CWPG811 Adrienne Easton 44788185 CWA2 Session 2/2017

Rises The Eagle (Working Title)

Chapter 3 Under The Wings

Outside, the Eagle is gone. Uneasiness whispers its way into Fleet’s belly but he
ignores it as no more than hunger pangs that will soon be satisfied. He finds the yams easily
enough—their glossy heart-shaped leaves are strung along the ground like the children on a
mineworkers’ chain. He saw them once when his father took him to his uncle’s, high in the
mountains. They stumbled along in a line, looped together and goaded by the mine guards. He
is thankful once again that he escaped the night the baby came. Was it a boy? he wonders.
Soon he will see. Soon he will be with his family again. He takes hold of the fork that’s been
driven into the soil and begins to dig.
Screams from the hut. Fleet is jogged from his reverie and he turns to run, fork in hand.
“Fleet! Fleet!” The door is barred. The window shutter is tight in its frame.
“Mala! Winkle!”
He lifts the fork to pry the window frame, but Mala opens the door. Together, they
batter the sleeping room door until its rotten wood gives way. The hermit is on his knees over
Winkle. With one hand he pins her wrist to the pallet, and with the other fumbles with his
drawstring. Winkle’s free arms beats and scratches like a cornered mountain cat. Fleet slams
the tines of the fork to the hermit’s head. He grunts and turns dazedly back to face Fleet, but
too late—the fork is up, then down straight to his throat. Winkle pulls back in horror as the
crimson lifeblood spurts across her bared breast. She rolls to the floor and retches violently.
Fleet stands tensely ball-fisted watching the hermit’s thrashing arms and legs gradually
still.
“Come!” he says to his women.
They leave the ugly hut and stagger to the beach. Winkle falls to the waves and lifts
clasps of wet sand to rub against her breasts, her face, her arms, her thighs. Then she lays
curled in the water sobbing and shivering, and covers her face with her hands, while Mala
rocks beside her murmuring, “My baby, my baby.” The tide floats Winkle and then gently
places her down. It is a soft rhythm that soothes her to quietness.
Fleet leaves them. He returns to the hut. He sees that the hermit is indeed dead and
revulsion fills him. He takes a knife, fishing line and needle from the table. He wraps the
callow cakes in his tunic pouch. Then he scoops a ladle of coals from the fire and throws
them onto the pallet. He stands in the doorway watching them leap to life on the filthy rags.
The flames take hold of the wooden pallet and then flare against the dryness of the driftwood
walls. Satisfied, he leaves.

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When he returns to the beach leading the goat on a rope, a crackle of flames and smoke
rises behind him. Mala sees but says nothing. Fleet gives her the knife, line and needle. She
sews Winkle’s torn tunic bodice while her lips move in prayerful whispers.
There is a call, clear and uncompromising, and the Eagle swoops before them.
“On! On!”
“We must follow,” says Fleet.
“Yes. We must follow,” says Mala.
Fleet moves to lift Winkle but she flinches away. Mala touches his sleeve. “Leave her
be, Fleet. She hurts.”
Winkle stands to her feet and hugging her arms over her chest, stumbles alongside
them. Mala keeps close. It is her turn to watch should her daughter fall.
The sun glows orange. It falls behind soft clouds and lines them with golden edges.
Fleet knows that it is too late now to reach The Caves of South Point because the tide is
almost at its full height making entry impossible. They follow the Eagle as she leads them
from the beach once more. The dunes are coming to an end, merging one by one with the land,
here stitched to it by bands of shrubs. Softer grasses grow beneath. Small birds dart among
them catching insects before the light disappears.
Fleet finds a small hollow in the lee of the shrubs where they can spend the night. He
tethers the goat. He takes the callow cakes and offers them. He and Mala eat, but Winkle only
looks at hers before letting it fall to the ground. She lays down in a tight curl and shuts herself
away, a little periwinkle in its shell. Darkness settles a blanket of gentleness over them, each a
small, storm-battered boat adrift in a sea of pain and loss. They succumb to the sleep of
exhaustion.
Fleet’s not sure what has woken him. Was it danger close by? Was it the need to
protect? Or was it the churning revulsion at what he had done? He stays still, eyes closed,
willing his body to quieten so he can listen. He and Mala have lain down either side but not
too close to Winkle. He thinks he can hear their quiet breathing but perhaps it’s just the ever-
present slide and shoosh of the tide. There’s the soft scurrying of dune mice and the
intermittent call of a night piper. There is something else—a deep, sonorous sound that rises
and falls like a distant thunderstorm rolling around the Border Ranges, promising new life,
settling into the weary, spent places of his soul. Fleet feels the nausea ebb away.
He rolls onto his back and opens his eyes. Above him are feather tips of clouds blotting
out the stars. The song rises and, as he turns toward its source, he understands that these are
not clouds but indeed feathers, the pinioned wings of the Eagle. She stands above Winkle’s
sleeping head, her wings outstretched in a sheltering canopy over them all, and from her
issues the healing song. She locks Fleet’s gaze. Later, he is not sure if he actually heard her
speak to him or if she somehow spoke to his very core. What he does know is that a sense of

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rightness and endorsement seats itself within him. He feels empowered. He lies in a place of
safety and wholeness. Then he’s awake and shafts of sunlight cut through the shrubs into his
eyes.
The women stir and sit stiffly upright. The goat bleats with the pain of an engorged
udder. They have nothing with which to catch the milk except their mouths.

