When Eagles Fall (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage) Read online

  WHEN EAGLES FALL

  Also by Mary Casanova

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  Curse of a Winter Moon

  Frozen

  Moose Tracks

  Riot

  Stealing Thunder

  Wolf Shadows

  WHEN EAGLES FALL

  Mary Casanova

  For all who suffer loss and find the strength to carry on

  With special thanks for the generosity of eagle researcher Dr. Bill Bowerman, Voyageur National Park biologist Lee Grim, and biologist Matt Solensky of The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota, who hear the cry of eagles

  The Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series

  Funded by the John K. and Elsie Lampert Fesler Fund and Elizabeth and the late David Fesler, the Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series publishes significant books that contribute to an understanding and appreciation of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest.

  Originally published in 2002 by Hyperion Books for Children

  First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2014

  Copyright 2002 by Mary Casanova

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Casanova, Mary.

  When eagles fall / Mary Casanova. — First University of Minnesota Press ed.

  Summary: Still coping with her brother’s death and her parents’ subsequent divorce, thirteen-year-old Alex finds herself stranded on a small, deserted island in Minnesota with an injured eaglet.

  ISBN 978-0-8166-9211-8 (pb : alk. paper)

  [1. Eagles—Fiction. 2. Wildlife rescue—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Family problems—Fiction. 6. Minnesota—Fiction.]

  I. Title. PZ7.C266Wh 2014 [Fic]—dc23

  2014007913

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The day is done, and the darkness

  Falls from the wings of Night,

  As a feather is wafted downward

  From an eagle in his flight.

  From “The Day Is Done”

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Contents

  1. Captive

  2. Naatuck’s Cabin

  3. On a Mission

  4. The Climb

  5. The Eaglet

  6. Wind and Water

  7. Alone

  8. Somewhere, Nowhere

  9. Stranded

  10. Beneath Dark Rafters

  11. Castaway

  12. Hunger

  13. To Catch a Fish

  14. Venturing Farther

  15. Skinny Dipping

  16. Night Falling Fast

  17. To Build a Fire

  18. Flames

  19. Special Cargo

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER ONE

  Captive

  The orange bag descended, branch by branch, from the eagle’s nest. Alex waited below with two other team members. She craned her neck, fingers laced under the sweaty knot of her bandanna and stubby ponytail. This was their ninth nest of the day, and, shoulders to neck, her muscles pinched and burned.

  Above the white pine, two bald eagles circled, protesting. Alex had heard the piercing kri-kri, kri-kri of adult eagles before, but the cry they made when an eaglet was ripped from its nest was different. Somewhere between a pig’s grunt and her mom’s tongue-click scolding.

  “Got it,” Ned called. Like the Green Giant, fully uniformed in Park Service green, he carried the wriggling bag to a patch of ground Alex had cleared of sticks and twigs. His wife, Maya, was busy arranging supplies at the edge of the banding site.

  With a handheld scale, Ned weighed the bird, then slid the orange fabric down around its body. Dark brown feathers and black, intelligent eyes appeared. Beak open, the eaglet’s pinkish-white tongue fluttered wildly. The eaglet was no doubt bewildered by what was happening.

  And little wonder. It was a captive, just like her. If Alex hadn’t landed herself in the emergency room, she’d still be back in San Jose, where she belonged. But Mom had overreacted, panicked, and phoned Alex’s dad—something she avoided at all costs since their separation—and told him, “I’m worried, Russ. I really think Alex needs a change of friends and scenery for a while.”

  A deerfly landed on Ned’s glistening bald head, but he ignored it. In one smooth motion, Ned flipped the eaglet on its back and put his green cap over the bird’s head, quieting it. “Okay, Alex,” he whispered. “You know what to do—you’re getting to be a pro.”

  “Yeah, tell my dad that,” she said quietly.

  A tremble threaded through her chest. Her palms turned damp. She knelt in front of the eaglet, then carefully slid her hands, just as her dad had earlier shown her, along the eaglet’s upper legs to its waxy, yellow ankles, just far enough down to keep the eaglet from flexing its talons and thrashing her bare knees. Its legs—just as surprising to her now as the first time—were warm. Poor bird didn’t know what was going on.

  “Abduction,” she said, her voice rising. “Safe in its nest, then my dad snatches it. It’s not really fair to the—”

  “Hey, Alexis,” her dad called from above. “Quiet, down there.”

  Alex felt like a scolded dog. She shot an angry glance at the camouflaged figure, eighty feet up, straddling the edge of the nest. “Hey, little fella,” her father cooed to the remaining eaglet, “it’s okay. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Why is he the only one who can talk? It’s like he thinks he’s God or something.”

  Maya swatted deerflies circling above her black hair, which fell in a braid to the top of her sweatpants. In her eyes, strong and dark as coffee, a smile played, and she whispered, “Alex, when it comes to eagle research, Russell is God.”

  “He likes things quiet for the birds,” Ned added with a wink, “but sometimes he breaks his own rules.”

