Winter came, and so the birds flew south.
This time, there was a little more to it than that, of course. The winter came not at autumn’s end, but at the height of midsummer, it brought no gales but sent the winds spinning in confusion, it dropped fire from metal in the sky in place of water, it set the lands aglow and brought daytime into the night.
That wasn’t quite normal. Still, winter came, and so the birds flew south.
All of them. It wasn’t a winter that could be toughed through.
The bits of the sky that weren’t filled with dust and cloud were choked with a thousand thousand feathers, endless plumes, wingbeats that could deafen a human at forty paces. It was a flock of flocks, one that hadn’t been alive in flesh or memory since the last Passenger Pigeon died alone in Cincinnati.
It landed somewhere in the southwest, on a very large rock several miles across. There wasn’t an inch of spare ground to be had, and many of the bigger birds found themselves turned into makeshift roosts by the smaller. Far down below, the lake at the rock’s base was coated with nesting waterfowl.
The most important thing to do now, of course, was figure out who was in charge.
“It should be us,” argued a chickadee, hopping nervously in place. “There are lots of us, lots of us, a whole lot, lot, lot of us. It’s only fair.”
“No no no, there are more of us, more of us,” snapped the sparrow facing it, bobbing furiously.
“Who’s talking?”
They didn’t listen to the question. No one was listening to them, after all.
Up above them as they squabbled, on the big broken butte that was the highest point, around the broken, dead tree, all the biggest and loudest of all the birds were arguing the question of leadership. The wind whistled through the cracks in the rock around their feet, polishing the rock smooth and moaning under each word spoken as though it was trying to say something.
“If the flock has be steered, it should be us that’s doing the steering,” said a big Canada Goose. “Geese flock, and we flock far. If you want expertise in migration, we should be in charge – we know where the water is, we know where the safe spots are. This continent is a memorized map for us; we won’t steer you wrong, however far we have to fly to get out of the winter.”
The Crows all laughed, caw, caw, caw, harsh and merry. “Strong but stupid, firm but foolish,” mocked the biggest of them. “What good is a sure and smooth flight if you don’t even know what you’re doing or where you’re going? These are changeable times, to have winter come in summer, to have cold come from human fires. You need a master of change at the helm to keep a cool head, and we’re nothing but. And we’re no strangers to a flock either, pillowstuffer. We prospered under the humans, and we’ll prosper without them. You need us in charge.”
A Golden Eagle stared at him, and would not stop until he shrank in on himself. Satisfied, it turned to face the others.
“Eyes,” it said, half-spreading its wings for attention. “You’ll need eyes in the skies, to see where you should go and where you should not, to find food and avoid trouble. We have the keenest of gazes, and will not lead you astray with fancies and whims. I can spy an insect from a treetop, and a safe nest from miles. You will be led with clear vision.”
There was a soft breeze gusting, a sort of asthmatic chuckle, and it took all present a moment to trace its origin back to the old Great Gray Owl that had been roosting on the stub of a stump the meeting was being held around, hemmed in on all sides by squabbling songbirds and till now quite asleep. “Keen-eyed? Hoo, hoo, hoo. Not in the dark, you aren’t. Those pretty eyes of yours are as useless as mirrors come night-time, and this winter will be the darkest of any we’ve ever known. The sun’s already half-masked in midday, and the sky grows dimmer with each passing moment. If ever there was a time for sight, it is now, yes, but your eyes are useless here. I can see clearer now than you could at high noon, and I can hear the faintest scurry on the ground or under it, predator or prey. Nothing will dare move for miles as long as I and my kin play sentry, and we can guide you through any night, no matter how dark.”
“Can you see through soot?” croaked the turkey vulture, shuffling her feet for warmth and hunching her wings against her back as a shroud against the rising wind. “No, I don’t think so. Stupid old thing, there’s more to darkness than mere absence of light! The sky is choked with the falling dirt and dust, and it will fall for months – you’ll be as blind as anyone else, and I’d like to see if you could pick out your own chicks cheeping for food in your ear amongst this hubbub. Sight and sound can fail alike in these times, but I can always follow my nose, and if any of you lot are disposed the same, I will not turn you away. There will be starvation and death aplenty among the groundbound, and nothing that lives can avoid its own stink, can avoid my nose. If you really must depend upon a sense for leadership, trust in the vultures: we do not need eyes nor ears to find what is needed.”
