Merlin's Booke Read Online Free PDF

his eyes. The calling, not yippy like the foxes’ or long like the howling fall of the wolves’, teased into his dream, and that changed the dream so abruptly, he woke. The calling came closer.
    Carefully he unwound himself from the tree crotch and crawled out along a thick branch that overlooked the clearing. Something flapped overhead and he craned his neck. It was a hunting bird; he could see the creamy breast. Her tail was banded with white and brown alternating. Her fierce beak and talons flashed by. She caught an updraft and landed near the top of a tall beech tree.
    No sooner had the falcon settled than the calling began again, seeming to invade the clearing.
    The boy looked down. On the edge of the wood stood a man, rather like the one with the sword in his dream. He was large, with wide shoulders and hair that covered his face. There was a thin halo of hair around his head. When he walked beneath the branch where the boy lay, the boy could see a round pink area on the top of the man’s head that looked like a moon, a spotty pink moon. The boy put a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing aloud.
    The man did not notice the boy. His eyes were on the beech and the bird near its crown. He stood respectfully away from the tree and swung a weighted string over his head. But the bird, though it watched him carefully, did not move.
    The boy wondered at them both.
    The man and the bird eyed one another for the rest of the short afternoon. Occasionally the bird would flutter her wings, as if testing them. Occasionally her head swiveled one way, then the other. But she made no move to leave the beech. The man seemed likewise content to stay. Except for making more circles around his head with the string, he remained motionless, though every now and again he made a chucking sound with his tongue. He talked continuously to the bird, calling her names like “Hinny” and “Love” and “Sweet Nell” and “Bitch,” all in that same soft voice.
    The boy wondered if the man would attempt to climb the tree after the bird, but he hoped that would not happen. The bird might leave; the tree, quite thin at the top, might break. The boy rather liked the look of the bird: her fierce, sharp independence, the way she stared at the man and then away. And the man’s voice was comforting. He hoped they would both stay. At least for a while.
    When night came, they each slept where they were: the man right out in the clearing, his hands around his knees; the hawk high up in her tree. The boy edged back down the branch so quietly none of the few remaining leaves slipped off, and nestled into the snug crotch again. He kept his hands warm between his thighs and when he moved just a little, a pleasant feeling went through him. He smiled as he slept though he did not dream.
    In the morning the boy woke first, even before the bird, because he willed himself to. He watched as first the falcon shook herself into awareness, then the man below stretched and stood. The man was about to swing the lure above his head again when the falcon pumped her wings and took off from the tree at a small brown lark, chasing it until they were both almost out of sight.
    The boy made slits of his eyes so he could watch, as first one then the other took advantage of the currents of air. It almost seemed, he thought, as if the lark were sometimes chasing the hawk. Seesawing back and forth, the birds flew on, circled suddenly, and headed back toward the clearing. The boy’s hands in fists were hard against his chest as he watched, cheering first for the little bird, then for the larger.
    Suddenly the lark swooped downward and the falcon hovered for a moment. Only a moment. Then with one long, perilous, vertical stoop, it fell upon the lark and knocked it so hard the little bird tumbled over and over and over till it hit the ground not fifty feet from the man. The falcon, never looking away from the dying bird, followed it to