Chapter 2

11

Chapter 2

‘Oriane?'

Her head snapped up at the sound of her father's voice. Steam curled in fragrant spirals from the bowl of stew before her, but Oriane had not eaten a bite. She'd been toying with her bread instead, tearing it to shreds on her plate.

‘Out with it,' her father said suddenly.

Oriane looked up. Arthur wasn't eating either. He folded his hands on the table before him, watching her expectantly over the wire rims of his glasses. When Oriane said nothing, he sighed.

‘You didn't think I hadn't noticed, did you? How preoccupied you've been these past days? You're not usually prone to fits of fancy, Oriane. It's not like you to get caught up in your own head.'

Had it been that obvious? ‘I'm sorry, Papa,' she began. ‘I know I've been scattered – I forgot to collect the girls' eggs for three whole days, and I only realised this aftern—'

‘It's not the eggs I'm worried about. It's you, Oriane. What's wrong? What has changed?'

Everything , Oriane thought. ‘I think I have,' she whispered instead, and told her father the whole of it. The people, the laughter, the way a thought had wrapped itself around her mind and refused to let go: the thought of the outside world, its call a glittering lure on the end 12 of a fisherman's hook – and she the fish, darting after it through the water without knowing where it might lead.

‘I just want to see it, Papa,' she finished, almost ashamed at the note of desperation in her voice. ‘The rest of the world. The other people in it.'

Arthur had sat still and silent as she spoke. He took off his glasses with a heavy sigh, then closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He stayed like that for a while, until Oriane ventured, ‘Papa?'

‘This is my fault,' he murmured, not raising his head.

‘No, it isn't,' she replied immediately. ‘It's nobody's—'

‘I never should have let you fly in the woods.'

A bristle of something – was it anger? – ran its way down Oriane's spine. It was gone as quickly as it came, uncertainty taking its place. ‘What do you mean?' she asked.

Finally, Arthur looked up, but not at Oriane. He stood abruptly and started clearing the half-eaten meal from the table. ‘It's dangerous for you to fly too far from home,' he said. ‘I've told you that before, but I thought the radius I showed you would be safe—'

‘I wasn't even flying when I heard these people,' Oriane said, frowning. ‘I was collecting water, like I told—'

‘That day you said the wheel had broken on the cart, when you came home without it,' Arthur said quickly, glancing her way. His gaze was sharp enough to startle her. ‘You lied to me.'

‘I didn't want to worry you.'

Arthur gave a little scoff. ‘Well, you are worrying me now.'

Oriane felt another flicker of irritation. Why was he acting as if she had done something wrong?

‘Papa,' she tried again. ‘I didn't mean to worry you. I only wanted to talk about how I've been feeling. I thought … I thought if I could—' 13

‘If you could what?' Arthur asked, pausing on his way to deposit the dishes in the washbasin. There was something in the way he asked it, something that told Oriane she was on a kind of precipice, and if she chose to go over it there would be no going back.

Perhaps she didn't want to go back.

She took a deep breath. ‘I thought if I could fly to the city, and stay in my bird form, I could just take a look at everything. That's all I want – just to look.'

But Arthur had already started to shake his head. He closed his eyes before she finished speaking, pressing his lips together in an odd smile. He kept shaking his head, as if it would make Oriane unsay her words, or make him unhear them. ‘No,' he said, eyes still closed. ‘No, Oriane, that's out of the question.'

A wave of hurt washed over her. He never dismissed her like this. She was twenty-one years old, for skies' sake, a woman grown. And her father was treating her like a child. She got up and followed him to the washbasin, where he was scraping their uneaten stew into a bucket for the animals.

‘Why?' she asked quietly. Arthur didn't turn around. ‘Why is it so dangerous for me to fly even a half-mile from here? Don't you trust me?'

‘I don't trust them !' he cried, dropping a bowl into the basin with a clatter. ‘Do you know what they will do to you, Oriane, if they find out what you are? They will never leave you alone again!'

