9.3: Down in the Bayou
Broadway left the kitchen at 3 a.m., and met Angela as she was coming out of the rookery; now that her first night of rookery duty was over, she was allowed to leave after the hatchlings' second Story Hour to help him with his exercise. They walked together to their favorite spot near the edge of the bayou, next to a downed cypress tree whose trunk made a suitable bench for resting on.
Broadway grimly went through all the wing exercises that the doctors had recommended, with Angela offering encouragement when he faltered and noting that he really did seem to be improving, regaining strength and flexibility. He was able to extend his left wing just a fraction farther that evening than before, and for the second set he was able to do the 8-count slow extending and furling of the wing without faltering even once.
"I'm sure when Guilliame sees how well you're doing, he'll clear you for short glides on the estate! We should go see him when we're done with the Chase tonight," Angela said with a smile, as she sat next to him on the cypress log after the last wing exercise was finished.
"Yeah, sure… after I shower and eat, that is," Broadway panted as he wiped the sweat of painful exertion off his brow ridge. "I'm already hungry; aren't you?"
"No, I ate with the rookery keepers and hatchlings earlier. You helped Martha bring the trays into the rookery, remember? I'm surprised that you didn't grab a bite for yourself at the time," Angela commented. But when Broadway only grunted in response and glanced away from her, her tone became suspicious. "Broadway… you did eat then, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah. But it was only a bowl or two of gumbo," Broadway protested.
"A bowl… or two?"
"Okay, three bowls. But that was hours ago!" he said defensively.
Angela sighed and shook her head, speaking in that tone that Broadway had already decided he really, really didn't like. "Broadway, you know you need to lose weight, and that means eating less as well as exercising more! Do you want to fit into that suit being made for you or not? Do you want to become my mate or not?"
"You know I do! I just…" He stopped and clamped his mouth shut for a few seconds, holding back what he'd almost said out loud, then sighed. "All right, I'll try harder to cut back."
"Just 'try harder'?"
"I will cut back! I promise. I'll do my best to lose the full eighty pounds... But darn it, I wish you wouldn't put such a tough condition on our relationship!" as he glared at her, finally unable to hold the words back any longer. "True love is supposed to be unconditional!"
For a long moment Angela said nothing. Then she sighed, "Broadway, there's the breeding flight to think about! I can glide faster than you even without the surge of energy I'll get when my time comes, remember? When you lose the weight, you'll be able to glide faster and farther, to keep up with me when it's time to breed our egg. And besides, it's doctor's orders; Dr. Lacey said she wanted you to lose at least a hundred pounds! Remember the diet she was talking about putting you on, just before we came down here?"
Broadway remembered, and shuddered. "Even Lexington eats more than what she recommended! And besides measuring everything out by the ounce, the food on that list she made was so plain, so… even back in the old clan, we usually ate better than that!"
"So at least I'm not telling you just what you can and can't eat… just asking you not to eat so much of it," as she planted a kiss on his cheek. "And it really is for your own good, Broadway, my dear heart. Don't ever forget that."
They sat there for a few more minutes, holding hands and murmuring sweet nothings to each other, until they were both smiling again. "And now, it's time for the fun exercise," Angela said decisively as she got up from the log. "Ready? You'll start from right here, this time… five seconds from now!" as she dashed into the swamp.
That was how they always began The Chase; with Broadway giving Angela a five seconds head start. Even though she was naturally a faster runner than he was, she insisted on having those five seconds, after what had happened the first time they'd tried this new form of exercise. Broadway had almost caught up to her, when she'd tripped and fallen over a cypress knee not 30 yards into the bayou, before the chase had barely begun. A good head start allowed her some time for tripping and stumbling while finding the best path, when venturing into new territory.
The bayou was largely swampland; grassy or mossy hillocks with cypress trees and other native flora poking up here and there in acre after acre of watery muck. Most humans made their way through the bayou in pirogues, modified canoes that were propelled by poling more often than rowing. In areas with fewer trees and more open water, one often saw airboats or 'swamp-skimmers', steel rafts with huge propeller fans mounted inside protective cages that used air power to push them across the water. But the bayou outside the clan's estate was far too thick with trees for airboats to be of any use; pirogues were the most viable option. For humans, that is; gargoyles could simply glide above the trees until they spotted prey, or found a good perch above a game trail. But since Broadway couldn't glide for now, he and Angela had to conduct the chase on foot.
Travel through the bayou without a pirogue was hardly easy going. They were splashing through shallow waters or slogging through mud more often than they were on semi-dry land. But over the centuries the wildlife had laid game trails that a reasonably skilled hunter could follow, particularly if that hunter had a gargoyle's keen vision. They kept to those game trails most of the time, trusting that the local wildlife would clear the path when they heard them coming. Even alligators, the biggest local predators, generally veered away from gargoyles coming their way… particularly when coming in fast and loud, like the two of them were doing now. In fact, they'd already had complaints from a couple of the New Orleans Clan's hunting parties about all the noise they were making during the chase, scaring the game away.
