carry, and it’s steep.”

She lifts her wrists. “What then?”

Da comes back along the fold in the path and gestures impatiently.

“What if you promised not to run? I could untie you then.”

“I’m not doing that,” she says. “You’ll have to think of something else.”

Da’s gestures get furious.

I sigh. “All right.” I tie her rope around my waist. “Come on, then.”

She’s too close as we climb. Close enough for me to smell dirty hair, wet cloth and lemon balm. Likely her mam — or servants — used the herb to keep her sheets fresh. Her grubby dress keeps tangling round her legs. There’s twigs caught in the torn strip of lace at the top, and mud smeared all up to her knees.

“Why do you wear that thing?”

“It’s my nightdress,” she snaps. “I was in bed, remember?”

I shrug, a bit awkward with the memory of her soft breathing in the warm room, of the way Da pressed the cloth across her mouth, then scooped her into his arms and climbed back out her window like a long-legged nightmare from a children’s story. There were toys on the shelves, and the rugs were thick beneath my boots.

“It’s long for walking in,” I point out, as she stumbles again on a narrow piece of path with a fall at either side.

“It’s not meant to be walked in.”

I’m about to answer when I hear the crunch of boots on stone. Many boots. Kingsmen. Moments later, Da comes racing back down the path. Elin tenses.

“Get her out of sight!” he hisses. I look round but there’s nowhere obvious, just the narrow path and the fall of rocks tumbling into a misty valley a long way below. “Hang her over the edge!”

I’m peering down, trying to see if there’s a way to the valley that don’t involve falling, when Elin shoves me hard between the shoulder blades and, as I’m fighting for my balance, throws herself down the slope. The rope at my waist tightens and drags me after her.

We smack against the stone, tumbling downward, out of control. I just got the presence of mind to tuck in my arms so I don’t break them, and roll with the fall. We land crash among a pile of boulders, winded and aching and hurting all over.

“What the hell did you do that for?” I snarl, heaving in a painful breath. “You could have killed us.”

“Just a bit sooner than you have planned for me anyway,” she says, with a smile that makes me want to punch one of the rocks. “I want to talk to you. And the Kingsmen are coming, aren’t they? Doubt they’ll look positively on kidnapping.”

I grind my teeth. Can’t argue with her logic. “Fine, then. You—”

With a slither and a huff, a salamander sticks his head out of a hole between the rocks.

“Hell.” I scramble back, drawing Elin with me by the rope that connects us. The smell of hot stone follows. The salamander’s tongue flicks curiously. He slips closer.

“Is it dangerous?” she asks, her voice a bit higher than normal. Guess like me she’s unhappy about being stuck between a fiery monster and the fall behind, which goes all the way down into mist.

All the salamander pictures from Da’s book shove themselves into my head at once. I clear my throat. “Only if it gets close.”

We scramble back again. I don’t say what I’m thinking: that it doesn’t need to get all that close to burn us. The heat from its skin is like a blacksmith’s forge.

Balanced at the end of the ledge, huddled together, both of us shaking, she asks, “What if we shouted at it?”

I shake my head, trying to settle some of my whirling thoughts. “It’ll rush us.”

“Play dead?”

“We’re in its territory, so it’ll come to check, and it won’t mean to burn us, but—”

The salamander slithers closer. The atmosphere heats and tightens.

Elin’s breath whines as she struggles for air. “Think, Tom. What will make it go away?”

My frantic brain drops me back into lessons with Da. Pictures and stories and all he’s told me about the creatures he collects. “Pain,” I say, relieved. “They’re cowards about pain.” And then I realize that gets us nowhere. By the time I’m close enough to stab it with my belt knife, I’ll be all crispy and dead. I put my hand on the knife anyway; maybe I could throw it?

“Untie my hands,” Elin says. There’s nowhere for her to go, unless steam and ashes count, so I slit the rope at her wrists. Don’t take me but seconds, but the salamander is closer when I look back, glowing a brilliant orange, the heat rising off it shuddering the air.

