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" A falcon. I can see that. I thought you said nothing lived here?”
Sand’s face went blank. “There was nothing alive, except for me, until Merlin. And then you.”
Perrotte bit back her exasperation, and said simply, “Go on.”
He twined his blunt-tipped fingers together, staring down at them. “I, erm. I found the falcon in the mews.” “So, it’s not true that there was nothing alive in the castle?”
“The truth is . . . Well, the truth is the truth, and thus worth telling, but sometimes truths are so complicated that it’s exhausting to get them out in the right order.” He glanced up at her. That sounded like an evasion if ever she’d heard one. She raised an eyebrow.
“The falcon was dead!” Sand blurted out. “Stuffed and mounted, and then also damaged in the sundering. I mended him, and put him on the mantel, so I’d have something to talk to. But a couple days before you—you came upstairs—” He gestured helplessly at the bird, who stopped stripping water from its feathers just long enough to glare at the humans. Perrotte stared. “The bird came to life,” she whispered. “After you put it to rights, this falcon came to life. Just like me.”
“Well . . . "
― Merrie Haskell , The Castle Behind Thorns