Some small part of Broadway's mind recalled those complaints as he tried to dodge around a small cypress sapling in his path but didn't quite make it, and broke it right in half as he ran over it. Some small part of him noted the snapping and splintering noise with chagrin, but the rest of him just didn't care. Every other part of him was focused on chasing Angela, his mate-to-be.
It was the only way he could keep up his enthusiasm for the full hour or more that the chase would last, before Angela changed course and led him back to finish the run at the edge of the estate. Angela had promised to be his mate, once he was fit enough for her. And every time he stumbled or his energy flagged, he spurred himself onward with that most primitive of urges; the male's urge to chase his mate and breed with her…
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Brooklyn turned to listen for a moment to the sounds of splashing and crackling of underbrush being trampled, coming from an area to the west. "Angela and Broadway," he said quietly to Yvette, who was perched in the tree next to him overlooking a game trail.
Yvette nodded in response, then pointed to another source of disturbance, also from a point west of them but much closer. After another second a marsh deer came leaping down the trail; running away from all the noise that Angela and Broadway were making on their chase.
Yvette gave Brooklyn a shrug and a grin that showed her fangs, then leaped down from the tree to land squarely on the back of the young buck as it ran past. It sprawled to the ground and she rode it down, while reaching for its neck. Grip-twist-snap of breaking vertebrae, and the buck was dead in seconds.
Yvette looked up at Brooklyn still perched in the tree, and he applauded her. "Nicely done! Um, tres bien!"
"Merci!" Yvette said with a smile. "And I think this is enough for tonight, don't you?"
Brooklyn agreed. In the hours since dusk that he and Yvette had been hunting, they'd already brought down a deer, two raccoons, four rabbits, three nutria and a full half-dozen opossums. The game bag they'd stashed high in a tree next to the first deer carcass was full to bursting; they would probably have to make two trips, to bring the second deer back to the estate for cooking up as well.
Yesterday's outing with Martha had been far different; she'd shown up for their 'hunting date' in a swimsuit and carrying modified swimming trunks for Brooklyn to wear, as well as a pair of nets and other fishing gear. She'd shown him how to catch crawfish, crabs, bullfrogs, wide-mouth bass and catfish, all plentiful in the bayou. Halfway through the night they'd even caught and killed a seven-foot-long alligator, who had foolishly tried to challenge them for their nets full of seafood. Brooklyn hadn't done much food-gathering from the sea around Castle Wyvern back in the old clan, so it had been a real learning experience—and fairly fun, once he'd gotten past the distaste of having swamp muck spattered all over his brick-red hide.
Martha had been an excellent teacher, and Brooklyn had enjoyed learning from and working with her. But Yvette preferred the mammalian prey that Brooklyn was more used to hunting, and they'd easily fallen into the rhythm that hunting teams had been using for millennia, of flanking prey and flushing or chasing it into the partner's waiting talons.
The sightseeing trips into New Orleans had been fun, but this was the sort of 'dating' that Brooklyn had experienced in the old clan. Hunting together to bring in food for the clan, then having a private feast with a portion the pair had saved for themselves.
There'd been plenty of opportunities to patrol and protect their territory in Manhattan, but darn few opportunities for hunting, other than for rats and pigeons. Brooklyn hadn't realized until recently how much he'd missed the thrill of the hunt. It would be hard to give all this up again when they returned to Manhattan…
But Yvette had said something to him after she'd dragged her kill up into the tree they were perched in, and he'd missed what she'd said. "Pardon? Sorry, I was thinking about how much I've missed hunting these last few years. You were saying?"
"I said," Yvette said with a worried frown in the direction that they'd heard Angela and Broadway running, "I do hope that your clan members remember to stay within the area that Adam said they could chase about in."
"Worried about them frightening away more game? It's only for a short while every night; shouldn't be long enough to make any animal leave its home permanently. And there's plenty of swamp outside that area for everyone else to hunt in."
"It's not that. For nearly a hundred years, we've had no one bitten by poisonous snakes; we…" Yvette gave him a quick but searching look, then said, "You can keep a secret, yes?"
"Sure. A secret about snakes?"
"In a way. Only the clan's hunters are told of this secret; you must never tell anyone of this, not even another gargoyle, for it mustn't get back to our human clan members. …Decades ago, we had a sorceress in our clan. Yes, we are all Catholics, but we know the world is far greater and has more mysteries than the Church would have us believe, and we know that not all magic is evil or of Satan."