There’s a clatter, and a fist-sized stone lands beside the salamander’s foot. Elin reaches for another. Grinning at her cleverness, I join in, sending a flat stone bouncing over the boulders to smack the salamander on the chest. It hisses, and the rock around it starts to bubble. I start worrying it’s going to make a rush anyway. Maybe this one’s braver than the others.

“Good shot,” says Elin, and gets it — whack — on the foreleg.

I throw a handful of smaller stones to clatter around its head. It shakes itself and hisses again, and its legs bunch, ready to send it charging forward.

“More. Quickly.” I scramble at my feet for loose stones.

A perfectly aimed rock hits the salamander on the nose. It rears back angrily, and just to help it decide, I chuck another that thumps off its belly.

It slithers back into its hole, and Elin and I exchange a grin.

“Not bad,” I say, “for a—”

“—boy,” she finishes, and pats my arm. “I thought you did very well.”

“Hey—” I start, but the end of a rope smacks off the rock beside us and brings me right back to the present. Up above, there’s the crunch of booted feet. At the top, Da’s gesturing like he’s trying to take off.

I grab the rope.

“No!” Da gestures. “Her first.”

Makes sense, I suppose. I fix her rope to the end of the dangling one, but leave one hand free, else she won’t be able to climb. “Up you go,” I tell her, aware that boots are crunching closer. The Kingsmen can’t be too far away. What if she screams? I hope she hasn’t thought of that; one glance at her face tells me that hope’s likely vain. “Go on,” I urge her. “Before the salamander comes back.”

“Listen, Tom,” she says, tugging back from the rope so she can look me in the eye. “That man’s not your father. I bet you anything.”

I wish she hadn’t started this again. “My mam’s not a liar.”

“Is she a rich woman, your mam? Educated?”

She takes my silence as an answer.

“Then how was she going to argue with him? What evidence did she have that would counter his insistence?”

“She’d have told me. Go on,” I say, as the boots crunch nearer. “They’ll catch us.”

“I bet he does that whenever his servant gets old enough to think for himself, or has an accident. Goes looking for a likely boy in a poor village and claims paternity.”

“Yeah, and why would he do that?”

“Bet he gets through a lot of virgins in this line of work.” Her eyes are hard yellow, like salamander skin. “Claiming boys is cheaper than paying, I expect. And he’s got the rights of a father over you. “

“Because he is my father.”

“They know him in the villages—” she starts, but Da’s lost patience and is pulling on the rope. She’s dragged up across the rocks before she manages to get her feet under her. When she does, she scrambles up the boulders like she was born to the mountains.

Boots come closer. Now I’m not distracted by salamanders, I can see a narrow chute leading upward. I start climbing behind her, aware of the long fall beneath me. There’s not much time to get up before the Kingsmen are on us. I stretch up to the next handhold. If I can get halfway before Da lowers the rope again, it’ll be faster.

But I reach halfway up and there’s no rope. We didn’t fall that far. She should have been back on the path and tied to Hercules an age ago. Maybe she’s struggling; maybe she tried to run. With no other options, I keep climbing, edging round the boulders, clinging with my fingers and toes, and not looking down.

No rope. Hand up to the crack in the rock face. Where’s Da? Foot into the hollow beneath. At last, after an age of climbing, I pull myself back up onto the path. It’s empty. Da and Elin have gone.

 

~

 

Ignoring the ache in my belly, I scan the path for Hercules’ hoof-prints. They show in the odd hollow of mud, in sections where he stepped off the stones of the path into the low, heathery grass. I’m not an expert trail-reader, but it looks like Da’s got Elin tied behind the horse again, and after a while there are visible signs, like scuffed stones and places where she’s set her weight against Hercules and dug in with her heels until she’s dragged.

