Chapter 2 - Mitha

I knew the sound of death before I knew many words.

 

Death was metal hitting metal, boots on stone, men shouting in voices too sharp and too loud, voices that cracked through the air and sent birds scattering from trees. Death smelled like sweat, leather, horse, and blood.

 

I did not understand everything they yelled, but I understood enough.

 

“Harpy,” one man shouted, his voice harsh with disgust.

 

“Spawn,” another spat, his tone sharp and eager.

 

“There!” a third cried, loud and triumphant.

 

The last word had sent me running.

 

My wings dragged behind me, too heavy and too young to carry me far, and one would not fold right anymore. Every step pulled fire through the place where the spear had grazed me, tearing feathers and skin and making the world blur at the edges. I wanted the sky, but the sky would not take me. My wings beat once, weak and useless, and pain ripped a cry from my throat.

 

Bad. Sound was bad. Sound made them follow.

 

I clamped my teeth together so hard my jaw hurt and scrambled over rocks on clawed hands and feet. Thorns caught in my feathers, dirt filled my mouth, and something warm slid down my shoulder, sticky and dark. The scent of my own blood made fear claw up my throat.

 

Behind me, horses screamed, and men laughed.

 

It was not happy laughter, not the laughter I sometimes heard from farms when children chased one another in the light. This laughter had teeth in it. This laughter meant they liked the chase.

 

Olympians were danger. I knew that the way I knew hunger. I knew it from stones thrown at my wings, from women covering children’s eyes when I crawled too near a road, from men reaching for knives before I had done anything but breathe.

 

They looked at me and saw something wrong, something to strike, something to end.

 

I slipped beneath a broken fence and tumbled down a dusty slope, biting back another cry when my injured wing twisted beneath me. For a moment, I could not move. The sun burned white overhead, the ground spun, and every breath came small and fast.

 

Boots pounded somewhere above.

 

I forced myself up. Hide. Hide or die.

 

I stumbled toward the smell of goats, old wood, and salt wind, toward a half-collapsed shelter crouched near stones and dry weeds. I shoved myself through a gap and curled into the darkest corner I could find, shaking so hard my claws scraped lines into the dirt.

 

Outside, the men’s voices grew closer.

 

I pressed both hands over my mouth. I was small. I was hurt. I was quiet.

 

Maybe quiet things could live.

 

The weeds outside moved, and I stopped breathing. A shadow cut across the little cracks in the wall, thin and shaky, not broad like the men with metal skins. I pressed myself deeper into the corner anyway, pulling my hurt wing close until pain flashed white behind my eyes. Someone was there. Small feet shifted in the dirt. Not a soldier. A boy.

 

He pushed the dry weeds aside and peered into the shelter, and for one frozen breath, we stared at each other. His eyes were dark, his hair falling over his forehead, mud staining his tunic, while one sleeve hung crooked from his shoulder. He did not look like the men hunting me, but he was still Olympian. Olympians were danger.

 

I opened my mouth and hissed. The boy froze so fast that he looked carved from the same stone as the one around me. His eyes widened, not with anger or disgust, but fear. That was better. Fear made creatures careful. Then his gaze dropped to my wing, and I snapped my teeth at him. He flinched but did not run.

 

Wrong. He should have run. He should have screamed. He should have called the men with spears, because that was what Olympians did when they saw things like me.

 

Instead, he lifted both hands slowly, palms facing me, fingers spread so I could see he held nothing sharp. “It’s okay,” he whispered, his voice trembling but soft. “I won’t hurt you.”

 

I did not know all the words. I knew I was hurt. My lips pulled back from my teeth.

 

The boy lowered himself a little, making himself smaller. No one did that. Big things stayed big. Strong things stayed strong. Cruel things like looking down. He kept his hands where I could see them.

 

“I’m not going to touch you,” he whispered, his tone gentle and nervous. “I promise.”

 

Promise. I did not know if promises were real things or sounds Olympians made before they struck.

 

He moved one hand slowly, reaching toward the blood on the ground near my wing. I lunged. My claws caught his wrist before my teeth did, scraping red lines across his skin. He gasped, pain flashing across his face, but he did not hit me. He did not kick. He did not shout. He only pulled his hand back and held it against his chest.

 

“I’m sorry,” he breathed.

 

Sorry. That word was stranger than a promise.

 

Outside, a man shouted, closer now. The boy’s fear changed. It was still there, sharp and bright, but it turned away from me and toward the voices. He looked back at me, and this time, I saw something I did not understand at all.

 

He was afraid for me.

 

The boy moved fast then, but not toward me. He grabbed something from the wall, a sagging net that smelled of old fish, dust, and sun-rotted rope. I bared my teeth again, certain he meant to throw it over me, certain this was the trap, the trick, the part where soft voices became hands and hands became cages.

 

But he did not cover me. He covered the hole.

 

The net fell across the broken opening in a loose tangle, hiding me behind its dirty knots. Then he shoved cracked boards against it, kicked straw over the bottom, and dragged a broken basket into place with shaking hands. He was making the shelter look empty, forgotten, dead—like me, if the men found me.

 

“Stay quiet,” he whispered urgently.

 

Quiet. I knew that word better from his mouth than from the others. Quiet meant live. I pressed myself against the wall and curled my claws into the dirt.

