Flight of the Eagle
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: The Call
Aiyana had been home four days when the email arrived.
She was at her grandmother’s kitchen table where all the important things in her life seemed to happen, working through a new layer of the spreadsheet she had been building since she was eleven. She had added a column for jurisdictional designation — federal, state, tribal, county, undesignated — and was cross-referencing it against case resolution rates. The pattern that was emerging was not surprising but it was precise and precision was what she needed. Anyone could say the system was broken. Aiyana intended to show exactly which joint in the system had failed for each individual case, so that no bureaucrat could point at another bureaucrat across a jurisdictional line without her data following his finger and landing on him too.
Her grandfather’s eagle feather was in a small cedar box on the shelf above the table where she could see it while she worked.
The email came from a production company address she did not recognize. She read it twice before she understood what it was.
The Shark Tank team was not writing to say no. They were writing to say they could not feature her on the show — she was twelve, there was no product, the legal exposure alone made it impossible. But someone on their team had read her letter carefully. More than once. And they wanted to know if she would be willing to speak with someone.
They did not say who the someone was.
Aiyana sat with the email for a long time. Outside the window the mesa caught the afternoon light the way it always did, indifferent and permanent. Her grandmother moved somewhere in the back of the house. The cedar box sat on its shelf.
She thought about what her grandfather had told her on the mountain before she went into the vision. A warrior does not wait for permission.
She wrote back the same day. She said she was willing to speak with someone. She said she had data she could share and a proposal she could present and that she was available after school hours and on weekends. She proofread it three times and sent it before she could second guess herself.
Then she went and told her grandmother.
Rosalie listened without interrupting, standing at the counter with a dish towel in her hands. When Aiyana finished she was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, go tell your grandfather.
Thomas listened to the whole thing from his chair with his hands resting on his knees and his eyes on the middle distance the way he listened to things that required full attention. When she finished he was quiet long enough that she wondered if he wanted her to say more.
Then he said, who is the someone.
She said she did not know.
He nodded slowly. He said, you find out before you meet them. You do not walk into a room without knowing who is in it.
She said she understood.
He looked at her then and she saw in his face the same thing she had seen when he turned around on the mountain in the dark after she had picked up the feather — not surprise exactly, more like recognition of something he had been watching approach for a long time.
He said, the eagle came to you and not to any of the people who have been working on this for thirty years. There is a reason for that. Do not let anyone make you small in this. Not the television people. Not whoever the someone is. Not the tribal council and not Washington. You know what you are carrying.
She said she knew.
He said, good. Now go do your homework.
The call came six days later on a Saturday morning.
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