  Alex huffed. “That’s for sure.” She knew her father was a respected eagle expert who had authored three books and read his research papers around the globe, that he had even studied the huge Steller’s sea eagles in eastern Russia. She knew better than anyone how he could talk for hours about what he loved most—eagles. That wasn’t the point. Actually, she wasn’t sure what the point was anymore. But Maya and Ned were her parents’ old friends from Minnesota, where she used to live when she was younger. Her father’s old friends. Why did she think they’d understand?

  She held the eaglet’s legs firmly, but not white knuckled as she had at the start of the day. Still, she knew she was hardly a pro. If her dad paid more attention, though, he might notice that she’d caught on pretty quickly.

  That morning at Grandma’s Pantry, shoveling in the last of his platter-size blueberry pancake, her dad had said, “If your head’s in the clouds today, Alexis, you’re gonna get hurt. Understand?” Did he think she was stupid? She was thirteen, a teenager for over two months already. At his words, she’d looked away to a sign above the cook’s serving window that read: THIS AIN’T BURGER KING. YOU GET IT MY
WAY, OR YOU DON’T GET IT AT ALL. Sounded just like her dad.

  Working quickly, Ned and Maya Naatuck plucked three feathers from the bird’s chest, drew blood from an artery beneath its wing, filled a tube and smeared blood on glass and paper, then sealed samples in envelopes.

  While they worked, a mosquito lighted on Alex’s thigh, dropped its needle nose, and began pumping up. She tried to ignore it. Her legs were already covered with red scratches like lines on a city street map; welted from mosquitoes, horseflies, and deerflies; and sore from squatting beside eaglets all day. She should have worn jeans as her dad had suggested, but she’d never admit that now.

  “Last,” Ned said, “ID tags.” Using the rivet gun, he clamped a blue metal band on one of the eaglet’s legs and a silver on the other. Then he spun the bands. “Gotta make sure they’re loose,” he said. “Still got some growin’ to do, but she’s good sized, for six weeks.”

  “Why does my dad call all the eaglets ‘fellas’?” As soon as she’d asked, Alex wished she hadn’t. Her mouth turned chalky. She knew the answer without having to ask. She could never be the boy her father once carried on his shoulders when they all went star catching. “Catch a falling star,” her father sang, “and put it in a socket, Make your brown hair turn gray. …”

  “Who knows anything, really,” Maya said, “about how your dad thinks.”

  With a sharp breath, Alex forced her feelings down.

  “Are you okay?” Maya whispered, the words merely forming on her lips.

  Alex swallowed around a knot, nodded, and focused on the eaglet lying helpless before her. Concentrate on your grip, she commanded herself. Hold on. Stay in control.

  Ned pulled his cap off the eaglet’s head, and the bird startled. “Okay, back to your nest,” he said, and eased the bag down over the eaglet’s head and chest. “Now,” he said, and Alex released her grip—at just the right second—and the nylon fabric slipped over the outstretched talons. “Perfect,” Ned said, “that was just perfect.” As he lifted the bag, the eaglet wriggled inside, righting itself before its return to the nest.

  Stiff from squatting, Alex stood and stretched. As she did, the edge of her tank top tickled her new belly ring. When her dad climbed down, she’d stretch again to show it off, just to make him mad.

  Through the bag’s cinched opening, Alex caught a glance. Head cocked, the eaglet looked back with one bright, intelligent, steady eye. Watching her.

  The runabout skimmed across Rainy Lake, and Alex faced backward, determined to not speak a word to her father, who sat across from her. The Evinrude motor churned a foamy white wake. In the distance, lake blended into sky without any line of green to separate the two. She could almost imagine that it was the Pacific, and that she wasn’t so far away from home.

  Stepping off the puddle-jumping plane in northern Minnesota was like arriving on another planet. The “Icebox of the Nation,” International Falls was a paper-mill town that boasted the world’s largest thermometer in the park beside its downtown, a whole three city blocks long. The city was like Alcatraz—remote and isolated—sitting on the edge of endless woods and water. There was no escaping, no running away.

  “Banished,” she said angrily. And that was exactly the right word for it.

  “What’d you say?” her father asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, with enough sharpness to make him think twice about talking to her.

  The hum of the boat motor filled the air between them. From the corner of her eye, she checked out her dad. He wore his brown cap backward, a middle-aged guy trying to look like a teenager. His plaid shirt stretched thin at his shoulders, and at his elbow a flap of ripped fabric hung in a V. Sweat and dirt layered his face, creased darkly into the crinkles along his eyes and the edges of his dry lips. The dirtier he was, the harder the day, the more trees he’d climbed, the happier he seemed. She looked away, wished she could disappear into that invisible line between water and air.

  The boat sped on and passed a nest on a small island. “See that nest on Skipper Rock Island?” Her father pointed. “Two eaglets in that one.”

  Caught in amber light, the nesting tree leaned into the island’s western edge. She wasn’t blind. The nest was like an upside-down beaver lodge, right on top. You couldn’t miss it. Unlike most of the mammoth pines her father climbed, the tree was short and skinny. You wouldn’t need spikes and straps and climbing ropes. Not far from the nest, like a sentry keeping watch, a bald eagle perched on a dead tree stump.

