Read Online In the Arms of Stone Angels by Jordan Dane - Free Book Online

told me that the bird was healed, I had to admit that I was sad. The next day, we’d release her. He’d given me a day to get used to the idea and he wanted to make a ceremony of it. I had grown attached to the little thing. But the main reason I hated the idea of releasing her was that it meant I had no more reason to visit him every day.
    â€œYou should be happy. She’ll be free of her cage tomorrow.” Inside the hut, White Bird looked at me and smiled, lying stretched out near me. He expected me to be happy, but I wasn’t.
    â€œYeah, but I’ll miss her.” Sitting cross-legged, I scrunched my face into a pout as I stroked the cage he’d built for her. “Couldn’t we keep her? I’d help you take care of her.”
    He shook his head and said, “It’s better to die free than live life in a cage. She must be free to fulfill her destiny. And thanks to you, she has one.”
    He always reminded me of my part in rescuing the bird. Repairing her wing had been all him, but he always made me out to be the real hero. And I loved him for it.
    â€œThen tomorrow it is. At dawn. I’ll be here.” I took a deep breath. “She should have a full day of freedom.”
    â€œThat’s the spirit.” He grinned and tapped my nose with his finger, a gesture I’d grown fond of.
    The next day I showed up at his hideaway at dawn, as I had promised. And I tried to look happy, for his sake. He’d come earlier and had started a small fire in a stone pit in the clearing outside his shelter. He was hunched over the flames now and the burning wood smelled good. It made my stomach growl.Not even the big wad of chewing gum I had in my mouth stopped my hunger.
    When he looked up from the fire, he smiled.
    â€œCome here. You’ve got something in your hair.”
    When I sat next to him, he leaned closer and pulled a small twig from my hair. I had brushed against a low tree limb on my hike in. But instead of throwing the twig away, White Bird put it into his pocket and grinned again.
    Something sad and wonderful struck me. I remembered thinking that I wished I could freeze us both in that moment. And even though it made me sad to know I couldn’t, that didn’t stop me from wishing I could remember him like this forever. His smile always made me feel that way, like every moment of our being together was precious and important…and fragile.
    I knelt beside him near the fire without saying a word. The crackling flame felt good against my clothes even though the drifting smoke stung my eyes.
    â€œYou ready to do this?” he asked.
    â€œYep. What do you need me to do?”
    White Bird asked me to get the bird. I went into his hut and brought out the cage. He had removed her bandages and she looked as good as new. When I came out from the shelter, he stopped me to grab a small feather that had gotten stuck in a branch of the cage. He made a point to stuff it into a beaded leather pouch that had a drawstring—a part of the ritual he had planned—but that wasn’t the only thing he put into the bag. He took the twig from his pocket, the one he had taken from my hair minutes before, and placed it into the pouch, too.
    â€œWhat’s that…that bag?”
    â€œIt’s my medicine bag.” He blushed and slid the pouch into his pocket. “I made it…myself.”
    I could understand why he’d taken the feather, but the twig he’d taken from my hair was another story. I grinned.
    â€œWhat do you keep in it?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, but when he looked into my eyes with a serious expression on his cute face, I stopped smiling.
    â€œI keep things that are…special to me.”
    Both of us blushed, but before I said anything else, White Bird pointed to a spot away from the fire.
    â€œSet the cage over there, away from the smoke.”
    I did what he told me, finding it hard to fight a grin.