After a while, Kyprosa tapped the bars impatiently. The bird still did not stir so much as a feather. Only the down on its neck, so mottled that its original color was hard to distinguish, occasionally fluttered in the wind.
The bird had been here since before Kyprosa was born. People said it was the snow bird of legend, or the bird that summoned snow. The snow bird lived for over a thousand years. When it descended from above the clouds and made a single circle through the sky, snow fell upon the earth. Or so it was said. They also said that it sat with folded wings on the peaks of mountains covered in eternal snow, then suddenly took flight when the air of corruption rose from the villages below. Whenever that happened, an avalanche was sure to follow. So it was called the bird of avalanches, or even the avalanche itself. Its cry was said to be identical to the roar of a charging avalanche. Because that was the sound snow made as it came rushing down, carrying an avalanche with it.
When Kyprosa’s father was younger than Kyprosa was now, the snow bird had still been a creature found only in legends, or in the stories of people who insisted that they had actually seen one in the snow on a day of heavy snowfall. Until Kyprosa’s great-uncle and a friend of his really captured it.
Not only the people of Fir Castle but those from the neighboring castles came crowding in to see the snow bird. The captured bird was a chick, only a little taller than a human man and covered in pure white down. But when it raised its head, flashed its emerald eyes, and gave its first cry, everyone trembled and knew the legend was true. For anyone born and raised in the land of the towering mountains called the Giant’s Body, it was exactly the most terrifying sound of all: an avalanche coming down.
The lord of the castle at the time was Kyprosa’s grandfather, Jaeim Daeior. He declared that the legendary bird his elder brother had captured would become a guardian to protect Fir Castle from natural disasters and enemy invasions. Then he ordered a cage built for the snow bird. It was to be large enough for the bird to fly freely inside, with plenty of room even when it grew bigger. Paying no heed to the whispers that it was madness to build a birdcage from the iron left over after making hundreds of spearheads, he had it completed. That cage was the prison that stood here now. Perhaps human eyes had been too presumptuous to look several decades into the future. In the years that passed, Jaeim Daeior, who had become lord, died. So did Landry Daeior, who had captured the bird. At first, a net had been spread over the cage to keep the snow bird from escaping through the gaps between its bars. Now it could not even spread its wings fully inside.
When Kyprosa first saw the snow bird, the creature once regarded as a living incarnation of legend, before which countless people had stared and secretly made wishes, was a sadly wretched thing. After the bird suddenly grew large, no one could go inside to clean, and the cage had been left for decades with rotting straw, food, and excrement mingled together. The bird trapped inside could hardly look any different. Its body, which ought to have been dazzlingly white, was mottled with the color of mold, and its long neck was always bent into a curve or thrust into the base of a wing. Its head, unlike any other bird’s and therefore all the more imposing, with jewel-like scales and five horns, slept like a dragon carved into a wall.
“Someday, that day will come.”
Kyprosa’s murmur was the exact opposite of what most people in the castle hoped. They did not want the bird to become free, less because they treasured it than because they feared it. Having been kept in such a state for decades, would it not certainly harm people if it escaped? Some thought it would be safer if it died outright, but they could not bring themselves to say so about the bird a former lord had proclaimed their guardian. Instead, they watched their words and complained about how much meat it ate or how the cage smelled.
“Hey, Rosa. Talking to the bird again?”
It was Jen, a veteran hunter. Arrowbolt perched on his thick hunting glove. Kyprosa had thought there would be no one to disturb her at dawn, but it seemed someone from the spearmen was going hawking early. Jen had been the lord’s hunter since before Kyprosa was born. They usually chatted, but at a moment like this he was unwelcome. Jen stood beside Kyprosa and looked up at the bird.
“It’s asleep.”
It was a ridiculous observation. If that pose meant it was sleeping, the bird would have to sleep all day long. Anyone uninterested probably assumed it never even changed position during the day. But Kyprosa knew the difference between when the bird was truly sleeping and when it was simply still.
“Must like it in there, sleeping so comfortably.”
She could tell he was trying to tease her, but she could not help glaring at Jen. He glanced at her fierce expression and yawned.
“Doesn’t it? Otherwise, it could break through and fly away. Look at those teeth. They could bite clean through a few bars. But it just stays there.”
“No living thing would like a place like that.”
“Why not? Cockroaches and rats would.”
“Are you saying the snow bird is the same as cockroaches and rats?”
“Of course not, by nature. But it’s lived there since it was a chick. It doesn’t know another world. If it’s that strong, why wouldn’t it try breaking the bars? It probably tried when it was little, failed, and gave up before it needed to. Stupid thing. It doesn’t even know how big it’s grown.”
She clenched her fists, and veins rose on her thin wrists. Arrowbolt, perched on Jen’s arm, was looking at Kyprosa with its yellow eyes. That one’s the stupid fool, she thought. It’s forgotten all about the joy of flying through the sky. If hunting hawks that fly through the air and snatch their prey, then return to their master’s arm to eat, look ridiculous, that one is far worse.
Kyprosa shook her head. That bird was no paltry hunting hawk. It was a mysterious bird that summoned avalanches. If the snow bird chose, it could bury the likes of you, no, this entire castle, beneath an avalanche. Including Kyprosa herself, of course.
That made it all the more fascinating. When the day came for the cage to collapse, the bird would cover all those miserable lives dragging on because they could not die, and wipe them clean away. Hundreds of years of history would be buried, leaving only pure, unblemished snow whirling through the air. Ah, if only that would happen. Right now.
“Get lost.”
At Kyprosa’s sharp dismissal, Jen shrugged, turned, and walked off. The sun was rising beyond his back. It was time to return to her room. If the person sent to collect her for worship reported to Grandmother that her room was empty, she would begin the day with a beating.
Before she left, Kyprosa looked back at the bird. It was exactly as it had been before, not even lifting an eyelid. She spoke to it.
“I’ll tame you. Then we’ll go together to the shining capital. Wait. Just wait.”
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