The Snow Falcon

ISBN 0-312-20166-4

“The falcon shifted uneasily, sensing danger. From her perch high up in the rocky cliffs she could see a figure far below crossing open snow. He was a mile away, a solitary blemish against a vast white landscape, but the falcon’s keen eyesight enabled her to clearly distinguish his features. She could see the rifle slung over his shoulder and the deep tracks he’d made leading back toward the trees. She had no natural predators. Only man threatened her.”

The magnificent gyrfalcon, soaring in the air over rocky cliffs, is winged by a hunter and falls to earth wounded. Rescued and taken to a nearby farmhouse, the bird will irrevocably change the lives of her savior, Michael Somers, and the woman and child Somers comes to love.

Somers has returned after many years to his hometown of Little River Bend to unlock the secrets from his own past that almost drove him to destroy his family in one night of irrational violence. Released from treatment but shunned by his neighbors, Somers is determined to heal the bird, whom he has named Cully, and release her to freedom. Watching from afar as Somers coaxes the bird to fly is a deeply troubled little boy, Jamie Baker, Jamie has lost the power of speech after witnessing his father’s death in a hunting accident, and his mother, Susan, yearns to free her child from his self-made prison. Slowly, a tender emotional bond

forms between the desperately lonely child, his mother, and the strange man who seems able to heal. But soon they find themselves in terrible danger as the hunter who tried to kill Cully stalks her again—and plans to wreak vengeance on Somers.

This is an extraordinarily moving novel

Harrison was born and educated in England and has traveled and worked in a variety of occupations all over the world. He now lives in New Zealand with his wife and son and writes full time. The Snow Falcon is his first novel. cover design by Steve Snider and lettering by David Gatti Jacket photograph by Š Shogoro/Photonica

THE SNOW FALCON. Copyright Š 1999 by Stuart Harrison, All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced

in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Design by Abby Kagan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in~Publication Data Harrison, Stuart.

The snow falcon / by Stuart Harrison.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-20166-4

1. Gyrfalcon—Fiction. I. Title. PR9639.3.H324S66 1999 82—dc21 98-44017

CIP

First Edition; February 1999 10 987654)21

1

THE FALCON SHIFTED UNEASILY, SENSING DANGER. From her perch high up in the rocky cliffs she could see a figure far below crossing open snow. He was a mile away, a solitary blemish against a vast white landscape, but the falcon’s keen eyesight enabled her to clearly distinguish his features. She could see the rifle slung over his shoulder and the deep tracks he’d made leading back toward the trees. Every now and then the man stopped and turned his face to the sky as if searching for something. He shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun and looked all around; then, after a moment, he walked on. The falcon was wary of him, though she didn’t know why. She’d seen him several times over the last few days, and her instinct had warned her to keep her distance.

A week ago, storms had ravaged the area, bringing high winds and snow from the north. For days the winds had blown the falcon south from the icebound land she knew as home. For much of the time she had sheltered as gales whipped up blizzards and turned her world into a maelstrom of swirling white. In the end, hunger had driven her to the air and she’d been carried in the path of the storm until the worst had abated. Now she found herself in an unfamiliar landscape. The mountains rose in the distance, blue gray against the sky; the valleys beneath her were forest-clad, dark green. High up above the tree line there were only rocky cliffs and snow.

In some of the valleys there were rivers, and lakes of deep aqua. Food was plentiful. Two days ago she had killed a ptarmigan, stooping down from above as it flew across open ground, but now she was

hungry again. Earlier, she had seen a hare feeding on a patch of grass that lay in the cover of a rock where the snow lay thin on the ground, but the man had been close by and she had let the opportunity pass. A breeze blew across the cliff and the falcon let her wings hang open, the flow of air teasing her feathers. She was dusky cream in coloring, with chocolate markings across her breast and thighs. Her wing primaries grew darker toward their ends, where the cream became light gray. At twenty-six inches in length, with a wingspan of more than three feet, she was of a race of falcon that is the largest and swiftest on earth. She had no natural predators. Only man threatened her.

THREE QUARTERS OF a mile away, Ellis paused for breath.

“Goddamn,” he said hoarsely. Phlegm rattled in his throat and he spat to the ground. He was tired from the long climb and warm beneath his parka. With each step he sank to midshin, crunching the surface of the snow. It was heavy going, and his head ached.

But for the lure of the money, he would still have been home in bed. He shifted the strap of his rifle and looked to the sky. There was nothing there but the odd drifting cloud and the glare of bright sun. The light bounced off the snow and made him squint. It felt like needles being shoved through his eyes into the back of his head. Ahead, dark rocks rose in a sheer cliff four hundred feet high. He wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his brow and rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot from all the drinking he’d done the night before. He was regretting that now. He figured he’d spent more than sixty bucks buying rounds and drinking Wild Turkey chasers. Red Parker and Ted Hanson had asked how come he was so damn generous all of a sudden, but he hadn’t told them, except to say he was about to come into some money. They’d started buying him drinks after that, probably hoping they could share in his good fortune, but he was too smart for that.

“Come on, Ellis, you got some rich old lady we don’t know about, gone and left you all her money?” Red had asked.

“Well, maybe I have,” he’d answered, “but I ain’t saying one way or the other.”

Hanson had snickered. “You damn stud.”

