by Esther David
‘And volunteer for a day or two to put away the ghosts before you head back, madame.’ Regalis bowed her head to welcome her.
‘Oh!’ Salmo blushed. ‘You can just call me Salmo Salar. It will be an honour to help you. You are the oracle of the oceans, the one who knows all the answers.’
‘So they say.’ Regalis smiled back and caught a plastic bag in her mouth to stuff it into a gaping cave. A few crabs gave way as Salmo and Kilkila got to work as well.
‘Answer …’ Hudhud murmured, looking at the queer underwater world around him. ‘What was the question again?’ Kilkila was gesturing him with his flippers to come along. ‘Kilkila is alive!’ Hudhud tossed his head back in laughter. ‘The answer has to be—all’s well that ends well!’
The sunrays filtering into the turquoise waters seemed to become brighter and brighter. Hudhud looked up to see all the hammerhead sharks circling above the stalagmites; each one was glaring down at him with its cold, steely eyes. They glinted and shone in the sunbeams till they dazzled Hudhud’s sight, and the ocean and sky merged into one harsh light.
5
One Good Tern
KRRR-BOOM! The sound of thunder shook the air below Hudhud’s wings. Lightning made silver spiders on the dark belly of the night. In that brief flicker of light, he saw the angry ocean below rising and falling in the storm, as if it were trying to break invisible chains. His abbi and ummi flew on either side, sheltering him from the wind and the downpour. This was Hudhud’s first flight of migration. He had been so excited to fly with his flock of thousands and thousands of Arctic terns from the north to the south of the wide, wide world. But where were the others? All scattered, all engulfed in darkness. He flapped his wet, aching wings, trying to keep pace with his parents.
A throaty roar and a whiff of hot air made him look down.
‘What was that?’ he cried above the grunts of the storm and looked at Ummi. But she was no longer flying by his side. Instead there was a tongue of flame reaching to lick his wing. He turned to look at Abbi and THWACK! Abbi hit him with his wing, sending him swirling away across the night sky. He stopped in midair, only to see a billowing cloud of fire devouring his abbi and ummi. The cloud disappeared in the falling raindrops and Hudhud looked down to see a firebreathing sea dragon …
‘Abbi …!’ Hudhud howled as something warm hit his cheeks. He opened his eyes to see a bright-blue morning sky. The warm air stroking him smelled of the salty sea. And fish!
‘He’s had another bad dream, Frodo.’ A grey seal shifted on the rocky shore.
‘He’s dreaming bad again, Samwise,’ another grey seal—they were twins—chimed in, rubbing his back with his large snout.
Hudhud’s red beak clicked an embarrassed apology as he stepped out of the crevice in a rock. A few seals—slate-grey bulls and silvery grey cows—lolled on the shore. The spots and patches on their ashen skin made them look like massive oblong sea pebbles. Many more swam in the sea, surfacing now and then.
‘Guess what we’ve got you …’ Frodo hitched forward with his front flippers, his fat body moving in waves.
‘Sand eels?’ Hudhud asked hopefully. ‘Or the answer to my question?’
‘What answer?’ Samwise squelched on the wet rock.
‘What question?’ Frodo asked.
‘Ummm … I don’t seem to remember …’ Hudhud yawned, spreading his wings and stretching his red webbed feet.
‘Must have been another dream of his.’ Frodo looked at Samwise knowingly.
‘Well, we’ve got you news,’ Samwise said. ‘Shaggy the shag has agreed to let you camp with him this winter as well.’
The tiny Hudhud flapped before his seal friend that weighed no less than 200 kilos. ‘You know, my winter with him last year was kind of lame. He made me fish for him all the time.’ Hudhud looked disappointed.
‘If you want something happening, you should fly back with your flock.’ Frodo’s whiskers trembled as he spoke. ‘You’ll get to see two summers in a year!’
‘No, no, no … I can’t fly back to the sea!’ Hudhud cringed at the thought.
‘How precious! Which bird is afraid to fly, dude?’ asked a young Arctic tern, flapping his wings quickly above their heads.
‘Oh, that’s chicken, Kilkila.’ Another one landed on a nearby rock, his jaunty black hat shining in the sun.
‘So what is Hudhud?’
‘Hudhud is a chicken!’
