She rose, fastened the pendant to her necklace, and looked up at the tree. It would not be an easy climb. The bark was rough and crevassed enough that she found ample holds for her hands and feet, but it was also crumbly in places, rotten and termite bored. She tore away chunks with her hands. It was amazing, really, that the tree still managed to stand. She found a handhold and a nub for her foot, pulled herself off the ground, and began the slow ascent.
An hour later she broke free of the canopy, having passed through regions of animal and insect life she had never conceived of. She blinked at the brightness of the world and felt the touch of moving air over her sweat-drenched skin and noted how the tree swayed. Despite a strengthening breeze the stink increased. The branches grew more crusted with droppings. They dirtied her hands and made it harder to trust them. She had to dig her fingernails into the stuff. Upon reaching the bare stretch of naked bark just below the nest, she straddled a branch, leaned back against the trunk, and caught her breath.
A flock of yellow parrots skimmed above the treetops to the north, fast flaps and then long glides, flap and glide. Below her, parakeets darted into and out of view, sticking close to shelter. Nothing larger floated on the air, no great raptors, nothing of divine origin. She did note the thickening clouds off to the east, a storm gathering, perhaps the first of the summer downpours.
The nest above her seemed to be empty. It was silent up there, save for the occasional rustle and shift of the nest material. She could get up and into it, look around, decide what she would do next. She hoped this last knowledge would come to her, for she had no clear idea as yet.
Opening the lid of her pouch, she drew out a coil of rope. It was a thin weave made from plant fibers, oily in her fingers. She shook loose the knots. She let one end of the rope fall free and tried to ignore the breathtaking height the dangling coils betrayed beneath her. The near end had been fastened to a three-pronged hook, a tool she had adapted from a deep-sea fishing lure. She flung the hook up and over the nest. It caught on the first attempt. The first few tugs gave slightly. A few twigs snapped before it set firm.
As she gripped the rope and stepped off the branch, the eel pendant fell free from her chest and then banged back against it. She dangled for a moment, her full weight committed to the rope. She caught herself starting to invoke a prayer to Maeben. She clipped the words and swallowed the unspoken portion. Once she stopped swaying, she climbed up, hand over hand. For some reason she thought of Melio, perhaps because her lithe fitness had so much to do with his training. But then she reached the tangle of brittle branches that was the nest and could think about nothing except how to claw her way up over the curve of it.
She was clinging there, panting, trying to find a decent placement for her hands, when an avian head rose up from inside the rim of the nest. It was just more than an arm’s length away, a grotesque, hooked visage. It opened its beak and squawked. Something was wrong with it, Mena knew, but she could not stop to think what. She expected the bird to take flight, and she moved more jerkily for fear of it. She scrambled as far back as she could. The nest swayed with the shift of her weight. Branches and twigs snapped. It took an absurdly long time to position herself well enough to let go with her right hand and draw the sword. Once she had the weapon in hand, however, she knew exactly what to do. She swung at it, using all the full, awkward force she could muster. The sword bit the bird on the neck, but the blade angle was off and it did not cut deep. She yanked it out-still surprised that she had the time to do so-and struck again. She got the angle and force right this time. The creature’s head sailed up and away from its body, then plopped down next to it.
In the nest a few moments later, staring at the convulsing body of the thing, she realized what had seemed strange about it. The bird was feathered sparsely, ill formed and pathetic, no bigger than a vulture. Fully grown sea eagles were two or three times as large. It was not Maeben at all. It was barely more than an infant of the species. Mena half formed a joking comment about the things only a mother could love, but she did not speak it aloud.
She sat down across from it, thinking how very strange this all was, amazed that she was actually here, in a sea eagle’s nest well above the forests of Uvumal, across from a corpse, with a naked sword in her hand, swaying as the wind buffeted the creaking, aged tree from side to side. Who was she? When had she become this person? Perhaps this was all madness, she thought. It was a crisis of her own creation. She could envision two paths for her future now: one of them that ended no farther than this aerie, the other one such a complete leap into the unknown that she could scarcely believe she had conceived of it. And yet in some bizarre way either course was acceptable to her.
She realized that she could just climb down now. She had taken a child from the goddess. Let her see how it feels. Mena could grasp the rope and swing into the air and be down from these heights before the storm-which was even more palpable now-dumped rain on the canopy. She could go home feeling she had accomplished something, an act of retribution, sealed in blood.
She could, she thought, but no, she wouldn’t. She was not finished yet.
By the time she distinguished the flapping of wings from the sounds of the strengthening wind, she had repositioned herself. She lay back against the nest with the dead infant in her lap, propped against her chest. It was headless, of course, but she held the severed part roughly in place with one hand. Thus situated, she watched the mother return, hoping the disguise would help her get close enough to strike.
The raptor appeared in silhouette against the clouds. Her wings flared just before she landed, massive, like a gesture meant to hide the entire sky. The nest shifted as the bird’s weight came to rest, talons squeezing the brittle branches near to snapping. She was enormous. She must have stood as tall as Mena did. Maeben. There was no doubt this was Maeben. Her beak could close around Mena’s face; her talons were each a vicious dagger capable of disemboweling her with a single tearing motion. Mena did not doubt any of this; yet she was glad, glad to finally face her. She was filled with an emotion, but it was not fear. She had never hated harder than she did at that moment. To be a child snatched by this monster…just a child…
Wait, she thought. Wait until she is closer.
There was a short stillness, and then the eagle cried out. The call was sharp, piercing in a way her offspring’s had not been. Maeben nudged her chick, pulled back, and then thrust forward again, knowing now that something was wrong.
Mena shoved the infant away and swung for the bird’s head. She might have ended it there, but the sword caught a branch, shifted, and only grazed the creature’s beak.
Maeben rose screeching into the air, her visage one of carnivorous indignation. She screeched again, a cry so fierce Mena’s eyes shut against it. She had the momentary sensation that the sound had shredded the skin of her face just as the talons would. But then her eyes were open again.
The eagle plunged, talons first, with all her power and weight. Mena stumbled backward. Her heel caught, and she fell over the edge of the nest. Trying to grasp something, she let go of the sword. As she fell free of the lip, the fingers of her left hand grabbed for the fiber rope. The fibers tore through her palm, slick and abrasive at the same time. She somersaulted around and got her other hand on the rope. This yanked her to a halt. Then whatever had held the fishhook anchor snapped. Mena dropped through the air a few frantic seconds. She smashed into a branch. It broke almost instantly, but it had slowed her enough that, falling again, she looked down and grasped for the next lower branch. She hit it with her chest, swung around it, and dropped, horizontal now, to the network of branches just below it. That stopped her. The rope cascaded around her. The hooks fell just beside her and one of them pierced her leg.