Drift: River of Falcons Book 1

Seen

By the time Drift returned, Summer had spread out an oiled cloth and fetched her wooden box of oddities: a collar bone from a shrew, several snail shells, an oval pebble that shone pearly white, and assorted other finds she had been attracted to over the years. The objects were scattered across the cloth. She had been reading a throw by lantern light.

"You've had an encounter with death," Summer said, picking up the bone. "But you acquitted yourself well and wisely," she continued, tapping an amber bead that contained a tiny, fossilized butterfly. "Did you put your learning to use?"

"Why do you ask?" Drift demanded. "You already seem to know everything."

Summer shook her head. "Only hints and indications. I throw when I'm worried about you, my dear. You were quite late. Are you feeling better?"

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you." Drift went over to help put the trinkets away. As she picked up a sharp tooth that had once belonged to a wildcat, she said, "I bumped into a lion. It was chasing a deer."

Summer stared at her.

Drift dropped the tooth into the box. "Do you think it could have been a sorcerer in the form of a lion?"

"I don't think it would have hunted deer if it had been a sorcerer."

"Why not? What else would it hunt?"

"You, of course. Or any girl your age it could find. I've warned you about the prophecy."

"I remember. Someone said that-"

"No, not just someone. The head of the Fena, whilst in a trance. She said that a princess would emerge from the water and take to the forest, and-"

"Oh!" Drift interrupted. "Because you found me on the river, you think I'm the one from the prophecy. But that's silly, Grandma."

"Humph. And the prophecy says that if she learns her names, which I think just refers to her coming of age and going through a traditional naming ceremony, she'll eclipse those in power. So it's natural that the sorcerers would be concerned."

"Murderously concerned," Drift said with a frown.

"I'm afraid so, yes. Now, let's thank the Spirits and eat our soup. It's late. You must be hungry."

Drift would have pressed Summer for more, but experience told her it was useless. Summer did not like to discuss the sorcerers.

That night, after they had banked the embers in the hearth and Summer had retreated behind her bed-curtains, Drift slipped down the ladder from her sleeping loft, tiptoed over to the bookshelf, and extracted the volume on animals. Taking it to a window where the moonlight shone in, she opened it.

The last chapter was gone. Frowning, she put the book back and returned to her bed.

*

Warm days followed, and they started their planting. Once the kitchen crops were in, the medicinal garden needed tending. There were perennials to lift and divide, and precious seeds saved from last autumn and started in cold frames, ready now to be planted out. Once these chores were done, they began to repair fences, and when the fences were done, Summer announced that it was time to fix the thatching.

It took all afternoon to gather rushes and tie them into bundles. The next day they set to work on the roof. By midmorning, they were close to done. Summer was standing in the back of the wagon handing bundles up to Drift, who was doing the thatching. She used a long wooden ladder to carry each bundle up. The peak needed the most work because it took the worst of the wind and rain. When Drift got to the top of the ladder with a bundle, she would set it butt end up, with half the rushes on each side of the ridge, then drive in staples made from flexible hazel branches. She was about to drive in another when Summer called out something urgently in Falcanto. Drift recognized it as a concealment, a spell that Summer had not used since the time three years ago when they had hidden beside a wagon-road while a band of apprentices went past, laughing and boasting about the looting they had done on outlying farms. The spell had a distinctive prickle to it that brought the unpleasant memory back at once.