“He said he wanted to do something for the castle.”
“What use is that bird to the castle?”
The words sounded strange coming from Kyprosa. Denny laughed.
“No use at all. That’s what made him such a fool. Because of that fellow’s bird, Jaeim had to build a cage. He couldn’t turn his back on a bird his elder brother had gone to such lengths to capture. And how much has that bird cost since then? How much? How much trouble will this business give Rosia now? Landry said he wanted to give the castle a gift, but what sort of gift was this? That fellow didn’t leave a gift. He took a dump and left.”
“You speak awfully badly of him, considering he was your friend.”
Denny only snorted and did not answer. For a while, the rotten smell drifted past them in silence. Kyprosa spoke.
“I was going to tame that bird.”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“That bird lives for a thousand years. You won’t even live a hundred. You are only a light that flashes for an instant in that bird’s life. How could it possibly become tame to you?”
“How long did you spend with Great-Uncle?”
Denny did not answer. Kyprosa was right. Landry and the wizard Denistrios had spent only three years together. Because of those three years, he was here as Mad Denny. More than thirty years had passed since then. Fir Castle had swallowed him. No, tamed him.
That afternoon, Rosia ordered that the bird be killed the next morning. And she promised the envoy that they would go to war the following spring. The envoy insisted that the entire army must march. If the entire army marched, the lord had to lead it. He smiled at Jaeim, standing beside Rosia, and told him to lead the spearmen himself.
Before dawn, Kyprosa slipped out of bed and went to the bird. It was deep winter, so she put on fur shoes and wrapped herself in a cloak. Ice crunched beneath her feet. When the familiar fishy smell reached her, Kyprosa took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry.”
It still did not move, its head buried where the wing joined the body. Kyprosa stood for a while, watching her breath rise white into the air. Then, just before she moved again, she spoke.
“For not keeping my promise.”
The keeper was asleep, but just as Lieutenant Medus had known, Kyprosa knew how to open the cage door. A person could enter through that door, but the bird could not come out. It had been small when it entered the cage and had grown inside without ever emerging. Naturally, there was no opening through which it could come and go.
When Kyprosa raised both hands high, white fire flickered at her fingertips. With those hands, she gripped the bars, waited a moment, then began to spread them apart. The thick iron bent beneath the girl’s two hands. Bar pushed against bar, and an opening began to form.
A space wide enough for the bird to come out had opened, but it did not stir. Kyprosa released the bars and stepped back.
“I don’t know why you stayed. Was it because of a promise you made to someone? If so, that person is gone now. Even if they were here, they wouldn’t want to keep you here any longer. Thank you. For protecting the castle all this time.”
Kyprosa retreated a few more steps and leaned against the wooden fence. Her breathing was labored.
“You can go now.”
The instant she said it, the bird lifted its head and came out through the opening Kyprosa had made. The girl watched it spread its wings. Countless feathers unfurled, rose to the very top of the sky, and swept the darkness away. Tears fell. She did not know why. Where had all that filth gone? The bird was white, as though it had never once been dirtied. The color of snow.
“Promise me. That you’ll go to the capital of the world. That you’ll fly through the sky there in my place. Please do.”
Without answering, the bird soared. It did not fly with the castle beneath its feet as it had in her dream, but it receded in the most majestic form Kyprosa had ever seen in her life. When even the white speck disappeared, the night sky began to brighten dimly. Kyprosa returned to her room. The snow was frozen, and she left no footprints.
It seemed that every person in the castle had come out before the cage. At the sight of the bent bars, they were all speechless. When someone murmured that their guardian had departed, they all nodded, as though they had forgotten the years when they had dismissed it as nothing but a troublesome burden.
The envoy flew into a rage. But when Rosia asked how she could prevent the legendary snow bird from leaving when its time had come, he could produce no convincing argument. It was difficult to imagine that anyone would release a bird that had attacked people and torn at corpses only the day before. Perhaps the absence of any trace of whoever had released it was also because the bird had swallowed them. Thinking that, the envoy returned to North Mere, leaving only a reminder to keep the promise to march.
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