‘Hudhud is a chicken!’
A dozen young terns joined the chorus as they circled above Hudhud and the twin grey seals before flying away to the waters to fish.
‘Hudhud, just ignore Kilkila,’ Samwise advised as Frodo grunted in agreement. ‘He is mean. We know you’re terribly afraid of flying. Good news is, like the last two years, you can stay back on this island with Shaggy this year too. You need a warm home in the winters. That’s the best we could do—’
‘Yo ho ho ho!’ Frodo mumbled, looking at the sea.
‘Ho! … Yoyoyo …!’ Samwise followed his gaze. Two seal cows were hauling themselves out of the water.
‘Here come our beauties! And both of them together, that too!’
The bulls high-fived with their front flippers.
‘Let’s show them some moooves, Frodo.’
Tap-tap-a-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-a-tap! The twins flapped their flippers and moved their fat bodies on the rock in perfect rhythm.
The two young cows passed them, one of them rolling her eyes while the other groaned. They sprawled on the sand to digest their fish.
‘Did you hear her sigh, bro?’ asked Frodo.
‘I heard my one for sure.’ Samwise grinned. ‘They can’t resist our charms.’
Hudhud cleared his throat. ‘I will stay the winter with Shaggy this year too. Thank you, friends.’
‘Hurhur!’ A puffin with at least three dozen sand eels stuffed in his sunset-orange beak landed near them. ‘Your granaaish looing fur you.’
‘What’re you saying, Mr Tuxedo?’ Frodo swung his tail.
Mr Tuxedo dropped a few fish from his mouth for Hudhud and gulped the rest down. Hudhud thanked the puffin before wolfing down the fish.
‘I said …’ the puffin chirped, ‘… WHAT is that vicious smell?’
‘Oh.’ Frodo shifted on his flippers. ‘I just had my meal, you know. It needs digesting.’
Samwise shook his head in solemn agreement.
Mr Tuxedo beat his wings to disperse the wind around him. ‘Hudhud, your gramma is looking for you.’
The gathering turned grim all of a sudden.
Samwise looked at Hudhud with pity. ‘Good that it’ll be done with early this season.’
Frodo nodded his flabby head. ‘Go get ’em, pal.’
After a few minutes of flight, Hudhud folded his white wings and landed on the topmost rock of the island. Waves crashed into the rocky outcrops of around twenty islands in the area and went back into the ocean, just to return and bang headlong into the volcanic rocks again. At a distance, a red-and-white lighthouse stood proud against the teal-blue sky. The tops of many of the rocky islands were snow-white with bird droppings. Puffins had arrived in thousands this April. He could see their black-and-white coats, red striped beaks and comic expressions. They waddled on the white slopes that were packed to the rafters with seabirds—eider ducks, kittiwakes, fulmars, guillemots, razorbills, sandwich terns and common terns. The spring migrants spoonbills and white-tailed eagles swooped in the air. The islands of Farne were so packed with life this time of the year, it always filled Hudhud with awe.
‘So many summer visitors …’ he mumbled.
‘You are a visitor too.’ A flutter of wings made him turn. An Arctic tern, her black cap shining and her red stockings prim as peach, stood looking at him. Her face was hard and unsmiling and dark. ‘You’ve overstayed your welcome. When do you plan to leave?’
‘Nice to see you too, Gramma,’ groaned Hudhud.
‘My daughter and your father dive-bombed humans,
pecking at their heads, as they protected your nest. Other kinds of birds made nests near theirs so that their chicks were also protected. Your parents were fearless and fierce. And you …’
‘If you had seen what I have seen—’
‘There are no sea dragons!’ Gramma’s voice stung. She stood more than a head taller than him, the tallest Arctic tern that Hudhud had seen in the three years of his life. ‘Your parents died in a storm on your first journey back to the Weddell Sea. And you just flew back alone to Farne Islands. Spent your first year here, hiding your sorry self with some or the other natives. The next year when I came, you were still raving about sea dragons. I thought you were in shock, and would get over it and travel back with us this year. That you won’t be a fledgling but a boyling by now. Alas, I had guessed wrong.’
Hudhud lowered his gaze under the old tern’s glare.