‘They would never know! I would just be any other bird—'

But Arthur seemed not to hear. ‘It isn't worth the risk,' he muttered. ‘I can't let you take the risk. It's my duty to protect you. I promised her I wouldn't let anything happen. I promised.'

Oriane wasn't even sure he was talking to her anymore. For some reason, it made her angrier. 14

‘I am a grown woman, Papa,' she said, her voice low. ‘I can take care of myself, and make my own decisions.'

‘And what if they're the wrong decisions?' he shot back, whipping around to face her. ‘What if your decisions put you in danger?'

‘Then that is my choice to make!' Oriane shouted. ‘I would rather put myself in danger than waste my life away here wondering!'

The words hung in the air between them, toxic, irrevocable. Her father seemed to crumple in on himself. All the anger drained from his face, replaced with a sadness so pronounced that Oriane wished desperately to wind back time and swallow her words before they surfaced.

‘I'm sorry,' she whispered. ‘I didn't mean that, Papa. Please believe that I didn't.'

‘You did,' Arthur said slowly, not looking at her. His voice sounded hoarse, as if he'd forgotten how to speak. ‘And you should mean it. You're right, Oriane. I need to let you make your own decisions.'

His eyes met hers. Their gazes were almost level, Oriane now nearly as tall as he.

‘But I want you to know the whole truth first.'

They sat together before the hearth. Arthur's eyes were fixed on the fire, the reflection of its flames wavering in his glasses. Oriane's focus was trained on him as she waited for him to speak.

‘You know you are descended from a long line of skylarks,' he began finally. ‘Your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother – and every one of their mothers before them. It's hard to trace them all, because most of them, like you, were born and raised and lived in hiding. And the reason the skylarks first went into hiding is … not pleasant.' 15

‘Tell me,' Oriane said immediately. After a moment, her father nodded.

‘Many, many years ago, one of your ancestors – Elidia was her name – lived in the city, among the people. They knew who she was and what she did each morning, but for the most part they were respectful. Kept their distance. There was a small group of people, though, who became … fanatic. Entitled. They believed she belonged to the people – that she shouldn't be living a private life with her husband, but with them, among them, so they might see her every transformation and song.

‘Elidia's husband grew afraid for her safety as the group became ever more zealous and obsessive. When Elidia fell pregnant, they decided to leave the city, so that she might give birth in safety and in secret. But the baby came early … and the people found out.'

Oriane sat frozen. She felt bound to her chair. Her gaze had narrowed into a halo around Arthur's face, everything around it falling to darkness.

‘The baby was born in a small, locked room as the fanatics gathered outside and pounded at the door. Elidia and her husband were trapped. She was weak from the birth, so she insisted that he take the baby and run. There was a window – too high for him to jump from with the baby in his arms. But the night was coming to its end, and just as the door was about to break down, the baby transformed, ready to call the dawn for the first time.'

A log fell in the fire, sparks swirling upward with a hiss, but Oriane barely noticed.

‘Elidia's husband tucked the bird away safely and jumped. The little lark sang as he pulled it out from his coat, then transformed back into the baby girl, and he ran away with her in his arms.'

‘And Elidia?' Oriane prompted. 16

‘The fanatics broke down the door as her daughter was singing for the first time. They realised that if she was still human as the day dawned, she must have passed her power down to her daughter … They surrounded her, demanding to see the child. Her husband could hear them shouting at her, closing in around her … They had treated her with deference once, but she was the lark no longer, and what cause had they to exalt an ordinary woman? She died there in that room, weak and bleeding and smothered by the people of her own city.'

Oriane swallowed the horror rising in her throat. ‘And the baby?'

‘The baby was safe. Her father took her far from the city and raised her in a small country town where no one knew who they were.'

‘In a town,' Oriane repeated. ‘With other people … Not isolated like us?'

‘Not at first,' Arthur conceded. ‘But your other ancestors … Well, as Elidia's story was passed down, they came to believe that she had cursed them, somehow. After she died giving birth to the next skylark, every one of her descendants did too.'

