I was halfway through sweeping up the shattered glass when my father returned. He glanced at my drawn curtains, gave a jerky nod of approval, then knelt on the floor once more and laid out his supplies: diaphanous gauze, thick bandage roll, scissors, blotting powder, a waterskin, something in a square brown bottle, and, somewhat ominously, a bath sheet. I dumped the glass into my dustpail and hurried over.


    Making a soft clucking noise, like a brooding hen, Father slid his hands under Sheshef’s shoulders and eased her into his lap. She awoke with a cry of pain.


    “Easy, little bird,” he murmured, “easy.” I’d never heard his voice like this, all soft and furry. “We’re going to get you patched up. Leo—” his voice was brisker now, the same businesslike tone he used when asking me to pass him the cooling oil, “cut some gauze and dampen it with water. We need to clean the wounds before we do anything else, see how deep they go.”


    Sheshef was gazing up at him, frozen with terror. I could see her pulse leaping in her throat. Father clucked again as I hovered anxiously with the damp gauze. “This is going to hurt a bit, little bird, but we need you to stay very still, all right?” he said. “Otherwise it’s going to strain your ribs.”


    He gave me a nod. I reached down, almost as terrified as my patient, and blotted the wounds. She made a strangled noise, and her wings quivered, but she held still. Fat tears welled in her eyes, glinting like diamonds against the darkness of her sclera, before spilling over and running down her face.


    “Easy, easy,” Father crooned. “You’re doing so well. Let’s have a look.”


    The scratches, it turns out, were not too deep, but we cleaned them well and treated them with the antiseptic in the brown bottle before binding them. When it came time to bind her ribs, however, Father looked more grave. “Rest a moment, little bird,” he said gently, easing her to the floor once more. “We’ll be getting ready over here.” He drew me to the hearth and said, voice low, “I have to do this part. And you will have to hold her.”


    “All right,” I said nervously.


    Father gripped my elbow. “You will have to hold her,” he stressed. “She will try to escape. It will hurt immensely. Instinct will drive her to use her wings. You have to keep her from wings bound using the bath sheet.”


    I nodded, as pale as the bath sheet.


    Sheshef hadn’t heard the words we spoke, but she hadn’t missed the tension in our exchange. As soon as we returned to her side, she leveled a cold avian eye at my father. “It will hurt,” she said flatly.


    “I’m afraid so.” Father took his glasses off and began to polish them. “But only for a few moments.”


    “Do you have oppio?”


    Father shook his head silently and put his glasses back on.


    Sheshef set her jaw, then nodded tightly.


    Now it was my turn to pull Sheshef into my lap, onto the bath sheet laid over my knees. I was stunned at how light she was; it was like lifting a log of firewood and discovering it had been cored out by beetles. She felt like a husk of a person, but soft—so soft—and warm, and alive. She worked her wings back underneath her to fold them to her back obligingly, breath hitching once again with pain, and I wrapped the bath sheet as tightly around them as I dared, doing my best to leave space for the bandage. I was fervently glad my father was going to do that part; I couldn’t tell where wing ended and flank began, and had absolutely no clue how to bind ribs on a human, let alone a creature with two extra appendages in the way.


    Father slid something out of his pocket—a leather glove—and handed it to Sheshef. “This is all I have to bite,” he said apologetically, “but it’s better than nothing.”


    Sheshef took it without complaint, rolled it into a cylinder, and bit.


    Father slid the bandage end beneath her, then, kneeling over her, gave me another tight nod. I tensed.


    I could see how gentle he was trying to be, as though binding an egg, but it was no use. The instant the loop tightened about Sheshef’s ribs, she twitched, then thrashed. Her wings tried to flare open; I held on for dear life, terrified she would break her own bones with the strain of trying.


    And she screamed.


    It was muffled by the glove, which she still bit into so hard I thought she might puncture it, but I could see her throat working. Tears streamed down her face. My vision swam; I was crying too, silently, one tear tracking down each cheek.


    And then she went limp. She had passed out again.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Father hurriedly finished his binding. “Quickly,” he said, “onto the bed. Before she wakes up.”


    We lifted her between us, light as a feather, and settled her on the bed. Father checked her bandages again, changed the one that had begun to bleed again, then tucked her in.


