Bird Magics

by JC Andrijeski

  BIRD MAGICS

  by

  JC Andrijeski

  Copyright © 2011 by JC Andrijeski

  Published by White Sun Press

  Cover art by James at GoOnWrite.com

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Synopsis

  Ulak is a crow. A berry addict and eccentric in the crow community that lives in the courtyard behind a row of human townhouses, Ulak decides one day that the humans must die. Convinced he knows the secret to getting it done, he shares his ambitions with his two friends, Fark and Jaak. They, of course, think he’s nuts. But when the white lights appear in the sky, Fark begins to wonder if maybe his crazy friend might have been telling the truth after all.

  bookmakr:BIRD MAGICS

  BIRD MAGICS

  The crow stood on the edge of a sagging telephone wire, looking down. Fidgeting from one foot to the other on the wire, he ruffled his feathers, tilting his head sideways to stare down at the tree-lined courtyard with one, deep-black eye.

  He continued to stare down at the chipped white skin of the square building. His mother had explained about “buildings” versus “trees.” This one had a slanted top and only the one odd branch coming out of the top that seemed to be made of red, crumbling stone. Inside, he heard no sounds.

  The sun had only just risen. He contemplated a short hop to the lawn to forage, when a cry overhead jerked his head to the side and up, so that he could aim one of his eyes skyward.

  He relaxed, seeing the underside of the wings of a second crow. He recognized the notch in one wing, the white tip on the left, a discoloration in the black and gray foot. He waited for the other to land on the same piece of sagging wire, to run his beak over and between feathers, cleaning them off with a few swift back and forth jerks before shuffling his feet closer on the cable.

  “Morning, Fark,” the new crow nodded.

  “Morning, Jaak.”

  They both proceeded to stare down at the courtyard.

  “Anything new?” Fark asked presently.

  “Trakk lost a foot.”

  “Did he?” Fark shivered a little, ruffling his feathers. “How did he do that?”

  “He won’t say. Rukk thinks he was chasing those big metal things...the ones the monkeys drive...”

  Fark thought about this. He decided that Trakk’s mate was likely correct.

  “They fascinate him,” he commented.

  “He’s an idiot,” Jaak replied neutrally.

  “Have you talked to Ulak yet?”

  “No, why?”

  “He’s been eating those berries again...”

  Fark chittered to himself quietly. His father would have pecked him bald if he’d touched those things...but some of the other birds couldn’t seem to stay away from them. It couldn’t be the taste. Fark had heard from his mate that the berries tasted like a cross between cat dung and the black, rock-like substance that the monkeys poured over the dirt wherever they drove the box-like metal things with the bad-tasting round feet.

  So...it couldn’t be the taste.

  Still, birds could get fixated on things.

  A light came on in the building below. Fark blinked at it, watching a shadow move around inside, blocking the light and unblocking it as it puttered around the small cave where it slept on the upper floor of the white-painted box where it lived. The monkeys were builders...all knew that. They liked their complex caves, their little holes in the dirt. Like the ants, they built stories upon stories inside the holes they dug, until their towers blocked the sun, creating odd holes and even long, endless gaps between and among the trees. The monkeys seemed to harbor a deep hatred of trees in particular...cultivating a few as pets but otherwise cutting them down with their giant knives, even digging them out of the ground with the heavy metal teeth of more of their smoking metal box machines.

  Fark, like most in his murder, found himself forced to contemplate certain aspects of the monkeys.

  Like, for instance, he knew the boxes let the monkeys move very fast. They rushed by him whenever he hung on the wires near the road, ruffling his feathers even at a distance, making long, screaming sounds of pain as they got close to one another, and higher more steady noises as they moved.

  “Oh, crap,” Jaak said beside him.

  Fark turned, angling his head so that he could see the crow approaching them in an off-kilter line. Ulak.

  Fark found himself mentally mirroring the sentiment voiced by his friend. Clearly, Ulak had been in the berries already today. His wings jerked at a strange angle right before he landed, even as he came in too fast. The combination forced him to clutch too hard at the hanging telephone wire, bouncing the entire length of it and throwing him headfirst towards the green lawn stretching below them.

  Fark found himself thrown backwards from the same bounce of the wire, as was Jaak, cursing, beside him. Jaak, responding faster, bounced up into the air with a beat of his wings, but Fark, in reflex, clutched the wire in an iron grip, which nearly pitched him over backwards.

  In any case, it broke protocol.

  Eventually, the thick, rubber-encased wire swayed back to its original position after much squawking and beating of wings.

  Ulak, seemingly oblivious to his part in all of this, preened his feathers erratically as the cable continued to sway slightly under his thick-clawed feet. Fark watched him do it, focusing briefly on the bright blue spot on his beak, an odd discoloration, yet difficult to avoid staring at because it was so bright. Like all crows, Fark liked bright things.

  Eventually, Jaak joined them, with another strong beat of his wings. Fark thought he might have beat them a little harder than strictly necessary in the direction of Ulak, but he couldn’t be certain.

  The three of them sat there for a moment, squawking and clacking their various opinions about the matter...until the emotions seemed spent and the courtyard quieted down once more.

