"Once
there was a boy. When the boy was 6 years old, his father gave
him a falcon to train. Falcons are raptors - killing birds, his
father told him, the Shadowhunters of the sky. The falcon
didn't like the boy, and he didn't like it, either. Its
sharp beak made him nervous, and its bright eyes always seemed to
be watching him. It would slash at him with his beak and talons
when he came near: For weeks his wrists and hands were always
bleeding. He didn't know it, but his father had selected a
falcon that had lived in the wild for over a year, and thus was
nearly impossible to train. But the boy tried, because his father
had told him to make the falcon obedient, and he wanted to please
his father. He stayed with the falcon constantly, keeping it
awake by talking to it and even playing music to it, because a
tired bird was ment to be easier to tame. He leard the equipment:
the jesses, the hood, the brail, the leash that bound the bird to
his wrist. He was ment to keep the bird blind, but he
couldn't bring himself to do it - instead he tryed to sit
where the bird could see him as he touched and stroked its wings,
willing it to trust him. He fed it from his hand, and at first it
would not eat. Later it ate so savagely that the beak cut his
palm. But the boy was glad, because it was progress, and because
he wanted the bird to know him, even if it had to consume his
blood to make that happen. He began to see that the falcon was
beautiful, that its slim wings were built for the speed of
flight, that it was strong and swift, fierce and gentle. When it
dived to the ground, it moved like light. When it learned to
circle and land on his wrist, he nearly shouted with delight.
Sometimes the bird would hop to his sholder and but its beak in
his hair. He knew his falcon loved him, and when he was certain
that it was not just tamed but perfectly tamed, he went to his
father and showed him what he had done, expecting him to be
proud. Instead his father took the bird, now tame and trusting,
in his hands, and broke its neck. 'I told you to make him
obedient,' his father said, and dropped the falcon's
lifeless body to the ground. "Instead, you taught it to love
you. Falcons are not ment to be loving pets: They are fierce and
wild, savage and cruel. This bird was not tamed; it was
broken.' Later, when his father left him, the boy cried over
his pet, until his father sent a servant to take the body of the
bird away and bury it. The boy never cried again, and he never
forgot what he'd learned: That to love is to
destroy, and to be loved is to be the one
destroyed."
- Jace, City of Bones ♥