Duncan sipped red mead, but his pencil was still in his mouth, and he spilled drink on his blueprint and brand-new coat. He cursed and threw napkins to soak up as much of the drink as he could. Then he finished off the tankard – for safety.
Only the bartender noticed Duncan’s accident. He raised a bushy eyebrow and nodded with his chin. Duncan nodded back – yes, he was fine, and sure, why not another. This time he’d keep it further from his sheet.
He groaned and leaned back in his bar stool. The tavern was quiet – a few locals and travelers, all bathed in the yellow light of enchantment-filtered bulbs. The odd monochrome turned his red mead deep orange, his blueprint to a blackprint.
A woman with powerful northern-tattooed arms took the stool beside Duncan. “Red, please, when you’re free,” she said to the bartender. She rolled her ‘r’s – a local.
Duncan preferred to keep to himself, but tonight he was curious. “Why are the lights yellow?” he asked the woman. “Not just in here – outside, too.”
“Bugs aren’t attracted to them,” she said over her shoulder. “Keeps fireflies out of town.”
Duncan nodded as if he understood. ‘Fireflies’ must mean something different here. He turned back to his blueprint and altered one of the measurements for the cylinder.
“What’s that?” the woman asked, leaning toward the sheet.
Duncan suppressed the instinct to cover the unfinished drawings. “Personal project. A pistol that can fire six times before reloading.”
“Can I take a closer look? I’m a smith.”
“That explains the arms,” Duncan said, unfortunately aloud, but luckily she only laughed. “Sure, go ahead.”
He slid the sheet to her and she hunched over it, emphasizing her powerful shoulders. She squinted in the low yellow light, but soon she nodded. “Having trouble with the tolerances for rotation?”
Huh. “Yes, actually. I haven’t had access to a proper machine shop for a while, so I’ve been calculating without prototypes and I’m not -“
“I could make your parts,” she said.
“Didn’t you say you’re a smith, not a machinist?”
She closed one fist and a faint shimmer of red light rippled through the tattoo on her arm. “Right, but I have just enough magic to make it work.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure I can afford to pay you right now, uh…”
“Rejka Arnesdotr,” she said, misinterpreting his hesitation. She smiled, her face narrow for her build. Rejka offered a handshake.
“Duncan MacReady,” he replied.
Rejka’s eyes widened. Her grip was powerful, and she didn’t let go. “Are you… Count MacReady’s son?”
He grimaced and extracted his hand. That damned name, inherited from some hero who died four hundred years ago. Other than not wanting or being able to pay for one, this was the reason he didn’t travel with a retinue. Reluctantly, he nodded and said “Yes.”
“Well then, I think we can work something out. Fireflies have been in decline recently, and the other day I found my son’s familiar dead – drained of magic and half-eaten.”
“You want me to hunt a monster?” Duncan asked.
“In exchange for -“
“No.”
Duncan rolled up his blueprint and stomped to his room, coat flared out behind him like the gathering dark cloud of his mood.
He was assaulted by nightmares of hunting trips with Count MacReady – Da. He’d half-wake, see an unfamiliar shape looming over him, scramble out of bed grabbing for a weapon – to realize the beast was his coat streaked with yellow street light. The third time he woke in a sweat, he ripped the coat rack off the wall.
Duncan banished the night terrors only when he opened his door to find the toilet… and stepped on a sharp-edged piece of metal.
He yelped and hopped back, then bent to retrieve the offending object. Nightmares fled, replaced by astonishment: he held the six-chambered cylinder from his blueprint.
Craftsmanship was precise, the steel’s grain smooth and well-worked, edges neat and unmilled, chambers aligned flawlessly. Duncan suspected that should he measure, he would find the spacing perfect to the second decimal, perhaps even the third.
He supposed he should speak with Rejka again. Perhaps apologize.
The town bathed in warm daylight instead of monochrome yellow. Centuries-old houses and market nestled in young but fast-growing red-leafed white trees. Duncan noted old burn marks around the doors, windows, and roofs of many stone buildings. Something to do with those fireflies, before the yellow lights were put in?