A very small throat cleared itself awkwardly, and one of the few things present at the council that was not a bird chirruped for attention.
“Excuse me,” said the rather small bat, “but you’re wrong; there’s still those that can hear, and more than that. And what good is smell if all you can smell is something dead or alive? Can you smell us a good roost for the night? Can you catch the whiff of a stream? No, we have the advantage. Even in this dusty air, our sonar fails us not, and we can see everything, without even opening our eyes. You may not like us that much, but there are lots and lots of us, and we don’t need much to eat – and this black dust is even easier to groom from fur than feathers. You’re lucky to have us, and you’d be luckier if you’d ask us to lead you about.”
There was a quick buzz through the air and a hummingbird invaded the bat’s personal space, beak pressed against eyeball. “Stopbraggingsillyfurrythingnobrainsleftinyouonlyspitestupidslowthing,” it spat out in one incoherent burst. “Ishouldbeincharge! You’realltooslow,willstillbeheretillendoftimeifhadyourway! Wetravelhereallthetime,everytime,fasterthanslowgeeseandjustasfar! Followus! Followus!” Each insistent statement was punctuated with a little shove, and at the end of its diatribe the bat was bent over backwards and its eye was watering.
A burst of harsh, human language assaulted the ears of all present, bringing each eye to the scrawny, slightly tarnished majesty of a battered old African Grey Parrot.
“Stupid, stupid, STUPID!” he squawked, and let fly another torrent of human abuse, mixed with the harsh jangle of an alarm clock. “All of you! Stupid! Look at you all, quarrelling and jabbering about leadership! Well, let me tell you this: I am the smartest bird here, I am the oldest and most experienced bird here, and I am the only bird here that can understand humans! And I tell you this again: gone or not, we will get more help from humans than anywhere else with this many mouths to feed. Grainhouses, seed stores, meat-packing plants – all can be plundered for the taking with a simple knowledge of the written word; and I’ll bet you every date in Morocco that there’s not a bird here that can understand any of it but for me! And to top it all off, I have no kin here to favour – I alone will be in charge, and I will appoint whom I please as aides!”
There was a long, thoughtful pause, and then a pigeon raised its wing.
“Yes?” inquired the parrot.
It stepped forwards, bobbing automatically, ducking its head against the moan of the oncoming winds that scraped the butte’s surface, half-instinctually checking about for bread crumbs that it knew deep in its heart had left it forever.
“Speak up,” snapped the parrot.
The pigeon cleared its throat. “No, you’re stupid,” it said.
There was a much shorter and less thoughtful pause, and then everyone started shrieking and yelling at once. The parrot made a mad dash at the pigeon’s eyes, the crows mobbed the eagle, the owl and the goose started a shouting match, and the turkey vulture’s attempts to call for order were brought to a halt by a bat zooming directly into its nostril.
“Why can’t you be quiet! Quiet! Quiet-quiet-quiet!” yelled up the chickadee.
“Yes, shut up!” called the sparrow. “Shut up! We’re trying to argue here.”
“Who’s talking?”
“They are, are, are,” said the chickadee.
“Yes, they are,” said the sparrow, annoyed. “I know that and you know that! You are stupid.”
“You asked me first! You’re stupid, stupid, stupid!”
“I will talk to them,” and this time the chickadee and sparrow were too busy arguing to hear the words.
Up above on the butte, matters were beginning to calm a bit, if only because most of the debaters were too bruised to continue their discussion and had retired to nurse their wounds and soothe their ruffled feathers.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t be in charge,” grumbled the parrot.
“You’re too showy,” said the goose sternly. “All this nonsense about humans. Humans, humans, humans. They’ve had their chance and lost it, and it’s our turn now. We must make a clean break of it.”
“Who’s talking?”
“I am, now,” said the crow. “You’re no better – clean breaks, clean breaks, the break is old and new, not humans and us. You’d better change fast, old stick-in-the-mud, or we won’t make it much farther, and if you won’t change, we’ll do it.”
“Who’s talking?”
“Stop asking that,” hissed the vulture. “You’re taking up air we could be breathing. A lot of talk over nothing, that’s what’s talking. Bags of feathers and air all waffling ‘till the end of days.”
“I will talk now.”
“Then speak,” said the owl, who had pinned the bat under one foot and was lecturing it viciously on manners. “Goodness knows it’s hard to hear you in this… wind.”
