Free The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy by Ryan Winfield Page A

they finally pass, my eyes are blinded for a moment by the return of unfiltered sun and when they adjust again, I’m standing face to face with him—
    I recognize him right away. I had convinced myself he was a hallucination, but here he is, dropped from the sky. His dark hair cascading over his shoulders, his chest bronzed, his waist narrow. It’s him, I’m sure—the boy who sits on water. I would have guessed he stood three meters tall, but his piercing gray eyes are almost level with mine. And he’s young, too. Maybe not much older than I am. He wears some kind of loin cloth stitched from animal skin. Slung over his shoulder he carries a large netted bag containing several dead birds.
    After looking me over, he passes me by and continues on walking toward the lake. He walks quick and easy, loose on his feet, and I have to jog to keep up.
    “Hey, what’s your name?”
    He ignores me, walking faster. I’ve never seen anyone like him before. His skin seems to fit him perfectly and the way he walks suggests that the very ground is there only for him to cross. He’s long and lean, his arms already ripped with muscle, and I can’t imagine him ever being afraid of anyone.
    “Hey, slow down.”
    I trot along behind him, dodging left and right, desperate to get his attention. He ignores me, his eyes focused, the netted bag of birds bouncing against his naked back.
    “Was it you who found me?”
    When he reaches the grove of trees at the edge of the lake, he stops. I stand in the leafy shade and watch as he opens his bag and tosses birds onto the grass, bending over to artfully fluff them up, or tuck their wings. Five, six, seven dead birds spread out. Then he breaks a narrow limb from a sapling and strips it of leaves. He pulls a string from his belt and lashes his last bird to the stripped limb. Then he buries the free end of the limb into the ground, pumping it back and forth to make a sort of hinge before lowering it onto the grass.
    “What are you doing with those birds?”
    He squats and ties a coil of rope to the stick just beneath where he tied the bird, then he uncoils the rope over to me.
    “Pigeons,” he says, stuffing the end of the rope into my hand. “They’s pigeons.”
    So he can speak. His voice is higher-pitched and more like mine than I expected it to be.
    “What do I do with this?” I ask, holding the rope.
    “On my signal,” he says, “pull fast an’ bring ’em up.”
    “Bring what up?”
    “The stick pigeon.”
    “What’s the signal?” I ask, but he’s already walked off.
    He unfolds the pigeon sack into a large circular net edged with small stone weights, looping it together with well-practiced folds and climbing with it up the nearest tree.
    Several minutes pass and I stand there, feeling stupid with the rope in my hand. He conceals himself in the overhanging branches so well that I have to keep refocusing to even see him there. I want to ask what we’re doing, but with every passing minute the silence grows heavier until I give up the idea of ever speaking again. So I stand, rope in hand.
    “Now,” he hisses, “now.”
    I pull the rope hard and stand the stick up in the grass, its dead-tethered display flapping lifeless and limp on its end.
    Now what, I wonder.
    They come twisting out of the sky fast—a much smaller flock of the pigeons that passed earlier—and within seconds the ground is covered with them pecking and cooing, chasing one another in circles, no idea yet that they’ve been duped.
    The net comes down in a gorgeous spiral, hovering for a moment in a whoosh of air spun by its stony edges, and then it drops on the confused birds, and he drops from the branches after it. He quickly scoops up the drawstring, sweeps the net around the stunned birds, heaves it up and holds it closed—closed and writhing with fifty flapping pigeons.
    He wrestles the sack to the lake’s edge and I follow.
    Before I can say no, he has me breaking their necks. We take turns reaching