The Falcon Princess

Chapter 6

* * *

“Can it do it?” Valhyle muttered to himself, not breaking eye contact with the bird.

Zelly nodded vigorously. I can do it! I can definitely do it!

Sir Luke sighed. “We do have to send it off… but the bird… Um, it doesn’t look so good right now, sir.”

She flapped wildly, her wings stirring a small gust of wind as she desperately attempted to signal that she could do it.

Sir Luke frowned and said, “We might just be killing the bird, sir— Or worse, we might be handing our secret message to the enemy.”

Valhyle stayed silent, looking thoughtful. Zelly started to become anxious because the conversation was heading in a negative direction.

Hey, you! I’m a princess of this country, but I’m telling you that I’ll go! Send me!

As she was screaming inwardly, Valhyle said curtly, “Colonel Luke.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go and bring back the soldier in charge of the bird. He should be fetching water out back.”

When Sir Luke left the barracks, Zelly was left with Valhyle. She glared up at him, and he eyed her right back.

“Why are you angry?” he asked.

Zelly’s eyes crackled. Funny you should ask. Yeah, I’m angry.

She clamped her beak shut in a fury and extended her foot in front of her, revealing her sharp claws. She used a claw to draw a circle in the ground. Valhyle looked suspicious of her as she drew another circle on top of the first one. One scrape, two scrapes, three scrapes—she drew circles over and over. It made the skin above her talon burn a little, but the circle in the dirt was as clear as day.

Valhyle frowned. “Does that mean you can do it?”

He then shook his head. “No, a mere bird communicating her intentions…”

“Skree!”

Zelly let out a short screech and flapped her wings, hovering for a moment, then pointed at the map with her untethered foot. Coming back to the circle, she drew yet another one.

Valhyle’s tired eyes looked conflicted. Sir Luke and the soldier entered the barracks. Valhyle seemed unable to take his eyes off the bird for a moment, but he quickly returned to his stony self and addressed the soldier without looking at him.

“Is there a way to teach this bird how to make a detour?”

Normally, if someone were asked this question, they would question the mental state of the person who asked it. However… The soldier was standing in front of his superior, the man who had the most authority in this defeated nation, so he answered speedily without any concern for his commander’s mental status.

“It won’t be possible, sir.”

Valhyle frowned, signaling his disapproval. “Birds use the shortest route possible and never make a detour unless there is an obstacle in their way.”

He rubbed his forehead and looked at the bird again. The cream-bellied bird with small brown spots was just sitting there, looking like a dumb beast, unlike how it was when he was alone with it. It was sitting directly on top of the circle it had drawn. Then the bird suddenly started grooming itself, as if it could feel him looking at it. Valhyle watched as the bird acted like a normal bird and momentarily wondered if he had been imagining things before. However, he was a logical person. The circumstances were too definite for him to be suspicious of the circle on the ground—which still had to be there—and what he saw earlier.

“Fine. You can go,” he finally said.

The soldier should have left the barracks right then, but he hesitated. Reaching deep into the recesses of his gut to scoop out as much courage as he could, he said, “Commander… Are you… planning on sending this bird… somewhere?”

Valhyle turned his eyes to the soldier, who withered under his glare and quickly added, “I-If you give me a few days, I will train it so it will avoid the green flag…”

“No need,” he replied, looking down at the bird.

It was clear he was going to send the bird somewhere. If he sent it out now, when birds were dying left and right, it probably wouldn’t come back either. This bird was one he’d caught as a chick—he’d fed it and raised it until now. Thinking this might be their last meeting made him feel strangely emotional.

Valhyle noticed the sympathy on the soldier’s face and immediately narrowed his eyes.

“Didn’t you say you had to go and see the injured bird?”

The soldier read that glare as a message to scram.

“Yes, sir. I-I’ll be going then, sir.”

The soldier ended up leaving the bird behind, but he sighed deeply as soon as he left the barracks. He was going to have to rub out one of the birds on the board they were using to mark their population. One was about to die, so he should go and try to save another.

The soldier hurried back to the barracks where the birds were kept.

* * *

Zelly was laughing heartily to herself and beamed with pride.

I knew it was a good choice to act like a human.

She had watched the situation unfold for a few days and decided only Valhyle understood the humanoid antics she used to get her points across. The other humans just looked at her and thought she was acting crazy, like a bird on drugs. But she was thankful there was at least one person who understood her, which meant…

Zelly stopped grooming herself and smirked. That meant the one who would be making the decision was this man. She was fully prepared to do whatever crazy nonsense she had to in front of Valhyle if it would help the Roymund Kingdom in any way at all.

After she came back from washing away some of the clumps of mud from her feathers, she saw that Sir Luke was gone. When she flew into the barracks, Valhyle walked toward her. He detached the cord from the stake, wrapped it around his hand several times, and spoke while looking doubtful.

