The Wisdom of Hawks
by Hari Blackmore
part 1
A sea hawk glided over the waves of Gula Bay; nigh-on imperceptible twitches of its brown, mottled wings kept the bird steady as it scanned the water below with keen eyes.
“Watch it hunt, Little Fish,” Khanat said. “It seeks its next meal among the waves, as we all do.”
It was a still, bright day. The sea broke lightly against the bay’s grey, barnacle-covered rocks, the water seeking its way through cracks and crevices to fill myriad small pools along the shore. Khanat sat halfway up a shallow cliffside, looking out over the surf. Her daughter on her lap, she guided the child’s pointing finger to follow the hawk’s flight path.
Sun glinting off the bird’s smooth wings, its eyes came fixed on a single point. The creature arced downward with precise control, pulling its wings back and stretching out sharp talons less than a moment before hitting the water’s surface. In an instant, the bird emerged, clutching a plump silver-blue fish and leaving a trail of shimmering water droplets in its wake. It flew off victorious.
“See how it controls its strike, keeping its eyes on what it wants and guiding itself to its prey? This is how we strike with our spear and catch our dinner; don’t take your eyes off your prize, don’t get distracted, adjust your strike to hit the target even as your hand moves towards it.” Khanat still held the child’s finger, thrusting it gently into her own palm. “This way is not just how we hunt, but how we achieve many of our goals in life. The wisdom of hawks. If you find a good rock today, I shall ask grandfather Eio to carve you a hawk to remind you of their lessons.”
Pondering her mother’s words, the girl asked, “Is it like how you kill monsters, too?”
“Yes,” Khanat said, after a pause, staring out to the horizon, “like how we kill the monsters that come out in the darkness, out from the Undersea.” She looked down at the girl on her lap, studying the side of her face. “But that is not the work you are destined for, I think. You will be the one to catch the best octopus and the biggest, tastiest fish for our village. You belong in the light of day, safe.”
The child sat still, pensively. “I wish I could fly like that,” she commented, her eyes fixed back on the departing hawk, “fly and swim.”
“It might be nice to fly, Iffe, but you’re my Little Fish, not my little bird, so swimming will have to do for you,” Khanat said, tickling the end of Iffe’s nose while the girl squirmed and giggled.
“But can people fly?” Iffe asked, piercing green eyes turning upwards to look at Khanat, a lock of deep auburn hair across her face.
“I’ve never heard of a man or woman with wings, but some say there are eagles as big as people in the southern expanses. Some tales even tell that those birds can talk!”
The girl’s eyes went wide at the thought. She’d heard the stories before, but it was still exhilarating to imagine.
“Well, I don’t know how that could be true; there’s no land out there beyond Eta’s Reef,” Khanat said, gesturing to a faint outline that sat low on the southeastern horizon. “So, where would these giant birds live?!” she exclaimed with a wry smile. “We wouldn’t want to meet one anyway, such big eagles would gobble up a little one like you!” She lightly prodded Iffe’s ribs and nuzzled her neck, pretending to eat her Little Fish.
The girl laughed once more, a broad grin exposing a gappy gumline which would soon be filled with new teeth. “Stop it, Mama!” she squealed cheerfully, wriggling around in Khanat’s lap.
“Alright, alright,” Khanat said. “That’s enough lessons for now. We need to go down and collect some seaweed; we might even find some crablings to boil with it. Up you get!” She lifted Iffe to her feet.
Moving to stand herself, she instead crumpled backwards as her arms gave way, her head coming to rest roughly on a clump of the clifftop’s coarse, reedy grass. To her eyes, for a fleeting moment, the sky was suddenly a dull, overcast grey. Her ears filling with the sound of a thunderous, out of place, burst of wave meeting rock. It felt as if she were being violently pulled out of a dream.
Not seeming to notice her mother’s fall, Iffe turned to face Khanat, brushing the hair from her face as long, wispy strands of salt-washed hair gently swayed in the breeze. “Mama, I don’t want to die again,” she said happily.
Khanat’s heart jumped. “Iffe?” she murmured, face wrinkled in stunned confusion, stumbling to her feet. She studied her daughter’s face intently for seconds that felt like minutes. “What... did you say?”
All felt still while the rush of the breaking waves down below suddenly felt louder again, more intense. The girl’s face turned quizzical; she frowned, saying in a rasping whisper, “Don’t fight, join me.”
This was wrong, this was not how it had happened, not what was said. Khanat stared at her daughter, dumbfounded, words caught in her throat. Iffe stood, silhouetted against the great blue ocean and broad clear sky as her mother stared in wide-eyed disbelief.
The sea was calm, but the rhythmic sound of its waves filled Khanat’s ears to bursting. All other noise stopped. Iffe’s lips moved, but nothing other than the ocean’s pulsing noise was audible.
Khanat’s heart started to pound, her head suddenly hurt as if she’d been struck with a cudgel. She raised a hand to her temple when Iffe turned away to descend the path to the rocky shore. Head swimming, she felt out of place, out of time.
She blinked. Knees buckling, her vision turned black. The outline of Iffe’s form remained seared onto the insides of her eyelids. All the while, the noise of the tide on the rocks below continued to play in her ears.
