Darian thought about the shoulders on the smith at Errold’s Grove, and how much he could carry and lift, and nodded solemnly. He tried to picture carrying a bird bigger than Hweel, and couldn’t. It must be like carrying a barrel of flour on your shoulder, he thought. “How does someone get a bondbird, then?” he asked curiously. Not that he thought he’d ever get one, but it was more likely than being Chosen by a Companion.
“Either an adult picks you out, or, more often, the adult parents pick you as the bondmate for one of their offspring. If the adults are bonded to someone, they let that person know who the eyas is going to, and if that person has experience with downy baby birds, very often they co-parent with the eyas’s new bondmate. If not, they wait until the little one is fledged, and lead him to you.” Snowfire turned his attention from the sky to smile at Darian. “That’s how I got Hweel; he blundered down out of a tree behind his parents, landed tail over head, fluffed all his feathers, and told me with the solemnity of a Kal’enedral that he was ready for me.”
“Does anybody have more than one bondbird?” Darian asked, wishing he could have seen that moment.
“Sometimes. One of us has an owl and a merlin for day and night scouting, I know of someone with a whole flock of ravens, and there are others. And sometimes your bond-bird’s mate may decide she wants to bond with you, too.” Snowfire raised an eyebrow. “Hweel says his mate is considering it, bonding with me, that is.”
“Hweel has a mate?” Darian replied, feeling oddly excited at the idea, though he didn’t know why. “Where is she?”
“Back at the Vale, teaching the youngster to hunt. I wouldn’t have left if there were still young in the nest, but by the time we were ready to go, the young one was fledged. Eagle-owls lay their eggs in deep winter; they’re hatched and fledged by the time most birds are going to nest, and once they’re no longer in the nest, they don’t need their father unless there’s more than one to teach to hunt.” Snowfire crossed his arms over his chest, and gave Darian a measuring look. “Now, you’ve spent plenty of time in the forest, can you guess why they’d do things that way?”
“Uh - “ Darian thought hard. “They build up for egg-laying in fall, when there’s a lot of dumb young animals on their own for the first time. Then they sit the eggs in winter, when there isn’t quite as much to eat but they also aren’t going to have to eat as much, then they have babies to feed in deep winter when there starts to be winter-kills and cold-kills lying around?”
“Good!” Snowfire applauded. “Then, obviously, it’s a good time to teach the youngsters to hunt when there are litters of very young and extremely stupid young rats, rabbits and squirrels about - not to mention the odd snake or duckling.”
“Do you have a bondbird?” Darian asked Nightwind, curiously.
She broke into peals of laughter. “Mercy, no!” she managed after a moment. “Trust me, the gryphons are more than enough for any poor trondi’irn to keep up with! Besides, with my temperament, I’d likely end up with something like a raven or a crow, and a bird with that much mischief in him would never be able to resist snatching at gryphon ear-tufts and jewelry, and there would never be any peace! How is your head?”
“It’s - fine!” he said in surprise, realizing that his headache had vanished without his noticing.
“That’s good, because you promised to help Ayshen with washing-up, and he’ll be expecting you about now,” Snowfire reminded him. “Now you’ll be able to talk to him - you might just go up and remind him of your promise and surprise him. There isn’t anything about the Tayledras that Ayshen doesn’t know - “
“ - and there isn’t anything that he isn’t dying to gossip about - “ Nightwind interjected wryly, with a tilt of her head.
“ - so if there is anything you want to know, and you feel awkward about asking one of us, go ahead and ask him,” Snowfire concluded, with a wink.
Darian gave a sigh of relief at that; there were things he wanted to know, but he’d felt uncomfortable about talking to Snowfire about them. It wasn’t that Snowfire wasn’t kind, and it wasn’t as if the things he wanted to know were at all personal, it was just - well - they felt like stupid questions, and he was embarrassed to ask them of Snowfire. I look bad enough, with him having to rescue me and all, he thought. I don’t want him thinking I’m so dumb that I’m going to be nothing but a bother to him.
“If you want to get back to Ayshen right now, just follow the path and only take right-hand turns,” Nightwind added helpfully. “When you’re done, well - by then, the rest of the scouts will have thought over what you’ve already told them, and I suspect someone will come fetch you for another round of questions. And this time, you won’t feel as if they’re talking over your head!”
Darian beamed at her. “Thank you!” he told her, both for the directions to Ayshen’s kitchen, and for understanding how horrid it had been to hear all those people chattering away, being certain they were talking about him, and not being able to understand a word of it. Suddenly eager to find the gossip-hungry hertasi and barrage him with a deluge of questions, he shyly took his leave of both the adults. Feeling as if he had been freed from a leash, he sped off down the path, always taking the right-hand turns, until he found himself at his goal, only a little winded. The hertasi, who was mixing something in a large bowl, looked up at him in some surprise - probably because very few people ever ran anywhere in this tranquil-seeming place.
“Hello, Ayshen!” he said cheerfully, taking great pleasure in the way the hertasi’s eyes widened with surprise at his perfect Tayledras. “Here I am, just like I promised!”
“You and Tyrsell are in a conspiracy over the boy, I know it. The two of you agreed to do something with him,” Snowfire said - trying not to sound too accusing - as soon as the boy had run off. “Just what have you two done to him? And don’t try to play the innocent with me; no child who’s just had his teacher go up in flames before his eyes and his entire village overrun by bloodthirsty barbarians can go running happily off to wash dishes!”
Darian had become cheerful - too cheerful - right after Tyrsell laid in the Tayledras language on his memory. Tyrsell was quite good enough to have meddled further with the boy’s memory without Snowfire noticing. Snowfire had seen the change in the boy’s behavior at once; he lost the haunted look that was in his eyes and started acting like a child on an adventure.
“Tyrsell has put a little ‘forgetfulness loop’ in his mind at my suggestion,” Nightwind told him with her usual forth-rightness. “Whenever he starts to get frightened, anxious or stressed, he will forget what he was getting upset about. He’ll know that his mentor is dead, objectively, but when the memory of that fact starts to make him upset, he’ll get distracted and then temporarily forget the fact. It’s strictly a palliative, and it will go away in a few days, but we can’t have a hysterical boy upsetting Starfall, you, and other key people while you’re deciding what to do about this situation. Furthermore, as an Empath and the only Healer you have, I can’t devote all my time to him.” She looked him straight in the eye, as challenging as the dyheli had been. “I went to Tyrsell this morning before you saw him and suggested it. That was why he was so eager to volunteer his services.”