She circled in the high currents, dark orbs upon the ground so far below, searching. Watchful and calm, riding the wind, eyes alert for prey. No flitting sparrows did the onyx eyes miss. No movement of any creature escaped notice. She hung in eddies, riding the rising column of warmer air and sinking in the occasional pockets of coolness. The wind carried faraway scents to her: pine, damp soil and fragrant water.

The eagle was a magnificent creature, born of wind and air and thousands of feathers. Seven feet of wingspan held her like an anchor in the sky. The sun beat her back and the earth stared longingly at her breast, wishing it too were free.

She stalled momentarily in another air pocket and reflexively pulled in her outstretched wings, sinking in the thin air. Then, with the rush of another rising column ruffling her pinions, she extended the tips of her broad wings and rose rapidly upwards.

Her eyesight was not jostled by the flapping of wings and it afforded her a piercing view of the forest below. One doe grazed carefully beside a small glade. Sparrows and squirrels busied along the trees. Small rodents darted ahead of the deer hooves. The tall clumps of grasses waved in the breeze. No noise reached her, despite her keen hearing ...only the rush of the wind. She was much too high to pick up any sound.

She circled south, cutting deftly across the current of air and positioned herself over a creek. It glistened below twisting and beckoning like a silver chain. The few exposed rocks pulled bubbles of froth behind them. She pulled in her wings and dropped.

Lower. Lower still. One hundred feet and closing the gap rapidly, she folded her wings and arced toward the pool after a trout, only to come gliding across the mirrored surface without prey. She gained altitude slowly, flapping hard, body abruptly heavy with gravity. At tree-level four sparrows darted out of cover and beset her, a tangle of brown specks after the larger one, sending her veering left along the brush.

This was their territory, but she craftily followed the hillside down, gaining momentum in the long slow glide. The tinier birds twitted and flew quickly to keep up, swooping and diving at her head all the while. She kept the steady pace until she met the ravine.

Another column of air rose here and now, buoyant, with wings over three times larger than her dogged opponents, she turned to fight. Backpedaling her pinions and flipping upside down, she lifted razor talons to the nearest heckler. The sparrow narrowly evaded those claws and the next diving bird unwarily blundered into them. One pull and the bird fell disemboweled into the rocks below. The next one flicked at her head, but, acrobatic in her element, she fouled the little bird's flight with a great wing and opened it into agony with her curved beak.

The last escaped evisceration by inches and vanished intelligently, into cover. The eagle extended her wings and captured the breeze. It lifted her, powerful and undeniable, above trees, skyline, and mountain. Far below, a red fox captured the two downed birds and devoured them with a snap. The fray was forgotten.

She drifted north again to the meadow where earlier she had spotted the doe quietly grazing. Craftily she hung above the glade, balancing wings and wind to hold her position. The fierce eyes pierced down on the scene. There was action below.

The deer had entered the clearing and nibbled slowly...but it was not the target of the eagle's eye. She watched the ground around the herbivore. Presently a squirrel darted from almost under the doe's feet and scurried up a tree. Another shape moved ... a rabbit, cautiously hopping out of the larger beast's way. Still the silent bird hung on the air. The doe took another step, undisturbed, and the hare took the option of trusting the larger animal's excellent hearing. It hopped, merry clover-seeker, further from its burrow.

The raptor continued her wait with infinite patience. The bunny nibbled here and there, raising long ears to listen between bites. Once he reared up on his hindquarters to gaze fearfully about ... then went back to munching the sparse grass.

She folded her wings and plummeted, turning into the sun. A flash of warm brown and milk white against the blue of sky. At fifty miles per hour, she dropped silent as a stone. The air detoured around her chiseled body soundlessly and at one hundred miles per hour, she flashed into the meadow and leveled with a powerful twist of her shoulders. The target had only the moment of realized pain as she hooked him in her talons and carried him aloft, dying as soon as his ribs crushed with the force of her speed.

The bird careened into a nearby snag and perched. She pulled at the rabbit, gaining the nourishment she needed for the clutch of eggs that she tended two miles away. They would hatch soon. She needed all of her strength for the long months of killing enough to feed her chicks and herself. She ruffled her feathers and preened her breast when she finished, dropping the bones and fur below. Two jays immediately laid claim to the carcass and filled the air with argument.

At last, bored, she soared free and swept gracefully over the terrain, screaming her defiance at the ground. "Watch me! See how it is done!" she challenged and rose effortlessly on the thermal air. She was lost into the heavens in an instant as if yanked by some invisible string.

Across the ravine and wedged in the cliff rock, Duncan MacLeod gasped and fell back with a dizzying rush; the descent from vision so swift that it was only the arms locked across his chest that kept him from a galvanic plunge off the edge.

"OH MY GOD...Oh my GOD...!" he sputtered, shoulders and back muscles trembling as if he had been awing. His spirit longed for the rapture of the flight and he scrabbled uncomprehendingly at the rocks nearby, trying to escape the fetters that held him pinned. "Oh my god..."

"That's why I don't do birds anymore," informed Connor, laughing in delight with his booted feet braced against the curving cliff face. Determination gave him strength against Duncan's misguided twisting to get to freedom and he shifted his grip as quickly as the young man dislodged them, never once letting go.

There was nothing else he could do except hold on until his friend returned finally to the world of rock and trees and men and the solid earth beneath him.

MacNair 8/28/00

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