The Falconer

He stood under the scorching desert sun surveying the windswept dunes of the competition grounds. It wouldn’t be long before the first round started; he could sense the nervous excitement surging through the air. For some, it was their first time challenging the years of training and dedication they required to get to this point. Young, fresh-faced challengers anxiously fidgeted at their positions while stealing glances at the crowd of onlookers and the other stoic old hands that have been doing this for decades. It was refreshing to see new members enter the sport each year; it gave him hope that future generations might appreciate it as much as he had.

He turned his attention to Mara perched on his arm, her head jerking from one sight to another as she awaited the start. The feathers at her neck bristled with anticipation. She knew why they were here and what they had come to do. She was born for this.

Seeing her today, he had trouble believing fifteen years had already flown by since the day he brought her home as a fluffy white chick. It was pure dumb luck he even found her that day. He had been heading into the mountains of Colorado for a camping trip with Melanie. At the time, she was his girlfriend, though later she became so much more. He idly recalled that he had the engagement ring in his pocket that day; he had planned to find a picturesque spot while they were hiking to propose to her. The proposal didn’t quite work out as planned, but she still accepted a few weeks later and the intervening weeks were some of the happiest of his life.

As they pulled off the highway and started down a deserted two-lane road that ran between a sloping mountain cliff and a dense evergreen forest, they passed a Peregrine Falcon sprawled out on the edge of the lane they were traveling down. Her feathers were ruffled and blowing in the gentle breeze but she appeared intact, as if she might have just been clipped by a passing vehicle. Melanie spotted her first and insisted he pull over to check on her. He could never refuse a request from her even if he had wanted to, so he did, only to discover the bird was long dead. Out of respect, he proceeded to move the body off the road to the edge of the forest. Giving her the dignity of not being ground into the asphalt was the least they could do for such a magnificent creature.

As they walked back up the gentle slope to the car, he wrapped his arm around Melanie’s shoulders and gave her a quick hug. Seeing this bird no doubt reminded her of Thor, who they had just lost about four months prior. Thor was twenty-two when he passed, a ripe old age for a red-tailed hawk, though that didn’t make losing him easy for either of them. Mel had grown very close to him in the three years they had lived together; she may have taken his death even harder than he did.

His father had taken him out when he was just a boy to capture him, a spunky little bird only a few months old at the time. His family had been avid falconers for centuries, since long before they immigrated to America when they still roamed the eastern deserts and hunted with their birds for nearly every meal they ate. It was in his blood, passed down from father to son for longer than anyone could remember, or at least that was how it had been up until now.

Before they reached the car, a piercing shriek from the cliff across the road froze them both where they stood. His eyes traveled up the cliff face seeking the source of the noise. When a second screech tore through the hushed morning air, he found it - a small nest built on a sheltered outcropping of rock about two-thirds of the way up the cliff. He turned to Mel to gauge her reaction. She nodded her approval without hesitation, reading exactly what he had in mind with no words exchanged between them. He briskly crossed the road and approached the cliff base, searching the rocks above for hand- and footholds. He charted a path quickly, inwardly thanking the cliff for not being particularly sheer and Mel for dragging him on at least a dozen rock-climbing trips over the years they had known each other.

He slowly clambered up the rocks, being mindful of each shallow cavity he dug his fingertips or boots into. After a tedious journey, he finally crested the outcropping that held the nest. Bracing himself against the cliff face, he carefully leaned over to look inside the nest and discovered three thin white chicks huddled together. Two were unmoving, but the third stared up at him defiantly, mouth slightly ajar as if daring him to make a move. He gently checked the other two and confirmed he was too late to help them, but the remaining emaciated survivor was very much alive. He carefully scooped her up with his free hand that she promptly bit before he was able to roll her up in the bottom of his shirt. Luckily, feisty as she was, she was too small and weak to do any real damage.

With even greater care than before, he gently lowered himself down the cliff while keeping one hand on the small protesting chick through the relative safety of his shirt fabric. When he reached the ground, Melanie gently wrapped her in a towel she had grabbed from the car and proceeded to fawn over her. They headed straight home and spent the next few months raising her in their home before she was strong enough to move to the large aviary Thor had once inhabited. That bird bonded with both of them more fiercely than he thought possible. She was more of a family member than most of the relatives either of them had.

He’s pulled out of his reverie by Mara lightly scraping the tip of her beak against his arm. He smiles and strokes the brilliant brown plumage on her back. In response, she leans her head down and puffs out her feathers so he can gently scratch the skin on the back of her neck. The thought crosses his mind that this is probably the raptor equivalent of contented purring.