Twice, I hide from the Kingsmen, but I reckon they’re looking for a huge golden bird, not a shivering boy lurking among the rocks. They march past with their shiny helmets, and no one glances my way.

As night falls, I have to face the fact that Da’s gone, with Elin, and I have no food, no blanket and no water. They can’t be too far ahead of me. Bet they found somewhere safe and are waiting. It’s not like Da would leave me, whatever Elin would say. It’s not.

Just when I’m looking for a place to spend the night, I see a white bit of cloth on a wind-bent little tree. Close up, it’s part of Elin’s nightdress. I look round, and there, a bit ahead, there’s another. Once is possible; twice feels like a trail, and when I find the third and fourth and fifth, I’m sure. With a trail to follow, I can run a lot faster than they can move, and as the darkness closes in, I hear their voices.

“You need to go back,” she’s shouting. “He’s just a boy.”

“He can look after himself.” Da sounds surly, like they’ve done this discussion before.

“He’s your son. You wouldn’t leave your son behind in the mountains.”

I thought she doubted that.

Dad huffs a bit uncomfortably and Elin speaks again: “Yes. That’s what he told me. Isn’t it true?”

I stop, heart pounding in my throat. Four years ago, Da strode into the village and claimed me. He and Mam both said he was my father, and that was why I needed to leave everything and go off to hunt monsters with him. That Da won’t admit it to Elin doesn’t mean it isn’t true. She’s just a virgin in his eyes, not a person.

Da lies all the time; Mam never did. So he is my da, because Mam wouldn’t have told me so if it weren’t true. Still, despite the closeness of the blankets and provisions just round the corner, I crouch on the path and make myself remember.

Sunny day. Fed the chickens. Up on the hill with Sam watching Barnabas’s sheep when I hear Mam calling. Run back down over the sheep-nibbled pastures. “Tomas,” she says, “my Tom, this man’s come for you.”

“Come for what?” I ask. The man’s thin and intent-looking, like some kind of hunting bird.

“I think he has my eyes,” the man says, patting me gingerly on the head. I step back and look a question to Mam.

“Tomas—”

“I’m your long-lost father, Tom,” the man says. “I’ve come to take you on an adventure.”

There. Forget Elin’s suggestions. He’s definitely my da. She just wants to cause trouble; can’t even blame her for it. I walk round the corner and rub Hercules on his soft nose. He nickers, glad to see me, and Elin looks up. Her face is all bruised, and her hands are swollen. She must have got hurt when she fell on the rocks. There’s a good long strip missing from the bottom of her nightdress. I glance at Da, who looks up from his book.

“What is there for supper, Tom?”

There. They were waiting for me. I go to the pack and look through my provisions, glad to be back.

 

~

 

Next morning we’re to climb the last spire between us and the roc’s nest. You can see the trunks and vines woven together way up the top of the mountain. Easy to forget how big a roc is.

“No time for breakfast,” Da’s saying at first light. “We need to reach the roc before anyone else does.”

I glance at Elin. She’s pale under her bruises. My stomach’s all tight and tangled. Nothing feels right.

“Come on, Tom,” Da says. “We’ve done this a hundred times before. We’ll get this done, take the bird to safety and have some supper down at the Mermaid’s Tail. You like their stew.”

I nod. “But—”

“And then we’ll go and see your mother. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I would. It’s been two years since I saw her, since a hill sprite was spotted among the flocks and Da went chasing after it.

“All these promises,” Elin says. “And you won’t even tell him the truth.”

“Quiet,” he snarls.

“Why?” she says. “You’re already going to kill me. I don’t see what else you have to threaten me with.”

“That,” Da barks in a voice I’ve never heard before, “is because you’ve led a sheltered life.”

“Perhaps,” Elin goes, “but death’s death.”

I don’t like the confrontation. I don’t like that she knows what’s coming and I can’t stop it. “We’re not going to kill you,” I tell her. This is one of Da’s favorites right from the start when I was having trouble with what we did. It’s not us that hurts the virgins. It’s the animals.