‘But it wasn't her fault,' Oriane protested. ‘She didn't curse them, she was … she was killed —'

‘I know,' Arthur said. ‘But imagine it: your mother dies soon after giving birth to you. Her mother met the same fate, and her mother's mother, and on it goes … What else would you be given to think?'

‘I don't have to imagine it,' Oriane murmured. Her father opened his mouth and closed it again, his head bowed. ‘And I do not think I believe in any such curse.'

The room fell to silence. The fire crackled and sparked, but outside the cottage, the night was still.

‘It has been this way for centuries,' Arthur said finally. ‘Your ancestors have kept themselves, and their daughters, away from the 17 world so that the skylarks may keep their secrets and be safe. I've just been trying to keep you safe, Oriane.'

But Oriane's mind was working quickly. ‘They all must have had some contact with the outside world, though,' she said. ‘They all had daughters, didn't they? How else could they have done so without …' Oriane blushed. She had learned the ways of the world through books, of course, as she had learned everything else. But she never spoke to her father of such things.

But Arthur's face had lit up, his whole demeanour changing. ‘That's where our plan comes in. Your mother's and mine.' He didn't wait for Oriane to respond before he barrelled on. ‘All the other skylarks, no matter how much they tried to isolate themselves, always had some form of connection to others. They always ended up meeting someone, sometimes falling in love, sometimes not, but always bringing the next of the skylarks into the world … And sealing their own death warrants as they did so.'

‘Is that how you and Mother looked at your relationship?' Oriane asked, horrified. ‘As … a sealing of her fate?'

‘No,' Arthur replied softly. ‘Your mother made the decision to have you more carefully than she had made any other. I tried to talk her out of it at first, but she said … She said she already knew you, could already feel your essence in the world, and she wanted to bring you into it. She knew …' He paused, his words seeming to catch in his throat as a wave of sadness washed over his face. ‘She knew she would not be here to protect you, Oriane. But even before you were born, she loved you so much … She made me promise, made me swear, that I would make sure you didn't meet the same fate she and all the other skylarks had.'

Her father smiled then, the light of it shining even through the haze of grief. 18

‘You look just like her,' he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Your eyes are a bit more like mine, perhaps – but still, the two of you could have been sisters. Even your wings have precisely the same pattern as hers.'

Oriane looked away, her throat tightening to the point of pain. Her eyes blurred as she stared into the fire. She wished that her mother could have been the exception to the rule. That she could have stayed here with her family, where she belonged.

‘But what was your plan?' she asked her father hoarsely, after a moment. ‘To keep me safe? Was it just … to keep me here forever, away from everybody?'

‘To keep you away from those who might do you harm,' Arthur amended.

‘Or from those who might love me.'

Arthur leaned forward in his chair, clasping one of her hands in his. There was a strange look of desperation on his face, as if he were grasping at the beams of a house as it fell down around him. ‘You don't understand, my love,' he pressed on. ‘If you never fall in love – never bear a child and pass down your power – you will never die .'

Oriane blinked.

‘From everything we've learned, the only reason skylarks die is because they pass their power on to their daughters. Even before Elidia, the larks who lived after giving birth didn't do so forever – they died of old age or disease or some other human thing. But you … If you never relinquish your power, there's no reason for you to ever—'

The rest of his words were lost as a strange humming began to sound in Oriane's ears. It was too much. All of it – the stories; the plan her parents had made; the idea of her life staying the same, staying this way forever , even after the lure of the outside world had taken hold of her and— 19

‘Oriane?'

Arthur was staring at her, concern etched in every line of his weathered face. He still held one of her hands clasped in his.

Oriane watched as he seemed to see, really see, the expression on her face, the wish in her eyes. He knew it then – they both did. In the morning, she would be gone. It was too late; the call of the world had grown too strong, and nothing that was said now would make any difference.

Oriane squeezed her father's hand, then withdrew hers gently from its grasp.

‘I'll come back, Papa,' she whispered as she left the room. ‘I promise.'