The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,2

feathers, but he crashed down on to the rocks. The female circled higher and higher, till I could no longer see her. I was certain she’d taken fright and had gone.

‘I started to climb back up to the nest, but just as I reached it she dived at me again. I was slashing at her with my knife, trying to keep a grip with my other hand on the rock. As if she knew I’d killed her mate, she fastened her claws on my shoulder, stabbing at my head with her beak. I was in agony and terrified she would blind me. I lashed out wildly with my knife. I didn’t mean to kill her, just to make her let go. Then I felt her collapse against me. But even though she was dead, her talons gripped my shoulder as fiercely as ever.

‘When I carried her chicks down from the nest her claws were still locked deep into my flesh. Her dead body was swinging from my shoulder. Even when I reached the bottom, her talons were still impaled in me. They had to cut them out of me, before they could tear her body off me … But I can still feel her talons gripping me. She won’t let go of me. She’ll never let go of me.’

He was sobbing, and Elísabet knew she should go to him and put her arms around him, but she couldn’t. She could see the white bird beating its wings against her husband’s face. She could hear its cry of fury. The whole room was suddenly full of flailing wings and the screams of murder, murder!

Elísabet fought her way out of the tiny cottage and ran as fast as her swollen belly would allow, but too soon she was forced to stop and gasp for breath. It was summer, but the great river of blue ice that lay below the cottage never melted, never moved. And now the chill, damp air rose up as if every breath she took sucked the cold towards her, turning her lungs to ice. She stared up at the clear blue sky above, but it was empty. Not a single bird flew, not a single cry was heard, as if every creature in the world had died with those falcons, the last falcons in the valley.

A boom echoed round the mountains, louder than a thunder clap. Startled, she stared down at the ice. A huge crack had opened in the frozen river, leaving a hollow in the ice like the inside of a giant white egg. Even as she gazed at it, Elísabet saw a great black shadow running down the valley, staining the sparkling blue-white ice until it was as dark as the bog pools. Terrified, she glanced up. It was only a cloud passing over the sun … only a cloud creeping out from behind the mountain … only a cloud where there had been none before.

Elísabet gasped as the child in her belly kicked. Tiny fists punched into her, thrashing furiously as if her child was trying to fight its way out. She could sense its fear, feel the small heart fluttering and racing like the heartbeat of a snared bird. But even as she listened to the tiny frantic pounding, she realized there was not just one heart beating in her belly, but two. Two little heads butted her. Two pairs of minute arms thrashed about inside her in their terror. She sank to the ground, pressing her hands to her belly, gently rubbing their little limbs through her skin, trying to comfort them as if she could grasp those frightened, angry little fists and calm them.

‘They know,’ a voice said behind her.

Elísabet twisted herself around as best she could. A young woman was standing in the shadow of a rocky outcrop. She was taller even than Jóhann and she held her back as straight as a birch tree.

‘An oath sworn on the life of an unborn child cannot be broken without a terrible price being paid. You should not have let him swear on the infants in your womb. If an oath was to be made, it should have been on your own heads, not on innocent lives. Your daughters are marked now. The spirits of the falcons have entered your belly. But I will do all I can to protect them if you entrust them to me.’

Elísabet stared aghast into the eyes of the stranger, eyes that were as grey and dark