Chapter 4 Into The Caves

The South Point rises black, like the head of a huge animal emerging from the verdant,
windswept land. The grasses on its back are rippling fur under the irritation of flies. The tide
is subsiding and South Point bares its jagged, rocky teeth.
To Mala it is menacing, uncompromising. We are unmarked Finelanders in a
Forbidden land. Will we be imprisoned as scapegoats for our people? I am afraid to go back,
yet, I am afraid to go on. Surely, if the Eagle has called us on, we will be safe. Obey her. If
we had obeyed, we would have passed the hermit’s trap. To obey is to be safe. Where is she
now—the Eagle? This place that Fleet has told us about, these Caves—I want to see them. I
want to see the Prophecy Stone. But am I worthy? Will they let us in? Imprison us? I am
afraid.
Mala holds Winkle’s hand—Winkle, a colt whose spirit has been broken—both to
reassure herself and to keep her daughter moving forward. She keeps her eyes on Fleet’s
broad back as he purposefully leads on toward South Point. The goat, which they tried to let
free after relieving her of her milk, trots alongside him. Every now and then, she butts an
insistent forehead into his hand. Like a dog, thinks Mala and she lightens a little. If a dumb
goat can follow then so can I.
Fleet feels the eagerness both of homecoming and to share the burden of great
responsibility. Ollen-da, I’ll see Ollen-da again! And my little brother! But first The Caves—
can I remember the way in? Help them understand that Mala and Winkle are no threat?
The way is clear after all and Fleet easily finds the entrance to the close, dark tunnel
into the belly of the headland. The tunnel is light.
At first, Mala does not comprehend how this can be, but as her eyes become
accustomed, she sees small lights twinkling high in the crevices of rock. They are starflies,
which seemingly know that these are welcome guests and light the way immediately before
them. The goat follows them still.
They are led on through the winding tunnel. Sometimes, there are airy spaces above,
and at other times the ceiling is so low that they must stoop. Sometimes, the tunnel leads

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upward in a steep incline. Then without warning, it dips toward the sea again. It would be
certain death to be caught in these tunnels at high tide.
In the low places the sand is wet, but further up the sand becomes dry and the air loses
its salty dampness. Occasionally, there are black openings running away to the right and left.
The starflies do not light these and so following, the family comes at last to a cave lit from
above by a galaxy of the tiny insects. Flecks of mica sparkle in the rock walls. The dry, sandy
floor glows. There is a pool at the far end.
Fleet stands at the pool and throws a stone. It hits the surface, not with an expected
splash, but with the sound of metal reverberating on metal. The sound rises pure and clear,
echoing around the walls of the cave, down the way they have come and up into the black
entrance of a tunnel on the far side.
“Now, wait,” says Fleet.
“The Caretakers?” asks Mala.
“Yes. I’ll go ahead and prepare them to come to you.”
“I’m afraid, Fleet.”
“It will be alright, Mala-ma. You’ll see. I’ll tell them and they will welcome you. You
are no more Finelander than I am. Here, hold the goat so I can go alone.”
Fleet gazes down in tenderness on his womenfolk. They sit close together, Mala
holding the goat by her rope and Winkle hugging her knees to her chest. These are his family,
his loves. He will do all he can to protect them. He turns and walks up into the tunnel.
The goat is restless. She bucks a little and strains to follow Fleet. But Mala holds her
tightly.
“Winkle. Please. Help me keep her still. She mustn’t follow Fleet or she’ll be lost in the
tunnels.”
Mala’s voice breaks into Winkle’s shell and she reaches out to run her hand down the
coarse-haired flank.
“Hush, hush,” she sooths. She fondles the goat’s ears and is rewarded by a soft butt that
almost topples her onto the sand. Winkle giggles and then, quite suddenly, a flow of tears is
unleashed.
“Oh, Ma-ma!” she cries and crawls into her mother’s arms. Mala-ma holds Winkle
while the tears run unabated, a cleansing river running through brittle lands until finally,
Winkle is spent and at rest in her mother’s embrace.
Then Mala-ma begins to sing. It is a lullaby of the old times when the world was at one,
before the dividing wall, before the Finelander Emperor in arrogance set himself above even
the Creator, before he ever was or even thought of, in the time when all was good and certain
and right—this is the lullaby that Mala sings. How does Mala know this song when
Finelanders have forgotten it and only Forbidden sing it now? She has only heard snatches of