“Don’t be a coward, Tom,” she says. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you and the worm who claims to be your father. You’ll have killed me as sure as if you stabbed me yourself.”

“Quiet,” Da snaps, and it’s only because I’m so close that I manage to get myself between Elin and his descending fist. It thumps into my ribs, hard enough to make me breathless. Never seen him hurt a virgin before.

I stare at Da’s distorted face and for the first time wonder if he is my father. Maybe Elin’s right.

World goes still. Feels like a balance. Like right now is when I have to choose. I like Elin. I’ll be sorry when she’s gone. More than sorry. The thought hurts. But I’ve been with Da for the past four years, and he has a mission, an aim to do something wonderful. I don’t know another life, now. I can’t imagine anything beyond it. So it isn’t much of a choice, in the end.

“Come on,” I say to him. “Let’s just get this done.”

Elin’s shoulders slump in defeat. “He isn’t your father, you know.”

“Why would it matter?” I ask, pulling her to her feet. “Why would you care except as a way of getting me on your side?”

She don’t have an answer to that, so I march her forward along the path to the spire, angry and not sure who I’m angriest with.

“He wasn’t going to wait for you, Tom,” she says after a minute. “Last night, he wasn’t going to wait.”

“Knows I can look after myself,” I say. If I close myself off and stay angry and short, things don’t hurt as much.

“I left you a trail.”

“Didn’t need it.”

The road gets steeper.

“I’m afraid,” she admits, very quietly.

I can’t ignore that, or her pallor. I stop, struggling for words. “It’ll be over in minutes,” I try.

She grimaces. “They’ll be very long minutes.”

Sickness forces its way into my mouth. I glance at Da’s disappearing back. “I want to, but I can’t—”

“You can’t let me go,” she says. It’s gentle, far gentler than I deserve, which just makes everything worse. I can’t forget the noises the last girl made. Her not-screams.

My stomach twists and clenches. I don’t know what to believe, who to believe, and the tension makes me reckless. I pass her my smallest knife. It’s too small to be any use; too small to do more than prick the roc. “It’s no use for… for attack,” I tell her. “But if you open an artery…” —I swallow hard— “…you’ll bleed out quick, and avoid the worst.”

Her hand trembles as she takes the blade. “Thank you.”

“Don’t,” I choke, looking away from the flush of her skin, from the life of her. “Don’t thank me. Leave me alone.” And I march off to Hercules’ head and try to pretend she isn’t there.

 

~

 

The roc’s not in its nest, of course. That’s why we bring virgins. You need bait to catch these creatures. Da ties Elin by the waist to one of the branches that poke upward from the uprooted trees — there are traditions to uphold — and squirts myrrh onto the torn lacy bit of her dress.

She lifts her head. “What’s that?”

“It marks you as the creature’s prey,” says Da, all his normal soothing charm vanished. I bite my lower lip, and watch him draw his belt-knife. Blood calls some beasts more strongly even than myrrh.

“Please, Da,” I call across the nest. “Don’t.” It has to be true that we didn’t hurt her. I promised her and it has to be true.

He frowns at me, his knuckles tight on the knife.

“I’m doing everything you want,” I tell him. “Just, please don’t.”

After another pause, he huffs and shoves the knife back into his belt. “It’ll know you’re prey without the need for blood,” he tells her, frustration at me coloring his voice.

“I see.” She lowers her head again, and her skinny shoulders jerk. I grit my teeth and remind myself that in just an hour — maybe less — it will all be over and everything will go back to normal. As Da slips the bottle of precious myrrh back into his pocket, I busy myself getting the chains out of the pack, and laying them to trap the bird.

Halfway through, I glance up, willing the roc to appear and finish things quickly so I can stop feeling hurt and sorry and tangled. It don’t oblige, though — the sky’s an innocent, empty blue. When I look back, Elin’s hand flashes in a move so quick that if I didn’t know how well she threw stones I might not believe I’d seen. She picked his pocket. I stare. She took the myrrh.