 

Boots crunched outside.

 

The boy turned away from me, putting his small body between the opening and the men. My heart slammed so hard I thought it would shake loose from my ribs. He was only a boy—thin, muddy, scared. The soldiers had spears and armor and voices that cut.

 

“What are you doing down here?” one of the men barked.

 

The boy’s breath caught. “I was checking the trench,” he answered too quickly. “My father told me to.”

 

“Did you see anything?” the soldier demanded.

 

There was a pause, a terrible pause.

 

“No,” the boy said. “Only goats.”

 

The soldier muttered something ugly, and another laughed. I did not breathe until their boots moved away.

 

The boy waited longer than I would have, standing there with shoulders tight and hands clenched, listening until the voices faded toward the lower field. Only then did he turn back and crouch near the net. He did not come closer. Instead, he pushed something through a gap—a small skin of water, then a heel of bread broken into pieces.

 

My stomach cramped so hard I almost made a sound.

 

The boy noticed, and his face twisted—not cruel, not pleased, but sad. “You’re hungry,” he whispered.

 

I hated that he knew. I hated more that the bread smelled warm and real.

 

He nudged it closer with two fingers, then pulled his hand away fast, as if remembering my claws. “I’m Zeno,” he whispered.

 

Zeno. A name. A thing offered instead of taken.

 

I stared at him through the dusty net, through fear, through hunger, through the strange ache of not understanding why he was still there. He swallowed and tried to smile. It was a terrible smile—shaky, pale, brave in the wrong places.

 

“I won’t tell them,” he said softly.

 

I did not believe him.

 

But I did not run.

 

The boy crouched outside the net for far too long.

 

Long enough for the soldiers’ voices to fade and return near the house, for the sun to shift and cast light on the dirt, and for my fear to morph into countless smaller anxieties.

 

The food was still there. So was the water. So was he.

 

That made no sense.

 

Traps didn’t wait. Hunters didn’t grant prey time to think. But Zeno did.

 

He picked at a splinter in the boards, his eyes darting toward me and then away. Each time I moved, he went still, his fear palpable beneath the layers of salt, mud, and bread.

 

Yet he stayed.

 

“Water,” he whispered, nudging the skin closer with his foot while keeping both hands where I could see them.

 

I knew that word. Water.

 

My tongue felt like old leather, and my throat burned. I stared at him, and he backed away slightly, still listening intently.

 

He sat on his heels, pretending to study a beetle, but his body betrayed him.

 

I hated him for noticing. Slowly, I hooked the water skin and dragged it close, sniffing it—no poison.

 

I drank too fast, water spilling over my chin and staining my chest. My stomach twisted, unsure, but I kept drinking until the skin sagged nearly empty.

 

Zeno’s mouth moved, but he did not speak.

 

Good. If he spoke too much, I might bite him again.

 

I grabbed the bread and took a bite, almost choking on it because I hadn’t chewed. A warmth spread through me—not enough to erase my pain, but enough to remind my body it wanted to live.

 

Zeno watched me, his expression soft in a way that made me uneasy. His gaze shifted to my wing, and I hunched over it, hissing softly.

 

“I know,” he whispered quickly, lifting his hands. “I know. I won’t touch. I won’t.”

 

I knew” from the way he shook his head, from the way his hands stayed empty, from the way he stopped moving.

 

He reached into a pouch at his waist and took out a folded strip of cloth—white once, maybe, now gray from use. He held it up for me to see, then set it on the ground beside another small thing, a clay jar no bigger than his palm.

 

“It helps cuts,” he whispered, pointing to his own scratched wrist and then to the jar. “See?”

 

He dipped a finger in the paste and smeared it over the red lines on his skin. He hissed quietly, as if even his pain might scare me.

 

Then he pushed the cloth and jar through the gap—not to my hands, but close enough for me to take it if I wanted.

 

Choice.

 

I didn’t know the word then, but I understood its shape. Choice was the space between us, him backing away, food left within reach instead of held like a leash.

 

I stared at the cloth and jar, then at him.

 

The paste smelled bitter and green, like crushed leaves after rain. Tentatively, I touched it with a claw, bracing for pain. Nothing happened.

 

Zeno pointed to my shoulder, his expression careful. “You’re bleeding,” he whispered.

 

Bleeding.

 

I recognized the word.

 

I pressed the cloth against the wound near my wing, nearly blacking out from the sting. I bit my lip to stifle a cry. Sound attracted men.

 

Zeno leaned forward unintentionally.

 

I snarled.

 

He froze instantly. “Sorry,” he breathed again.

 

There it was—that strange word, that soft, useless sound no Olympian had ever given me before him.

 

The soldiers had called me spawn, vermin, parasite.

 

He called me bleeding, hungry, and safe.

 

“You’re safe here,” Zeno whispered, so softly the words almost disappeared beneath the wind.

 

Safe.

 

I watched him through the shelter’s cracked wood, skeptical of his words. Safety had never been real—not on roads, in fields, or even in my wounded wings. “Safe” was merely a story mothers shared about children without claws.

 

Yet Zeno spoke of wanting to create safety. I recalled his words not from trust—at least not yet—but because he was the first Olympian to see me, bloodied and battered, without disappointment at my survival.