* * *
When Khanat opened her eyes, her vision was a blur. She was face down, prone, sprawled out on a flat stone ground. The sound of crashing waves was now muffled by a hard ringing and the roar of blood rushing through her ears, pounding, synchronous with her heartbeat. Her body was numb.
Her head ached hard. Her eyes were stinging; she could see no more than two feet in front of her. Khanat shook her head slowly, taking a hand off the slabs to clutch her forehead. She felt light; there was no hair weighing her down, nothing fell to cover her face.
Her right hand came away smeared with grey pigment, uneven in tone, streaks of black paint on her palm and blobs of white on her fingertips. The same colours appeared in smudged patches on the ground where her head had lain.
Khanat’s heart was still pounding, but the ringing in her ears started to subside. She was no longer within that memory of Gula Bay. Heavy surges of water onto rocks below echoed up what must have been an almost sheer cliff face; the sound burst all around her. The sky was that dull grey, not the clear blueness of the moments before.
As she regained some of her senses, the numbness in her limbs gave way to hurt, an acute throbbing pain taking hold in her left thigh; it felt wet and tacky. Khanat grimaced, remembering the ritual, remembering where she was: The Clans’ Round on Motu, a place carved into the rock face, halfway up between the sea and the sky, a place for meeting, for the settling of disputes, and for rituals to the gods.
She had been a burden. In her broken state, she had put her clanmates at risk, unable to fulfil her duties as an Unlight’s Vigilant, unable to clear her mind. Haunted by memories of Iffe, her love, and the thing that tore her away, no longer could she protect her clan-kin from the threats out of the darkness.
Khanat’s loss had been painful, but that was no excuse. The elder Vigilants had relieved her of her status, and the Priests had demanded she be remade here in the Round or be banished out into the endless sea.
Her head still swimming with pain, she raised herself up onto her forearms, preparing to stand. A cracked spear lay on the ground several feet away, the bronze tip stained with some foul, steaming ichor. A sudden crack of stone on stone came from behind her, followed by a scraping noise, as if something heavy and smooth were being dragged across the ground. Another rocky thud followed.
Khanat glanced behind to see a monstrous figure. It was no more than nine paces away, using a hefty shard of rock to drag itself towards her. A Lath, a grotesque from the Undersea. Its gaze fixed upon her through small, milky-white eyes on the sides of its head.
Its elongated arms ended in swollen, three-fingered hands which gripped the chunk of stone it used to pull itself towards her. The beast’s stubby legs trailed limply behind, twitching erratically, covered in wounds seeping black-green blood that seemed to sizzle as it smeared across the ground.
“You...” it grunted in a disgusting, gurgling voice, “I break you!” It heaved its body forwards, flashing a row of shark-like teeth as it spat the words out. A haze rose from the Lath’s dull grey skin as it was seared by the divine sunlight, flaking sores coming open across its surface.
Khanat’s eyes widened. This creature was not the same cursed, long-dead thing but the Lath that had shattered her, stolen from her, broken her into pieces. To kill this one here would to be made whole again, to gain vengeance and be cleansed; but she would also have to forget, to unremember.
Feeling eyes on her from above, she stole a glance towards the cliff wall. Three figures stared down at her, silent and expressionless: Priests of Tempest, Life and The Warrior Below, each finely dressed in their ritual regalia. In case Khanat failed in her task, The Warrior’s Chosen held a shimmering copper spear, the tip flecked with golden streaks that moved and warped, a weapon enhanced with the power of godsblood.
Another thud and the sound of dry scraping focused Khanat’s mind, the shattered spear ahead of her capturing her notice. Habitually, she planted her left knee in preparation to stand, but cried out at the shocking pain, collapsing back down onto the flat, rocky ground. Her right side ached, but she was at least able to propel herself forward, crawling on three limbs while her other leg dragged painfully across the stone.
She didn’t look back and made a line straight for the spear. She hastily grabbed for the upper half, but it slipped from her grasp, the paint smeared on her hand preventing her from getting any purchase. She could hear behind her that the Lath was still coming, the tempo of its stone-beat quickening, now accompanied by forceful, pained grunts.
Again, she stretched for the spear piece, her heart thumping, panicked. The pain in her body was lessened again thanks to this fear and the drive to end that miserable creature’s life. She took hold of the spear shaft and used her three working limbs to push herself up, hobbling on one leg and falteringly turning to confront the corrupted monstrosity.
The Lath had closed some distance but was not yet within striking range. Even in its crippled state, this creature was still dangerous; one clean hit from its muscular arms could crush her ribcage and end her life. If Khanat were not injured, it would be a much simpler matter to finish off the disgusting thing but, in her present state, it could easily knock her off balance with even a glancing blow and then overpower her on the ground.
Khanat looked down upon the creature and raised the half-spear. The Lath paused, staring hard into her face and snarling, again exposing its array of pointed yellowish teeth. It pushed itself up with one elbow on the ground, the other hand on its heavy rock. Its skin smouldered as it groaned in discomfort.
Copyright © 2026 by Hari Blackmore
