__The Bird Bone Flute__part 2
By Blackmare



After a very subdued tea during which no more was said of anything supernatural, the two brothers excused themselves to their guest and went to sing the vespers service in the room of their invalid abbot.

"Why don't you go have a look at the chapel," Amos suggested. "James will come find you there in a bit."

As Giles crossed the inner court of the compound to the small chapel, he heard the first phrases of the office drift into the growing dusk, three voices closely woven, a baritone that would be James supporting two tenors, one of them quite faint and surely the voice of Joseph. The three moved through the plainsong so intimately together that shortly Giles found it difficult to tease them apart and found himself hearing instead one voice, clear and calm and focused entirely on the offering and praise. He was unsurprised when the hair on his neck and arms rose in response to the power of the music, and he knew that he was hearing the source of the stillness in Amos's eyes.

The heavy chapel door resisted his first attempt to open it, and he could see that its iron hinges were so worn that no amount of lubrication would ease them. They would never be replaced now, he reflected, stepping into the dim sanctuary, the last light barely reaching the interior through the slender windows high on the walls. The lines were of the building were very straight and simple, its columns square and unornamented. There was no stained glass, and only a spare iron cross on the solid block of the alter flanked by large candles that scented the air with sweet beeswax and shed the light of three brave flames into the damp, quiet space. The flames did not move in the still air, and as his eyes adjusted to the shadows Giles saw that three flames were just enough to see one's way from the door to the long bench before the alter.

When he arrived there, he looked down at the pale stone floor and saw a peculiar shallow trough, about six inches wide, that ran parallel to the entire length of the plinth. It was deepest where it ran in front of the alter. It took him a moment to realize that it this was where the monks knelt in the service, and that their knees had worn the stone away. How many thousands of hours of prayer would it take to leave such a subtle and profound testament to faith? His breath caught, and suddenly he felt a rush of terrible grief at the loss of such a simple, timeless thing to the rising water.

Giles' vocation had been dropped right onto him like a yoke, heavy, confining and inescapable. But the thousands of small gestures of assent which created the trough before him came from an entirely different kind of vocation, a summons heard and answered in willing hearts, commitments renewed with each office of the day and every mass. And, like rain flowing into a river, each reverent gesture had aligned with the next to shape and smooth this stretch of stone. It was, he realized, a kind of power that he had never truly understood before. In fact, he realized he had never tried to understand it, dismissing it out of hand because no church had ever offered what he wanted. Perhaps, he thought, I should have considered what I needed instead.

He knelt then, carefully placing his knees into that long hollow, and finding the fit perfect for his body if not for his spirit. He felt a new respect for this ancient gesture, and his heart bowed in recognition of all the souls who had come to this place to find peace.

The chapel door's hinges whined behind him, so he rose and turned to find James regarding him. For some time they just looked at one another, then James nodded and said "Thank you," as if he knew the exact nature of Giles' epiphany. Giles nodded back in acknowledgement. James stepped back toward the door and gestured to Giles to follow him out into the young night.

The moon was one night from full, and just visible on the eastern horizon. A few sheets of high, thin clouds would soon soften that stark silver light. Without a word Giles followed James past the barns and empty paddocks, around the fallow garden and down the long slope toward the river. James walked as one who knew every detail of this route and did not need to guide his feet from one step to another. Fortunately, he slowed as they approached the huge rocks by the water and waited for Giles to reach him so that he could indicate the shadowed but distinct toe- and handholds that led up off the path to the flat top of the largest boulder. The monk settled himself on the far side high above the water and dangled his legs over the edge. Giles did the same, moving cautiously and grateful that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the chapel before facing this challenge.

James reached into a pocket in his robe and drew out a narrow wooden box, a little longer than a pencil case. He opened it and Giles smelled herbs -- rosemary in particular, but others as well, spelling herbs. James lifted out a thin drawstring bag, snapped the box shut and slipped it back into his pocket.

"This is what we are asking you to bear away for us," James said very softly, the grief clear in his voice. He was silent for a long moment. "Well, not just this. But who it calls." His soft voice was breaking. "Our beloved one. Our guardian." Although his heart went out to the older man, Giles was increasingly anxious to understand what, or who, James was talking about.

He was just about to ask directly when James slid something slender from the soft bag, tucked the empty bag into his belt, and lifted the item to his lips. Giles realized the object was a flute.

