The Springborn

SABELLA

JUNE 7, 1886

EVENING

W ith slow beats of his wings, Calder carries me earthward in his arms. He descends with quiet grace, as if he has mastered the art of flying after only a few flights. One of his arms curves behind my back and the other supports my legs. My arms encircle his warm neck. I can feel the steady, fast thud of his heart in the place where our bodies meet. It comforts me, this throbbing evidence that he still lives. He is not a hallucination crafted by a weary, careworn mind.

If I had lost him today with the others, how could I have borne it?

When we reach the land, the first sight I see is Sparrow in Robbie’s embrace. How small and ancient she looks. Rays of evening sun stream through the treetops and graze their bowed heads. There is something strangely beautiful in their shared sorrow.

Rhys sleeps nearby at the base of a tree, blessedly unaware of the tragedy that has befallen us. Loath to disturb him, Calder and I choose a place to rest among the gnarled roots of an old oak. He cries without making a sound, his knees drawn to his still-bare chest, wings folded flat against his back. Through my own tears, I spy his abandoned shirt on the ground. I fetch it and wrap it around his shoulders. He reaches up to pat my hand in thanks.

The shadows are shifting here in the woods. Nightfall must not be far off. Sparrow breaks the silence, saying, “We should go home. Cleona is waiting there with the other boys.”

“Let me find Branna first,” Robbie says somberly. “Cleona will need to say goodbye to her sister.” He walks off and Calder follows him.

When he returns after perhaps a quarter hour, Robbie carries the body of a red-haired, fifteen-year-old girl. She’s been dressed in Calder’s shirt, and they’ve folded her fair hands upon her chest. The long fall left no mark on her freckled face. If I did not know otherwise, I might think her asleep rather than dead.

Where is Calder? Did he stay in the woods to grieve privately for a time? I want him here with me, where I can see he is safe. Our recent peril has left me ill at ease with separation from loved ones.

Robbie looks straight ahead as he walks past me. Perhaps to gaze at Branna would be too much for him, as she and Cleona share almost identical features. With such a slight twist of fate, Cleona might have been the sister to die.

As if rough handling could break her, Robbie slowly lowers Branna onto a patch of moss. Sparrow kisses her forehead; her gnarled fingers smooth the girl’s hair. “Rest well, little one,” she says. “Your brave, kind heart will never be forgotten.” She tucks a white, star-shaped wildflower into the girl’s hand.

Something makes me look back into the woods. There is Calder, stumbling out of the trees with Yonaz’s body draped over his shoulder.

“I think he’s still alive,” Calder says. “Though barely.” He lays Yonaz on the ground and collapses next to him.

Sparrow rushes to them and falls to her knees beside Yonaz. She digs in the satchel at her hip and pulls out a surprising assortment of small bottles and paper envelopes. She arrays them on the ground before selecting a few. These ingredients she funnels into a water flask.

I kneel beside Calder as he lies staring at the treetops. “Are you all right?”

“I will be.” He sits up and runs a hand through his hair. Exhaustion has left purple crescents under his eyes and his cheeks are sallow. “And you?”

“The same.”

“Hold Yonaz’s mouth open,” Sparrow says, and Calder obeys. She pours her concoction into Yonaz’s mouth. He coughs and moans. His eyelids spring wide open. Panic and fear show themselves in his expression and the twitching of his limbs.

Calder presses down on his shoulder. “Hold still now. You’re safe.”

Yonaz’s teeth chatter. Sparrow whips off her shawl and covers his chest with it.

“I’m going to die,” Yonaz says. There is blood on his lips, blood seeping through his clothes and from the side of his head.

“I’ve done all I can,” Sparrow says. “I’m sorry.”

“Branna. I…” His voice weakens as his skin fades to an impossible shade of white.

Gently but with authority, Sparrow says, “You are not to blame for what happened to Branna. That is on Delphine’s soul, if she has one.”

“Still… I am sorry. So sorry. Tell her sister…”

“I will.”

Only then do I notice Robbie returning again, this time with Delphine in his arms. He places her on the ground a few feet from Yonaz. “She’s alive, though not for long, I reckon,” Robbie says.

This Delphine is far different than the one I saw before the fall. She is still touched by springtime beauty, but she no longer commands awe. She is like the dried husk from an ear of corn, an empty, powerless thing. Her eyes stare blankly skyward. Her chest rises and falls slowly.

Yonaz turns his head toward her. “I forgive you,” he says. He seems to sink closer to the ground. A second later, he breathes his last.

Sparrow crawls from Yonaz to Delphine and lays a hand on her forehead.

“Ah,” Delphine says. “The little Sparrow with healing in her wings. You cannot save me.”

“I would try, if there were any hope at all.” Sparrow takes a tiny box of salve from her collection of treatments and moistens Delphine’s lips. “Would you like something for the pain?”

“No. No. Too late for that. I will make my confession. Long ago, there was a fairy woman. She ruled these mountains. I angered her. She ensorcelled me…to live three hundred years but to change into a crone every winter. Gave me dominion over the magical spring. She said… I had to use it. Or perish in agony. No choice. I had to…wash foundling babes whenever…the magic demanded. Make them…rare and wondrous. Give them to the barren women of the mountain…to bless and to trouble them.”

