“Major cygnus malleus,” Beth identified as she came to a halt beneath an elm tree.
“This one, you can’t touch,” Devon warned. “Its magic will break your bones.”
Beth abstained from rolling her eyes due to the urgency of the moment. Maybe later she would commission a badge showing her qualifications so that men would stop advising her on the basics of her job. “If we can get it to land,” she said, “we can use one of those umbrellas to pin it down.”
“It’s attracted to shiny metal objects,” Devon added, looking around as if expecting a mobile jewelry vendor to be in operation nearby.
“Hm. Perhaps if we—”
“FEAR NOT, GOOD PEOPLE! I SHALL SAVE YOU!”
Startled, they turned to see a young man emerge from the trees nearby, waving both hands in general greeting as he jogged onto the field. His shoulder-length hair and cheap, oversized suit fluttered in the breeze. Overhead, the whopper swan screeched.
“Who the hell is that?” Devon said.
Before Beth could supply a response, the man held up a coil of thin braided leather and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it unfurling dramatically. Then he whistled in three short, loud bursts to the bird.
“Oh my God,” Beth gasped.
“Jesus,” Devon muttered at the same time.
Eeeeeeeee! the swan added in a distinctly more pagan tone.
“STIFFEN YOUR SINEWS and STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” the young man urged the picnickers, none of whom appeared to require such instruction. “I’LL CATCH THE BIRD!”
He whistled again, and the whopper swan shrieked with aggravation. Soaring high, its wings rapping the air with every beat, it reached a pinnacle and began to turn…
“It’s going to dive,” Beth and Devon said in unison.
Crack! went the young man’s whip.
Boom! responded the swan’s magic.
The air shattered into a thousand discordant splinters. Beth and Devon clamped their hands over their ears, to little effect. Thaumaturgic noise slammed through every cell of their bodies, making them stagger in pain. People screamed, leaves exploded through the flashing sunlight, and the young man hollered as he cracked the whip again. The whopper swan tucked in its wings and began to plummet.
Once more the young man whistled, but the sound was lost in pounding shocks of magic. A tragedy in three acts played out rapidly on his face: smugness, confusion, horror. He dropped the whip and cowered, arms wrapping defensively over his head. The swan skimmed inches above him, then soared again. Thump thump thump went its wings, considerably more steady than Beth’s heartbeat. She shot an ornithological glance at Devon; he gave her a brief, silent nod, then took off running toward the nearest group of picnickers. Without hesitating, Beth dashed for the young man.
“Excuse me, may I?” she asked as she snatched his whip from the ground.
“Aahhh!” he replied from his hunched position, which she took for permission. Quickly tying the leather rope into a lasso, she began to spin it overhead, building momentum.
Boom! The swan emitted another thundering bass note as it circled, preparing to dive again. Assessing its likely trajectory, Beth adjusted her stance. From the corner of her eye she noted Devon hurrying toward her, picnic umbrella propped against his shoulder. Excitement rushed through her, intensifying as it synchronized with the swan’s magic, pounding hard until she began to feel more than human. Her vision filled with sunlight and sable wings.
She threw the lasso. It fell over the swan’s back and instantly she tugged, tightening the noose. The bird tumbled, its magic scattering like the discordant sound of grief.
Whoosh.
Devon swung the open picnic umbrella with a strength Beth could only imagine (i.e., him using it to lift her easily and set her against a wall, holding her there while he kissed every qualification out of her brain), and he ladled the swan out of the air. In one swift moment he brought it down safely, immediately tipping the umbrella over it as a shield.
Screeee! cried the bird in fear. But all that could be heard of wild, wing-rapped magic was a soft scratching against the canvas. Devon stomped on the umbrella’s long handle. It snapped, and the canopy dropped fully. Setting a booted foot upon it for added security, Devon shook the hair off his face and looked sidelong at Beth, bouncing his eyebrows.
“Good job,” she said. “Perhaps a Yale doctorate is worth something after all.”
“Why, Miss Pickering,” Devon replied wryly, “it seems the farther we travel into England, the more impolite you get.”
Beth pursed her lips in indignation (and because she could not immediately think of a witty reply). Luckily, just then the young man unfurled himself, rising on his knees. His nose was bleeding as a consequence of the bird’s percussive magic, but he appeared otherwise unharmed.
“Blimey!” he shouted. “That was awesome! How did you catch the bird with just one toss of the rope?”
“Expertise,” Beth told him.
“That’s what comes of being a UNIVERSITY-TRAINED ORNLITHOLOGIST!” he said, his voice ringing through the shivering silence across the field.
“Um,” Beth said, bewildered. “Are you all right?”
“I am now!” He leaped to his feet and began to applaud her with such loud enthusiasm, Beth winced. “You SAVED MY LIFE! This day shall be remember’d to the ENDING OF THE WORLD! HURRAH FOR ORNLITHOLOGISTS!”
Beth glanced at Devon, who appeared equally bemused. Behind him, picnickers were beginning to emerge from beneath their umbrellas and behind the shelter of trees. The young man turned to them, his clapping intensifying, and after a moment they obediently began to clap also.
“Who are you?” Devon asked with a suspicious frown.
“Laz Brady, good sir!” He used the back of his hand to wipe the blood dripping from his nose, then held out that same hand in an offer of a handshake. Devon didn’t even glance at it, and he snatched it back faster than a seagull snatching a sandwich from a picnic. “I’m a mere wag who DREAMS of becoming a proper ornlithologist one day! I thought perchance it was enough to know a bird’s song, and to be able to tell a blackbird from a starlink—”
“Starling,” Beth corrected.
“—but clearly if I WANT TO BE A HERO and SAVE LIVES, I need to ENROLL IN A UNIVERSITY SUCH AS OXFORD, CAMBRIDGE, OR THE SORE BONE—”
“Sorbonne,” Devon corrected.