He followed a column of black smoke to find Rejka’s shop. From the outside, it seemed merely a small stone cottage with a late-addition oversized fireplace mortared to the exterior wall.
There was an “open” sign on the door, so Duncan stepped inside. Intricate windchimes doubled as doorbells. The forge and bellows were there, running full blast, with an anvil and quench-trough in front and a single large hammer hanging on the wall. No equipment for casting or molding, no chisels or forms.
Everywhere else there were twisting, shining spirals, writhing forms of frozen, icy metal, so gracefully dynamic they seemed to dance and twist in place – though when Duncan focused, they were solid, immobile.
Rejka appeared from the cellar, wearing a heavy apron and a flipped-up forge mask. “Oh, hello – uh, hello,” she said, catching herself, perhaps to avoid his name after the way he’d reacted last night.
“They’re beautiful,” Duncan said open-mouthed. “Do you make these?”
Rejka shrugged. “It’s more of a hobby. Locals mostly use them as windchimes.”
Duncan looked back at the door “bell” and shook his head. “Their loss. Well, I came to apologize for the way I left. I’m sorry,” he said. Then he pulled the cylinder from his coat pocket. “And I came to ask about this.”
She didn’t acknowledge his apology, instead pointed at the cylinder. “To your specifications, I think.”
“Yes, but – how?” he asked, and waved at the spaces tools weren’t. “You don’t have the equipment for this kind of precision, let alone overnight from one look at my drawings.”
Soft heat-red light washed through Rejka’s tattoos again. “I have a bit of magic that lets me shape metal into the exact form I want. Passed down through family from the ancient north.”
Duncan marveled at her talent and tried to suppress the sense that Rejka was cheating. That her advantage was unfair. His family’s antimagic ability only brought mages down to his level, didn’t help others catch up to skills such as these.
Still. Duncan didn’t know when he’d next have access to this kind of precision since he’d cut himself off from Da’s money.
He turned the perfect cylinder in his hand, traced his finger round the edges of the six chambers. Rejka watched him, clearly waiting. Annoyed as Duncan was that she could read him, he had to ask anyway.
“What was that problem you mentioned last night?”
Rejka eyed Duncan for another moment and eventually said “You’re sweating. Take off that coat and sit down, I’ll get some water. Sorry – I need to draw on the forge and heat the metal before shaping it.”
He followed her to the kitchen a few steps away. Already cooler – small windows let air circulate through the stone walls. Duncan draped his coat over a wooden chair that looked hand-carved, though not by Rejka.
She handed him a glass of slightly-clouded water. Not a concern, just a reminder that modern plumbing didn’t reach far outside the cities. After the heat of the forge, mineralized water was delicious.
Rejka sat across from Duncan, thick arms on the table. “Fireflies have been getting rarer for years,” she began.
He held up a finger. “Sorry, what do you mean by fireflies?”
“You don’t have those?” she asked. He shook his head, so Rejka explained. “Fireflies are insects that make fire. It cooks prey – mostly bugs – and scares most predators.”
No wonder the town avoided attracting them. The fireflies must be the sparks of the old house fires.
“People haven’t been upset to see fewer fireflies,” Rejka continued, “But recently my sister realized some of the lesser spirits have gone missing and -” her voice cracked – “and my son’s familiar was… I don’t know, drained.”
Duncan leaned in and frowned. “Drained?”
She nodded and rubbed her eye. “Familiars are magical creatures. It’s supposed to be very hard to kill them. Permanently, I mean. They always come back, but it’s been too long.”
“Have you moved the body?”
“I had to. I knew Draun – the familiar – he had a fire spirit – would come back, so I didn’t want my son to see the body. Every day Draun didn’t come back, I worried more and more that I made a mistake.”
