by Mark Jacobs
Chapter VIII
A sudden, shrill whistle made the air ring, obliterating the old man’s reverie. Quick as a spark, a blurry shape slashed down from above, whooshed past the gardener’s face, and crashed into a plot of windbell flowers with the speed of a thunderbolt and all the grace of an errant cannonball.
“What ho! A surprise? Magnificent entrance!” said the gardener by way of introduction. “Unannounced, uninvited, undeterred–reminds me of a prince I once met.”
Out of the undergrowth popped the head of a small nut wren, her dark profile defined by ruffled feathers. Her black eyes shone like wet stones. She impatiently curtsied before hurrying back into the shadows below the flowerbed. “You’ll have to excuse me, old friend, but I’m famished,” she called, not in words but in birdsong. “I’ll drop out of the sky if I don’t find something to eat straight off.”
“Please help yourself,” the gardener replied, whistling in the same key as his guest, “the garden belongs to you as much as to me.”
“You speak beautifully,” cooed the nut wren as she rummaged for a meal. “Why, you could fool a tree into thinking you belonged up its bough.”
“Something tells me I’ll just be sticking to my stump, here,” replied the old man, gulping dryly.
“Gads, I’m starving!” the little wren howled before the gardener finished speaking. The dirt-pecking and stem-shuffling moved from beneath the windbell patch to a neighboring row of moondaisies. Tall and delicate, they swayed like seaweed while the tiny bird jostled about beneath. “Where has all the food crawled off to? Preemptive retreat, is it? Did you tell them I was coming?” The pecking and shuffling abruptly ceased.
“How could I have known you were coming? You fell out of the sky like a duck swum on grog. And so few of you visit anymore,” the old man sighed, a sound like leather scrubbed on a washing board, “I’m afraid my sense for such things has all gone dull.”
“Well past dull, from what I’m told,” the nut wren whistled back matter-of-factly. “We’re not even supposed to come here anymore, normally. Pappy says your gizzard is no good.”
“Ridiculous,” the old man dismissed. “I’ve not heard this blather before. Why, I was speaking with an old crow just the other day. Or… was it…” he trailed off, unable to pinpoint the past. “What day was it? Might have been a few days, come to think of it.”
“Not days, old friend. Think decades. And more than a few,” said the nut wren. “Since before I was born, anyway.”
The gardener snorted irritably but he did not deny the wren’s claim.
“Pappy says you just stopped listening to the birds one season, that you never said why.”
“Oh, I doubt not that birdkind has forgotten the why of it,” the gardener said sourly. “Hardly uncharacteristic for a species that live and die in the blink of an eye.”
“That’s not nice! Life is tough for chicks.”
“The birds of old vowed to… help me. They abandoned this pledge.” The old man’s voice was hollow as he reeled in his moth-eaten memories. “After that, no longer could I listen to the songs that came from the treetops, and silence is at once an instant and an eternity. I did not know it had been this quiet… quite this long.”
“The promise is not forgotten,” the little wren squawked, trying to rouse her host’s morale. “The birds of old did search. Pappy has told me the story more times than I can count. A crusade of birds, they flew to this vow of yours, as you say it, old friend. To all the One Hundred Kingdoms of Man did this crusade for you bear devoted wing, yet never a hint nor hair of her in any castle, cave, or cloud. How can you fulfill a vow to find someone that cannot be found? Still, it is the great torment of birdkind to have failed you, old friend. Failed, Pappy says, but not forgotten.”
“Do they look for her still?” the old man asked pointedly.
The nut wren nervously rapped her talons.
“Forgotten,” said the old man ghoulishly, “or as good as.” His eyes shifted rapidly, scanning the footpath for any sign of Pence returning from his walk.
“Pappy gets all weepy when he tells it,” the nut wren carried on casually, “but I’m not interested in history. I’m more into flying around, chirping at things I see, preening, leavesdroppings–the usual stuff.”
The old man stared into space, tallying lost time.
“I can’t find anything,” the unremitting wren continued, whistling fast and high and all of one breath, “and I have an epic flight today. I’ve got to eat, by all that’s bloody sacred!”
“Huh?” grunted the old man absentmindedly.
“I’m meeting our Gramsy at midday tomorrow for a fish luncheon. She lives by the sea, right on the coast,” the wren squealed in mock distress, hidden from view as she searched below the checkered pumpkins that overshadowed the moondaisies. “Do you know how far that is? I’m going to be flying all day! And I hate fish.”
