Page 1 of Skysong

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Part I2

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Chapter 1

Like her mother before her, and her mother’s mother before that, Oriane was born with a duty.

She understood it little in her early years. The moment she let loose her first screaming breath, her mother sighed her last, so it fell to Oriane’s father to guide her. How taxing those years must have been for him – raising a daughter alone and in grief, helping Oriane through the transformations that began on her very first day in the world.

His wife had prepared him for it, or tried to, at least. But Oriane could only imagine how it felt for her father to see his newborn daughterdisappear; to watch her form fall from her like water – baby-soft skin transmuting into feathers, brown and white wings sprouting from her back. His girl had gone, leaving naught but a bird in her place: a plain, unremarkable little bird with keen black eyes and an interminable call.

The call was the point of it, of course. Those trilling, insistent notes that shot forth the moment she transformed – they weren’t just song. They were power. Power passed down through the women in Oriane’s line, mother to daughter, skylark to skylark.

At the end of every night, Oriane would call for the dawn. Every day was hers to command. Hers to pull down from the heavens so4that darkness never reigned unchecked. From the minute she was born, she alone had drawn back the black curtain of night, revealing the sun that smiled beneath.

At first, she had little control: she would simply transform, and sing, and transform back. She could no more have stopped her song than she could have stopped the flow of her own breath. But as she grew, she learned. One morning after singing, Oriane stretched her wings and, for the first time, attempted to fly. Her father caught her when she fell, and every morning thereafter he followed her around with hands outstretched, keeping her safe until she could stay aloft.

She took to the skies more and more often after that. Though she could not choose when to become the lark, she developed some control over transforming back. It gave her freedom to fly, to roam, to explore.

‘Don’t go too far,’ her father warned, his brow creasing, making him look old. ‘Don’t lose your way.’

‘I won’t, Papa,’ she promised. And for the longest time, she didn’t. She loved him too much not to do as he asked.

It wasn’t until her twenty-first year that Oriane felt the first true stirrings of restlessness.

She and her father lived a quiet life. Their home was a comfortable cottage tucked away on the outskirts of the kingdom, surrounded by acres of verdant woods. Together they tended fruit trees, planted neat rows of vegetables, raised a brood of chickens and a single lazy cow. Once a month, Arthur would untether Snowpea, their faithful old mule, and head out to collect extra supplies. But Oriane never5went with him. She never ventured further than her lark’s wings took her each morning – just far enough to feel the air beneath her, to watch the woods wake below to the sound of her song. Then she’d fly back to her father, to her human self.

On one bright, bluebell day that hovered on the cusp of summer, she was walking back through the woods after a visit to the stream. It was slow going. She dragged a little cart behind her, loaded with two buckets full of water. They usually relied on the well behind their cottage, but a pulley had come loose yesterday. Her father was hard at work fixing it, and Oriane had offered to fetch water.

The afternoon was warm. Sunlight poured through the gaps in the canopy like rivulets of molten gold, but the shade cast by the great trees was blessedly cool. Wiping her forehead on the back of her sleeve, she stopped to catch her breath—

A laugh echoed through the woods.

The tone of it was musical, a sparkling, glass-chime sound. Every muscle in Oriane’s body froze. She stared around the little clearing in which she’d come to rest. Steadying herself on the trunk of a tree, she listened, sure her ears had made a mistake.

All was silent – or as close to silent as such a place could be. The ever-present music of the woods still played: the rustling of leaves in the breeze, the chirp and chitter of forest creatures. Oriane relaxed, shaking her head at herself. The heat must have been getting to her.

She dried her palms on her dress, then steadied her grip on the handles of the cart. She hefted it upwards and began to pull—

The laughter sounded again. It was nearer this time, clear and unmistakeable, bright as a struck bell.

Oriane dropped the cart. The buckets wobbled and then tipped, the water she’d collected spilling over the side.6

Her pulse jumped, fast, faster, as if her lark’s heart had been planted in her human chest. Something inside her leapt to attention at that sound. Straining her ears, she heard something else filtering through the trees. The cracking of twigs underfoot. Other voices. The faint murmur of conversation.

People. There werepeoplenearby.

The voices drew closer. She couldn’t move. Had they heard the crash of the cart falling? Even if they hadn’t, they were coming her way, and all she could do was wait.

She glanced wildly around the clearing. Should she hide? The path that led here was difficult to find if you didn’t already know where it was. If only she could transform at will and flutter up into the trees like any other bird … Panic was setting in now, dousing her sun-warmed skin in a clammy sweat. What if they saw her? Her father had warned her how dangerous that would be, how vital it was that she stay hidden. If no one ever saw her, no one could ever discover what she was.

The conversation grew louder, and Oriane made up her mind. There was no use hiding. She would need to run.

Leaving the cart and fallen buckets where they lay, she lifted the hem of her skirt and fled towards home, her tread light and silent on the familiar forest floor. The voices grew fainter behind her, and soon she couldn’t hear them at all.

Oriane slowed as the cottage came into view through the trees. What would she tell her father? He would only worry if he knew just how close she’d been to the strangers. Sinking to the ground against a sturdy tree trunk, she sat for a moment in thought.7

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