Mixed Media Challenge: "The Tale of Lady Genevieve the Hawk-Taloned" -- by Abigail Leskey

This story is based off of this picture: https://discardingimages.tumblr.com/post/171908005403/ladyhawke-apocalypse-the-cloisters-apocalypse

The Tale of Lady Genevieve the Hawk-Taloned

By Abigail Leskey

The fiery-haired child gripped her mother’s woolen kirtle, staring at the lady roped to the stake. “Mother? Why does she have bird feet?”

Her mother looked from the brown, feathery legs that protruded from the lady’s red-lined tunic—the hawk-like claws at the end of them hidden by the piles of fagots around her—to her child’s round, small face. “Because she is a wicked woman, fathered by a demon.”

“Oh.” The child stared at the wood and then at the lady. She looked sweet, as if she would be smiling were she not roped to a stake. “Will the fire hurt her?”

“It—it will make her sleep, forever and ever. So she will not steal more children,” the mother said, and took her child into her arms.   

A red ladybird ran along one of the fagots. Lady Genevieve, hawk-taloned, hawk-winged, hawk-tailed, bound, lifted a claw and set it before the ladybird, so the ladybird ran up onto its yellow, ridged hardness, and then jerked her caw so the beetle was tossed away onto the grass, away from the wood that would soon be burning. 

The Sheriff promenaded towards the stake, a parchment in his hand. “Lady Genevieve. You are charged with stealing children and devouring them, using your unnatural powers of flight. How do you answer these charges?” 

Lady Genevieve looked the sheriff in the face. And then her defiance became alarm, and her gaze leap up higher than him, into the cerulean sky. 

“What say you?” he reiterated.

“Look behind you!” she shouted, eyes fixed on the sky.

The crowd turned as a monstrous hawk as large as a woman sped down towards them and snatched the fiery-haired child and flapped its wings and hurtled upward, higher than any tree, in less time than it takes to make the sign of the cross. The child’s screams dissipated. 

“I told you of the birds! And you did not heed me!” Lady Genevieve shouted over all other shouts and wails, her eyes feverish with fury as she stared up at the vanishing bird. “Let me go! No one else can save the child! Let me fly!” 

The child’s mother ripped a dagger out of a man’s belt and raced towards the stake and began sawing at the hemp. 

Lady Genevieve burst out of the ropes and wide brown wings slashed out on both sides of her, her open-backed tunic merely a covering for her bosom. She soared upward, pursuing the predatory hawk.

Twice as high as the trees, a grey falcon flapped onto Lady Genevieve’s wrist, and screamed.

“Yes, dear falcon. Will you help me?”

The falcon screamed again, and almost like an echo, Lady Genevieve heard the child screaming ahead, a dark speck in a bird’s claw. She flapped onward and then, like the two branches of a “Y,” she and her falcon separated. She dived under the giant hawk; he flew above it, and stabbed down towards it screaming and clawing at its yellow eyes.

The monstrous hawk’s claws splayed in pain and the child plummeted, screaming, past a cloud, past a finch, into Lady Genevieve’s arms. The lady flew upward at once, clutching the child with her left arm and drawing a sword from under her tunic with the right. Her falcon was flying toward her, the monstrous hawk’s talons at its tail. It rushed past her and then the hawk’s claws tore at her feathered body and its open beak attempted to clamp around her rosy face.

Lady Genevieve screamed furiously and thrust her sword through the hawk’s windpipe to the hilt.

It fell like a falling star, cratering moss.

Lady Genevieve drifted down after it, patting the crying child’s back. Her falcon followed her. Half a Paternoster later, she stood on the moss, the child in her arms and the falcon on her shoulder. Her talons stabbed into the green velvet. 

A knight on a grey horse galloped towards them, stopping a few yards away. He leapt off of it and hurried towards Lady Genevieve, limping, throwing up his visor with his one hand. “My lady. I would have been too late.” His eyes were wide in his long face. 

Lady Genevieve shook her head, smiling at him. “You would not, Sir Ingram. Roast fowl cannot be cooked in a moment.” 

He dropped to his knees before her and kissed her bloody free hand. “What are your commands, my lady?” 

“My request is that you take this child to her mother, and tell that town to beware the hawks—and that neither this hawk”— she gestured toward the dead one—”nor myself shall step talon there again.” She looked at the child. “Do you want to ride on the horse with the kind knight?”

The child nodded. “Afeared of birds,” she quavered. 

Sir Ingram bowed his head, rose, and took the child from Lady Genevieve. “I’ll be taking you to your mother, little one.” He looked at Lady Genevieve again. “There are other knights who can slay hawks, though we must wait until they alight. You, only, will be burned for such noble deeds. Why not seek peace, my lady?” 

Lady Genevieve reached up and stroked her falcon’s feathers. “Other knights can slay these monsters, dear knight. Only I can steal their victim from them, living. Will you meet me at St. Jude’s Chapel? I have heard tell that three of the demon hawks have been stealing children round about it.” 

“You have my word.” Sir Ingram walked to and remounted his horse, and set the child in front of him, hearing Lady Genevieve asking her falcon if it were hungry. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw her with it on her wrist, feeding it a sword-severed hawk leg. 

He cantered toward the town, the child chattering, and Lady Genevieve flew toward St. Jude’s Chapel.