“I’m sorry to hear how difficult life is for you,” said the old man, struggling to breathe without gargling up more despoiled muck.
“I didn’t volunteer for this! I don’t know why we bother with her in the first place. Pappy says she’s crazy as a dip-fried loon. See, here’s what she does,” the riled-up wren persisted in one long, winding whistle, “she watches whales! That’s her thing–that’s what Pappy says. She’s got a spot up top some creepy old castle… she just sits there all day and watches whales. Whoever heard of it?”
“That sounds sublime,” whispered the old man with a low exhaling whistle.
“It’s absurd. It’s downright pedestrian. And I don’t even know what a whale is! Why would anyone want to watch anything all day, sitting on some dank, filthy old gargoyle? It’s batty, isn’t it? A bird just doesn’t do such things. A bird flies.”
“Perhaps her wings have grown tired,” said the old man.
She ignored him. “Anyway, I have to go, creepy old castle or not. If it’s important to the flock, it’s supposed to be important to me, too. And I’ll just have to brave her cooking–that much can’t be helped.”
“I admire the courage you display in spending an afternoon with your Grandmother.”
“Ha, no, she’s not my Granny, you old sod; Granny got eaten by a billy goat,” the wren chirped with a prudent trill. “Gramsy is a lot older than that. Cleverer, too… moreso than a goat, at least. They say she’s completely white, even her eyes, that’s how old she is. Some call her the Oldest Bird in the Sky. Only a chick would believe that, though.” The trail of her voice suggested the talkative guest had left the pumpkin patch and was now exploring under a swathe of low-sweeping straw ferns. “Aaargh! Where is everything? Pappy said this place used to be a goldmine for grubs, but I’ve found nothing but tiny tunnels, all deep as wells. Why does the very earth conspire against me?”
The gardener rolled his eyes.
“Old friend, have you any grub to spare? I still can’t find a single bite.”
“It’s entirely possible that I regurgitate a number of my vital organs later this afternoon, if you’d like to stick around for that,” the old man whistled quietly, still wary of overexerting himself and duplicating his unearthly upheaval from that morning. “Elsewise, no, I have nothing.”
The sound of pecking underneath a soggybottom bush ceased. “That sounds pretty tasty. Nice and fresh and pink, I’ll bet. If I didn’t have this flight ahead of me I would stay and see what comes up. I do love gall bladder, you know. And intestines. Oh, curse this ill-plotted luncheon! Curse fish! Curse whales! And castles! And Gra–”
“Don’t say it,” warned the old man, cutting in sharply, forfeiting the tranquility he had attained. He sat forward and coughed violently several times, but no bilious dirt was emitted this time, and very little blood.
“You’re right! You’re right! Ahhh, shame upon me,” the little wren repented, filling her miserable wail with a shuttering vibrato. “It’s the hunger makes me say such things!”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” said the gar
dener, rolling his eyes again.
“While I’m gone, if any gall bladder or intestines come up, would you save me just a bite? I’ll be back in a few days and I hate to miss my favorite dish.”
“If, when you return, you find my intestines or any other pieces of me strewn about, you are most welcome to them,” the gardener politely offered, his notes losing their melody for want of water to wet his whistle. “Though, to be honest, it’s more likely to be beard-hairs and blood on the stump.”
“Perfect for nest building!” came the wren’s happy approval. “Hey, do you think all the little grubbers being gone has anything to do with what happened here last night?” She suddenly burst out from under the canopy of windbell blossoms, to which she had come back full-circle, and alighted on the gardener’s left big toe.
She had white feathers cresting her head, while the rest of her was chestnut brown with black stripes, offsetting a strawberry splash of color on her chest. “Because I was asked to come here not to fill up before my flight, but to tell–” then she shrilled and thrashed her wings in place as if battling thunderous winds. “But what has happened to your arms?”
“Do not whistle a word of that!” the old man barked curtly, reverting to spoken words for the first time since greeting her. He fixed the wifty wren with a redoubtable stare.
“That’s not good,” she chirped, unperturbed by the gardener’s commanding display. She jumped down to the ground beside his right arm. “Sayyy,” she whistled, “that’s really lousy! You’re in wet socks with that one.”
“Improvident bird! I know that. Now stuff up!”
“But what happened?” She hopped back and forth on one foot, occasionally popping into the air for short, frenetic bursts whenever her excitement bubbled over the top.
“Very well, if it will curb your tireless verbigeration for one blessed moment,” the old man surrendered. “You eavesdrop on those who travel under your trees, do you not?”
