Flight of the Dragon Kyn

Drag­on’s Milk was going to be a short sto­ry. Back in the ear­ly-mid 1980’s I had this idea for a bunch of short fairy tales fea­tur­ing girls with grit and courage. But some­thing hap­pened as I began to write. The sto­ry grew dark­er, deep­er … longer. Way longer. Pret­ty soon I real­ized that I writ­ing a nov­el, not a short sto­ry. And there was a whole bunch more stuff to write about, things that took place before Drag­on’s Milk began. So I decid­ed to write the pre­quel, Flight of the Drag­on Kyn. (The sequel, Sign of the Dove, came later.)

The most amaz­ing thing about research­ing Flight of the Drag­on Kyn was the birds. I talked my way into an Ore­gon Zoo pro­gram where they trained teenagers to work with hawks and fal­cons. But first, we had to earn our keep. The teenagers and I cut up cute lit­tle dead chicks and mice for the hawks’ and fal­cons’ din­ners. We prac­ticed mak­ing fal­con­er’s knots using the fin­gers of only one hand. We cleaned the mews and cut up the birds’ mutes and cast­ings, look­ing for signs of dis­ease. (Cast­ings are like owl pel­lets, indi­gestible balls of skin and bones that the birds urp up after they eat. Mutes are what come out the oth­er end.)

<p”>Pretty soon I real­ized that the zoo train­ing was­n’t enough. I was going to have to hang out with some fal­con­ers. I found a news­pa­per arti­cle about a fal­con­er, Byron Gard­ner, and called him up. He invit­ed me to his home and intro­duced me to his birds. He urged me not to “pret­ty up” the fal­cons in my book. Fal­cons are bloody, he said. They kill in order to sur­vive, kill cute lit­tle birds and mice. And they are mag­nif­i­cent, nonethe­less. Byron promised to read my man­u­script for accu­ra­cy and to take me hunt­ing with his fal­cons the fol­low­ing autumn.

When autumn rolled around, I called Byron. He was very ill with can­cer. He could­n’t take me hunt­ing, but he told a for­mer appren­tice about me. And that man, Bob Welle, now a mas­ter fal­con­er, showed me his birds stoop­ing (div­ing from mid-air) on prey.

Byron died before I fin­ished the book. Bob kind­ly checked it over for me. Years lat­er, when I went on an author vis­it, I was greet­ed by Byron’s wid­ow, who now worked at the school. On my way out, she hand­ed me a gift: the bell from one of Byron’s fal­cons. It now hangs in a spe­cial place in my studio.