‘We are the greatest travellers on earth … flying no less than 96,000 kilometres from our nesting grounds here to the south … through West Africa, crossing into the Indian Ocean and reaching the Antarctic after four months. And flying back again. Don’t you want to fly from pole to pole and back again, follow the sun and see more daylight than any other animal? Arctic terns are not settlers, Hudhud …’
‘… they are nomads,’ Hudhud finished for her, still looking down.
Gramma looked at him coldly, her beak pursed. ‘So you’ve heard enough of it, huh.’ It was not a question.
Long silent moments passed as Gramma drilled her razor gaze into him. Hudhud shifted his to the eider ducks sitting in their nests in crevices on the nesting cliffs.
Eventually Gramma broke the silence. ‘What is a tern without winter wanderlust?’
Hudhud shifted on his webbed feet.
‘He is a rat that hides in burrows come winter.’ Gramma took off in flight.
Hudhud stood there brooding for a long time, watching the seabirds nesting on the islands swoop and soar and hover and dip, around and over and below the cliffs. This was a quieter corner on the clifftop. It was like that secluded patch where the hero met the oracle in old stories. Only in his story, the hero was a coward and the oracle, mean.
His eyes were fixed on a large crack in a distant rock when his vision got disturbed by a flutter of wings. A young Arctic tern, her white wings moving like waves against the sun, her red beak stuffed with moonbeams of fish and her red feet swaying in the wind, rose above the cliff. Hudhud’s beak dropped as he looked at the elegant bird in her liquid motion. Just after her, rose three seagulls that took a dip at her one at a time. Seeing the avian pirates trying to steal the tern’s fish, Hudhud ducked behind a small jutting rock.
The harried tern crouched and then rose in the air, flapping her tired wings as the attack continued. He could see her looking around for help but she could not see him. Hudhud shrank farther behind the rock as the tern’s and the seagulls’ high-pitched shrieks rang in the air. It looked as if they would not stop at hurting her. But Hudhud couldn’t gather the courage to fly to her aid. One of the seagulls dived at her, his beak wide open and feet outstretched to strike. The terrified tern dropped the mouthful of fish down the cliff and the three seagulls followed, trying to catch one in the air. She landed on the clifftop, flushed and puffing.
Hudhud was gawking at her from behind the rock when the tern caught sight of him.
‘Ahoy, who’s there?’ she called.
Hudhud would have liked to have become invisible then, but he crawled out from his hiding place. ‘Hey there.’
‘I didn’t see you.’ The tern had a golden voice.
‘I just landed.’ Hudhud lied. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Don’t ask.’ She turned back to the sea. ‘I was just robbed.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind, it wasn’t a good catch. Just some fish. I would rather have crabs. But it’s so difficult to find them here.’ The tern looked too proud to talk of her lost fight.
‘You want crabs? I … I can show you where to hunt for them,’ Hudhud said earnestly. He felt guilty all the way down to his bones. But he was sure he could not have helped in any way and, at worst, would have ended up injuring himself.
‘Who are you again? I haven’t seen you in the flock in the last three years—I’ve done three migrations, mind you.’
‘Um … It’s a large flock.’
The graceful tern looked at the scores of terns scattered on the islands all around. ‘Hmm … Do you have family?’ She still sounded suspicious.
‘My gramma … the tall tern with a stern expression.’
‘Oh yeah! The quaint tern has family?’ Her face softened. ‘If you’ve been keeping away, I don’t blame you.’
Hudhud scuffed his webbed feet.
‘Will you show me where to hunt crabs … er, what is your name?’ she asked, spreading her wings.
‘Hudhud.’ He smiled. ‘What is yours?’
‘Ababeel.’
‘Why are you named after a swallow?’ He took off in flight.
‘Why are you named after a kingfisher?’ She flew after him.
They crossed a few islands as he told her their names: The Bush, Fang, Blue Caps, Elbow, Big and Little Harcar, Gun Rock, Callers, Crumstone, Wideopens. The noise of the birds crammed on the islands was deafening. Eventually, the din of the tens of thousands of different seabirds became a distant hum as they landed on a secluded patch of scurvy grass.
‘It’s beautiful …’ Ababeel looked at the fourpetalled white flowers in the grass spreading all around. ‘Like winter’s first snowflakes.’