  “When Ned and I did our flyby last week to check the nests, something glinted from that one. Another blasted lure, no doubt.”

  Alex didn’t say anything. She pretended she didn’t care. At the base of other trees they’d found skeletons of northern pike and suckers, feathers from seagulls and crows, a squirrel’s tail, fishing line, a battered teddy bear, and a half-dozen lures. When eagles brought fish back to the nest, fishing lures that had been snagged on a fish’s body or mouth came with the eagle’s catch.

  Skipper Rock Island shrank steadily in the boat’s wake, one of a thousand islands in the winding wilderness lake. The nest was one of many nests. Still, something about the nest tugged at Alex. Two eaglets that had bumped into each other since birth, probably fought over food together, tucked snugly in their feather-lined nest. One wrong move, and a lure might snag them. A curious peck could mean death.

  “Will you get the lure out tomorrow?” Her words slipped out.

  “Tree’s got a zipper down its side—struck by lightning. Climb it, and you’re asking for trouble.”

  “But what about the eaglets? You’re the expert.” Her voice was rude, but she couldn’t seem to talk with her father anymore without a bite in her tone. She pressed ahead. “Someone has to help them.”

  His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “The tree’s weak and might not hold my weight. It’s a risk for the climber and the nest, too. Let’s hope the parents do some housecleaning.”

  “I don’t weigh much. I could—”

  “Alexis, “ he said, crossing his arms, glancing at her with a tilt of his head. “No. Don’t even think about it.”

  She was lighter, smaller, parakeet-bone skinny. She suddenly remembered. Parakweet. That’s what her brother had called her after her first-grade skit, when she’d dyed her hair blue to match her blue papier-mâché wings. How old had he been then? Three? Four? She wondered if her father remembered the nickname. It had been a long time since she’d heard it.

  The nest faded to an ashen smudge on the edge of the island. In her mind, she could see the two eaglets. She couldn’t stop thinking about them. If her dad—God—wasn’t able to help the eaglets, maybe she could.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Naatuck’s Cabin

  The boat nudged toward the wooden dock. Heavy with exhaustion, Alex grabbed her backpack and piled out of the boat after the others. The moment her feet hit shore, mosquitoes began to circle.

  “I’ll get the sauna goin’,” said Maya.

  “And I’ll get the drinks flowin’,” Ned chimed in after her.

  Alex’s dad cleared his throat and shot Ned a look.

  Ned apologized, palms outstretched. “Hey, not that we’re big drinkers here. A couple beers, that’s all I mean. And pop for those who are underage, of course.”

  Alex pretended not to hear. She didn’t like to think about how much Maya and Ned might know. Head down, she passed the sand beach and overturned green canoe, the pansy-filled rock garden and fire pit. Maya, whose arms were already filled with birch logs, was heading to the sauna building. “Taking a sauna?” she asked.

  Alex shook her head and climbed the wooden steps to the Naatucks’ cabin, a log home that Maya and Ned lived in all year. In the summer they boated to their island, and in the winter they drove their truck across the lake, except for freeze up and spring thaw, when the ice was too weak; then they stayed in town at an apartment.

  The screen door creaked as Alex entered, amazed that the Naatucks didn’t lo
ck up when they left for the day. A pair of snowshoes hung crisscrossed above the stone fireplace. Butterball, their overweight tiger-striped cat, uncurled herself in an overstuffed chair, arched her back, then lay down again.

  “Another ambitious day?” Alex asked. Pausing to scratch the cat between its ears, she crossed the braided rug to the porch, her room for the next week. Not fancy, but at least she had a place of her own. The faded couch waited for her like open arms. She flopped herself on top of her sleeping bag, and before she knew it, she was out.

  Sometime in the dark of night, she woke with a start. At first she didn’t know where she was. Her own bedroom … but she wasn’t on her water bed. Her abuela Elena’s in Pismo Beach … but the air was wrong, sharp and piney, not seaside scented. Light flickered in the distance. Voices. Blinking, she sat up and rubbed her chilled arms. A mosquito buzzed. Minnesota. The light was a fire—a bonfire by the lake. The three silhouettes were familiar—the Naatucks and her father—sitting beside the fire on logs.

  Voices floated up from shore, as if they were speaking through the screen, right next to her. Alex flopped down, climbed inside her flannel-lined sleeping bag, and closed her eyes.

  “She was just acting out,” Ned was saying. “All teens do.”

  “Well, getting into that kind of trouble”—her father’s voice rose, uncertain, tinted with anger—“was a little more than acting out, in my mind. It’s not like she’s the first kid to go through a separation. I mean, not all teens end up in the emergency room.”

  A silence followed.

  Alex lifted her hands to her ears, but midway she stopped herself and kept listening.

  “Sometimes,” her father continued, “I think she needs to live in a small town. Maybe I should talk her mother into sending her here to live with you two!” He laughed. “Hey, I give up. I mean, I try, but she shuts me out the minute I say anything. I send her gifts. You think I ever get a thank-you in return?”