  Fark found himself gazing out over the area beneath his feet, back to contemplating the white building with its flickering lights. Additional lights had come on in surrounding buildings in the interim, and now he saw some of the monkeys in the lower stories of their white-painted homes, watching their fast moving pictures on the wall and eating out of rounded, stone-like utensils they carried in their upper feet.

  They spent a lot of time staring at things, Fark noted, not for the first time.

  Looking out over the courtyard itself, Fark watched one of the monkeys carry a basket filled with that soft material so good for nests, walking on the smooth, whitish stone path. He clacked his beak a little, wondering how pleased his mate might be if he snatched one of the smaller pieces for their own young ones, particularly given the early season.

  But it was risky, that.

  The path wound through the center of the long courtyard, meeting each of the individual monkey’s dwellings and interspersed with grass, rocks, bushes and trees, all arranged in precise shapes. The whole layout spoke to a pattern Fark couldn’t quite wrap his head around, but that filled him with a vague disquiet. Something about the need to impose order made him sympathetic to the monkeys. Such a futile task.

  Yet something about it bothered him, too.

  “Good morning,” Ulak said beside him.

  “Get stuffed,” Jaak responded curtly.

  “Did you hear about Trakk?” Ulak said, seemin
gly oblivious to Jaak.

  “Yes,” Fark said, deciding to let it go. “Car, they say,” he added.

  Ulak gave him a knowing look. “They say that?”

  “You know different, berry-head?” Jaak squawked.

  “I do,” Ulak said, nodding sagely.

  “Do you now?”

  “I cursed him,” Ulak said, nodding again, clacking his beak.

  “You did what?” Fark stared at him, tilting his head sideways to gaze into the somewhat glassy eye of the other bird.

  “I cursed him,” Ulak repeated. “I used bird magics.”

  “Really.” Jaak stared at him, shifting his feet back and forth on the wire to show his impatience. “And how, exactly, did you do that?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “Show us?” Fark said, his head still tilted sideways.

  “Bird magics...” Jaak chittered derisively, hopping a bit on the wire.

  “I’ll show you,” Ulak only repeated mysteriously. “Come with me.”

  He began to beat his wings again...somewhat erratically, and in Jaak’s face. Jaak stumbled backwards on the wire, making harsh, loud cries of disapproval, and Fark found himself doing the same. He was trying to decide if he should try Jaak’s approach this time and simply launch himself airborne, when Ulak did so before he could make up his mind.

  Leaving the wire and soaring across the lawn in an erratic line, Ulak left Jaak and Fark to look at one another in bewilderment.

  “Follow!” Ulak cawed back at them. “Follow! Follow! Follow me!”

  Fark looked again at Jaak, to see if he would follow the berry-addled bird. He assumed he would not, but the older bird shifted his feet for only a brief instant of indecisiveness, then cawed a laugh.

  “What the hell,” he said. “Breakfast can wait.”

  Fark watched him go, then decided Jaak had a point. Perhaps someone should be talking to Ulak’s wife though, he thought, as he lit off the wire with a strong flap of his wings. Gliding across the courtyard after Jaak, Fark followed Ulak’s erratic bursts of wing-flapping over the bulk of the walled courtyard stretching between rows of high, white buildings.

  The weaving crow took them to one of the crumbling red-stone towers that emitted steam in clouds from the early time of the morning to late at night.

  Ulak aimed straight for the odd little window in the structure below the high tower of red rock. He half-crashed into the side, then seemed to walk and flap his way through an opening leading to the inside of the wooden tower.

  Jaak hesitated only a half-beat before following him.

  Fark found his nerves ratcheting higher. Owls lived inside that wooden structure sometimes, and didn’t take well to visitors into their enclaves. Particularly not in the early hours of the morning when they were tired and likely to be full of food and aggression from the hunt.

  Still, he barely hesitated before he climbed inside after Ulak and Jaak.

  The light in the wooden tower was strange...patterned from the light of the rising sun broken by the oddly symmetrical slats that filled all four of the wider openings to the outside. A few seconds later, however, he was able to focus on Jaak’s eyes reflecting light, and then those of Ulak, standing just beyond him on an odd outcropping of wood that formed a somewhat overly-symmetrical perch.

  “What is this?” Jaak demanded.

  Clearly he was a bit worried about the owls too, Fark thought.

  “I will show you.” Ulak used his beak to tilt some of the wooden slats, so that more light came in through the opening, shining on a single, white-painted wall with odd markings all over it.

  “See this?” he said.

  He pecked at an odd smudge of black marks that almost looked like that sticky substance sometimes found in the edges of the black material where the metal boxes ran.

  Fark saw bits of feather sticking in the black rocks, and what looked like...

  “Is that shit?” Jaak said, disgusted.

  “It is Trakk’s shit,” Ulak said, pride audible in his voice.

  “You followed after Trakk, picked up his shit, and put it on this wall?” Fark couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “To curse him.”

  “With his shit?” Jaak said. He couldn’t seem to get past the shit thing.

  “Why curse him?” Fark said. “What does that mean?”