"No argument there," Brooklyn replied. "You probably already heard that one of the humans who raised Angela was a magus. So, you had a magic-user too?"
"Yes; you might have noticed her statue in the graveyard when we held that funeral last week. Her name was Anastasia, and she could cast spells on the wind and water. The story goes that when she was a hatchling, barely out of the rookery, a male from her generation was bitten by a cottonmouth while on his first hunt and died of it. So in revenge she cast a spell that somehow banished all poisonous snakes from the bayou, for a full twenty miles around the estate."
"Wait a second… I've seen at least three snakes during our hunt tonight—look, there's one in that tree right there!" as Brooklyn pointed at a thin green snake draped across the branch of a sycamore tree not twenty feet away from them.
"That's a rough green snake; it has no venom. We have green snakes and rat snakes and coachwhips and nonvenomous water snakes aplenty, but no cottonmouths, copperheads or coral snakes ever come within twenty miles of the estate. But outside that area, hunters must take care indeed. Robert and Rebecca know about the spell, and I am sure they have warned your brother Lexington already about the added danger outside our usual hunting territory. But I don't think anyone has warned Angela and Broadway, and if they chase each other too far…"
"Not likely," Brooklyn said with a shake of his head. "I heard them running around nearly every night while I was--um, in mourning for Brentwood, and the chase usually doesn't last more than an hour. And while any of us could glide farther than twenty miles in an hour, going on foot in this terrain, they probably won't go even a quarter of that distance. Though it probably wouldn't hurt to warn them anyway, to be on the safe side. I can pull Angela aside before dawn and let her know that she needs to steer clear of certain areas that have poisonous snakes in them, without saying anything about the sorceress. Or you can tell them yourself, when they come in to see the fancy clothes you're making for Broadway."
Yvette made a grimace and a harrumphing sound, but said nothing. Brooklyn cocked a brow ridge at her and asked, "What? Something bothering you?"
"I should not say… but since you asked, I will!" Yvette turned to him with the look of someone who needed to vent, before she exploded. "The too-small wedding clothes are a stupid idea, and every time Angela sees them she makes it worse! She saw the pattern pieces I put up on the male mannequin and told me to take them all off, and remove even more padding from the mannequin! Now it is nearly as slim as you, Brooklyn! And Broadway will never fit the clothes she wants to put on him, unless he becomes deathly ill and loses good muscle as well as fat!"
Brooklyn had actually scooted back on the branch at her vehemence, and now he looked at her wide-eyed. "Um… have you tried to explain that to her?"
"She will not listen! When I tried, she accused me of trying to interfere with her relationship with him, and stalked out of the room… and I later heard that she went down to the kitchen, and made Broadway push away the bowl of stew he'd been eating! Martha has had to let him sneak in food between meals, to silence his poor stomach when it growls so loudly she can hear it from inside the larder! I do not know just who Angela is trying to make Broadway into, but if someone does not talk sense into her, she will starve him to death!"
"Okay, okay!" Brooklyn held up his hands in a placating manner. "I'll talk to her, or better yet I'll talk to Goliath, and let him talk to her. He can usually get her to see reason… except where her mother is concerned, that is."
"Her mother?" Yvette gave him a querying glance as she hoisted the game bag, preparing to glide with it back to the estate.
"Yeah, Demona." Brooklyn decided that now it was his turn to vent, as he carried the first deer back to the mansion. "You just would not believe all the horrible things that psycho has done, and the even worse things she's tried to do… and Angela still wants to see her, and even worse, to persuade her to come back to the clan! Like I'd perch anywhere within seven leagues of that…"
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And Brooklyn honestly meant to talk to Goliath, but when they returned to the estate Goliath was inside the cottage that he and Elisa had stayed in last week, and Adam told Brooklyn it would not be wise to go in and disturb him with news of anything less than utter calamity. He would be either talking with his mate on the cell phone, and not want to be interrupted… or still waiting for her call, and growing more anxious and irritable as he waited.
"And either way, going in there would be a bad idea," Brooklyn agreed. "Well, this isn't urgent; I can wait until he comes out again."
So in the meantime, he and Yvette brought their kills in to the castle kitchen, where Martha received them with thanks and put them in the clan's giant walk-in refrigerator for use in the next night's meals. Yvette saved a haunch of the second deer for her and Brooklyn's private feast (for which Martha agreeably provided a bottle of wine and some easy side dishes), and they had such a good time, roasting the meat and eating and talking about this and that… The thought of talking to Goliath just slipped his mind for the next few hours. He remembered when he saw Goliath again, as everyone gathered on the perches for dawn, but by then it was too late. Well, Brooklyn thought as he struck a pose and prepared to turn to stone, there was always the next night.
Next: Hard Rain, Hard Words