TWELVE
RAMBLING ALONG THE ROCKY NORTH beach in the grey morning, Gideon almost missed it. The wings were untouched and splayed out on the rocks, a broken supplication to the clouds. The light wind lifted and dropped a froth of white and grey down feathers, detritus of a falcon’s meal: all that remained was roughage, indigestible and left to sink into the sand or be carried away on the breeze. A marvel of economy.
The bones were picked smooth and gave off a pearly gleam. Gideon crouched. The falcon had made a surgical job of the breast, stripping the flesh neatly from the bones. The gull’s head was gone. It was a recent kill; how disappointing to have just missed the falcon at her meal. What remained, flesh that once connected the breast with the wings, smelled fresh, even appealing, an o