She meets my eye and, for some reason I don’t examine, I keep my mouth shut and get on with laying out the chains. Under the howling of the wind, I imagine I can hear the squirt-squirt-squirt as she sprays myrrh on Da’s cloak.

The sky darkens. Da just has time to say: “It’s a fine thing we do here today—” and there’s a flash from Elin’s hand and his words end in a pained yelp. Did she stab him? Waste of the knife. The roc pounces in a roar of wings and stabbing beak and huge, reaching claws. It’s massive. Feels like there’s nothing else in the world.

I scramble away from the chains as they draw up, rattling against the furious cries of the bird and human screaming. I block my ears with my hands. Minutes, is all it will be. Minutes she chose because she didn’t use the knife as she ought to have. Then I can forget her. I thought it was when you drowned you saw your life in flashes, but as I cower under a trunk at the edge of the nest, I see Elin’s past. Kicking Da, rushing off down the stream. The yellow of her eyes and the way she grinned when we beat the salamander.

Hurts like the kick of a horse; hurts and hurts and the truth comes rushing in like oceans: I don’t want her to die.

I scramble out of my hiding place into the rocking nest, and struggle past the roc’s flailing wings. If I get to her now and drag her away, she might still live. There might be enough left. The screaming’s still going. Maybe rocs like to play with their food. Maybe.

But as I’m squirming out from under the wing, the roc makes a sharp, lifting movement with its heavy head, and the screams cut off.

I sink down against the feathers and the moss. My chest aches like nothing I’ve felt before. Like nothing.

Too slow. Too slow, Tom. Too long to realize what you felt. Head made of wood like Da always says. The roc’s eating; sounds of flesh tearing, and blood pools in the middle of the nest.

“Tom!” And now I’m imagining her voice, like that dream with the unicorns. “Tom!”

“Sorry,” I say to her spirit.

“You will be if you don’t get over here. Come on, Tom.” That didn’t sound very spiritual. I shake myself and crawl further. And there’s Elin, tied to her tree, looking grubby and tangled and alive.

“Untie me,” she says. “Quickly. Before it decides it wants seconds.”

Too much to get my head round there. The roc snaps at us, but the chains are tangled and for now they hold it back. The small knife from my belt don’t seem to cut the ropes properly. Takes me a while to understand that my hand’s shaking.

“In my boot,” she says as the roc snaps again, inches from her face.

“What?”

“A knife. In my boot.” Her voice has gone high. I can smell feathers and blood. I reach into her boot, and draw out a long, sharp knife.

“What’s this?” Nothing makes sense.

“Cut the rope.”

I stare at it. “Tell me.”

“I stole it from your father. Cut the rope, Tom. Please.”

I don’t recognize the knife, but that doesn’t matter now, so I cut the rope and she jumps down from the tree stump.

Then, I turn.

The roc’s all bloody beak and claws, wild dark eyes, and at its feet there’s a tangle of cloak and a snarl of grey-black, but what it is don’t register until Elin says: “Looks like he was a virgin.”

The bits resolve themselves into Da. “No, he was my—”

“He wasn’t.”

I shake my head. Don’t want to think about that. “Maybe he didn’t need to be a virgin,” I say, carefully not looking at the mess of cloak and stuff that’s all the roc left of Da. “Maybe he was wrong about that, or the myrrh and the blood were enough.”

She smiles. “True, and maybe I’m not.”

I frown at her and try not to be grateful that I was hidden. I hadn’t been—

“Believe me,” she says. “He’s not your father. He was in the monastery when you were—”

“Don’t,” I say. “I don’t want to hear it.” I clear my throat. “He was going to do amazing things,” I tell Elin, my voice unsteady. “He was going to find the gods’ voices.”