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it, once, when Fleet tried to sing it to Winkle who lay sick with the fever. But somehow, here
in this sanctuary, wonderfully, the words come easily to her tongue and flow in a rhythm that
lifts them both. It is an ancient tongue. It is uncommon to their minds but somehow their
hearts are caught with its meaning—comfort, adoration and possibility. The goat is still, head
hung low.
Fleet comes. The Caretakers glide on soft leather soles, pale faces alight in wonder to
hear a Finelander sing a song of the ancients. They come close and kneel before Mala and
Winkle. At the sight of them Mala stops, frozen, as the old fears assail her. But the Caretakers
take up the song. It rises in a chorus of such generous praise that Mala and Winkle relax.
Never did Mala expect or dare hope for such a welcome. But here now, with the Caretakers
by her feet, a sense of belonging encompasses her.
There are four of them in all, dressed similarly in coarsely woven tunics. Two appear
quite elderly—white-haired and faces furrowed in kindly creases that tell the tale of a grateful
life. The man wears a greyed cloak over his tunic. It’s sashed with a leather thong into which
shells have been woven. His beard is full, wisped with silver and white, and reaches to his
chest. His raised scars are faded. His voice is powerful for a man of his age.
His wife, for Mala assumes this from the way she leans on his arm, is quite bent over.
She wears her hair in a braided coil on her head like a crown. Her eyes are the colour of
gentian flowers that grow in the high country of the Border Ranges. Mala knows this because
Dunnar brought her some when he asked her father for her hand—the only time he ever
brought her flowers. The old woman has decorated the edges of her scars with patterns of
indigo dots, making them quite beautiful.
Mala turns her head and is surprised by how young the others are—a boy and a girl
even younger than Winkle. They are staring unabashedly. Mala turns away again. Who are
we to receive such blatant interest? Yes, we are Finelanders. Unmarked. But, I don’t want to
be stared at. I don’t want to be different.
The song rests.
Then the old man speaks, “Welcome to you, mother and sister of the Eagle.”

Chapter 5 The Sanctuary

Later, when Mala and Winkle lie together under warm blankets, Mala recalls her
response to meeting Bryn and Lyah with hot-faced embarrassment. She was so rude! She
gaped, yes, open-mouthed like a fish caught in a rock pool at low tide. They watched her
patiently but her mind could not form words and she was doubtful if her tongue could have
given them voice even if she had. Then suddenly, a flood of meaning broke. They knew about

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Fly? The Eagle? Sure, they would know the Prophecy, but to know that Fly and the Eagle are
the same?
“She’s here?” she blurted. They lifted her up and Winkle too, offered water and led
them along further tunnels into this wonderful place of interconnected rooms hollowed out by
generations of Caretakers. They let them bathe and dress in fresh tunics, wrapped them with
shawls, fed them, and then left them rest in this small cave room.
She supposes that Fleet is somewhere near in a room of his own. Mala watches
Winkle’s face soften as she slips deeper into a sleep induced by Lyah’s herbal infusion.
The Eagle had not been here. Of course, it was Fleet who had told the Caretakers about
them. When they reached the main living cave, they were greeted by a group of bright-faced
Caretakers cheering, clapping and shouting, “The Eagle’s come! The Eagle’s come!”
Bryn and Lyah saw the way the family held close to each other—even Fleet was
overwhelmed—and knew their need. Bryn lifted his hands to quiet the others.
“Yes, it is true! The time of the Eagle has come!” The people erupted with joyful
shouting and began to surge forward but Bryn’s command held them back.
“The family of the Eagle have come to us for shelter. They have endured great loss.
Now they need rest. There will be time to speak and celebrate after.” Then they were led
away from the noise.
Mala stretches out her hand to stroke the purple bruises on her daughter’s wrist.
“We are safe,” she murmurs, “and you will be alright.”
Mala gives herself to the heaviness of sleep.

The upper caves, including the Sanctuary, are lit and aired through a series of chimneys
that open to the hillside above. It’s said that the Guards will never venture here because it is a
haunted place. At certain times they have heard an eerie, singing wind that spooks their
horses. Some have stepped into the chimney shafts and broken their legs. To the Guards, the
sounds are the voices of those lost in the shipwrecks that lie impaled upon the jagged rocks
below South Point like bird carcases on a dead wolf’s teeth, bones whitened by sun and salt.
The Caretakers use this belief to advantage. They leave the wrecks where they lie, to not only
feed the superstition, but also provide markers for the Scatterfeet boats to enter safely into the
Landing Cave.
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