by Johnny Benet
URGENCY PULLED FEATHERS on through days and nights. At times Green Fish swam deeper, disappearing from sight entirely. At these times Feathers found he could track her by feeling alone - he felt for the direction of the thrumming. Somehow it connected them. It was not sound exactly. It was something he felt, rather than heard. There was no explanation for it, and the first time Feathers tried it he was sure it would not work.
But it did work. Green Fish came up exactly where Feathers thought she would.
Still each time Green Fish disappeared into deeper water Feathers was sure he had lost her. In spite of his disbelief he followed the thrumming guide.
He followed it because it was his last hope. He had to reach the bay. He had to find them. Feathers could lead his flock to a safe place. A place free of the black poison. Part of Feathers mind knew that following this thing in his head was madness. But his need to get back to his flock compelled him to try.
And it worked.
Maybe it was something like flock. Feathers had never understood that either. Some things just were.
When Green Fish stopped swimming the sun was sinking towards a bank of white and gray cloud that covered the horizon. Under the clouds was land. Feathers could make out a long rocky beach backed by sand bluffs.
Feathers left Green Fish then. He flew towards shore.
It was farther than it looked. By the time Feathers reached shore the sun hung low in the sky, mostly hidden by cloud. He flew along that shore, knowing every rock, every feature of the bluff.
It was not long before he came to the inlet, and that stretch of long black water.
The urgency to get here had almost torn him apart. But now that the bay was just a short fly away, Feathers could not do it.
He could not cover those last miles. The terror of his dream was still in him. That terror, and his feeling that the dream was somehow real, immobilized him. Feathers flew in circles there, at the mouth of the bay, not knowing what to do.
He could not go back. That would be abandoning the flock to possible danger. He could not go forward. If what was there was anything like his dream, Feathers could not face it. It was too much.
He eventually settled down in a safe place on the shore, a place where he could see the approach of danger from the land, where he also had a view of the bay. It was nearing dark, and the flock might still be out fishing. He could intercept them as they flew home, and warn them.
And then what? Feathers had no answer for that. Was he still of this flock? He was not sure if he was ready to come home, and he was not sure if he would be welcome.
Feathers had dreamed of being on land for so long. He had imagined every detail. The stability, the soft grass under him, the smells of grass and marsh. But now that he was actually on solid ground he felt dizzy. It was if the land were itself heaving in great waves, just like the sea.
But the smells. The smells were everything he had imagined. The sweet smell of grass and the subtle fecund stench of mud flats. The smell of the water. It was the smell of life, and Feather's blood sang with it.
The sun shone through a gap in the clouds, turning the bay into a giant sheet of gleaming orange. The breeze started to settle. Night was coming on, and Feathers had seen no sign of the flock. If they were still out they would have passed over him by now. No, they had to already be home, in the high grass just across the bay.
What if tonight was the night the poison came, and he had stayed out here, afraid? He had to warm them. That was what he had come here for, wasn't it?
When he lifted off and started across the bay, it was like someone else was commanding his wings to fly. Feather's heart and mind resisted every stroke of his wings, every bit of progress. But something compelled him to fly on. He would fly there, and he would warn them. As soon as it was done he could leave. He could be out over open sea before the moon came up, and he would never have to come here again.
When he reached the far side of the bay the sun was just starting to sink behind the coast mountains. He saw the place, in the high grass, where his flock would be.
Feathers flew to them.
He was surrounded by the old familiar sounds. A night breeze sighed through the trees. Crickets chirped and insects sang. The lonely blast of a ships horn sounded from the other side of the bay.
But there was no bird sound.
The grass lay not far ahead, swaying in the fading light. Feathers flew closer, filtering out all of the night sounds, searching for the ones he needed to hear. Bird sound. The sun was nearly down. The air should be filled with bird sound.
A terrible shriek started to howl through his mind, growing louder, louder as he glided low over the grass.
Nothing.
Feathers shot out from above the grass, flying fast. The water was black and opaque in the late twilight. What was it hiding?
What was it hiding!
Suddenly he was shooting down through the water, his wings tight to his body, a streamlined bolt of bone and feather shooting down from the sky.
Feathers had closed his eyes for his dive. Now he opened them. To see if the thing was there, down on that bottom.
Cold murky water all around. Below him the water seemed to thicken so that no light could get in. It was dark down below. He kicked deeper into that dark water. The bottom must be close. Just into that darkness.
As he went deeper something changed in the water. First his eyes started to itch. The itch quickly grew into a burning feeling. Feathers body reacted instantly to the pain, and his eyes closed.
He kicked hard towards bottom, then forced his eyes open again. But the water was so murky he could not see a thing, and in an instant his eyes closed. The burning seeped back into his eye sockets. And now his body felt it too. It spread from his legs to his breast to his back, until it was like he was on fire.
Fire pushed inside him. Its flames flickered through the protection of his feathers and ate into his skin. The heat grew and grew as Feathers forced himself deeper down.