Ellis frowned. Maybe he’d been a little hasty, talking about the

money. Could be he’d exaggerated things a little, too, when he’d seen they doubted him, let them think he was going to get his hands on a fortune. Maybe there wasn’t going to be any damn money at all, he thought sourly, and then he was going to look stupid. He’d been walking now for two hours, and there was no sign of the falcon. His head was hurting and his mouth felt like he’d been chewing sand. He knelt down and took off a glove, then scooped snow into his mouth with his bare hand. It tasted slightly bitter but it quenched his thirst. He took off his cap and rubbed a little snow over the stubble on his scalp. It helped to ease the pain. He blew on his hand before he put his glove back on, then beat his arms against his sides. Once he stopped walking, it became cold real fast.

It could be the falcon was long gone, or even that he’d been wrong about its being an arctic gyr. Uncertainty worsened his mood. The idea of losing out on an easy thousand bucks was bad enough; that he might be wasting his time up here when he was suffering from a king-size hangover just made it worse. He thought about just turning around in his tracks and heading back to his truck, and for about two seconds it was an appealing notion. Then he thought about the money again and decided he’d give it a while longer.

It occurred to Ellis that for all the trouble he was going to, it was still Tusker who was getting the better deal. They’d agreed on a thousand for the gyr, but now that Ellis thought about it, Tusker had rolled over with hardly a murmur, which Ellis realized probably meant he was getting stuck with the short end of the stick.

He’d seen the falcon for the first time three days ago, early in the morning, when he’d stopped to take a leak. At first he’d thought it was a peregrine; then he’d decided it was too big. This had made him curious. He knew from the shape of the wings that it wasn’t a hawk or an eagle. He’d watched it ride a thermal over the trees; then it had turned and dropped, flying low, and he’d caught a glimpse of its coloring, a pale flash. He would have shot it right then, but his rifle was back in the truck and there hadn’t been time to fetch it. Since then he’d never been as close.

Later he’d had to deliver an order of lumber for a guy who was building an extension on his house over toward Williams Lake. The guy had really screwed him on the price, but what the fuck, business was lousy and any kind of sale was better than no sale at all. He’d made up for it anyway by putting some second-rate crap in among

a

the load, which the guy wasn’t going to find until it was too late. Afterward he’d driven on to town and stopped in at the library to see if he could find something that looked like the bird he’d seen. As soon as he’d found the picture of a gyr falcon, he recognized it. He didn’t know how it had come to be so far south, since the book said they were generally found way farther north, but when he’d read that the species was rare, especially one so light colored as this, he’d had a feeling Tusker might be interested.

Tusker had been working on a grizzly when Ellis walked in the door. It was a female, posed in an aggressive stance, up on its hind legs, menacing teeth bared, huge and frightening. In the dim light of Tusker’s workshop it had looked almost alive, and Ellis had involuntarily hesitated. Tusker had glanced toward him, his sharp black eyes flashing with amusement.

“Looks pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess so,” Ellis had said. He didn’t like to go to Tusker’s place; the sharp smell of the chemicals Tusker used in his work made him feel sick to his stomach - that, and the underlying stench of death that always clung to his clothes long after he’d left. He’d looked around, feigning a casual air, not wanting Tusker to get the better of him.

“What can I do for you?” Tusker had said, straightening up and wiping his hands on a grimy rag.

“I might have something for you.”

“Business ain’t so good right now.”

Ellis had looked away, a quick bitter anger rising. Tusker always said business wasn’t so good, just to establish ground rules so nobody would think he was going to pay much for anything a person might be hoping to sell. The showroom out front was filled with Tusker’s work. Raccoons and beavers; foxes slinking through grass; salmon, even, mounted and fixed with a plaque all ready to be inscribed. Tusker did a good trade in selling trophies to fishermen who went home and bragged about the fight their fish had put up before they’d finally hauled it in. Lotsa guys like that, wanted something to show for the hours they’d spent standing in freezing water. Tusker said some of them even got so they almost believed the stories they made up in their heads. Ellis had to admit that Tusker was good at what he did, though it was hard to imagine a more unpleasant way to make a living. Surrounded by dead things all day, ripping out their

guts and flesh, which all went into a stinking drum out back that attracted swarms of fat blackflies when the spring weather came. Ellis stared at a fox that stared right back at him, its eyes glinting, looking about ready to turn tail and run, so lifelike he would almost have sworn it moved.

“You ever get people looking for falcons?” Ellis had finally said. It hadn’t come out as casual-sounding as he’d wanted, and he didn’t miss the way Tusker hesitated, his eyes getting narrow before he answered.

“What kind of falcon we talking about?”

“An arctic gyr.”

There was a pause. Tusker turned back to his work. “Where you going to get a gyr falcon, Ellis?”

Ellis had seen the look in his eye, the sudden quickening of interest he’d tried to hide, and his confidence jumped a notch or two.

“You got some people you sell to, if I remember right,” Ellis had said. “Collectors and such. Think maybe one of them might be interested?”

“Maybe. Thing is, Ellis, a gyr falcon, that’s a protected bird.”

Ellis had snorted, amused that Tusker should even think he’d believe that such a thing would be of any concern. “Well, if you ain’t interested, that’s fine by me. I just thought I’d give you first pop since we’ve done business in the past is all.” Ellis had started to make as if he were heading for the door, which both of them knew he wasn’t.

“You’re sure about it being a gyr falcon?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” Ellis had said.

“They don’t usually come this far south,” Tusker had mused. “What’s it look like?”

Ellis had described it. “Almost pure white, too,” he’d added. “That makes it a pretty rare bird, I’d say.” Then he’d told Tusker what he wanted for it, plucking from the air what he’d thought at the time was a pretty outlandish sum.