Chapter 4
Martin didn't fire right away.
In his log, he wrote that in that moment, everyone was frozen in place, like they were nailed to the ground in the ravine.
Because that woman's face was smiling straight at them.
Her chin was pointed.
Her eyes shone brightly.
When the evening breeze swept her hair aside, a few dark gray feathers peeked out from behind her ears.
Just by her face, she looked like a young woman who had just walked out of a brothel in Serevale.
But her body was hanging from a tree.
Two massive eagle wings unfurled behind her shoulders.
Below her waist, there was no skirt, nor any human legs.
Only two talons sheathed in hard scales.
The tips of her claws gripped an iron helmet, and beneath the helmet, half a face still dripped blood.
The young interpreter started to cry.
He fell to his knees, desperately pleading for forgiveness in the island's language.
The priest raised his cross and called out the name of Our Lady.
The thing in the tree tilted its head.
It was as if it understood.
Or perhaps it found it amusing.
It tossed the iron helmet down.
The helmet rolled to the priest's feet.
Inside, half a face turned over, the eyes wide open and staring.
The priest's prayer faltered.
The next moment, a soft fluttering of wings came from the treetops.
Martin whispered, "It's not just one."
"There are at least three of them," Martin added.
They were hiding up in the high branches on both sides of the ravine, their wings folded tight, blending in like smudges of gray shadow.
Only when the last rays of sunlight slipped through the leaves did you catch a flash of gold at the tips of their feathers.
The soldiers finally snapped out of it.
The first shot went wide.
The bullet splintered a branch.
The woman in the tree cackled, her laugh sharp enough to make your skin crawl.
It wasn't a sound from her throat.
It was more like a bunch of tiny bones scraping together inside her chest.
Just as the second soldier raised his musket, a dark shape swooped down overhead.
Martin watched as two talons clamped onto the soldier's shoulders.
The soldier was lifted off the ground.
He didn't even have time to scream before he was hauled up into the branches above.
The leaves thrashed overhead.
A few drops of warm blood splattered onto Martin's face.
Someone started running back.
But the entrance to the ravine wasn't where it used to be.
The path they'd come from was blocked by tangled vines and fallen trees.
Martin wrote a line here.
"I swear, those trees closed up on their own."
The priest said it was pagan witchcraft.
But the young interpreter insisted it wasn't the trees moving.
"They memorized the way," the young interpreter said.
"They knew where everyone would try to escape," he added.
Before he could finish, a song drifted up from the depths of the ravine.
This time, it was the sailor's shanty they always sang before setting sail.
The tune was eerily perfect.
One note even sounded exactly like Pedro, who was already dead.
As Martin wrote this, his handwriting grew messy.
He admitted that for a moment, he almost found himself stepping forward too, drawn by that haunting melody.
To Martin, it felt as if an invisible hand was softly tugging at his ear, urging him to follow.
There was no order, no threat.
It just made Martin long for a clean bed, a sun-warmed shirt, and a woman waving by the docks.
It wasn't until the old islander smacked Martin hard across the face that he snapped out of it.
He had no idea when the old man had joined them.
The old man smeared mud on everyone's ears and made them bite down on a chunk of bitter vine.
As the bitter taste hit the back of their throats, the song changed instantly.
Now, it wasn't a woman's voice anymore.
Instead, it sounded like a flock of birds picking at bones in the dead of night.
That was when Martin finally saw what was hanging on the stone wall at the end of the ravine.
There were buckets.
There were axes.
There were severed hands.
And there were a few women's dresses.
Those dresses weren't left behind by any women from the colony.
They were patched together out of bird feathers and human skin.
The priest retched.
The old man whispered a name.
The old man whispered, "Skyblind."
Martin asked what it meant.
The old man said it wasn't a name.
It was a warning.
It meant, "Don't look up at the beautiful face."
But he said it too late.
The last soldier had already looked up.
He saw a woman in the tree, her hand slowly reaching out toward him.
Her face was the spitting image of his dead wife.
The soldier, tears streaming down his face, cried out, "Maria!"
Then, as if entranced, he stepped right into the shadows beneath the trees.
When Martin rushed after him, all he could hear was the sickening sound of bones snapping.