“I don’t think you made a mistake,” Duncan said as gently as he could, “but it will be difficult to find Draun’s killer after time and movement. I’ll want to see where it happened anyway.” He stopped, cursed at himself, and added “In case I decide to help.” Why’d he say that? He left hunting behind with Da, but one child’s familiar was all it took to set his mind to tracking?
Rejka rubbed her eyes and rose to her feet. “Come with me,” she said, and through a sniffle, showed him the back door.
In a dry breeze, laundry swayed, sized for two different adult women and one child (Rejka, her sister, her son). Mostly-bare earth held partial boot prints: mostly a child’s, but also two adults. Remnants of larger scuffs remained, disturbed and dusted over.
The place where the body was found was a slight depression surrounded by claw gouges and a circle of heavy boot prints (Rejka’s?), later traced by child’s feet and small round objects (a game of marbles?).
Duncan clenched his fists below his jaw. It all came back unbidden, like a scar on the tip of his nose he could try to ignore but never not see. One day he’d live in a modern big city where everything was concrete, asphalt, stone, glass, metal. Where he couldn’t track anything.
Rejka held back, observing in silence. Duncan turned to her. “I do see evidence that an animal was attacked by a larger predator,” he said, “but I can’t identify them after the disturbance of the boot prints.”
“Do you want to see the body?” she asked.
“No. But I will.” As she turned to lead him, Duncan paused and touched her elbow. “To be clear. I’ll help you find out what did this but I don’t want to hunt and kill.”
Rejka stared at Duncan, her lips betraying the slightest motion. In the end she only nodded.
The familiar’s body didn’t reveal much. The poor cat was almost mummified, its fur and skin brittle. Pulled apart by something narrow and blunt, which wouldn’t have taken much strength after the desiccation. No tooth or claw marks.
He spent the day asking around town, wondering how he’d let himself get involved in this mess. Unhelpfully, folk were quite distracted by news that a farmer’s unstealable wagon (enchanted to burn attempted thieves) had been stolen. Duncan tolerated the gossip and ferreted out meager information on local predators of fireflies and spirits.
As far as anyone knew, fireflies had three predators. First, a harmless hand-sized snake that ate firefly eggs and larvae. Second, a small flightless bird said to keep growing forever if well fed – but above a size threshold, fireflies weren’t enough and the birds starved. And third, the continent’s smallest drake species, a lizard in all but fire-resistant lineage. None of the three were big enough to hunt cats and none had increased in population recently.
Spirits were tied to the domain that manifested them and had few predators of their own. Fireflies and the animals that ate them were in decline, thus so were their associated spirits. Not the only spirits that had gone missing, but ecology was complex.
There were other local creatures that would hunt a cat, but none that could drain magic from a familiar, and none that ate fireflies or spirits.
From the information available in town, Duncan saw no connection between the decline of the fireflies, the disappearance of spirits, and the killing of the familiar. The only link was Rejka’s belief in a link. The only path was to observe and track.
Assuming the cat-killer ate fireflies, Duncan had hours to prepare before dusk. Though he intended not to use his bolt-action rifle, Duncan stripped, cleaned, and oiled it. He fought to be deliberate, to override drilled-in muscle memory with conscious intent. Wherever possible, he worked in the wrong order. Tensed his shoulders so he wouldn’t flinch at the thought of Da over his shoulder whispering wrong, try again.
Other preparations were simple, but Duncan aimed to be thorough. He checked and re-secured every strap, belt, and fastener on his boots, belt, coat, and pack. Inventoried his trail rations and refreshed at the market, wrapped to hide the scent. Packed clothing and blankets in case of night chills.
Duncan hiked through red and white woods pocked with thickets of fast-growing thornberries and sturdy (but not woody) shrubs. In the shadow of imminent dusk, he noted the occasional black spot: clearings burned out by recent brushfire, already budding with ferns and thistles emerging from flame-cracked seed pods. Rifle scope in hand, he toed around fallen branches and dried leaves, hiding from memories more than stalking for prey.