“Yes,” said the voice in the wind.
It was very thin and very reedy, very breathy and very small. It was gusting up out of the ground under the feet of the flock’s council, blowing through the cracks in the rock.
“Who speaks to us?” demanded the eagle.
The voice paused, but the wind didn’t. It eddied and howled, low and sad, and somewhere in there words were being made.
“I’m not me. I’m a bit of me. I was me, once. I was. I was.”
“Speak plainly,” said the goose.
“I’ll try. I’ll try, I will.” It paused again, collecting a thought. “I flew, I did, I really did,” decided the voice. “I flew. Yes. That’s why I thought to speak, yes. I heard you all speak, of the flying, of your feats, yes, of who should lead you all, all of you. I should; I could, you know. Because I led under the cold once, when I used to fly.”
“Pardon me,” said the bat, squirming loose from the somewhat distracted grip of the owl, “but why are we listening to this? It’s just some old ghost, you find them in caves sometimes. Nothing important, and it has nothing to do with us. Who cares if you flew? That’s no reason to lead.”
“I was big,” it said. “I was big. Bigger than you, bigger than you all. I was bigger. Yes.”
“Andsowhat?” said the hummingbird. “Slow. You’reslowanddead. Doesn’tmatter. Can’thelpusnow”
“I flew far,” it said. “I flew over oceans. So far. Flew over the world, so far, almost never flapping, no.”
“Albatrosses,” said the eagle dismissively. “Vagrants. Tale-tellers. Only a step above common gulls. No advice of yours can help us, ghost.”
“No gulls, I think, I don’t think. No gulls. No birds, not really, just little ones, so little ones. Are you birds? You must be, so many feathers. And some fur. There was almost no fur. So small, all of you, so small.”
“This shivers my bones,” said the crow. “Let’s leave it here. Put me in charge and let’s leave it here, now, fast.”
“Listen,” said the voice, and it said it so agonizingly that they had to stop and listen, really listen for the first time all that evening. Even the sparrow and the chickadee paused in their debate.
“I was there, you see. Was alive. It was warm, and I was young, and my wings covered the sky for the things on the ground, down there. I needed no feathers, almost didn’t need to flap my wings, almost never, no, and when I did, each beat broke brush against dirt. Each wing was double the full span of the largest of you put together, it was, it was! I flew, I really did! Like you! I flew!”
Dead quiet.
“And?” asked the bat. The owl stepped on it again.
“Ashes,” said the voice, slowly. It was getting quieter again, as if it had said whatever it felt it really had to. “Ashes in the sky. Like now, but a little more, a little more. All cold, all dark, all hard for the things on the wing. I flew, you know. I flew. I was the biggest, and that’s why I led us, when we flew, we fled. I fled, and I flew, but the ashes still caught us, and the cold would not leave us. No matter how big, how swift, how strong we flew, how well I led, long ago, until I couldn’t fly, didn’t flew. Couldn’t fly, not the cold.” It seemed to remember something, as it sank into whispers. “The humans found us, you know, you know, not long ago, after the long ago. They called us a god’s name, did you know?” it said, sounding almost surprised at the knowledge itself. “A great god, a feathered god. Was I a god? I needed no feathers, you know. The little ones, the other ones had feathers. Some of them. I wonder what happened to them. Maybe I shouldn’t lead us. Why is it cold again, so cold again?”
“It’s winter,” said the goose. “We fly south for the winter.”
“That’s good,” said the voice, barely audible now. “Too cold. Good plan, fly away. Fly faraway. We’ll try that. We couldn’t. We tried… We tried...”
The wind died down. The owl cocked an ear and listened for a moment longer, watched by all, then shook her head.
“What’ditsay?” asked the hummingbird.
The owl shrugged, ill at ease. “’Fly. Faraway.’”
“Here,” said the bat, once again tearing loose from her distracted grasp. “Let me take a look.” It squirmed into the largest of the crevices of the rock, and was gone for a time. It came up clutching an old, broken pebble.
“Fragment of a wing joint,” said the eagle, passing it over with a critical eye.
“How big?” asked the goose.
The eagle didn’t answer.
There was no agreement, after the meeting. There was no leader. There wasn’t even a council. But the flock arose in the morning all the same, in the cold that was growing colder, and flew south, away from the winter.
Faraway. Maybe it would be far enough.