“I’ll tell you where you need to go.”

Yes! Zelly was elated. She quickly flew up and landed on Valhyle’s desk where the map was, then looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. His brow furrowed ever so slightly, but he pulled a map with rough edges toward him on the desk.

“I don’t know if you know this…”

He pointed at a yellow pebble laying on the map and drew a line to a yellow dot.

“If you go straight, you’ll die.”

He drew a V shape with his finger.

“So, fly out this way and angle in to fly the rest of the way.”

Zelly pecked at the place he’d indicated to convey her understanding.

“When you see the yellow flag, go to the barracks in the middle of the base and flap your wings. If they tie something to you, you have to fly back in the same V shape but in the opposite direction.”

Yeah, yeah. So he was saying she should fly in a diamond shape, counterclockwise. Zelly shook her beak up and down rapidly.

“Did you really understand?” he asked, watching her nod.

Zelly was about to get very annoyed at the constant suspicion, but she generously let it go and drew another circle on his wooden desk.

This has to be enough.

Zelly defiantly lifted her chin while Valhyle stared at the faint circle in the wood for a few moments. He then went to a corner of the barracks and brought back a small piece of paper and a piece of string. It was the secret message. Zelly gulped as Valhyle took her leg and tied the note tightly to it.

Untethering her from the cord, he said coldly, “There will be no useful messenger birds left if we end up losing you too.”

Zelly was now free, but she didn’t fly away. She waited for him to continue. She was finally going on a mission, but for some odd reason, she had a bad feeling she might die out there.

Valhyle picked Zelly up by her body and carried her out of the barracks, muttering, “You must come back alive.”

Alive. As Zelly focused on that word, something caught in her throat. That was something she’d never heard when she was a human. But it didn’t matter if she was a bird now—for the first time in her life, someone had told her to stay alive.

She sent that message directly to her human body.

You must be alive.

Valhyle tossed Zelly up into the air, and she quickly pumped her wings and flew up high, circling his head a few times.

“Go,” he shouted.

Then, Zelly turned westward and shot through the sky. Very soon, her surroundings changed. She could almost understand why humans wished for birds’ wings, as they lived their lives chained to the ground.

Zelly remembered where she had to go: the Ropeche base. In the past, she wouldn’t even look in Ropeche’s direction. But now, that base was the place she most wanted to be.

She clenched her beak with determination. When she breathed in, she could feel more oxygen being pumped into her blood as a bird than when she was a human. At the same time, the weight of the secret on her ankle felt extremely heavy as she soared through the air.

Valhyle stared up at the bird, watching it grow smaller and smaller until it was a dot in the sky. Only when it disappeared altogether did he turn away, clenching his fist. He rubbed his forehead.

Please. Let this secret be delivered successfully. And… wherever, whoever, even just one of them…

“Please be alive,” he muttered.

* * *

Zelly fell into thought as she flew past the endless eastern plains and forests of the Roymund Kingdom.

Up until now, all she’d done was work hard to figure out if her human body was alive and if any of her royal siblings were alive. But as she was flying for her country for the first time in her life, she thought about her eldest sister—the first princess, Linbethy.

Linbethy was the first of the eleven siblings. She was also the only one who had the support of all three factions: the pro-queen, pro-noble, and pro-king factions. It was planned for their father to step down from the throne and for her to be crowned queen after the war.

Linbethy has to be alive.

Zelly drew her eldest sister’s face in her head. She was generous and magnanimous. Her sister had to be alive—it would make reforming the country so much easier. Plus… The three armies—Ropeche, Rohaneim, and Roymon—would probably be gathered under one name.

Zelly drew the circle from the Roymund Kingdom’s flag in her head. It was yellow, dyed several times with yellow dye found in the central part of the kingdom to make it a deep, rich hue. In the center of the flag was a circle filled in with blue, light green, and dark brown to symbolize the three areas of the Roymund Kingdom: Central, East, and West. It also symbolized the three armies that protected each area.

Her oldest sister had gained her power from Ropeche, the pro-noble faction that guarded the western area. As the child of a royal consort, her bloodline was perfect, which the nobles thought highly of. She was a girl, so the pro-queen faction approved. And as they joined the Tchuluzi War, the pro-king faction also supported her.

As for Zelly, she had lived in fear of her eldest sister for her entire life. Only three of the siblings were children of royal consorts—Linbethy, the eldest, Demyra, the second eldest, and Zelly, the eighth. Her sisters were the daughters of the first royal consort, and she was the daughter of the second. Neither consort was alive now, but they left behind their noble bloodlines to their children, and the three daughters were welcomed by the pro-noble and pro-queen factions more enthusiastically than their other siblings.

But Zelly didn’t make any allies or connections with the nobles—she just wanted to survive.