Feathers Gets His Mojo

by Johnny Benet

  Feathers Gets His Mojo

  Johnny Benet

  Published by Brick Wall Publishing, 2018.

  Feathers Gets His Mojo

  Copyright © 2018 by Johnny Benet

  Published by Brick Wall Publishing

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Loyalty

  Cover background art copyright © 2018 by Valeo5/Dreamstime

  Cover Design copyright © 2018 Brick Wall Publishing

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Feathers Gets His Mojo

  About the Author

  Feathers would always wonder what had made him do it. Was it seeing an eagle for the first time? Had something passed from the eagle to him? Some kind of wildness or independence? Or aloneness?

  Or was it seeing Grey, one of the old birds, falter and fall out of the flock? Grey's dying was not remarkable. The flock lost birds every year - it was the way it had always been. The birds of the flock just closed ranks to fill the hole that Grey had left. Like he had never been of the flock at all. Feathers had never noticed that when other birds had fallen away. This time he did notice, and it made him wonder: would the flock just close ranks and forget him when his wings finally stopped?

  Or maybe the reason he had done it had nothing to do with any of that. Maybe it was just something wrong in his makeup.

  Whatever the reason was, what Feathers had done was a first for the flock. There was nothing in flock lore anything like it.

  He guessed he would never know why. But he did know one thing. He was not sorry. Even with all that happened after, he was not sorry.

  FISH HAD BEEN PLENTIFUL and near the surface that morning, and Feathers had fed well. Power rippled through his wings as he flew effortlessly though a transparent sky empty of everything but the warming morning sun.

  But of course the sky only appeared to be empty. Those that moved through it knew the sky held winds and breezes, gusts and eddies. Some days it carried cold winds from the north fresh with the clean smell of snow. Other days brought breezes that came off the land, full of earth scents.

  The sky could shake Feathers with a sudden gust, or drive him down twenty wingspans in an instant with an eddy, so fast that his insides tingled and he felt upside down.

  And it was not just its ebb and flow that changed. The sky could frame the sun in a startling blue background or cover her with cloud, nestling her deep in its breast like a mother covering her single precious egg. Some days it brought clouds to sport with, driving them across the sky so fast that Feathers could not pace them no matter how hard he flew.

  And its colors. The sky colored with purple twilights and pink dawns, with cyan and blue and gray. Some days it dressed itself in thin delicate streams of wispy white cloud, as fine as the down on a starling. Other times it rose up into great majestic towers of cloud, so immense that they made Feathers heart draw in with awe bordering on fear.

  The sky was so immense it even colored the sea below. The deep sea that held fish and life and things no bird would ever see. The sky could turn the sea blue or green, black or gray. Some days its surface glittered in the sun, other days found it dark and ominous under cloud shadow.

  They were two great oceans, one of air and one of water. Feathers knew the ocean of air and sky. Of the sea he knew a only a little from when he fished, fast shallow dives into the cold and dark - but what lay down deeper, only the fish knew.

  That morning the wind carried him gently as he soared above a glittering blue sea highlighted here and there with white foam from a breaking wave. The sky around him and over the shore was so clear you could almost see the afternoon sun’s rays cut through it. Out seaward, way out almost at the edge of sight, a dark cloud bank covered the horizon. There was a hint of rain in the air.

  Feathers was not alone. In front of him, behind him, to his left and right, above and below, were birds. The flock. The occasional light snap of a wing cutting the wind, a caw from somewhere near: their sounds blended with wind sounds in a song.

  But being of the flock was more than being with the other birds. The flock was something bigger than all of them. And Feathers belonged.

  The flock was security, it was wholeness, it was something each of them was born into. From one end of the flock to the other they flew as one - Feathers did not fly as Feathers, he flew as flock - the decision to turn was not Feather's decision to make - in fact Feathers never decided to turn, or direct his flight, at all. He just flew. He just knew. And the others did too.

  It’s not as if thought instantaneously moved across the flock from one bird to another, telling each what to do. It was not a lead bird thinking turn and then that thought rippling through the flock to the others. No. The "lead" bird was actually no different from the rest. Feathers knew. He had flown in lead position. They all had. It was no different up there.

  When the flock flew there were no individual birds. They joined together to form one flock and the flock guided each of them. It was a great mystery. It was a great act of faith. Except that Feathers had been born to it so that it came as naturally to him as breathing. In fact he had never really thought about it. It was just the way things were.

  Until that day he saw the eagle flying alone, high up, so high he seemed but a dark speck soaring across the sky.

  Turning.

  Flying.

  On his own.

  It was a beautiful day of fishing and flying. A normal day. When the sun sank low in the sky the flock veered towards land and their bedding down place for the night - the flock's nesting grounds. Like they had always done.

  But that day was different. That day Feathers did something that he was sure no bird of the flock had ever done.

  It happened so fast Feathers did not remember thinking about it at all. It just seemed to happen all on its own.