The sun crept under the low treeline, plunging Duncan into dusky shade. Through white trunks and red leaves, sunset burned brief but fierce enough for Duncan to watch for smoke. There was none, and soon white-fading-yellow of day sputtered to early blues of nightfall.
Duncan settled in the heavy lower branches of a burnwillow grove, the bark scorched black. Fluffy string-seeds awaited sparks that did not come when fireflies failed to feast on sapsucker ants. Still, Duncan’s best chance of finding fireflies was in the burnwillows with the ants, and he hoped that where there were fireflies, there might be the predator.
Well. ‘Hoped’ was the wrong word.
He waited in the tree, let unfocused eyes pass over the edges of teh clearing. Like when he was young. When Da would whisper to him. Small things to keep him alert – did he notice the hare a moment ago? How many signs of wildlife could he spot without moving? Where to aim to kill most efficiently? Which knives were best for skinning, gutting, carving?
Duncan caught himself and controlled his breathing. He’d been told that proper meditation allowed the thoughts and let them slip away, but Duncan did not want the thoughts at all. He wanted to keep away memories of pained cries and still-pumping hot blood on his hands.
A lone firefly sparked up an ant at the foot of his tree and ignited the burnwillow grove in a whooshing, crackling rush of flame. Duncan was grateful for the distraction.
Flame reached for his boots in the blast wave of erupting tree-fluff. Yet as the string-seed pods began to crack and the burnwillows wept sap, each released a spurt of moisture. Hissing, smoking calm descended on the grove. Flames danced low and quiet on the ground, red-orange-blue, fed yet suppressed by the burnwillows.
Beautiful, Duncan thought, that such trees adapted to the careless, consuming magic of the fireflies. All without any magic of their own. A small sign that magic need not dominate the natural world, nor the people in it.
Still, should the fireflies’ flames grow too hot, the burnwillows’ countermeasures could be overwhelmed. Much the same as how Duncan ignored Da just fine until the hunt overwhelmed him.
Duncan rubbed his nose, massaging out black soot and thoughts. Perhaps he should move on – firefly predators preferred to catch them before they sparked an inferno, not after. But as he began to untuck his legs from the branches, Duncan spied movement.
A bird. The fire-eater. Not much bigger than a dove. Long powerful legs, reddish eyes, wickedly sharp beak. The black-and-rust-coloured bird darted in from the foliage at a quick sprint, then froze. Its head cocked, darted from side to side. Another short sprint, a pause to survey the blackened clearing.
A lone firefly lifted off the roots of the burnwillow, abdomen glowing red-hot. The fire-eater dashed and leapt and snatched the firefly out of the air, sharp and graceful, never unfurling its wings. The bird arced to ground, skidded briefly, and sprinted into the forest.
Duncan could only imagine the chaos of the burnwillow grove when swarms of fireflies ignited the air and fire-eaters leapt like guided rockets seeking their targets. He wondered if the birds crashed into each other.
This fire-eater was too small to attack and kill a cat familiar. Perfectly prey-sized, in fact. Still, Duncan climbed down from the tree and dropped into a puff of ash. May as well track the fire-eater, perhaps to a greater concentration of fireflies to watch for the more dangerous creature.
Kneeling amongst hissing seed pods, Duncan found where the fire-eater landed. Clear twin skid marks in the ash and brush transitioned to light pattering footprints. Three toes, thick for the bird’s size, claw impressions at the tips.
The fire-eater was easy to track in ash but difficult on forest floor in deepening night, away from low flames. He took a hefty red lamp from his pack, shone it only occasionally to preserve his night vision and the battery – and to avoid attracting fireflies or fire-eaters.
The fire-eater was running and its toes dug in well for its size, but at night, with the young tree canopy blocking moonlight and scattered leaves on the forest floor, it was painstaking work to track. Duncan took hours to travel what must have taken only minutes for the quick little bird.
The red glare of the lamp froze as Duncan’s hands went still.