She’s getting old now and losing some of the vitality she once had, but she is still a breathtakingly majestic bird, especially in flight. His second wife, Caroline, once accused him of loving Mara more than her. He chuckles to himself as he recalls the argument because she was right, though he denied it at the time. Mara was with him when Mel got sick, and after when he was left alone and shattered. She was there years later when he met Caroline, and she astutely hated her from the start.

The first time he introduced them, Mara screeched and hissed at her, puffing up her feathers and beating her wings angrily before charging to the boundary of her pen and snapping at the wire fencing separating them. He had never seen her so instantly or so intensely despise someone before. At the time, he assumed she was just jealous, or she still missed Mel and had no interest in this interloper invading their lives. In retrospect, he probably should have listened to her.

Luckily for everyone involved, that marriage only lasted a year, but it was long enough to confirm that he should have ignored the friends and family that kept telling him it was time to ‘move on’ and ‘get back out there.’ None of them understood what Mel was to him; if they did, they never would have made such asinine suggestions regardless of how many years had passed. Mara understood, and she grieved as he did, taking little interest in food or flying for months after her death. Slowly, they worked through the pain and got back to some semblance of normal, though it has never been the same for either of them.

Three years ago, after Caroline’s hasty departure from their lives and the constant questioning of self-worth that followed, he hit a breaking point, briefly convinced that he simply could not go on. He drove Mara out to the deserts of New Mexico with the intent of releasing her back into the wild so she could live out her remaining years free and maybe even find a mate of her own. She, of course, had other plans and refused to leave the area after her release. He sat in the bed of his old pickup and watched her playfully diving and kiting overhead for hours while he pondered his next move. Finally, he gave up on waiting for her to leave and decided to do the leaving himself. He drove back home to Colorado without her only to discover she followed him the entire way and was perched on top of the porch overhang as he pulled into his driveway. Since then, he’s accepted that her stubbornness will keep her with him to the end. In her own way, that bird probably saved his life.

She snaps her head up, sensing a new tension in the air and keenly watching as other competitors begin to notice the judges walking out toward the horizon ahead. They’ve been in dozens of these competitions over the years, but today is different. She’s slowing down, and he’s starting to see the signs of what’s coming just like he did with Thor before her. This will be their final time competing together. The rest of her life will be spent resting comfortably in her aviary or casually flying around the Colorado countryside surrounding their home. Deep down, he knows this will be his last competition as well; he just cannot go through this again. He wouldn’t change having Mara for anything in the world, but he can’t love and lose another bird after her. Losing Thor hurt, but losing Mara will break him.

He’s tried many times to rationalize that she’s just a bird whose time is nearly up; she’s had a happy life with people who love her, so this really shouldn’t feel like a tragedy. But the undeniable truth is she’s not just a bird - she’s a friend, a confidant, on at least one occasion a relationship advisor he foolishly ignored, and in a sense, she’s his last remaining connection to Melanie. That particular realization hits home as he watches her crouch down to prepare for liftoff, awaiting the starting signal.

He reluctantly pulls himself out of his reflective thoughts. Her head’s in the game and his needs to be as well if they want to have any chance of winning. This is going to be their last hurrah, after all. They need to make it something special.

He quickly glances at the crowd standing behind him and spots his sister and her daughter watching them closely. His niece grins broadly and waves at him when she catches his eye. He smiles and nods at her before turning back to the judges and stiffly holding his arm out to give Mara the starting position she needs.

Amira will turn twelve next month; after hours of discussions that nearly broke down to begging, her mother finally agreed to the birthday present he proposed. They’ll be taking a family trip into the vast forest running from the edge of his backyard all the way to the distant mountains where he’ll help her capture and tame her own young raptor. Ideally, they’ll find her another gentle hawk like Thor for her first bird, but following family tradition, fate will make the final decision on what they bring home.

He spent the last three weekends building a second aviary next to Mara’s while she looked on, perplexed by all the commotion. Within the next two months, there will be one new avian resident on the property and two new humans in the house. The shame he carries for being too caught up in his post-Caroline pity party to be there for his sister when she was going through her own brutal divorce still weighs on him, but perhaps he can start making up for it now. This isn’t the future he expected those long years ago when he and the woman he loved rescued an orphaned chick from a cliff overlooking a desolate stretch of road in the Rocky Mountains, but life has a habit of taking unexpected turns. One chapter closes, and another opens.

Mara lowers her head and holds her wings away from her body, a perfectly aerodynamic phenom ready to launch into the sky and obliterate the competition. “Alright beauty,” he says softly to her, “let’s steal the show one last time.”