“Who doesn’t? But we call it leavesdropping.”
“I thought leavesdropping was when you… ahem,” he cleared his throat, “on travelers’ heads. Sort of a past-time in the treetops?”
“No, no. That’s leavesdroppings.” She flew a quick, fluid somersault. “Big difference. Especially for the ones who don’t wear hats.”
The gardener blinked once but was otherwise stone-faced. “Indeed. So then, in all your time listening in on those below you, have you ever heard a parent tell a child not to pick their nose?”
“Sure, sure. That’s great advice.”
The gardener nodded to his right hand, indicating his cracked-off and blasted remnant of a finger. “This is why.”
The nut wren screeched her disapproval of the jest and gave the old man a poisonous stare. Then, hop-stepping over to the purple jewel that had almost been Pence’s brain, she inspected her fragmented reflection, bobbing her head back and forth. “Soon there will be too many here asking questions for you to parry,” she whistled back over her wing.
“Nonsense,” groused the gardener. “I’ve never been more ready to parry. I welcome all comers–I’ll parry all night long! Shoot, if there’s going to be a crowd, maybe I’ll go ahead and bake a couple of wild parry pies!”
“Many saw the White Tree!” countered the nut wren. “Pick your nose with that.”
“What White Tree?” the old man shot back instantly, forgetting to whistle.
“What White Tree, he says!” She honked like a startled goose. “The Tree! Here! Bright as a river under the sun. But it was like a cloud on a windy day–here then gone.” She studied his face. “How can you not have known?” she asked at last. “Or is your gizzard fizzled out for real?”
Statuesque, the gardener stared into the wren’s black eyes and beyond.
The little bird shivered and looked away. She tried to speak but hesitated, fidgeting nervously. Finally, she tucked her wings behind her back, much as an orator does with his hands before addressing a large crowd. “They will come for answers, old friend. The White Tree… They will come in droves, birds and men, and other beasts besides. So what will you tell them? Will you greet them all with parry pie? Because you certainly won’t be greeting anyone with a handshake.” Here she looked down, embarrassed to have perhaps crossed a line of etiquette. The old man signaled no offense, however, so she drew herself up and continued her peckish reproach. “Be warned–and this is a message from all the flocks, as well as the true reason I was sent: one is already outside. He watches you from the–”
“How long?” demanded the gardener. “How long has he been here, this man in purple?”
“Yes, yes,” the nut wren cheeped excitedly, “he does wear purple robes and a purple hat! Purple trousers, belt, and buckles. But how did you know? He is darker in the shadows than the stool of a rat. He was concealed even to the flocks until the White Tree cast its light. You cannot yourself have seen him, when you were blind to the light itself?”
The old man opened his eyes and took a deep breath. “I saw the light… it was too bright. Alas, I turned from the Holy Tree. As for the man in purple… he has been here before, that one. You might say I have his scent.”
After a brooding stretch of silence, the nut wren flew over to the bucket beside the gardener. She landed inside with a piddling splash, the water being in good need of a refill. “You don’t mind if I bathe in your bucket, do you, old friend?” she whistled amidst the din of much fraying about and birdplay.
“Why would I mind?” grunted the old man. “I was only planning on drinking from it.”
“How?” the wren asked brusquely. “Your arms are bushwhacked and bedeviled.”
“I thought I’d just tip it over when I’m ready for my last drink and soak up what spills with my feet. Now,” he said fully to end all diversion, “tell me about the man outside.”
The playful splashing stopped. “He is silent as the dead and just as hidden. His manner is fouler than a grave.” Her words rebounded and vibrated roundly as she whistled up from the bottom of the bucket. “He does not belong among our trees–all of us feel this way! The flocks have left these hills but they yearn for homecoming. At your consent, we will usher him from here, a thousand-winged storm in his face.” Suddenly she appeared at the lip of the bucket–plumage pristine, obsidian eyes gleaming–and the disconcerting echo was gone as if it never was. “And gladly, too–t’will be a morning’s sport,” she piped. “What do you say? For, as he no doubt seeks you, it is not our place to send him back butt-rosied without your blessing.”
“Well spoken, my lady,” said the old man. Grinning, he bowed his head what little he could to the wren. The rest of him was motionless, his legs and torso melding with the ground and the stump like heavy stones sinking into moss.
“So? What say you? Shall we give him the old nutty flap?” She demonstrated her offer with a series of slow, elaborate spanking gestures with one wing.