The impression was not perfect, obscured by leaves and sticks and dry soil. Many trackers might have missed it in daylight, let alone after midnight. Duncan knelt and traced the edges of what he believed he saw, not quite touching the ground with his fingertip.
The footprint of a bird. Three-toed and heavy-set, much like the fire-eater’s, but bigger than Duncan’s boot. Each toe print was tipped with pits from talons that must have been at least as long as Duncan’s fingers.
He shut off the red lamp and closed his eyes. How fresh was the track, exactly? A bird of that size, regardless of its intended prey, could cause a lot of damage to a human. He’d neither expected nor prepared for this.
Duncan knelt in the dark, his breath shallow and slow. The air felt still, though the occasional leaf dropped among the slightest sway of branches. He heard nothing more than the trills of crickets and the peeps of tree frogs.
He’d continue in daylight, if he felt up to it at all. Duncan picked his way through brush and saplings, avoiding the burnwillows. He remained alert, employing a technique his Da taught him, all the while hating the necessity.
When Duncan shuffled back to the inn, he allowed the exhaustion of his late travels and the stress of avoiding memories to wash over him all at once.
Duncan slept uncharacteristically late. He groaned as sunlight fell across his eyes. It had been some time since he’d used Da’s technique to ignore exertion, and it showed in the ache of his muscles and joints.
Duncan crawled out of bed in search of breakfast. He searched the market for pastries and fruit, but too late – it was well after noon and the danishes he’d hoped for were already sold. He settled for a nutty loaf of brown flatbread and a jar of thornberry preserve for dipping.
Through mouthfuls of bread, Duncan asked around about local bird species with footprints bigger than a boot. Some of the townsfolk laughed; the rest shook their heads with uncertain smiles.
He avoided Rejka. Didn’t want to report his lack of progress. Instead Duncan skirted the edges of town, searching for evidence of the bird.
Around dusk, after he’d run out of bread and scooped the last of the thornberry with his finger, Duncan found the tracks.
He’d avoided checking Rejka’s cottage, saving it for last in case she spotted him. It was the first place he should have checked, and he felt an idiot for not having made a more thorough inspection when she’d showed him around. Now he’d arrived, and he found the signs immediately.
At the edge of the woods, just beyond the edge of the white-trunked saplings, the bird had waited and watched. It shuffled its feet and repositioned occasionally, but for the most part stood utterly still. Last night, while Duncan was out ranging – it must have been here for hours. The night before, too, and several more beyond. It came back after the familiar was drained.
Duncan stomped to the front door, as loud as he could so as not to startle Rejka. He could not see the red glow of the forge through the windows.
A child answered his knock. Rejka’s son? A raven-haired boy thick-framed for his age, and Duncan only now realizing he’d never asked for the kid’s name.
“Hello,” he said, and followed with “My name is Duncan MacReady.” The boy was a little twitchy, cautious. Haunted, even. Should he pat the boy’s head? No, that would be strange. “I’m looking for Rejka – for your mother. I, um, I’m helping her with a problem.”
“Okay,” said the boy.
After a moment, Duncan cleared his throat and asked “Would you mind telling her I’m here? Please?”
“She’s not here,” the boy said and closed the door.
Hell, Duncan didn’t know how to behave around kids. Was that awkward? Did he scare the boy off? Should he have asked his name, or would that have been strange?
The door swung open and another woman appeared – not Rejka, slimmer and shorter, clearly related. Her jacket was Aulonian military issue – a trainee pilot, by the patches. A clutch of striped feathers jutted from her braids, and from her neck hhung a well-worn necklace of northern ivory. “Hi, sorry, Rejka isn’t here,” said the woman with an apologetic smile. “She’s out looking for spiritwood before the travelers leave the market. I’m her sister. Would you like to come in and wait? Or can I pass on a message when she gets back?”
Right. The sister who could talk to spirits. She had tired eyes and her hair was limp. “Just the message, thanks,” said Duncan. “Tell her a very large bird has been watching the house. It might be related to the -” Duncan’s eyes flicked over the sister’s shoulder to the boy watching quietly inside – “the problem you’ve been having. Best not to go out after dark.”