Then his body betrayed him, and it betrayed the flock. He turned upwards towards the light. Towards clean cool water. Cool water. Feathers swam with all his strength up to the surface.
The clean water cooled him until all he felt was a strange tingling. It was hard to open his eyes. As the fires pain faded the screeching in his head grew to take its place. It was pain and fear transformed into sound. It screamed at him. Need to know. Need to know.
It drove him back down to find whatever was down at the bottom of that water. But he could not stay down in that fire long enough. He could not force himself down through that layer of burning black flame.
Feather was driven back and forth between fire and madness.
He dived into the bay again and again. And he burned. He burned from that murky black water. He burned until the sky was red with fire and he could feel his feathers start to melt away.
And his mind shrieked through it all. A terrible obscene shriek that filled him and drove him on.
So he dived into that burning water as night fell, trying with all his might to pass through, to get to that bottom.
But each dive ended in a mad thrust for the surface, a mad thrust for self-preservation. A self-preservation that kept him from burning down there, down deep, never to return.
Suddenly the shrieking in Feathers head ended, and he stopped. The whole world seemed tinged in red, and he felt so cold.
He knew then.
His flock was gone. Gone somewhere under that water.
He was the last of them.
He started to shake. His mind numbed. Moonlight washed over the bay in a soft silver light. The tall grass and the trees beyond. They were not real. The water was not real either. Real water did not burn.
But deep in the pit of his stomach Feathers knew one thing that was real. His flock was gone. Not moved to another place. Not still out flying over the sea. They were gone.
And he had to leave.
He flew towards the sea, knowing he was
leaving his home for the last time.
And as he flew over the black water he saw in his mind’s eye, as if from long ago, a faint shadowy form, a white bird flying the other way, back towards the bay. She was alone, but she carried an egg inside her.
She was first bird.
It was she that chose this place as home, and it was her egg from which the flock came. From which Feathers came.
How had she felt then, with everything new and clean, with years of life and promise waiting for her, waiting for her in that tall grass?
Feathers was the last of them. She had brought life and promise. He took it with him as he flew away.
He was last bird.
The night was so cold. Shivers ran through Feathers body. A full moon lit the sky, but somehow he could barely see. He could not keep his wings level. The world tilted over to one side like it would slide away at any moment.
His wings grew heavy, until each stroke was an effort. The bay was endless. Where was the sea? Why was it so far?
He flew on, gliding as much as he could, fighting to stay level, to keep dizziness and fatigue from forcing him down into the water. But he was so heavy.
Feathers vision faded. It became hard to even breath.
Then he was over the sea. The beautiful clean infinite sea. The sky covered him in a blanket of darkness.
Feathers right wing failed and folded in on itself and he was suddenly spiraling downward. He had nothing left.
He stopped struggling. He would join his flock. Last bird would return home.
Cool salty water welcomed him in, soothing his burning skin. The shrieking in his mind was gone. Everything to be done, he had done.
The world was still tilting over. He could not seem to see, now. Had the moon gone down? Feathers right wing lay limp in the water, forcing his head downward. Below the water. It soothed his eyes. He reached up for each breath. But his strength was nearly gone.
He peered out trying to pierce the darkness, to see his beloved sea one last time.
Then the last vestige of strength left him, and his head fell into that water. Water filled his mouth. It was time to go.
It was then that he heard it.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
His old friend, Green Fish, was here.
Something solid pushed up beneath him. Something round and green. Water poured off it as it broke the surface, trailing down furrows that divided it into armored sections. Strands of fishnet were caught in the grooves on one side.
Feathers lay his head down on that hard stable back, and just breathed. Something was moving. He squinted into the darkness trying to see. A neck with a thin black line running along its side. Old leathered skin, traced with many scars. A face turning towards him. There was an indentation on the left side, a hole, like something had torn a chunk of flesh off. The dark green skin was mottled with black patches. The left eye was white, scarred over, unseeing.
Feathers thought of the burning in his eyes in that deep water, and this creature swimming deep, seeking the black poison river, to follow it back to Feathers home.
Then Feathers looked into its other eye. Black. Shining with intelligence, and an oldness, an oldness like Feathers had never seen or imagined. And deeper down there was something else. Sadness. Sadness hung like a cloud, deep inside that shining black eye.
It was a turtle. A great ancient sea turtle.
Not a fish. Not a fish at all.
Everything started to fade into black. The turtle was moving now, swimming on the surface, paddling out to sea. Feathers finally surrendered to his fatigue and fell into the pure nothingness of deep dreamless sleep.
IT WAS A GOOD WHILE before Feathers flew again. Whether he had swallowed some of whatever poison was in that water, or it had just passed into him through his skin, now it was inside him. He felt it, black and sluggish, coursing through his veins, sapping his energy.
And he was cold all the time. In the days following, Feathers molted. But it was not what happened normally before each winter. Now his feathers came off in bunches, leaving patches of bare skin behind, bare skin where neither new down nor new feathers were coming in to replace what was lost. It was as if his body just did not have the energy. All he could do was sleep. And shiver.