    This was how he had been with Mother. I scrubbed my tears away angrily. They wouldn''t stop.


    Sheshef stirred once, but did not reawaken. Father and I moved to the hearth silently.


    For a long time, he did nothing more than gaze blankly into the flames. I couldn’t even see his eyes; his glasses reflected the firelight like mirrors. They would have made a good addition to the whirligig.


    “She will take at least six weeks to heal,” he said at last. His voice was soft, but I startled nonetheless at the sound. “Maybe eight. She will not be able to fly that entire time.” He turned to look at her. “Unless her ribs have been broken before, which I doubt, she will never have gone that long without flying before in her life, not since fledging.” He turned back to the fire. “It will be very hard for her.”


    I rubbed my nose and said nothing.


    “Why did she come here?” he asked, after another stretch of silence.


    “I don’t know,” I said. It wasn’t entirely a lie. “I have no idea what happened. She just burst through my window without a word and said she’d been in a fight.”


    “Why,” Father said, voice now dangerously edged, “did she come here?”


    I didn’t answer.


    “Your contraption—it was for her.” His voice was low and cutting. It wasn’t a question. There was nothing to deny.


    “Yes,” I replied. My voice was barely above a whisper.


    “How many times did she come here?”


    “Twice.” I thought. “Three times, if you count the first time I saw her, when I was a kid. Only twice for the whirligig though.”


    “This was only the fourth time you’d seen her?”


    “Um. Fifth.” I flushed.


    My father looked at my reddening face and sighed, but did not comment.


    “Her name is Sheshef.” I spoke almost without volition. It just came out.


    “‘Steep Diver.’”


    I blinked. “What?”


    “Shesh means to stoop like a hawk. To dive. The -ef suffix means to an extreme amount: much, very. ‘Extreme Diver’ might be another translation.”


    It took me a moment to find my words again. “You speak Winged One?!”


    “They call their language Nahashaaf. They are the Hashaa.” When my father spoke the words, he did not sound like the wind, but the words nevertheless fit in his mouth in a way that they would not have in mine. Not then.


    At the moment, I was too incredulous to even try. “How do you know their language?”


    “I learned it,” he said calmly. “From their schoolbooks. They are quite literate.”


    “I have to learn Latin in school,” I said, growing incensed, “even though everybody who speaks it is dead, but they get to learn Romanci in their school?!”


    Father looked at me sharply, evidently taken aback by the extent of my knowledge, but his voice was mild when he replied, “Many of them learn Latin, as well.”


    “I want to learn their language. They all know ours. It’s not fair.”


    “It’s not fair,” Father agreed.


    “It’s stupid,” I insisted.


    “It is.”


    “Do you still have the books?”


    Father hesitated. “It’s been a long time,” he said slowly. “I’ll have to see what condition they’re in.”


    “I want to learn.”


    Father sighed again and slid his glasses back up his nose. “Renella would not be pleased.”


    “I don’t care if I please her.”


    “Yes, I am aware of that. As is she.”


    I refused to be chagrined. I crossed my arms.


    Father looked at the bed. Sheshef lay there, still and pale, her tawny hair almost amber in the firelight.


    “Sheshef can help me learn!” I said in a rush of inspiration. “It will help her keep her mind off of things.”


    Father rubbed fretfully at his jaw. “I don’t think she can stay here.”


    “What?” I yelped. My voice cracked. “But where will she go?”


    “She does have a family,” Father said dryly. “Or so I would presume.”


    “Then why didn’t she go to them?” I said stubbornly. “She came here.” A thousand explanations immediately presented themselves, the most obvious being that she simply couldn’t fly any further after her injury; that this was the nearest safe haven. That as soon as she awoke, she would have us send a missive to her people, telling them to come and fetch her.


    But I didn’t want it to be true. I clung to straws.


    “She said—she didn’t even want me telling you that she was here,” I pressed. “She said that ‘you would tell them.’”


    “Them who?”


    “I don’t know. She used a word I didn’t understand.”


    Father rubbed his jaw again.


    “She sounded scared,” I went on, trying to sound levelheaded and rational. “I think she should stay here. In my tower.”


    “We’ll ask her what she wants to do,” he said firmly. “When she wakes.”