‘Wait till you look ahead.’ Hudhud pointed. Scores of crabs strutted sideways on the sand.
‘Whoa …!’ Ababeel’s excitement was contagious as she dived after them. Hudhud grinned when she landed near him with a large crab in her beak. ‘How do you know this secret place? And the names of all the islands?’
‘I have a lot of local friends.’
‘That’s cool. What is the name of this island?’
‘Nameless.’
Ababeel returned his grin as she started working on the crab.
Hudhud flew to the sunning rocks in the evening to look for the twins. He found the bulls soaking in the slanting rays of the sun on flat seaside rocks after hunting in the ocean. They raised their triple-chinned faces as Hudhud landed near them.
‘How is your stern gramma?’ Frodo asked.
‘Oh oh, a stern tern—howzat?’ Samwise gave a high five to Frodo.
‘She is almost thirty I believe, but doesn’t look a day older than twenty.’ Hudhud shook his wings before folding them.
‘I guess not smiling has spared her some wrinkles,’ Samwise offered.
‘Being so old, she would have already travelled 2.4 million kilometres—a distance almost equal to three trips to the moon and back,’ Frodo said dreamily.
‘Imagine the frequent flyer miles she has gathered!’ Samwise’s fat belly wobbled as he laughed. Hudhud just shuffled on his feet.
‘Someone doesn’t look wretched after meeting the tall tyrant.’ Samwise observed him critically. ‘He looks as excited as I am on seeing the first puffins arrive in April.’
‘He looks dreamy-eyed, if you ask me,’ said Frodo.
‘So you’ve finally made up with Gramma?’
‘Nah … the meeting was no good.’ Hudhud shifted, trying to hide his obvious happy state. ‘But I met someone after that.’
‘Aha. Is that someone a lady?’ Frodo had raised his head and now sat up straight on his two front flippers.
Hudhud flashed them a bashful smile.
‘Tell us more!’
Hudhud gave them a brief account of his encounter.
‘Does she know you … er … don’t travel?’ Samwise looked at him with his round soulful eyes.
‘Um … she hasn’t asked.’
‘And you haven’t told.’ Frodo was serious all of a sudden. ‘Terns partner for life. You can’t not tell her the truth, chum.’
&n
bsp; Hudhud frowned. ‘You sound like my gramma.’
‘I do not have problems with your fear. I understand it. I just want you to be comfortable with who you are.’
‘And I thought you were my friend, Frodo.’ Hudhud bristled. ‘Go ahead and tell me, like Kilkila, that in this life I missed my true calling as a rock on which birds shit.’
Samwise rumbled, ‘Peace, peace!’ but Hudhud had already taken off in flight.
The next day he flew around looking for Ababeel. It was like searching for a twig in a nesting colony. There were thousands of birds on the rocky islands, spring and summer migrants, many of whom had come there to nest. The gent puffins went strutting, and shags wore crests to impress the ladies. The adult terns, three years and older, were out on dates. They took highaltitude flights, with the girls chasing the boys. Once they descended on land, the boys started fish flights, bringing gifts of fish for the girls. If a boy succeeded in wooing a girl, they spread their wings and moved on land with a swagger. Hudhud, who used to find it super funny, felt like doing this with Ababeel. He laughed away the thought and continued his search.
All the jutting rocks of the islands were actionpacked. But there was no sign of Ababeel. Hudhud saw a familiar figure and landed in the puffin colony.
‘Hello there!’ he shouted.
Mr Tuxedo turned towards him, his mouth stuffed with sand eels.
‘Et yoourgranna?’
‘What?’ Hudhud asked.
Mr Tuxedo dropped a few eels from his mouth for Hudhud and asked again, ‘Met your gramma?’
Hudhud nodded, gulping down the offering.
‘What are you doing here then?’
‘I’ve been, you know, looking for a friend … Ababeel. I just saw you and stopped for a snack.’ He grinned.
‘Ababeel … she’s a fearless girl.’
‘You know her?’ Hudhud lost interest in the eels.
‘My friend’s daughter.’
‘Wow … Any idea where I can find her?’
The puffin looked at the soaring birds and the tops of the rocks. ‘She’s a wild one. Likes to hunt away from the crowds. Do you know any place she would go?’