The sister’s eyes flicked back, but she did not turn to look at the boy. “All right. Thank you.” Her gaze lingered on Duncan’s rifle, slung over his shoulder. “You’re the hunter Rejka told me about?”
Duncan winced. “I, well, I tracked the creature, but I’m not a hunter. Now.”
“I see,” she said, in a low tone that suggested she didn’t. “Well, thank you, I’ll tell Rejka.”
Duncan nodded. He stood there a moment, the sister watching him. “Uh, right,” he said, and he left.
He woke early to pack his bag, hoping to leave before Rejka could try to convince him to hunt the bird. He was sorely tempted to ask her to forge the rest of the pieces of his handgun, but he knew the price and it was more than he would pay.
Duncan strapped his pack shut, latched his rifle to its side, hefted the bundle to his shoulders, and reached for the doorknob.
He was interrupted by a knock and a panting woman’s voice. “M. MacReady? Please, it’s important.”
He opened the door to find Rejka’s sister, sweating, her face pale but eyes dark and sunken. The feathers in her hair were missing. He blinked and began “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name yester-“
“Rejka didn’t come home last night and I’ve been out looking for her and I found her and something’s happened,” the sister blurted breathless.
He sucked in a breath. “What?”
“Same thing that happened to the familiar.”
Felt like his insides were falling. “Is she -“
“She’s alive,” the sister clarified, “But it’s not good.”
“Show me.”
Duncan stood over Rejka abed in a tiny stone room, cramped by the sister, the town’s priest, and the healer. Despite her muscle, Rejka was diminished – her face lined and dehydrated, her tattoos faded and grey.
“She’s not in immediate danger,” said the healer in a reluctant tone, his brow furrowed. “I don’t know what this is, how it will affect her, how long it will last, whether it will get better…”
The sister led Duncan downstairs, past the slumbering forge, and outside to the back of the house. She crossed her arms and stared, her eyes on his rifle.
“I want you to find whatever did this to Rejka,” she said, “And I want you to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
Duncan leaned away. “I don’t -“
“Before it happens to her son,” she said, meeting his eyes.
He turned to face the woods. The young white trees were still and silent in the golden light of dawn. Briliant red leaves, previously vibrant and alive, today reminded Duncan of blood.
“I’ll do it,” he whispered to the trees. “Hunt the thing. Kill it.”
The sister nodded. “Thank you. I – you asked my name earlier. It’s Frej. Frej Arnesdotr.”
All he could do was nod and say “Okay.”
He hated how quickly the hunt came back to him. Once he set his mind to the target, Duncan realized what he’d overlooked – what he should have seen from the beginning.
The fireflies were a clue, but the fireflies themselves weren’t important. Duncan would not be seeking out swarms in groves. What mattered was how they fireflies created fire. Not by natural means such as chemical reactions, high pressure, or friction. They were magical creatures conjuring little pieces of elemental fire.
The fire-eater birds didn’t need the insects – they ate fire magic. The boy’s familiar bore the spirit of a fire elemental. The “stolen” wagon used fire magic to burn thieves. Rejka’s smithing magic harnessed the fire of her forge.
And the story that fire-eater birds kept growing until they outgrew their food source… Well, Duncan now knew what would happen if one found larger sources.
Duncan hauled as many firestarter charms, everburning torches, and other flame-trinkets as he could find in town. He scattered them around the forest as bait, setting a trail toward a burnwillow grove ready for flashover. He dumped the bulk of the trinkets at the center of the grove, then climbed into one of the trees, hunkered down, and waited.
The very moment he transitioned from actively doing to sitting and waiting, Duncan’s Da descended on him. He knew Da wasn’t really there, yet still Duncan looked over his shoulder.
