A call chased along the horizon.
The hatchling twisted its neck to stare toward the north.
Somewhere, out there, another has been born.
As soon as the thought took form, he understood how foolish it was. Not one, but a hundred and more, one for every tribe, for every circle of WiseMothers, who for this span of time had incubated the eggs of the FirstMothers, the ones who in ancient days bred with the living spirits of earth and gave birth to his kind.
So the story was told among the Eika.
It leaped. The pressure of its fledgling wingbeats battered him supine against the ground. It caught an updraft, and yet it beat those flashing wings as though to churn the still day into a gale. The clouds tore apart as it vanished into them. Lying stunned on the ground, he saw revealed the hard blue pan of the sky and felt—so briefly!—the melting warmth of an early summer sun.
The wind whirlpooled around him as though trying to suck him up into the heavens. Pebbles scooped up by the gale pummeled him. Lichen and moss writhed in strips through the air. The wind poured into him, blowing right through his skin and into every part of him, enveloping him, drowning him.
Alain stands at the wall staring toward the north, although he isn’t sure how he has come to be out here with the evening settling in and the wind pouring through him. He burns as if the wind is fire on his skin.
He hears their calls, even though they rise so far away that he should not be able to hear them. They raise a clangor, deeper than bells, that resonates in his body until he weeps without knowing why. The hounds whine, licking his hands, but he cannot stop the tears.
A puny, cold, fragile creature moves up beside him, only it is after all the servant assigned to make him comfortable in the palace. “My lord? I pray you, my lord, is there something the matter? How can I help you?”
It hurts, but he doesn’t know why. He listens for the last echoes whispering out of the north.
Their voices came to him, a thousand, a myriad, but all familiar to him and beloved in their way.
“Good. That. You. Are. Strong. Of. Hand. Son. Fare. Well. Be. Wise.”
The tempest quieted. A ragged wisp of lichen settled out of the air and onto his face. He brushed it aside, shook himself, and jumped to his feet. Above, the clouds were knitting themselves together again. The wind had failed utterly, and the day became silent and colored With the pearl-gray filter of a clouded sun. The fjall lay empty. Nothing moved, nothing spoke, nothing breathed, except him. He might have been the last creature alive in the entire land.
Certainly he stood alone here.
Altogether alone.