“No… no, my friend. Let him be, for now, for now. He’ll be no threat to any of you unless goaded. We may assume that if last night’s fireworks did not prompt him to come a’knocking, he is waiting for his own cues to act.”
“If you say so,” the wren allowed, though her key was diminished. “But the flocks won’t wait forever. Pappy says three days to settle your score, or the birds march. Fly. Something! Go to war,” she concluded dramatically. Then she added, behind her wing as if sharing a secret, “It’s never happened before, you know–a big fracas. That’s why I’ve got to go see Gramsy. No one will fight without her blessing. Your approval is important, too,” she tacked on dutifully, “but hers is the one that counts.”
The old man contemplated his guest’s bleak report. “What ever happened to the fish luncheon and the whale watching?”
“Oh, that’s all cakes and gravy, sure. It’s kind of a complicated mission, don’t worry if you can’t follow along–that’s one of the first symptoms of a fizzled gizzard.”
“I believe I once heard that only birds have gizzards,�
� the gardener whistled with augmented emphasis. “Are you very sure it’s not Pappy that’s gone fizzled?”
The wren shook him off. “Does the man in purple seek the White Tree?” she asked. Her pearly talons gouged into the moist lip of the bucket.
“If he had any knowledge of the White Tree, he would not have leveled it so long ago.”
The wren shrieked like a boiling teapot at this revelation and blasted into the sky, a sparkling waterspout jetting up like a rocket. Then, before the last drop of her castaway water had fallen back to the earth, she plummeted vertically for a stomach-gulching moment and pulled up next to the gardener’s foot with a tip-of-the-talon landing. Her strawberry-splashed chest heaved as though warrior spirits possessed her. “When the others hear–”
“The others never!” the old man interjected. “You must tell no one! I should not have divulged that. Strike it from your mind! Ahhhh,” he lamented, “but what bird could ever keep a wriggling piece of gossip down.” His voice took a resentful edge. “You listen to me, nut wren, and you listen good: fly hie to your appointment. Do not repeat what I have said. If your brethren hear those words of history and heresy, they will besiege the man in purple as surely as the sun holds sway over the earth, and they will not wait for anyone’s blessing.”
“This man deserves the hardest punishment our feathers can dole out. The White Tree was to my–”
“I know what the Tree was!” the gardener hissed more sharply than perhaps he intended, for he took a necessary moment to sit back and reconvene his composure. When he resumed whistling, his tone was distinctly diplomatic, even pleading. “Old friend, when has it fallen to birdkind to judge and condemn men? Our affairs will only muddy your rudders. No, I will deal with him in good time, for I fear that if he is provoked, not only will the ground be soon littered with the bones of broken wings, but he will guess the reason behind it, too–he will see that I have learned of his presence by collusion with the same birds that keep watch on him from shadows higher still. This may spur him to hasten his plans. And if he comes to the gate and finds me like this, the garden will wither at his very touch.”
“Then do not let him in!” squealed the wren.
“I must! I must!” the old man bellowed like a forge, growing red and black as coal in the face. “I must let him in! That is how it must be; it can be no other way. The garden belongs to him as much as to me! As much as to you!” Agitated, he began coughing and could not stop until he spewed out a bitter mist of dirt and a teaspoon of blood. He spat the last sticky flecks off his lips, holding the horrified wren eye to eye. “If he finds me like this… like this… the garden will surely burn and the White Tree will never give life again. Now, precisely how long has he been espying?” the old man asked the rapt wren. “This is vital.”
“Like I said, old friend, the flocks only saw him last night–testimony to his unnatural ways. A man able to hide under our trees with no bird the wiser? It reeks like a big, fat hat. Sorcery, most likely!”
The gardener frowned. “I am accused of witchcraft as well,” he said, “but the truth is far less outlandish. I suspect the same as concerns our visitor.”
She flew up to the gardener’s big toe and perched there. “Hear this! Though birdkind learned of him only last night, the trees hint that it has been much longer… maybe a fortnight!”
“A fortnight?” gasped the gardener.
“Yes, a fortnight,” the little wren solemnly replied.
“I see. A fortnight… Curious, indeed.”
“A fortnight is curious?”
“A fortnight is altogether too curious. I should have supposed no more than three nights and two days.”
She studied the gardener attentively. “Why three nights and two days?”
“Tell me,” said the gardener permissively, “what news of the traveler in the tattered cape who came here three days ago and left the very night? The one with the tan pants who peddled charms to bring good luck. What news hath birdkind of he?”
