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It wasn’t the storm that woke Aurora. The thunder and lightning were often a welcome accompaniment to sleep, the rain on stone a white, soothing sigh. What woke Aurora was the unusual, tap-scrape of something against wood shutters. There were no trees next to the stone walls, certainly none that reached so high, so it was no branch in the wind.
“Perhaps a bird is sheltering on the window ledge. One of the ravens from the tower?”
Those black rouges were quite mean, swooping down to snatch whatever delicacy she mistakenly brought out to eat in the gardens. Even so, her child’s heart beat with pathos at imagining the poor wet feathers, the dripping beak tapping demurely at the shutter. Aurora pushed back the covers and skipped to the window to unhook the latch.
What fell in upon her was mostly drenched feathers, but it was larger than any raven, bigger even than the hawks in the aviary for that matter! Aurora quickly disentangled herself to push the shutters back as a torrent of rain flooded in on the rushes. She had no light to see, but her small hands discovered cold skin, arms and legs, a face, and wings.
It was shivering, this person with wings, so Aurora did the sensible thing as children often will. She wrapped it up in blankets and, it being very light even for something as big as herself, carried it to bed, snuggling under the covers with it and drifting off as if it were some wonderful plaything the storm had gifted her.
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The castle labyrinth became Facent’s cage. It was not a garden maze but had perfectly smooth stone walls ten feet high and was said to have once upon a time harbored a different fabulous beast.
The rest of the manor’s dwellers saw it as a pet for the little princess. Yes, it was
one of those troublesome Fey that had escaped the culling, but it was too young to be much bother. Fey could not fly until their pin feathers grew in around the time they became adults. Let Aurora play with her pet until then. Like a dog or foal, it would be taken care of when the time came.
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Aurora danced through the labyrinth, long hair and skirts flying. She knew every corner, every switchback, and always where to find Facent. She flung herself, laughing, into his arms as she gained the center of the labyrinth and he had to back-wing furiously to keep from toppling.
“I’m to be married!” Aurora sang out, laughing as the dust settled from the maelstrom of wind created by his wings.
“Perhaps I’ll fly into the clouds and make them rain upon you,” Facent said teasing. “I’ll fly through that hole there,” he pointed toward a gap in the clouds, his dark eyes turned from her to the longed for sky, “and find where the water is born, steal a bit of thunder and chase you with it!”
“I’ll rip your feathers out and stuff a pillow!” Aurora screeched, thumping on his chest to make him look at her again. She wanted to grab handfuls of that tangled, mane of hair that fell past his shoulders; pull his head down by the short, tightly curled ram horns lost within the strands and keep him from looking toward the heavens.
Facent flapped his enormous wings again. “Can you feel how close it is?” he asked, hugging her with joy, rising just a little off the ground. “Two more days perhaps, and I will fly.”
“My wedding, Facent,” Aurora insisted, gripping his arms to pull him back to earth. “I want a gift!”
He looked at her quizzically, turning his head like a bird. “What can I give, Aurora?” He literally had nothing, never having left the labyrinth.
“Close your eyes,” she said, holding his hands fast in hers.
Knowing nothing of guile, he did so, a small smile of curiosity on his lips. It was wiped away the instant cold metal closed over his wrist. Nausea and weakness suddenly flowed through him, and his vision blurred when he opened his eyes. Aurora clamped a second gauntlet, gold laced with iron, onto his other wrist. Facent dropped heavily to the ground.
“They were going to cut off your wings,” Aurora said, tears in her voice. “This is my father’s wedding gift to me. I can keep you; you can keep your wings. Nothing will change.”
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“You want a blessing? From me?”
There was more weariness than malice in the voice that issued from the grey shadows. Aurora held the baby close, wondering at her own audacity in coming to ask such a thing.
The dusty, dry sound of shuffling feathers, the scrape of metal against stone, and Facent was standing at the foot of the stair in the weak light afforded by the slots cut for archers high in the stone walls. Could it have been little more than a year? There were strands of grey in his dark hair, bruised darkness around his eyes, his wings a musty cape of feathers hanging from his shoulders.
“I bless him,” he said, reaching to barely touch the blankets, the skin of his hand red and raw where his wrist emerged from the iron laced cuff that was slowly poisoning him. “I bless him with the fortunate fate of escaping this place.”
Aurora gasped and drew back hurriedly, but a strange wind sprang up in the enclosed place, ruffled Facent’s feathers and rushed over her, setting the baby to crying.
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Ronin sought refuge under Facent’s unkempt wings the night his mother died. Over the past year or so, the Fey had fallen completely silent. Only the tick of his claws along stone, the dry leaf rustle of long pinions against the rushes gave away his haunting presence. Ronin’s attendants found him there, Facent lying face down studying the young boy whose cheeks were streaked with dust and tears. They pulled him out from amongst the feathers, a few black quills tipped with the same silver-grey as Facent’s long, knotted hair clutched fast in his hand.
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Ronin was still absurdly young for the crown when it came to him. His father was slain in the great war to the north. Now the armies marched in to claim the spoils.
On the day of his coronation, as battering rams splintered the gates, Ronin climbed to where Facent lay, wings spread wide to the sun, on the warm stone of a high parapet.
“I know I won’t be king long,” he said to the silent Fey. “A few minutes at best.” He blinked hard at the childish tears that rushed to his eyes.
A breeze zephyred by, catching a few dull grey feathers that shed from Facent’s wings. They had become so prevalent about the castle that Ronin had taken to fetching his boyish play arrows with them, often catching one and sharpening it to use, dipped in thick ink, in practice writing his letters.
Now, kneeling amidst the soft, downy storm of feathers in the rising wind, Ronin took a key from a chain around his neck. The locks were obstinate with age, but the manacles gave way in the face of persistence. The prone Fey did not move when they fell away; did not even look at Ronin or acknowledge the sudden freedom. He merely closed his eyes and sighed into the wind.
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The moment the crown touched his head, Ronin was dead.
Or so he thought.
There was clash of weapons as his few retainers leapt to defend their king, but it was the thunk of bow strings that sounded the death knell in his ears. Something struck him, threw him back, then lifted him up in a great thrashing whir.
He clung to Facent as he beat high, high into the sky. The Fey seemed to reach an apex and begin a long, distance eating glide, but then he wavered in his flight, stumbled in the air, regained the delicate balance for several moments, then tumbled from the sky.
Wrapping his arms and wings about Ronin, Facent crashed through trees to earth at a hard angle, twisting so that his own body took the crushing impact of the ground.
By the time the boy regained his senses, the Fey was nearly gone. Arrows spiked his back and sides, his whole body striped with deep, jagged gashes, his wings torn to shreds.
“Blessed,” Facent breathed. Then the light left his eyes and the Fey flew beyond to where one did not need wings.