“Why?” Robbie asks. “It makes no sense.”

“She…did not give reasons. Fairy folk…are not sensible creatures.” She shuts her eyes, and struggles to draw a few raspy breaths. “To stop becoming the winter crone…required a sacrifice of…three particular Springborn.”

“You wanted to stop being the crone at any cost. Yonaz was supposed to help you, I gather,” Sparrow says.

“Do not blame him for…my transgressions. He was blinded…by love for me…for a time. But in the end…he regretted…refused.”

“Rest now,” Sparrow says. “What is done, is done.”

“Come close,” Delphine says. Sparrow leans over so Delphine can whisper into her ear.

When Sparrow sits back on her heels, the life is gone from Delphine’s eyes.

Calder helps Sparrow to her feet. Robbie brushes leaves off her clothes and offers his arm to steady her when she sways a little. She says, “Before we leave this place, I must do one thing.” From a pocket, she pulls out a vial like the one she used to poison the vines inside Delphine’s house. “You must all move a fair distance from the stalk. I will command it to come down gently, but one cannot be too careful.”

Robbie, with Rhys in his arms, leads Calder and me up onto the mossy knoll where Branna’s body rests. From there, we watch Sparrow fling a potion onto the base of the huge plant’s stalk. The ground grumbles and trembles. Leaves fall from the trees like snow. Sparrow hastens to join us as, inch by inch, the stalk sinks down into the dark soil from which it grew. When the house touches down, the earth opens wide and swallows it whole, along with the lifeless bodies of Delphine and Yonaz.

Dirt rises like water from an underground spring to fill in the hole. Everything settles. The woods look as if nothing happened there apart from the ordinary. It has nothing to remember and nothing to try to forget.

I glance over at Branna. It is good that she was not swallowed by the earth like the others. She deserves to be kissed goodbye by her sister, and to be given a proper burial thereafter, with songs and flowers and memories.

Why did Delphine take her? She was not even one of the three needed to break the curse. Was Branna nothing more than a lure to draw Sparrow and me into her trap? We will never know—and such painful, unanswerable questions should not be dwelled upon.

The sky above the treetops is graying quickly. Nighttime insects are starting to buzz and chatter in the trees and bushes.

“We ought to head toward home,” Calder says.

“Yes,” Robbie says. “I do not want to spend another hour here.”

“Are you in agreement?” Calder asks me. “There should be a little moonlight to navigate by, and we do not have to hurry.”

“What about Sparrow and Rhys? I do not think their legs will carry them far.”

“I’ll carry Sparrow,” Calder says. “Robbie can carry Branna, and you can carry Rhys. If we need to stop to rest, we will.”

“All right,” I say. Heavens, I’m tired. I cannot imagine walking half a mile, let alone the four or five forested and rocky miles that must lie between here and the farm.

Robbie passes the still-slumbering Rhys to me. He is a slender child, but I know before long it will feel to me as if he’s stuffed with stones.

Sparrow hobbles to me and Rhys. She lays her hands over his ears, murmurs something, and slips a bit of crumbled herbs into his mouth. “There,” she says. “He should sleep until morning. He can learn of Branna’s passing when we are home and he is safe in the company of his brothers.”

After watching her treat the boy, I want to ask if she knows of herbs or incantations to restore her youth, but I already know what her answer would be. She’d say her gifts are her own, including the one that ages her, and she is at peace with them. She has always been at peace with them, in a way I fear I never shall be.

I want to scream at the universe and demand a long life for her. Indeed, I would ask that she would outlive me and spare me the sorrow of ever standing over her grave.

The press of Calder’s hand on my back halts my rambling thoughts. I turn to look at him. He’s draped one of Sparrow’s big shawls over his shoulders, crossed it over his belly, and knotted it behind him to replace the shirt he gave to Branna. I recognize it for the kindness it is, an act of consideration for my modesty, and Sparrow’s, that he need not have bothered with in these circumstances.

“Ready to go home?” he asks. “You looked far away there for a moment.”

“I’m ready.” I wish I could cast myself into his embrace and cry. I long to linger there and to take whatever comfort he might offer, to let him soothe the sting of death that pains me, but time will not allow for such an indulgence. Instead, I lean into him for a handful of seconds, my arms full of Rhys. My shoulder presses into his chest. I hold my head at an angle so as not to poke him with my antlers. Too soon, I force myself to straighten and separate from him. I miss the warmth he radiates seconds later. Although it is June, the woods become chilly and damp when the sun sinks.

He turns toward Sparrow and opens his arms to her. “If you will allow me, Sparrow?”

“Thank you, Uncle Calder,” she says, sounding like a little girl again.

He lifts her as if she weighs no more than an actual sparrow. She wraps her thin arms around his neck and lets her head rest against his shoulder. Right away, she falls asleep.

Shadows overtake the woods as we begin our journey. Robbie clutches Branna close to his chest as he walks. Now and then, he sobs or sniffles, adding bruises to my already sore heart.