The Fickle Winds of Autumn

40. A Queen Confesses

Harath shook her head and folded her wings back into place.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Kira responded, "but you know it's quite natural to grow older - my friend Aldwyn is old, but he is still a great healer."

She pointed to his outline, resting in the slumbering shadows.

"No, it is not age that has stolen the sheen from my feathers - I have eaten the flesh of Graath, and it has transformed me more than I could know - I have become too human and not enough Akkipter, and you humans cannot fly...Perhaps that is why I find such comfort in your company, yes? And why I understand and sympathise with you so much - it is the spirit of the merchant within me, calling for his own kind."

Harath hopped slowly from one leg to the other and ruffled her forlorn wings.

Her kind voice and actions were certainly more considerate and human than many others who did not have feathers.

Particularly some of those who wore the outward robes of a nun.

Her eyes blinked in the dull light; her head drooped.

"But I will not have to put up with the torments of the others for much longer, for when the new queen is confirmed, I shall be forced out of the aerie and abandoned to my own resources - without the warmth of the nest to sustain me against the winds, without the blessing of flight to hunt for food, death will swiftly hunt me down. Our cruel cliffs carry no waste and offer no warmth to the needy; they only provide for the strong - they are lean, and their spirits hunger for the souls of the dead. No, my fate has delivered me a lonely and cold ending - my one consolation is that I will not need to endure it for long."

Harath scraped at the ground with her talon; her wings sagged limply by her sides.

A swirl of sympathetic fragments rushed through Kira's thoughts.

Could it really be that a queen was so lonely, so badly treated by her own people?

Made to feel so worthless, even in her own nest?

And then, after such misery, just left to die?

Her mind prickled with anguished memories of the convent and the other girls.

Hadn't they also teased and been cruel to her in that way?

Especially, as Harath had said, when they were in groups together?

Sometimes even Amber had not been able to drag her thoughts up from the deep dark despond.

She was on one side of the cell bars, and Harath was on the other - but were they really so very different?

Weren't they both alone and helpless and powerless?

"Courage!" said Kira, through the bars to her new friend.

"Courage?" Harath's puzzled eyes blinked back.

"Yes - why let the others push you around? You said yourself they don't even really know who you are - so why let them bully and define you like this? And aren't you their queen? You are still a strong leader with much to give - you have gathered much wisdom and experience - you shouldn't just let them push you around. Your talons are still powerful and sharp - find your courage and be a queen to them again."

"But what has made you think like this?" asked Harath. "Where have you found such inspiring words?"

"I...I don't know really - it's what my friend Amber used to say to me when I was in the convent... in my nest, I mean, and I was bullied by the others."

"You? You were also treated like this? Isolated and helpless?"

"Yes, I felt so alone sometimes - even my friend couldn't cheer me up. I was clumsy - perhaps like your wings are now - nothing I did ever seemed to go right, and all my lessons went wrong - and it was all so unfair - and even if I tried to complain, the nuns, always took the other girls' side in everything."

"But how can this be?" asked Harath. "That one as strong as you could be intimidated by others? The great Gift of Skirnam does not lie - you have broken its power for a reason - you have shown me a new current of air to explore, one that has lifted me into the great, grey, careless skies again. And I sense it in you - I am sure that you are a strong queen, a warrior like me - even if your wings are hidden - your soul is a powerful one - I sense it in you - and I should know, for I myself am still a great queen, swift in flight and strong in claw."

Harath pulled herself up to her full height and puffed out her chest feathers; they seemed to shine with a fresh and deeper lustre, even in the dim half-light.

Kira strained her eyes to follow Harath's bold decisive strides as she disappeared around the corner into the darkness of the corridor.

The scratching footsteps faded into the murmuring silence of the unfeeling cave, and left her alone again, with only the dark shadows for company.

Her anxious mind tumbled and flushed with new doubts.

It was nice that she had been able to help someone - and Harath's words were kind and well intentioned - but no-one else would ever think of her like that.

Certainly not the nuns or the other novicellae.

A powerful queen?

She was just a clumsy girl, who had brought trouble and danger to the only two people who had ever shown any kindness to her.

More likely, the drug just hadn't been injected into her shoulders properly.

Aldwyn snored gently in the corner and twitched a restless foot in his dreams.

Even her new friends would laugh at Harath's assessment.

And besides, what difference would it make?

Queen or no queen; powerful or not.

Tomorrow was the Observance.

Tomorrow she would die.