“Unfocus your eyes and be alert for movement,” whispered Da’s voice in Duncan’s mind. “If the wind picks up, move trees. Listen for the difference between branches cracking from their own weight or from something else’s. Search for repetition, but not necessarily patterns.” Duncan clamped his hands over his ears. It didn’t help.
Da whispered only soft, helpful advice. Never said that the fire-eater’s attack on Rejka was Duncan’s fault, wouldn’t have happened if he’d been on the hunt from the start. Didn’t have to say it. Duncan knew. Could hear it in the undertones.
The day crawled past at an agonizing pace. Duncan stayed in his tree, employing Da’s techniques to delay aches and cramps till later. The fire-eater was nocturnal, would not hunt during the day, and yet still Duncan sat and sweat and watched with unfocused eyes and alert ears.
The first firefly appeared as the last sliver of sun disappeared below the smaller saplings. The firefly hugged the trunks of the burnwillows, hissing and sparking, hesitant to produce true flame.
A soft press of leaves, a settling. Duncan did not move. He waited, not for a pattern, but for repetition.
Fully two minutes later, another shift. A minute after that, a third.
In the twilight, a powerful scaled food slid from the wall of white saplings. It paused above the scattering of burnwillow string-seeds, then settled three heavy, hooked flaws into the floor of the clearing. Claws longer than Duncan’s fingers and thrice as thick, more than enough to disembowel him.
The foot was followed by the fire-eater’s head. Duncan estimated the bird to be at least his own height, and yet the beak remained long, narrow, pointed, slightly serrated around the edges. A beak for darting, snatching, holding.
The fire-eater’s red eyes caught the last vestige of sunset and sparkled with the earliest-awakened stars. It stood there, half-out of the white trunks, its gaze fixed on the pile of trinkets Duncan dropped between the burnwillows.
Duncan breathed long and shallow, lips parted. In a motion so slow it took several minutes, Duncan raised his rifle, stock against his shoulder. Da was silent, finally.
The fire-eater was cautious and sly. The time Duncan spent getting into position, the fire-eater spent waiting, watching. Perhaps suspicious of its good fortune, if it could think.
Duncan’s cheek rested against cool metal, one eye peering through the scope. The fire-eater was close and still enough to aim for the head – a clean shot with the least cruelty. He saw each barb of each rusty-black feather.
The fire-eater took slow, steady steps toward the bait, eyed the clearing once more, bent to peck at a bottomless lighter.
Duncan’s finger quivered on the trigger. A desperate want surfaced, a need for the bird to do something. To be vicious, to attack, to be somehow hostile or evil. Knowing the fire-eater killed a familiar and hurt Rejka was somehow not enough. It wasn’t a murderer, only a hungry animal.
He let out his breath, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
“Proud of you, son,” Da whispered in Duncan’s head. He slumped and cried, there in the burnwillow, unable to look at the fire-eater’s settled corpse.
A firefly sparked an ant and the grove hissed and popped with low flame.
Duncan returned to town in the morning, hauling the unburnt fire-eater across his shoulders. Word had got round – they all knew what he’d done, and a cask of red mead was tapped early to celebrate.
Rejka was on crutches, but up. Before the fire-eater took her power, she’d completed the parts for Duncan’s blueprint. She’d found spiritwood for the grip, to make the revolver lighter, intending to gift his design to him regardless of whether he killed the monster. Still intended to, even though the bird ate her power and she would never forge her way again.
Rejka was too tired to hand him the gun herself, so Frej presented it to Duncan. Frej thanked Duncan and swore herself in his debt. She would be a pilot soon and she could speak with spirits. Useful skills for future hunts, she said.
Duncan merely nodded, empty save for the painful echo of Da’s pride.
The town was happy. Rejka and Frej were happy. They all said Duncan saved them from a dangerous monster.
He stared down a tankard of red mead and the empty chambers of the new revolver. Ideas were brewing on how to carry over his innovations to his rifle, to other guns. To help them kill more efficiently.
Maybe Da was right. Maybe Duncan was a hunter after all.
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