"Made from the wing bone of a bird," the monk said softly, "Something large, like an albatross." James began to play. The notes were so faint that Giles could barely hear them, and his musical training had to scramble to place the music - Dorian mode, very ancient, a seven tone scale. He heard a series of simple phrases repeated, then a variant phrase, then three long, plaintive notes. James looked directly at him to confirm that he was paying close attention, then repeated the song. Giles nodded, affirming that he could remember it. James slipped the flute back into its bag, laid it into the box, closed the box and touched it to his lips before passing it to Giles.

Giles took it, surprised at its weight. He secured it in the capacious inside pocket of his jacket and looked over to see tall, elegant James hunched beside him, desolate. Mindful of the patience that had marked the stone of the chapel, Giles for once did not press for answers. He watched the clouds veil and unveil the stars, listened to the trill of a night insect, and waited.

Cassiopeia has rotated clear of the horizon when James shifted, ran his hands over his face, and finally spoke.

"There were four of them in the beginning, two sons and two daughters, born of one litter. One for evening and one for dawn, one for noon and one for midnight. When they were well grown they separated, one to each direction, to guard the turning world from things that meant it harm." He paused for a long moment. "We believe she is the last of her kind, the only one of the four still walking the earth." He looked over and Giles knew that, although it was too dark to see, the monk was giving him one last appraisal with the eyes of his heart, needing reassurance that what he was surrendering would be honored and safe.

"What is her name?" Giles ventured softly.

"We don't know. Perhaps she never had one," James answered. "Her sire was one of the Powers of the Second Triad."

"The angels who guard order on earth," Giles said and James nodded.

"Her dam was probably the forest itself. We can't know for sure and she has never said."

"She speaks to you?"

"Only once to me," James' voice caught slightly, then he went on, "and that was the first time she's spoken to anyone since the 1830s."

"What language does she use?" Giles asked.

"Latin, mostly. That's what she spoke with me. But the older diaries do mention that she used Anglo-Saxon and Gaelic, and something the author couldn't identify." He looked over at Giles. "She doesn't really speak much even when she can."

"Why doesn't she? Is she bound somehow?"

"Not exactly. She doesn't use words in the form you'll she her in tonight. And she's held that form for, near as we can figure, the past two thousand years. With a few exceptions."

"Such as when she spoke to you."

"Yes." The word was a whisper. Sensitive to the other man's pain, Giles asked gently "Can you tell me when that was?"

"Last September. I was down fishing for our dinner and she came to me from across the river. She told me we would have to leave here, and asked for our help."

"To do what?"

"She has to go west now, further west. That is her place, the direction of evening."

"There isn't a whole lot of dry land west of here," Giles said.

"There is a whole continent west of here," James answered.

"North America?"

"Yes. That's not the word she used, but that is where she needs to go. She needs our help to get across the water."

"I see."

"She'll need an escort. A disguise of some kind, actually."

"Am I going to be part of it, then?" Giles asked. The monk nodded.

"That's what we are hoping," he answered. "I would do it, but I cannot leave with Joseph so ill and Amos so infirm. They'll need me too much during the shift down to Cornwall." Giles thought for a moment.

"Which form will she be in for this journey?"

James didn't answer right away. He was looking due west intently, up at the crest of the hill where it stood black against the stars.

"I don't know. I think probably this one. It might be best that way." He was still staring at the distant ridge, transfixed and expectant. Giles followed his gaze, trying to see what James saw.

Then Giles heard the song from the small flute coming back to them in a deeper, stronger voice, drifting down the flank of the hill, across the river and onto the rocks. The tone was pure and pitch perfect, though there was something about the voice itself that he couldn't quite identify, something about the rising glissando, about the way it ended - then he had it: he was hearing a wolf's song. Having only heard wolves on soundtracks, he was pleasantly surprised by the voice's agility, depth and richness. He looked over to see James leaning out into the night, his head cocked to listen, utterly still.

The high clouds diffusing the moonlight played havoc with Giles' depth perception as he scanned the ridgeline across the river, trying to locate the singer. The last three notes resonated in the valley for several heartbeats, then the night was very quiet.

Giles felt her long before he saw her. He did not know what it was, of course, the faint but firm jolt that quickly sharpened into a intense longing, a sudden focus of his entire awareness at a moving point on the far hillside. It quickly grew so intense that it made him dizzy, then afraid. He fought it, reaching frantically for the strength of his own disciplined center, then gasped aloud when he found the fierce, alien energy was somehow even stronger there. He had never encountered such a pure natural magic. Just before he panicked it released him, and he was back on a rock by a river watching a wolf silvered by moonlight trot down the last slope toward the water.

