The Butchers, The Menders

Part 1

Dalen studied the dark waters of the river and gripped his spear tightly in one hand.  He looked for the telltale flash of silver far below, the one that would tell him his prey lay just beneath the surface.

His mount shifted beneath him, the branches of the tree they sat upon creaking with their combined weight.       

“Steady, Beloved,” he told her.  The bird settled, her wings pressing tightly against her sides.  Her beak snapped once, and then lay still.

Sweat beaded on Dalen’s forehead, and he focused for a moment on the yellowed grasses of the shore.  Fifteen hunts and he hadn’t brought back a verger, leaving his family increasingly worried about their stores of oil.  He might have found some peace if they’d discovered his sister’s drowned body.  Instead, they’d only found Beloved laid out on the shore, barely alive, with an onion tied about her neck. 

It stank of magic.    

There.  The flash of silver, the broad scaled back.  In the next moment he would urge Beloved into flight, and together they would fall towards the water, dive past the surface, Beloved’s wings pumping as they followed the verger down.  She’d draw abreast of the great fish, and then Dalen would plunge his spear into its eye, keeping a hold of the twine tied to it.  Beloved would struggle for the surface, as the verger struggled for the depths.         

The flash of silver disappeared and Dalen hadn’t moved—his legs rigid against the black feathers of Beloved’s sides, his fingers molded around the spear. 

Coward, he admonished himself.  Tayla would have kicked a heel into the bird’s side, letting out a whoop as they dove, her sinewy arms poised to strike.  Dalen cursed under his breath as he dismounted, pulled the leather belt from his pack hanging on one of the branches, and fastened it around the base of Beloved’s neck.          

“Go on,” he told her.  Beloved looked at him with one yellow eye before she launched from the branches and plunged into the river.         

The backs of his hands burned as he climbed down the rough bark of the tree, his pack over one shoulder.  Less verger oil meant less protection from the summer sun, and though he’d slathered on a layer before he’d left home that morning, he’d forgotten the backs of his hands.  They’d be red by the time night fell, and peeling two mornings from now.           

He waited on the shore for Beloved to finish.  One pot of oil left in his family's house.  He'd face the depths tomorrow, or the day after.  It wasn't as though he'd never swum in the rivers before, or watched under the water as Tayla battled the verger, the sunlight casting beams of light into the deep blue.           

A ripple broke the river’s surface.  Dalen glanced up in time to see something long and dark roll at the water’s surface.  Despite the warm air, he shivered.  He’d never been afraid of the creatures that lurked in the rivers, not until Tayla had disappeared.  Now he felt as though the ground might give way, sending him into the water that honeycombed through the earth below.  It was all in his head, he knew.  The paths he walked to get to and from his home were solid, and had not given way for over a hundred years.          

Beloved burst from the water in a shower of spray.  She scrambled onto the dusty shore and disgorged the contents of her throat onto the ground next to Dalen.  Without waiting for him to unfasten the belt, she waddled away, webbed feet slapping the ground, her low cries of alarm bubbling into the silent air.           

Dalen’s chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe.  He grabbed for the fish, stuffing them as quickly as he could into his pack.  He’d gotten halfway through the pile when the smell struck him.  It drifted with the wind, but it was unmistakable.  Acrid, tangy—it burned the inside of his nostrils and made his eyes water.  Magic.