The Falconer's Daughter

Do you remember me, Pia?

He removes the packet from the inside breast pocket of his leather jacket. It glows whitely against the black satin lining, less so against the crimson exterior. He doesn't open the slip of folded paper, but turns it idly in his hands. Seeing it. Not seeing it.

If you do think of me now and then, I imagine it is not my face that comes to mind. We never saw each other the night we met. He chuckles ruefully at the memory. And your family kept you far removed from me after that.

The blade from a straight-edge razor rests on the coffee table in front of him. He's come to think of this as his coffin table. It has never held a beverage. Only escape. One day it might be the scene of his final escape.

From the night of that party onward, the Falconer cursed me whenever I sidled past him on the rocky path linking your hilltop home to N'hander Falls. He spat on the ground where I dared to walk. "You have no business here, boy. Be gone," he would growl. His wife, your mother, tried to be kind—though she had just as much reason to despise me. She would slow her steps until he was beyond hearing, then whisper: "He doesn't understand." We both knew she was lying. He understood all too well.

He places the packet on the table, and slides the hand mirror closer so he can peer down into the glass.

Do you remember my voice at least? My name? Who I am to you?

The young man gazing up at him is eleven years older than the day he felt the first tug that drew him across the polished wood floor of Falconer House… leading him into the throng of well-heeled guests… steering him around the expensive antique furnishings, the sideboards groaning with food and drink... carrying him through a haze of laughter and celebration to within steps of the great man and his woman.

The Pull. It was supposed to be legend. He and the youth in the mirror share a laugh. If so, it did not behave like one.

I was just a pup at the time, and had no right to be there. But they'd opened the doors to all the adults in the valley that evening. Raul had accepted the invitation, eager as always to be a pebble in the Falconer's shoe. And where my sire went, I went.

Eleven years. The face staring back at him from the glass looks older than that. The eyes are bloodshot, the skin pale and drawn—nearly translucent. If he scratches at the crust of stubble on his chin, will his nails rend the flesh like tissue paper? The mouth is soft and generous, like a boy's, but the eyes are dark as obsidian, flinty as those of a grown man. The hair is unruly, uncombed for the third day straight. He tucks it behind his ears. The wine-red tresses coil around his neck, reaching forward again towards his jaw. He will be eighteen this month, and is less than a year from the start of his quest, though he does not know it.

On the night she pulled him to her, his hair had been short and curly as a cherub's, and carroty red—the color not yet aged to burgundy. His eyes would have been silvery gray back then, as all males of his lineage were born with. It would be years before they darkened to the black he sees in the mirror.

I wonder how I looked to your parents as I crept forward, emerging from behind the swirling skirts of rainbow frocks, slipping past the rich leathers of the men's best-dress trousers. Did your mother feel a chill when she looked down on the waif from the Packlands, dressed in simple homespun, leaving dusty boot prints on her shimmery floors?

If so, she hid it well. She turned to him, a smile lighting her features, one hand reaching for his in a gesture of welcome, the other pressed against her swollen belly concealed beneath a patterned gown.

Violets. The silk was covered with painted violets. Lace at the wrists and neckline. A purple sash was cinched high beneath her breasts. If the townspeople hadn't been whispering amongst themselves for weeks, no one would have guessed her condition.

He, a mere child, had not been let in on the secret. But it hadn't mattered. From the moment he had crossed the threshold, he had known: The Falconer would soon have an heir.

I'd known something else too—something no one else had reason to guess, or even want.

It would not be a lawful succession. The babe was a female.

"My female," he sighed to the man in the mirror.

He stopped turning the folded packet between his fingers and grasped it firmly, peeling back a corner. The powder inside was whiter than the paper, a mound of glistening crystals that would help him forget.

What he had said at the party that night had unleashed such mayhem! Drinks had spilled. Women had cried out, hands clasped to their breasts. Men had reached for weapons, only to find empty pockets and waistbands. No one had thought to bring a knife or pistol to such pleasant festivities.

Lucky for me.

The young man poured the drug onto the mirror, obscuring part of his reflected face. Careful not to cut his fingers, he lifted the razor blade and began his ritual. Chopping. Blending. Gathering the grains together in two thick lines. Parallel snow drifts on an icy pond.

He reached for the wallet in his back pocket to pull out a twenty. Rolling the currency into a tight tube, he conjured up the words that had turned that distant celebration on its ear. Not about the baby's gender; that would become clear without stating it aloud. No, what he had murmured had been a riddle, really; easily mistaken for the nonsense a seven-year-old boy might babble nervously when presented to his betters. Incomprehensible. Ridiculous.

Unless you knew the stories from the Before Days. Unless you knew about the pillar, about the Old Ways of mating, and about the rights of succession passed down from the time of the Scottish highlanders. And who in Falconer House—in all of N'hander Falls—does not?

The one-time boy, now grown, sits bent over the lines of cocaine, the tube halfway between his reflection and oblivion. He repeats the foolishness again: "Olympia Falçone, first and only offspring of Sean Michael Falçone, rightful Falconer of N'Hander Falls, I am Keitha Gennovese, eldest son of Raul Gennovese, fourth male in succession, decended from the Falçone warriors, second in line to assume leadership of the Packlands. I… I… I felt you, Olympia. You called to me and I came."

The Falconer's woman lurched back. The Falconer reached forward to catch her… reached around her waist to protect you. But of course, by then, it was too late. You had heard me and kicked hard against your mother's belly. Once. Twice. And then again—the field of painted violets rippling in excitement.

Your mother could not fail to feel it. Your father as well. Yes, by then it was far too late.

With no weapons to strike down such an impertinent pup, the males in the room surged forward, hands curled like talons.

They would have torn me apart, but for my sire.  

The old man snatched the boy off his feet, tucking him under an arm like a sack of grain. Palm raised outward, it was Raul who held the angry crowd at bay.

"Here? Now? During this happiest of times? And to a boy just barely seven years? I think not."

Your father's expression said clearly that the time, the place, and the age did not matter if he could somehow stop what had been set in motion. He glared at my sire and at me across a lifetime of distrust and fear.

"We'll take our leave, Falconer," Raul continued, his tone soothing as grease on a seeping burn. "We wish you an easy birth, Lady Hannah, and—gods willing—a male successor for you, my cousin."  

He backed toward the door to make our escape, but I squirmed, not wanting to leave. I opened my mouth to object and he clamped a large hand over my face, unconcerned if I could breathe—which I quickly could not.

"Keep him away from us," Sean Falçone bellowed.

"No worries, cousin. The pup will feel my strap if he dares to return."

For the first time in over forty years, the cousins were in agreement.

But I was not. I bit hard into the pad of flesh at the base of my sire's palm and tasted blood. He jerked back from the pain, and I screamed before he could still me with a box to the ear.

"I am Keitha Gennovese. And I claim you, Pia Falçone! You called to me and I claim you. All the beatings in the world will not keep me from you."

I kicked and almost broke free, but my old man was stronger, catching me by the shirt collar and dragging me to the door. "I will come!" I screamed as I was shoved onto the porch and down the steps. "You will join me at the pillar one day, Olympia Falçone. I have claimed you!"

The young man who sat bent over the coffee table stared back in time at his handiwork, his hands knotting into fists. Suddenly he reared up and slashed at the mirror, sending it and its contents flying. The glass broke against the wall, falling in a cascade of tiny diamond shapes to the floor, mingling with the crystals of cocaine.  

"Do you remember me, Pia?" he sobbed. "Do you? Wherever you are, wherever they have hidden you, remember me…

"And call."