"You can feel her, can't you," James said very softly. It was not a question. "Then you are the right person."

Giles was so shaken that he could not answer. He was trying to slow his breathing and steady the frantic pace of his heart, but he was afraid to touch his own core, afraid of finding that other power in his most private place.

So he watched the wolf instead, counting her strides out along a gravel spit. A chain of broken boulders lay across the river there. She bounded up to the first one, gathered herself, then launched herself across the water to the next. He would not have thought it possible for her to clear the gap between the two great stones flanking the deepest part of the channel, but she did so in a graceful arc over the moonstruck water. Giles lost sight of her for a moment in the reed beds on this side. He heard James turning beside him, and scrambled up to help the older man rise stiffly. James stepped toward the flat center of the stone, then went down on one knee to greet the wolf as she bounded up over the edge and stood facing them.

There hasn't been a wolf like that in the world since the end of the Ice Age, Giles thought. Her back was nearly at the level of his hips. She was a leggy creature, built for distance running, but he saw the tremendous strength in the size of her neck, shoulders, and jaws.

The wolf made a soft sound in her throat and stepped right up to James, touched his face with her muzzle and then stretched her throat across his shoulder so her cheek lay alongside his. The monk was speaking softly to her in Latin, his words muffled by the thick fur. He had reached up and laid a hand on the side of her neck. It was in no way the gesture of one petting an animal; it was a gesture of great and tender reverence. The man and the wolf touched this way for a long moment, then the wolf pulled back a little and gently licked away the tears that glittered on James' cheeks. Afterwards, she stepped back and held his eyes until he bowed his head in what Giles realized was assent.

Then she looked at Giles.

He dropped to his knees with the wild force of the longing that surged in him again. It was so strong he could not breathe. He knelt in the fickle moonlight, paralyzed by that gaze, held firmly for close examination. He was about to pass out when she released him and he gasped for air, limp and afraid. Afraid of the touch of such effortless, elegant power. Afraid it might never touch him again.

The wolf stepped closer to him, extended her muzzle and began to sniff. He sat absolutely still. She never actually touched him, although she sniffed him thoroughly from the soles of his boots to the crown of his head, walking around him slowly and pausing at certain places: the nape of his neck, where her breath was warm on his skin; his face, pausing at his forehead; then for a several moments over his sternum at the height of his heart. Never had he felt so completely revealed to anyone as he did to that questioning nose. When she reached his left side she stopped over his forearm, exactly where the mark of Eyghon lay under his jacket. She growled then, very low. To Rupert's astonishment shame boiled up through him with a wave of nausea.

The wolf stepped back around in front of him. The longing in him was pure pain now, greater than the turbulence of revulsion, fear, and anger. He looked up, shivering and weak. The uncertain light meant he could not really see her, yet for the first time he felt he could sense her there, a person of such balance and clarity of purpose that the humans around her seemed rickety and tremulous by comparison.

She reached forward and touched him on the forehead with her nose.

Peace.

The relief was so profound he fell sideways onto the cool stone before her, aware only of each calm, deep breath moving him. He needed, just then, to lay quite still. He did not feel weak or empty. He felt something utterly new: he felt It was as if for the first time in his life every impulse, every surge of energy and idea and desire had aligned along a clear single direction. He didn't just feel right, he fell all right. Purpose, intention, course, and ability knit themselves together into a strength he could never have imagined in himself before. It seemed to him that he might be able to do anything; that, in spite of all obstacles, in spite of the great size of the task, he would be able to do whatever needed to be done. He knew this in a way for which there were no words, because language could never hold such certainty. Giles lay there soaking in this, without will or loneliness.

He woke some time later, his head cradled in James' lap and the moon nearly at its zenith. The wolf was gone. The strange new sense of himself was only a memory breaking up into fragments the way dreams do before dissolving completely. The deep peace stayed with him, though. Giles sighed, and, realizing suddenly where he was, hastily gathered himself and sat up to find James watching him.

"I know you're okay," the monk said gently. "That happened to me the first time, too." Giles could only nod. James creaked to his feet, stamping sensation back into this long legs before reaching down to offer the younger man his hand.

Giles took it, rose, and the two of them made their way slowly back up to the abbey in silence. James showed Giles to his small guest room, lit the fire laid there to drive off the chill, and then took himself off to sing the midnight service. Giles stripped and burrowed down under the blankets savoring the delicious inner stillness. Gingerly, not wanting to disturb the gift, he wrapped himself in this peace and slid into sleep.

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