Thursday 14 February 2013

The uninvited guest (part 20)

As she entered the kitchen, it was clear that Leo had been cooking. A pan lay on the hob, inside of which was the sheen of a fine smearing of oil, a jug of maple syrup stood on the counter and a large plate, knife and fork lying side by side with a crumpled serviette, was in front of Roy.

"Ah, Chani," said Roy. "I couldn't leave without saying goodbye. Rory and the pups are doing fine. I am pleased to have met you and hope that the next time that we meet, it may be, well, different to our first meeting. 'Bye, Leo. I shall pop in one evening next week for a check up but in the meantime, any problems, just call; I'll be straight round. Oh, and one of those puppies is mine! A bitch if you please, more likely to inherit her mother's traits which you know I cannot resist! How I long for my very own red, Irish eegit! While I think of it, I didn't rewind your creance; you know that I'm rubbish at it."

Roy left by the more conventional route of the front door and, as it slammed shut, Leo spoke.

"You look and smell nice, find the 'Sanctuary' did you? Breakfast? Then sit down!"

Chani sat down as Leo took a plate of still warm pancakes out of the oven and two empty plates. Taking some cutlery out of a drawer, he laid the empty plates and a knife and fork on either side of the counter with the plate of pancakes between."

"Here's some that I made earlier," he joked in the manner of every TV chef who has ever existed. "Tuck in, there's maple syrup here or I can get you fresh lemons and brown sugar, if you'd prefer."

"Shrove Tuesday," she replied. "In January? No, the syrup will be fine. I have not had it in such a long time."

They ate once again in almost complete silence but, as Leo brought more espresso, the silence was broken with a question.

"Have you got time, before you head off home, to perhaps watch Eegit fly?" He asked. "I planned to fly her today after Fjorgyn, before the little, you know, and most people find it pleasurable to watch; you don't often see stooping falcons in the wild and while Eegit is not as good as a peregrine or a lanner, still it might amuse, pass a pleasant ten minutes."

"Yes, please!"

After donning their hats and coats, they both walked down to Eegit's weathering, stopping along the way to collect Leo's hawking bag and a lure, a weighted piece of old rabbit skin attached to a couple of metres of stout nylon twine, to which he had lashed one of Eegit's daily allocation of day-old chicks. They walked out, not to the Tea Party lawn but along a gravel path in the opposite direction that led through his vegetable garden. After about a hundred yards or so he stopped and told her that she must wait there while he went further on; if there were more than one person standing where the lure swinger stood, it made the swinging far more difficult, if not impossible. He walked about another twenty or thirty yards to where a small square of paving stones lay. He took off Eegit's leash and stood still, with his left arm raised, turned so that the falcon felt the wind against her face. After a couple of minutes in that position, she ruffled her feathers and then took off with a bound, beating her wings rapidly in great sweeps as she sought to gain height.

He rummaged in his bag and brought out the lure, while the falcon climbed in wide circles centred on Leo's position. He started to swing the lure, in great arcs parallel with his upright body. Chani was transfixed by the effortless rhythm of his action; he seemed as if he would be able to keep this up all through the day, if necessary. It took her a few moments to locate the bird in the sky again but, as she did so, she saw the falcon flip over and, beating her wings strongly, dived straight for Leo and the lure. As the bird approached at what seemed to her to be breakneck speed, Leo stopped swinging and presented an almost stationary lure to the bird away to his right. Even at this distance, she was amazed that she could see the falcon's legs coming forward from their position beneath the tail as Eegit attempted to grab the lure in her talons; she could hardly believe how long those legs actually were. At the very last moment, Leo whipped the lure from her path and she flew on past, beating her wings once more in further attempts to gain the height necessary for a another strike. Chani was stunned. When he had asked her to come and watch the flight, she could scarcely imagine that it would be as exciting as this was proving to be.

Leo had resumed his swinging; six more times, the bird tried to catch the lure with, what to Chani, seemed an impossible speed and each time the lure was withdrawn at the last second. As the falcon circled, climbing steadily, for the eighth time, she suddenly changed direction and flew fast along a tangential path to her original gyre, wings beating faster and now with more urgency.

"Bollocks!" Leo shouted, so that his voice would carry to her. "She's always doing this. Why do all of my animals have a bloody  obsession with pigeons."

As she followed the falcon's flight away from them, she could discern, far into the distance, another bird; the pigeon? And then, as she tracked the bird's flight, straining her eyes at the rapidly diminishing dot in the sky, she heard it. The whistle, long and insistent, like a banshee's shriek, but calling to her. Mere seconds later, it came again across the flat earth surrounding her. Again and again.  A call to arms? The Piper's plaintive melody? A call to home. The more it was repeated, the more insistent it became, the greater her need to follow the sound of its call. She was still barely managing to follow Eegit's flight when, suddenly, the falcon started to veer away from its pursuit of the pigeon and turned, with the same urgent wingbeat, and was flying towards Leo and his lure once more. In a flash of unexpected insight, she suddenly began to understood the whistling, the whistle that had so troubled her earlier, what the whistling might mean. She would undoubtedly divine further meaning and a fuller understanding later, she was sure; 'later, in the alone of my time', she thought.

Looking back towards Leo, she could see that the lure was still swinging but Leo had moved his left hand away from the cord, which he usually had a hold on with both hands in order to vary its length as he swung, and a thumb and forefinger were now in his mouth. As the bird approached, at a seemingly impossibly low level this time, so low that she could hear the sound of the wings brushing the stalks of the onions which were as grass along Eehit's flight path, he suddenly flew the lure high into the air, shouting 'Ho!'. The falcon, climbed almost vertically and grabbed the lure firmly with outstretched legs and talons. Once the lure had been caught, she flew in a more leisurely fashion, in descending circles, finally settling on the ground some fifteen yards away from Leo.

It took Leo ten minutes of cautious maneuvering, crouching low, before Eegit finally, once more, stood on his fist and he was able to stride back to where Chani stood.

"Enjoy that?" He enquired, grinning, as he stood before her.

"I think in more ways than you can possibly imagine," she replied. "I don't know what makes you call her Eegit, I thought she was truly magnificent. She's so fast. How on earth do you pull the lure away so that she doesn't catch it? Every time, I thought she was going to get it and yet..."

"Same way you get to the Albert Hall," he said. She looked puzzled. "Practice, practice and yet more practice! Would you like to carry her back?"

"Can I? Really?"

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