  “He made fun of me,” Ulak said. Briefly, his voice grew bitter. “He made fun of me in front of my mate...called me berry-head.” He turned, glaring one of his black eyes at Jaak, faintly accusatory.

  “...In front of my mate,” he repeated.

  “But what does this mean?” Fark repeated. “To curse him?”

  Ulak pointed a foot and a beak at the wall. “I made his picture...then I cursed him. I wished him harm.” He looked at Fark, chortling his glee, his head tilted back and bobbing. “I wished him to look a fool in front of his wife, too...” His caw turned smug. “...She thinks it is his fault, does she not? The foot?”

  Fark had to admit that she did.

  Still, he remained unconvinced.

  “You think you did this?” Fark said. He couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his words. “...By smearing his poo and some of his feathers on a wall, you think you made Trakk lose his foot to one of the metal cars?”

  “Yes,” Ulak said, even more smugly.

  “Why in the name of the Great Yellow God would you believe that?” Jaak said. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Ever.”

  “Trakk was only my test,” Ulak said.

  “Your test for what?” Fark said.

  But Jaak noticed something else. “You smell like blood,” he said, prodding Ulak with his beak. “Why do you smell like blood?”

  “Cat,” Ulak said. “I didn’t see it...”

  Jaak chortled. He found this funny.

  “Maybe Trakk cursed you!” he cackled, hopping up and down. “Bird magics...!” He flapped his wings a little, despite the confined space. “Bird magics...” he mumbled, chittering a little in humor. “Stupid. You are really stupid, Ulak...stupid berry head.”

  But Ulak only seemed to have heard the first thing.

  “No,” Ulak said. “Trakk didn’t curse me. But there’s always a price.”

  “A price?” Fark said. “What does that mean?”

  “It was only a test...” Ulak said. “I needed to test it.”

  “Test what?” Jaak said.

  He sounded impatient again...and now, bored. The joke was beginning to wear thin for him, Fark could tell.

  “What are you testing?” Fark repeated, tilting his head.

  Ulak walked sideways across the wooden perch. With a few shoves of his beak, he moved the slats to illuminate a different segment of wall. On it, Fark saw more figures. A great many more. Bits of cloth were stuck out of pieces of wall.

  There was also a smell, Fark realized.

  A smell he almost recognized, even as he shook his beak in attempt to extract the scent from his nostrils. It almost smelled like...

  “Is that monkey shit?” Jaak asked.

  “Yes,” Ulak said proudly. “I’m going to wipe out the monkeys,” he added.

  Jaak laughed aloud at this. “What?”

  “The monkeys,” Ulak repeated. “I’m going to curse them, too.”

  “Why?” Fark said. “Why would you want to do that?” He thought to himself of the food he picked up off the road, the catfood left on the back doors, the endless pieces of yarn and string he collected for his mate. He liked watching them in their metal boxes. He liked the shiny things they left in the road. Monkeys dropped such an interesting assortment of shiny things.

  “Why?” Fark repeated.

  “They throw rocks at me,” Ulak said bitterly.

  “Only the boy,” Jaak said, hopping a little.

  “No. The bigger ones too. I’m done with monkeys.” Ulak’s voice turned harsher, a thick caw under his glassy black-bead eyes. “...They a
re bad. They have to go.”

  Fark thought about this. “A little bad, maybe.”

  “No,” Ulak said, adamant. “They are bad. It’ll be better without them. You’ll see.”

  Jaak laughed, hopping up and down on his perch.

  “It’ll be better,” Ulak repeated stubbornly. “I’m going to wipe them out. You’ll see. You can all thank me later...”

  Fark and Jaak just looked at one another, speechless.

  If you were a crow, you would know just how rare this is.

  Fark didn’t know when it started.

  The sky changed first.

  He saw white trails in the sky...everywhere it seemed. Then the sounds came...but before the sounds, the shockingly bright lights. So bright, he couldn’t see for a few beats of his heart after he saw them. The world turned white with those lights...which seemed brighter than the Great Yellow God himself.

  Fark wanted to find his mate when he saw the first one. He wanted her to see what he was seeing, and wondered if she might have an opinion as to what it was. His mate always had opinions about such things. But it had been her turn to hunt worms and other insects for the little ones, and he didn’t know which of the four fields they often used that she might have visited first.

  He feared he would miss too much if he left now, to look for her.

  So he stood on the wire above the rushing rivers of metal boxes, a place where he sometimes liked to go...if only to watch the speed and glint of glass and color as they whizzed by. He liked the activity, even if he didn’t fully comprehend it. He liked the feeling of motion. He almost understood how a bird might become so exhilarated that they might want to chase after the machines, if only to race them down the road, and try to outstrip their rolling motion, to flicker past the round eyes in front.

  The flashes ended all that.

  When they started, the metal boxes stopped.

  Monkeys climbed out of them, staring up at the sky.

  Instead of chattering and showing teeth, which seemed to be the monkeys’ way of showing pleasure, they had closed mouths, wide eyes as they gazed up at the sky. Some of them cawed in dismay, and wouldn’t stop cawing. The air rent with their cries, until soon it was hard for Fark to hear anything else.