  He did not turn towards land with them.

  Feathers looked back to the flock in surprise and wonder. They closed ranks around the empty place he had left so that it was as if he had never been. Just like they did when Grey fell. The flock just came together. The flock just went on.

  He had never seen his flock from a distance. It was a great sphere-shaped stretch of birds, and as it turned landward it elongated into an oval like a cloud being slowly stretched by the wind. Moving as one. It was so beautiful.

  As the distance grew between them Feather's felt something in his breast. The feelings of security and belonging washed from his heart like dust from a summer rain, leaving an empty space there. A space filled with an unbearable longing.

  But Feathers felt elation, too. It sang in his blood it rattled through his bones. It powered his wings.

  He could fly.

  So he did, by himself, a single arrow shot from his flock, a single arrow flying straight and true across an empty blue sky.

  FEATHERS HAD NEVER had to think about where to fly before. When to turn towards land and where to do it. Where to settle down for the night. The flock did those things. The flock found safe ground, far enough into the wetland where cats or foxes could not reach them, safe amongst the high grass as it sighed in the night breeze.

  But now the place inside him that told him what to do was empty.

  Below and far towards his left the shore snaked its way into the distance. Feathers kept it within sight. The sun started to fall behind the coast mountains, bathing them in an orange hue in the fading light. But Feathers still did not turn towards land to find a safe resting place for the night. He knew he should. He knew he had to.

  B
ut somehow he did not know how. His mind had emptied into some kind of confusion, and all he had in him was to keep flying. He could not seem to do anything else. A voice inside his head that must be him said to turn towards the land. But his wings did not listen. It was like he was in a dream.

  But at least he kept the land within sight. The land was his lifeline, and it kept him from falling into panic as the sun lowered behind the glistening mountains. The sky went from gold into violet and then into dark.

  The flock always settled down well before sunset. Sunsets should be seen from a safe sleeping place with other birds around him.

  But the flock was somewhere behind him. Feathers flew alone into the darkness that swallowed the land and the sea below. The night air was cool across his wings, and a land breeze started to blow from shore carrying the scents of grass and earth and still water.

  The sea, the coast, the sky. He had lived his life here. They had always welcomed him. But in the nights darkness, for the first time in his life, Feathers felt he was being watched, and he felt a question surround him like a fog. Who are you? What are you doing here?

  He flew on. He could no longer see the coastline, but he flew along it, using the image he still had in his mind of where it had been when the last light faded. It had been to his left. And the land breeze was coming from his left. The land might be invisible in this darkness, but Feathers knew it was there. He could not seem to make himself turn, but he was able, at least, to keep flying along the coast. If he could just keep doing that he could turn around in the morning and find his way back.

  Find his way back? If that’s what he was going to do, why had he left?

  Stars spread across the black sky. Feathers had never seen them like this before. They were beautiful, but they did not give enough light to see by. The breeze strengthened to a wind. It was fresh and clean, without earth smell. This wind did not come from land. The image in his mind of the coastline beneath him faded until it was unsure.

  Everything he had ever been certain of seemed to be lost now in the nights darkness. He had left the flock. He had not sought the safety of land at nightfall. He seemed to be unable to think right, to decide anything.

  But his wings were strong and sure. He could fly. He could still fly. So Feathers did, his wings working easily in long strong strokes. He flew with the wind into the night, with only his thoughts and the darkness for company.

  Feathers lost track of time and became lost in his flying. Never in his life had a night seemed so long. When the first hint of orange finally peered over the sea in front of him, it seemed like years since he had seen it. No, if felt like a lifetime. Even longer. If felt like the beginning of the world, with the sun rising for the first time. As Feathers watched the curve of the sun rise above the black sea a heaviness seemed to fall from him. He watched it in awe.

  Feathers blinked.

  The sun was rising in front of him. But it should be rising to his right.

  Before him, to his left and right, there was only sea. He flew higher, and veered into a long circle, his eyes searching in every direction. But all he saw was water. A vast flat ocean that went on forever.

  His heart fell. His mind refused to take it in.

  He glided down to the blue water below and landed. He tucked his legs up tight under him and buried his face deep into the downy feathers of his breast. He thought of his flock being around him. He thought of the tall grass whispering in the wind. Trying to ignore the sea's rising and falling beneath him. A voice rang inside his head. You cannot sleep here! But he did sleep, in no time at all.

  FEATHERS SLEPT THROUGH the day. Just before nightfall he heard flock sounds through his sleep, the cawing of many voices. Calling for him to come. He woke, his heart soaring. They had found him!

  He looked in each of the four directions. Each was the same. Cold black water capped by heavy gray sky. And nowhere out there in that black and gray did he see them. Nowhere did he see his flock.

  He closed his eyes and listened. For the flock sound he had heard as he woke. The wind keened over the water. Its call was so lonely. Feathers forced himself to listen into it. There were no playful calls in it, no caws, no snap of wing. No sound of flock. The lonely keening held no room for any living thing.

