Page 69 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

Finally he thrashed about along the bracken and located a fallen tree trunk substantial enough to bear his weight. He hauled it to the water’s edge and pushed it in. No conjuring up an ice-walk for him. With the help of a staff, he balanced himself and began to draw his way across the water. He could have swum, he knew, but that would require his undressing either before or after the swim, and it seemed an undignified way to approach a Convention.

The Birds seemed patient, and as he got closer he thought: It’s as if they have been waiting for me.

This was so, according to the hunch-hooded Cliff Eagle who bade him welcome.

“You’re the boy-broomist,” he said. “The fledgling. We knew you’d been downed. A Red Pfenix got far enough through enemy lines to cry out that much information before being wounded and having to turn back. We trusted you would come. You’ve come.”

The Cliff Eagle paused smartly, puffing out his breast feathers.

“I almost didn’t,” said Liir. “It wasn’t even my idea, really.”

The Eagle made a mouth gesture as close to a sneer as he could manage. “Humans are fickle. We know. But you’re here. The boy-broomist.”

“I’m without the broom.” Liir put his staff down on the ground so the Birds could see. “I walked. Have you a name, by the way?”

The other Birds hopped a branch or two closer to see if the Cliff Eagle would answer. They were the larger creatures, mostly—a few random Finches and Fitches, some Robins, and a busy preening department of Wrens—but mostly Eagles, Night Rocs, a youngish Pfenix in its glowing halo. Nine Swans still waiting for their Princess. A blind old Heron with a twisted left leg. Others.

“I know what happened to the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, and told them how he had buried her—and, in a dim sense, come in her stead.

The Cliff Eagle took the news unflinchingly, though the Swans bowed their heads until their necks were white hoops, and their wings shuddered with an airy sound, as of an industrial baffle.

“I am the President of the Assembly,” said the Cliff Eagle. “Thank you for coming.”

Liir had no use for honorifics. “Am I to call you Mister President? Or just Birdy?”

The Cliff Eagle bristled, and then said, “General Kynot is my name, though my name isn’t important. And yours isn’t either. We’re soldiers at strategy, not a military tea.”

“Well, I’ve been a soldier and I’m not going back to it. I’m Liir, for what that’s worth, and I use my name. I’m not Broom-boy.”

Kynot ducked his head and bit at a nit under his wing. “Sorry, the place is crawling with nits,” he said. “Liir.” It was a concession, and Liir relaxed. He was about to ask permission to sit down, and then remembered he didn’t need it. So he sat, and the Birds came farther down from the branches, and most of them settled on the hardscuffle with the sound of small loaves of bread falling to a floor.

Kynot made quick work of their concerns. The Conference seemed to be comprised of seventy or eighty Birds who were now afraid to leave. They had met to convene about the threat in the skies, but that very threat had cornered them and grounded them. It would take a talent and a cunning greater than any of their skills to make the skies safe for travel.

“You’ve come to the wrong beak if you want talent or cunning,” said Liir.

“Don’t be absurd,” snapped Kynot, and continued.

He beat out every point of his argument with a hard flap of his wings. Whereas conditions of life under the Emperor had become intolerable, whereas his airborne army of dragons had systematically disrupted air travel, unsettled populations of Birds and birds, and interfered with the natural rights of flight and migration and convocation, now therefore a Congress of the Birds had been summoned, if sadly beleaguered by aforementioned hostile army, and such delegates as had managed to sneak in had concluded thereby that they were singly and in unity incapable of combating the enemy fleet. Therefore they needed help. Fast.

“I came to tell you of the death of the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, “because it is what Elphaba would have done. Beyond that, I can’t be of much use. If I’m the only hope around, you’re in a heap of trouble.”

“Unlike Animals, we Birds haven’t often lived wing by jowl with humans,” replied the general. “The human prohibition against eating Animal flesh being subject to abuse, think how much less strict is any taboo against eating the Bird of the air. We must be shot at and brought down before we can be interviewed to learn if we are talking creatures. Few hungry farmers are willing to extend Birds that courtesy, so those of us who talk tend to congregate in areas less frequented by human scum. My apologies, that was crude of me.”

“Don’t apologize too fast, you don’t know me very well,” said Liir. “But still, why ask me for help?”

“You have flown, as most humans have not,” said Kynot simply. “You have powers unique among the humans we’ve met…”

“I can keep my balance. So what. It’s the broom that has powers. Elphaba’s broom.”

“The wing doesn’t work separately from the feather, Liir. They work in tandem.”

“Well, I haven’t the broom any longer, or haven’t you heard? So I can’t fly—which means this hardly concerns me.”

“You were attacked by the dragons yourself. Weren’t you? Or have I been fed misinformation?”

“Well, I was. But that’s between me and the dragons. It has nothing to do with you.”

“And they call us birdbrains.” Kynot was livid. “There is a common cause among our kind and a flying boy, you dodo.”

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