“If you suspect that the tatter-caped traveler and the man in purple may be the same, disguised… it is not so. He of the tan pants is far from here. He left with great haste, taking many foolish shortcuts. I say foolish and a pity because a day-and-a-half away from here he rushed blind through a hedge and headlong into a gang of half-wild pigs.”
“Oh dear,” said the old man, slitting his eyes.
“They weren’t too pleased about being barged in on–you know pigs!” She paced back and forth atop the gardener’s toes like so many stepping stones while she recounted the traveler’s fate. “In the end, the imbecile had both his hands bitten clean off, trying to keep the pigs from snarchin’ off his… lucky charms.”
“Scandalous!” cried the gardener. “What is the world coming to?”
“That’s what tan pants will get you,” the nut wren assessed without sympathy.
“Is that all you know of the poor fellow? Had he done anything dubious or deceitful before these dastardly swine got their snouts on him?”
“We do not believe that he had dealings with the man in purple, not after he left your gate. Whether they met prior to his arrival is not known to the flocks.”
“He was the one-hundredth traveler to knock at my gate, but the first to leave without throwing a penny in the well,” the gardener tepidly recalled.
The nut wren considered the gardener’s words. “Strange season,” she chirped at last, “when two men chance their way to this garden inside a fortnight!”
“Only one came by chance,” said the old man with a consonant tone. “Now, you mustn’t tell anyone what has happened to my arms,” he grimly repeated. “Not anyone, lest it be put into the spoken word and the man in purple catch wind of it. And he must not know.”
The wren cocked her head, a dispirited slump to her small frame.
“He harbors heartless intentions for this place,” the gardener continued, “as you have felt for yourself. Sooner tell a hawk you sprained a wing. Or wings, I suppose, in my case. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes, I am not a chick! No need to tell me thrice!” she snapped. “Bah! And still no grub! And I’m beginning to think you weren’t serious about coughing your insides out. All this talking… I nearly forgot how hungry I was!”
“You’ll find something as you fly,” the gardener assured her.
“Will I?” she cried, anchored to his foot. “Gramsy’s tower is wayside of the mountains. There’s no wind through the tunnel road–a bird could never wing it. No, I have to take the mountains roundabouts, over open sea. No food to be had then. Strange things in the sky, too, on the other side. Big things. Pappy once told me a whale of a tale… Birds, they say, do best to stay away.”
“Good heavens,” observed the gardener.
“Pappy says Gramsy likes to be left alone, that’s why she roosts where she does. Beyond where little feathers can fly, above the wind. To get to the top, Pappy says I’ve got to take the stairs!” She hung her head as though all the world approached its end and she wailed, “I’m just not right until I’ve had my third breakfast!”
The gardener cocked an eyebrow. “Third breakfast? You mean you’ve been carrying on all this time when you’ve already eaten twice this morning?”
The little bird nodded despairingly.
“You had best take wing,” commanded the gardener in a no-nonsense baritone. “No good will come of lingering here this day.” He nodded earnestly as he whistled his rude and hurried goodbye, indicating to his uninvited guest that she depart at once. “Do not let the man in purple see you when you return, if he still lives to haunt these hills,” he whistled. “He may try to catch you, and if he so deigns he will have his hand around you in no time. You’ll wish the hawks had you then, I promise that. Go now, and leave the flocks as they are. Their wait will not be long, one way or the other. All scores will be settled before three days are done.”
The little wren looked at the gardener, eyes blank, head cocked to one side. The ga
rdener nodded farewell to her again, casting his eyes upward suggestively.
“Go on then, shoo!” the old man said at last, shuffling his feet so that she was rudely jutted into the air.
Fanning her wings like a ship’s sails in a full wind, the nut wren sped back to the fence, coasted low over the top, and was gone as quickly as she had arrived.
“Seems like a nice girl,” the old man said to himself. “I always liked how birdkind call everyone they meet old friend.” In the silence that followed he spoke to himself inaudibly, determined not to overtax his struggling vocal tendons and clamping throat. “As for my old friend… there can be no doubt he has returned in refuge of selfish meditations; now he waits for… what? I’ve lost my good arm, and my…” he looked down at his left hand but did not finish the sentence. “And the White Tree can grow again only if I abandon my plan, which would now seem to involve casting Pence out to pit wits against the Prince.” He paused. “It’s not what I would have asked for, but it won’t be his wish come true to pass either, and that might be worth more than the hands he sought to sacrifice.”