  The wind forced the long rolling waves higher into a high swell that lifted Feathers up, then pulled him back down. Like it was going to pull him all the way down, beneath the waves.

  Darkness gathered around him.

  Feathers closed his eyes to shut out the darkness. He tucked his face into the down of his breast against the cold. He brought up memories of tall green grass and quiet flat water. He went deep into the memories, making them real, building strong high walls from them, walls that shut out the loneliness that filled this bleak place.

  And slowly, alone and afraid, he drifted into sleep.

  The waves grew, higher and lower, until finally, in the dead of night, they pulled Feathers down deep, down into the unknown black sea. Feathers drifted there in utter darkness.

  Voices drifted up out of the black void, then. Old voices. Dim, far away. Feathers strained to make them out, to hear what they were saying. Shadows gathered around him, just at the edge of his vision. And there, in the middle of that black night in the heart of a black sea, the voices spoke to Feathers, and the shadows came alive.

  LONG AGO, BACK FAR enough to be out of memory to all but the ancient ones, a feeling spread through the sea. It took time for the creatures of the sea to even recognize it for what it was, because it was something new. Their hearts grew heavy, they swam a little slower, a film seemed to form over their eyes that made light into shadow. They decided to call it sadness. The creatures just swam and fed and explored the sea as they had always done, waiting for the sadness to pass.

  But instead of passing, the sadness grew. It settled down into the sea, deeper and deeper, until even those who lived in the depths in places of constant darkness felt that something darker had come.

  Seeing that the sadness would not fade with time, the great fish swam up to find where it was coming from. Maybe if they knew that they would see what could be done.

  The sadness led the great fish to coastal waters and up to the shallows where they could not go. So they spoke with the fish that swam there and asked them if they felt the sadness too.

  They did.

  And the fish of the coastal waters agreed to search for the source of the sadness in the waters that lapped up to the coast, and in the bays and estuaries, and amongst the tall grasses of the wetlands. They followed the sadness to the great rivers that poured from the land bringing fresh water to the sea. But the fish of the shallow waters could not go up the rivers. So they spoke with the salmon that swam there and asked them if they felt the sadness too.

  They did.

  The salmon agreed to swim up the rivers and fight through their rapids and leap up their waterfalls to find the source of the sadness. The salmon traveled far up the rivers, searching their deep holes and their shallows and tributaries for the source of the sadness, until they finally came to the small mountain streams that flowed down from the snowcapped mountains into the rivers. But the salmon could not go there. So they spoke with the river fish who swam there, the trout, and asked them if they felt the sadness too.

  They did.

  The trout agreed to help find the source of the sadness, and they swam up the mountain streams, fighting against fast cold currents, until they could force their way no further. They saw that they would not be able to make it to the source of the sadness.

  They looked for any fish that swam there who might go higher up the fast shallow streams. But they found none.

  So the trout settled down above gravel bottoms seeking shelter behind rocks and in holes. And they waited.

  They waited for the small creatures that rode the water down, and as they passed by, the trout asked them if they felt the sadness.

  They did.

  They said the sadness was in
the water that came from snow melt and rain and underground springs. It was in the water that came from the land, the water that had caressed grass and tree, that had watered the fields, that had lain in puddles and ponds mixing with dark earth. It was water that knew the land and the living things that lived there.

  And now it came to the streams and rivers and sea carrying something that had not been there before. Something heavy and hard for hearts to carry. Beyond that they knew nothing about it.

  So the trout told the salmon, and the salmon told the fish of the coastal waters, and the fish of the coastal waters told the fish of the deep.

  Then the fish of the deep gathered together, deep in the sea, in dark quiet where they could think. They talked and thought for a long time. What could they do to lift the sadness that floated through the earth's mountain streams and rivers and seas? But for all their experience and all their wisdom, they did not know what to do.

  They left each other then, each going their own way, into a world that was not the same.

  But all was not lost. As the great fish spoke, they were overheard by a creature who swam in great circles below them. Listening.

  The fish of the deep swam great distances, but the creature swimming below them had swam through waters they would never know. The fish of the deep lived long lives, but the creature swimming below them had seen a hundred generations of the deep fish come and go.

  The creature was one of the great sea turtles, ancient and filled with its own memories and the memories of the great turtles that had gone before her, going back in time, back to when the world was young.

  The great turtle swam down into the deep water where the sadness lay floating like a misty veil, and it opened its heart to it and took it in. The turtle knew it was not wisdom that was needed. It was courage - the courage to feel the sadness of the world.

  The great sea turtle let the sadness rest in her heart without turning away. The misty veil that lay over the deep coalesced into shimmering drops. The drops just hung there in the water for a time. Then they began a slow descent, teardrops of infinite sadness, falling down like raindrops from a cloud, falling down to the peace that lay at the bottom of the sea.