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Part IX: At least he’s cute, freedom, and a very disturbing piece of metal.

Andrew struggled against the net, trying to squeeze between the mesh to get to her. She tapped the top of his beak with her finger.

“Shhhh,” she scolded. “It would be nice to get through this without having to face off against those two.” From one of the folds in her dress, Sonja pulled out a small knife and made a quick cut in the net, yet pinched it closed instantly. “You are not going to fly off again are you?”

“No!” Andrew cawed.

She looked at him, her left eyebrow hiked up questioningly.

He cawed “no” again and she smiled and dropped her brow. “Now, I can’t let your friends go. Just you.” She said as she slipped his little black-feathered body out of the small hole, careful to keep any of the other ravens from getting free.

Smiling, she explained to him her plan. “I am going to turn you back into your normal charming self. Then I am going to tie the net back up and we are going to sneak away.”

Sonja was saving him from being made into a pie and as she held him in her hand, gently, he was almost overcome with emotion. She felt warm, safe, and right.

“Listen to me, mush. When you return to normal, you are going to want to shout for joy. You are going to want to sing something like, “Thank heaven I am not a bird anymore.’ You cannot do that? You keep it inside till we are clear of these two.”

He agreed, of course. Anything she wanted was hers.

One her fingers press right against above his beak and she mumbled “Fawr” and tossed him to the ground where he found himself Andrew again.

He jumped up and wrapped his arms around her. Spinning gently, he lifted her off the ground. “This feels great!!” he shouted. “I am so glad I am not a bird anymore. You don’t know what it was like,” he told her.

As he spun her, her hand came loose of the net and ravens came flooding through the little hole, screaming and cawing as they reached for freedom. They twisted and tumbled upward blocking the dim light of the moon.



She smiled and tilted her head down bringing her lips close to his. “At least you are cute,” she said just before kissing him softly. To her surprise and to his, he kissed her back.

Yet, wherever that first kiss was going to take them had to be set aside, because the father and son where not happy.

“That was my property.” The older brute shouted moving towards them. “You have no rights towards my stuff, banshee!” The last word was spat as a curse.

Sonja gave Andrew another quick little kiss and shrugged loose of his grasp. She kept her body facing away from the two men and towards Andrew and when she spoke, her voice was very soft, low and wrap inside the fury of a hurricane.

“You are on our land, deargamadan. Watch your tone and watch what you call me.” She turned to face them, her sword somehow in her hand. “I can be shrill, but if I had the voice of the screaming ones, you’d be dead already.”

The son thumped his club against the damp earth. “Da, I’ll whack ‘er one, right?”

While the two of them did not strike Andrew as particularly bright, the father, huge, hulking and hairy had dark black eyes that exposed a slight bit of cunning. Andrew moved up close to Sonja’s back.

“We are in the right,” the father said putting out an arm to keep his eager son back. “Hunting for birds is granted by your queen.” He reached up above his left shoulder and pulled his short axe free from its bindings. Andrew felt Sonja tense up.



“Hunting for birds may be, but bringing that metal here is not!!”

There was rage swimming in her voice. It rippled through out her words even though her pitch and volume had not changed.

“What should I do?” he whispered to her. ”You can take these guys, right? I mean you took that crazy horse.”

“The pooka doesn’t think. These two will.” She said, never taking her eyes off the fathers axe. “And that axe is iron.”

“Which means?” he asked.

“Which means what your little girlie ain’t too fond of iron, gob,” the son shouted.

“Iron hurts,” Sonja said. “Hurts bad.”

“Maybe what’s you pay for what’s you lost me and we call it even,” the father offered. “Maybe I forget you bothering me and you forget this lump of iron.”

Sonja turned her back to the two and locked eyes with Andrew. “I’m going to need your help with this one,” she whispered. He looked up then back at her and noticed a small splotch of crimson on her side. She was hurt.

“Finding you wasn’t as easy as you might think,” she told him quickly as she handed him the knife she used to cut the net with. “I hope you fight better than you follow directions.”

Andrew laughed softly and she turned back around smiling.

“What say I do not pay you for what you lost? What say you place that foul metal to the ground and take your dense and worthless spawn away from here and back to the edge where you belong?”

“She calling me dumb, da?” the boy asked gripping his club tighter. “She jus’ called me a dumb one.” He snorted and lunged free of his father’s grasp, charging.

Sonja crouched just an inch, moving her sword to her right hand. “Get rid of that axe.” She said to Andrew as she jumped into battle.