Teagan nodded tersely.
“Yup. If we don’t stop her, she’ll create the biggest bonfire this county has ever seen to quicken her eggs. Well, Ros, sorry about this, but you can consider yourself drafted into the wild, wonderful world of cryptid conservation.”
*
Ros hadn’t thought about what helping Teagan would entail, but she hadn’t expected it to involve pointing a hose threateningly at a bunch of large and angry birds while Teagan destroyed their nest. It had only taken a few powerful blasts from the hose before the fire condors had gotten the idea.
The problem, of course, was that there was only one hose and a final count of six birds.
“I really hope there are six,” Teagan said as he scattered an armful of branches back into the forest. “I’ve counted six together, and I don’t think the flock is wandering right–hey!”
Ros jumped as Teagan waved his arms at one of the birds that was slyly trying to steal some of the branches back. It had made it halfway back to the deck with its loot, but it took off once Teagan started towards it, shrieking in angry offense.
“Okay, new plan,” Teagan said. “You soak all the branches I brought down here with the hose, and I’m going back to the house for some buckets of water to throw on the branches on the deck.”
“You’ll be at the deck by yourself?”
‘’I’ll be under cover, and I’ll have buckets of water with me. Areyougoing to be okay here?”
Another fire condor landed on the ground just five or six feet from where Teagan stood, and Ros shot a stream of water at it, sending it aloft again.
“I think I’m good. I’ll join you when this is all wet, okay?”
“Perfect,” Teagan said with a grin, and then he was heading back to the house, leaving her with a huge pile of wood to wet down.
Left alone with neither man nor bird, Ros found that her mind kept going back to what they had been talking about before the fire condors decided they wanted to turn Tabbie’s cabin into a barbecue.
True mates.
On one hand, it sounded like a fairy tale, and as someone who had decided she wanted to be an accountant around the age of twelve, Ros didn’t think of herself as someone who had a lot to do with fairy tales. On the other hand, she was helping a man who could turn into an extinct species of eagle prevent flaming mythological birds from setting the Northwoods on fire.
Yes,she tried to argue to herself.But I have seen evidence that he can turn into a giant eagle. I have seen the flaming birds.
And if she were being perfectly honest with herself, she had also felt something change inside her the moment she laid eyes on Teagan. Something inside her had shifted, had opened and was so happy that if she concentrated on it too hard, she wanted to cry and laugh with joy.
She really couldn’t afford to have a laughing or a crying fit right this moment, however, so she simply took a deep breath and continued to water down the branches. Watering down branches was easy. She could do it.
Ros was just figuring the branches were so wet they would never catch on fire when she realized she was not alone.
“Awk?”
“Oh, son of a–”
Ros turned slowly, hose up and ready, to find one of the fire condors watching her from the foot of a large tree. She was ready to give it the soaking of its life, but it wasn’t making a try for the wet branches. Instead, it was watching her, tilting its head from side to side.
As she started to back away towards the house, the bird’s crest lifted, and its neck started to snake back and forth. It shifted from foot to foot, and Ros remembered one of the fire condors doing the same thing that first day.
“Um. Are you the one from before?”
At this point, she almost wouldn’t have been surprised if the bird had spoken to her–wasn’t that what they did in fairy tales? Instead it perked up at the sound of her voice. It swayed faster, its head moving so fast that it was almost a blur, and it shook its wings out parallel to the ground.
“Um, okay, I’m just going to go–”
Before she could finish her sentence, the bird lifted from the ground in a rush and dove at her. Almost in the same moment, she gave it a blast with the hose and took off for the house. Ros wouldn’t have said that speed was one of her strong points, but she crossed the yard so fast that it felt as if she had teleported. The bird gave a weird choking screaming cry from behind her, giving chase, and she practically vaulted the steps to the deck.
Teagan’s head jerked up when she got to the deck, but he wasted no time with questions. Instead, he tossed his bucket of water at her pursuer and followed her inside, slamming the sliding door behind her and dropping the blinds with a clatter.
“Ros! Ros, honey, are you all right?”