He would have died there but for the sea turtle. She bore him on her back, keeping him above the waves. And she brought Feathers fish to eat.
And so Feathers survived. The poison slowly left him, and his energy came back. But it had left its mark - when his feathers came back in, they were not white as before - they came in black and dull, without luster.
Although Feathers energy returned, and his plumage grew back in, one thing stayed missing. He had no desire to fly. When he had left his flock that first time and lost his willpower, flying was the only thing he could seem to do. Now it was the one thing he could not.
Days and night passed. Feathers rested on the turtles back, the great turtle swam and fished for them both.
During those days Feathers thought, and he remembered.
His mind returned to the dream of an endless beach of gleaming white sand and clear green water, and to the times when the sea turtle seemed to lose her way, and of the vision he had had of rivers of black poison and underwater fields of white snow that brought confusion that could lead to a fish becoming lost.
Or, perhaps, a sea turtle.
He thought of how he had started feeling the strange vibration just after he began following the turtle. How the sadness had grown, a heavy cold stone deep inside him, its coldness so bitter it seeped into his bones, and into his heart.
And he thought of the strange dream, of great turtles taking on the sadness of the world. When they finally died it was not from old age - it was from sadness. And he thought of his sea turtles ravaged face, her scared body, and most of all the unbearable sadness he saw in her one good eye.
When Feathers finally lifted from the great turtles back and spiraled up into dark gray sky, he did not fly for himself. He flew for her.
IF ONLY HE COULD FIND a center, he could fly around it in ever widening circles, until he found land. He knew there must be land somewhere.
That’s what he had thought back in his lost days. But there had been no center, then. Now there was.
Feathers spiraled around the great turtle in widening circles, until she was out of sight. And he went farther still. He did not need to see her any more. He could feel the direction in which she was, he could feel it in that strange thrumming. As he flew farther and farther out, it connected him to her like a tether.
He flew out towards the horizon until her thrum was but a whisper, like a sigh of the wind in his ear. Then he flew in a great circle around her, scanning the horizon for that white beach, trying to match the white beach in his mind's eye with something in that far off place where sea met sky.
But all he saw was sea and sky and clouds.
So Feathers flew back in to her, and flew with her like in the old days. Some days she would come up, and Feathers would alight onto her back and ride with her for a while. They fished together, and they kept moving. Feathers was careful now to follow the turtles lead. The direction must come from her. She was lost, but she also remembered somehow.
Feathers knew that, because every night now he would see that beach in his dreams, and fly above it, the white sand so bright in that hot sun that it hurt his eyes to look at it, the blue-green water so crystal clear he would wish he was a fish, so he could swim down into those shimmering endless depths. It felt so real, and Feathers became convinced that it was. The turtle was sharing her vision with him, and that was where they were going.
They would find that beach, together. But each time he flew out to the end of the humming tether that connected them, Feathers would secretly hope that it would not be this time. He felt that finding that beach would end his and turtles time together. He wanted more, just a little more time with her, before that ending.
He was given that gift. He flew out t
o the edge of their world many times looking for the beach of their dreams. Each time he returned without seeing it a weight lifted from his heart. He would have a little more time with her.
To fish, to dream.
A little more time to travel the ocean together.
THE BEACH DID NOT RUN from horizon to horizon like in the dream. It was just a small strip of white sand gleaming out from an impossibly blue ocean. It could have been a low cloud. But a few small sticks were floating on the sea, and that meant land.
Still, Feathers was not sure until hints of sweet scents carried out to him on the sea breeze.
He returned to turtle and led her in, pacing her by flying circles around her like in the old days.
It was a glorious day. Sunlight sparkled across the water, making the whole world glisten and shine. The ocean became so clear Feathers could see turtle swimming, way down below the surface, a splotch of green in that clear blue water, veering slightly left, then right, as her great webbed feet propelled her forward.
Beneath her the sea was so clear, it went down forever, so far it made Feathers dizzy to look into it too long. It was like an infinite cloudless sky, without a bottom.
The shore appeared to grow wider as they grew closer, stretching out into a long wide beach of pure white sand. Waves rolled up and fell back. Sunlight reflected off small glistening objects on the darker wet sand. Small birds ran up and back on the beach, dodging the waves, feeding on something in the sand.
The beach was deep as well as wide. Behind it was green. Feathers had seen trees and brush and grass, but never anything like this. Tree and brush were packed together so closely here, into what looked like an impenetrable wall of bright glistening green.
Sweet and spicy land scents, different than any he had ever smelled before, wafted out on the stiff warm breeze. The air was full of life. Feathers took it in in long deep breaths. Raw energy flowed through his veins.
They moved closer. The waves pushing up the beach sounded a long inhale, exhaling as they fell back, and under the wave sound was a quiet roar, a long swooshing sound that filled the air around him, a sound made by surf and waves and wind together, that blended with the low slow throb of turtles thrumming.
