But you must eat and grow strong, preciosa, she sent out the thought again and again, feeling the hawk’s hunger, her weakening struggles. Preciosa; that is your name, that is what I will call you, and I want you to eat and grow strong, Preciosa, so we can hunt together, but first you must trust me and eat. . . I want you to eat because I love you and I want to share this with you, but first you must learn to eat from my hand . . . eat, Preciosa, my lovely one, my darling, my beauty, won’t you eat this? I don’t want you to die….
Hours, she felt, must have crawled by while she stood there, tensed into the endless struggle with the weakening hawk. Every time the frenzied bating was weaker, the surges of hunger so intense that Romilly’s own body cramped with pain. The hawk’s eyes were as bright as ever, as filled with terror, and from those eyes it all flooded into Romilly, too, in growing despair.
The hawk was weakening, surely; if she did not feed soon, after all this struggle, she would die; she had taken no food since she was captured four days ago. Would she die, still fighting?
Maybe her father had been right, maybe no woman had the strength for this….
And then she remembered the moment when she had looked out from the hawk’s eyes and she, Romilly MacAran, had not even been a memory, and she had been something other than human. Fear and despair flooded her; she saw herself ripping off the gauntlet, beaten to take up her needlework, letting walls close round her forever. A prisoner, more a prisoner than the chained hawk, who, at least, would now and then have a chance to fly,, and to feel again the soaring ecstasy of flight and freedom….
No. Rather than live like that, prisoner, she too would let herself die….
No; there must be a way, if only I can find it.
She would not surrender, never admit that the hawk had beaten her. She was Romilly MacAran, born with the MacAran Gift, and she was stronger than any hawk. She would not let the hawk die … no, it was not “the hawk” any more, it was Preciosa, whom she loved, and she would fight for her life even if she must stand here till they dropped together and died. One more time she reached out, moving fearlessly into the bird-mind, this time aware fully of herself as a shadowy and now familiar torture in Preciosa’s mind, and the sickening, rank smell of the meat on the gauntlet … for a moment she thought Preciosa would go into another frenzy of bating, but this time the bird bent its head toward the meat on the glove.
Romilly held her breath. Yes, yes, eat and grow stronger … and then Romilly was overcome by sickness, feeling that she would vomit where she stood from the sickening rotten smell of the meat.
Now she wants to eat, she would trust me, but she cannot eat this now; perhaps if she had taken it before she was so weak, but not now … she is no carrion feeder….
Romilly was overcome by despair. She had brought the freshest food she could find in the kitchens, but now it was not fresh enough; the hawk was beginning to trust her, might perhaps have taken food from her gauntlet, if she had brought something she should actually have managed to swallow without sickness … a rat scurried in the straw, and she discovered that she was looking out from the bird’s eyes with real hunger at the little animal….
Dawn was near. In the garden outside she heard the chirp of a sleepy wraithbird, and from the cotes the half-wakened chirp of the caged pigeons who were sometimes roasted for special guests or for the sick. Even before the thought was clear in her mind she was moving, and at the back of her thoughts she heard herself say, the fowl-keeper will be very angry with me, I am not allowed to touch the pigeons without leave, but the hunger flooding through her mind, the bird-mind, would not be denied. Romilly flung away the piece of dead rabbithorn meat, flinging it on the midden; it would rot there, or some scavenger would find it, or one of the dogs who was less fastidious in feeding. There was a fluttering, flapping stir as she thrust her hand into the pigeon-cote and brought out one, flapping its wings and squawking; its fear filled her with something that was half pain and half excitement, adrenalin running through her body and cramping her legs and buttocks with familiar dread; but Romilly had been farm-bred and was not squeamish; fowl were for the pot in return for safe cotes and lifelong grain. She held the struggling bird for an instant of brief regret between her hands, then fought one-handed to hold it while she got the gauntlet on again. She thrust into the hawk-mind, without words, a swift sharp awareness of hunger and fresh food . . . then, with one decisive movement, wrung the pigeon’s neck and thrust the still-warm corpse toward Preciosa.