“He was a very clever man,” she allows, and I notice she’s keeping a good distance between us. I pick up the pointed staff Da used to control the beasts, and wipe it off on my tunic.

Don’t want to look at Elin; don’t want to look at Da, so I study the bird. It’s a beautiful thing, the roc: layered gold feathers and smooth lines and the stretch of dark gold wings. I walk slowly round it as it feeds, admiring what we’ve caught. If anything would tell you the secrets of the gods, it would.

 

~

 

The palace is all made from gold. Well, Elin says not, but it shines in my eyes so I can hardly see where I’m going. We get taken down endless corridors, the wet bag of liver soft in my hand, until we reach a massive hall full of people all dressed up in colors that are worse than the dazzle of gold.

Elin tucks her arm under mine. “Relax, Tom. We’ll be out of here soon.”

“Right,” I choke. “Just minutes.” And she laughs.

Killing the roc was easier than this — that was one thrust with Da’s staff through the back of its neck. This is challenge after challenge of people and bright light and guards. Somewhere in the background, there’s a man with a crown, but it’s the boy a bit older than me I notice first. He’s in a sort of chair on wheels, a couple of servants hovering round him. His clothes are very fine, but not one of the too-much colors.

Elin steers me toward him. No one stops us. Recovering from the dazzle, I start to wonder why.

When we’re a couple of feet away, we stop. She curtseys. I try a sort of bow.

“My prince,” she says, and tugs me forward. “We have the roc’s liver that will cure you.”

His eyes flash all keen and then he surprises me. He nods to her, formal and stiff. “They said you were good despite your youth,” he says.

She holds tight to my arm, which is all that stops me running. I turn to her instead, forget the prince, forget the crowds. My mind twists, tumbles me back to the start of the whole hunt: that open bedroom window, the way the Kingsmen were always close, always driving us on, but never so close they caught us, all the drip-drip-drip about how Da lied to me.

“I wasn’t sure you could do it,” the prince continues.

“You didn’t have much faith in me, my lord.”

I can hear the irritation under her smooth voice, and I wonder how the prince don’t, or maybe he’s just too important to care.

“It was taking a great risk. I had rather it had been one of the other windows they stopped at.”

The snowy street, the window open ajar, just enough for me to notice. “How many windows?” I hiss, tugging against Elin’s hand. She doesn’t answer, she doesn’t let go; instead, she steps forward and bows.

“I was glad to do it for my prince.”

Then she turns to me, her fingers bruise-tight on my arm. “You understand money, Tom. He was the best collector in the Kingdom. The best in the world. There was only one roc, and there wasn’t much time.”

And then she lets my arm go, and I run — away from the prince and the crowds and the bright colors and my world all in a mess — and I end up in the too-big stables with my face against Hercules’ neck, and the breath heaving in my chest and sending sparks across my eyes.

Footsteps. “Tom.”

I wipe my nose on my sleeve, and scrub the heel of my hand across my eyes. “What?”

“Let’s go and get our money.”

“I thought you were doing it for your prince.”

“No. That’s what I told him.” Her hand closes on my shoulder. “Royalty like to think they’re important. I was doing it for the money.”

I close my fingers around the bird’s liver. I’ve lost Da and all the certainty of the life he trained me for. But I never again have to listen as a virgin is eaten by a monster.

I can go home, back home to Mam and the village, and it won’t be like it was the last time — running after Da and carrying his books. I’m not going home as an empty-handed servant.

“Come on, Tom,” Elin says again, and I nod. I might have lost everything I thought I had, but five thousand guilders buys a lot of sheep.

 

 

 

 

Anna Dickinson Biography

 

Anna Dickinson lives in Scotland with her husband and two young sons. She works at a university, where she believes in accessibility and computational linguistics (sometimes even together) and amuses herself by living in fantasy worlds full of unicorns and talking trees. She's represented by Gina Panettieri at Talcott Notch Literary.