The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate

by Scott Nash

  Junco grimaced. “Yes, the fisher doled out plenty for the both of us.”

  “And what, pray tell, is the present condition of this fisher?” Poppa Fox asked, casting a sideways glance at some young sparrows in the tavern. “An angry, wounded fisher in the forest is a danger to everyone who lives nearby.”

  “It’s dead,” said Junco. “Killed it.”

  The eavesdropping patrons looked stunned by the claim.

  “Remarkable,” Poppa Fox murmured, dumbfounded. Then the old innkeeper turned to Cyrus. “Son, we don’t have a moment to lose! You and Covey go tell the blokes in the field that there is a dead fisher out in the forest.” Poppa turned to Junco. “Where is the carcass?”

  “Just to the west of here,” said Junco. “Under a mound of pine needles. Follow the north side of the pond and then continue straight ahead.”

  “Good! Cyrus, tell the fellows to find that fisher and see that it’s well hidden! If it’s one of Teach’s cats, and the crows discover it, it will be trouble for all of us!”

  Teach’s cats? thought Junco. What could he mean by that?

  Poppa Fox ordered two other sparrows in the tavern to set a watch for crows. He addressed a young, serious-looking sparrow who was standing near the door. “Henry! Henry Clay! Come over here, will ye?”

  The sparrow came forward silently. He was dressed in a dark brown hooded frock that covered his eyes and made him look a bit ridiculous, or so Junco thought.

  “Young Henry here will attend to your friend,” said Poppa Fox to Junco. “Henry knows the wild plants around here better than anybody. What does the goose eat?”

  “Gabriel,” said Junco. “His name is Gabriel.”

  “What does Gabriel eat?”

  Before Junco could reply, Henry recited: “Berries, seeds, pond plants, tubers, roots, algae, and nearly any variety of grass. A Branta goose spends most of its waking hours eating.”

  Junco was startled by the young bird’s knowledge and had to agree. “That just about sums it up!” Henry was an odd, earnest bird and clearly very intelligent.

  Poppa Fox chuckled. “Well, Henry, if those are the facts, then you had better get out there and steer that Branta goose away from our fields and toward something in the pond.”

  “There’s some new watercress growing in the pond,” said Henry. “Right near the western bank. I’ll lead the goose there.”

  “And, Henry, one other thing,” said Poppa Fox. “Ask Gabriel to stay as close to the shore as possible for his safety. I’d like to keep him out of the sight of crows for the time being.”

  “I’ll tend to it straightaway,” said Henry without emotion, then turned and flew directly out of the tavern.

  “Perhaps I should go with him,” said Junco.

  “Let’s see how he fares,” said Poppa Fox, winking. “Go take a look if you like.”

  Junco went to the doorway facing the pond and watched. As Henry approached Gabriel, the goose reared back. Junco worried that Gabriel might attack, but the sparrow hovered around the big goose for a bit, and soon the two of them moved together toward the shade of the western bank.

  Poppa, who had hobbled up to stand beside Junco, said, “He’s a good boy, that Henry.” He then shook his head wistfully. “Sad story, though.”

  “Sad?” asked Junco.

  “Ah, his very best friend was murdered just this spring,” said Poppa. “By Teach’s mob. Henry was with him at the time and blames himself for not saving his friend, though the crows nearly kilt him as well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Junco said, shaking her head. “But why are the crows attacking sparrows? I mean you’re . . . ah, we’re all Thrushians, aren’t we?”

  Poppa Fox paused and looked skeptically at Junco over the rims of his glasses. “Hmmm, I don’t know. Teach seems to be determined to run roughshod over everything these days. Frankly, he’s a terror to all of us.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, then Poppa clapped Junco on the shoulder. “All right, then, enough of that. You must be hungry. What’ll you have? My pantry’s a bit depleted of seed, but we got some thistle and millet, walnuts. Betcha never had a walnut, have you? And grubs, nice ’n’ fresh. Fat midsummer variety. I’ve got lots of grubs for you.”

  “Walnuts and thistle will suit me fine, thank you,” said Junco. “I’ll save the grubs for later, if you please!”

  Poppa Fox led her toward a table and soon returned with a basket full of walnuts and thistle and two tankards of mead. While Junco ate, Poppa told her how his great-grandfather had built the Sooty Fox by enlisting the help of fifty sparrows and twenty woodpeckers over the course of three years. “I’ve lived in this village me entire life except for when I went off to fight for the Thrushians in the war.”

  The war of which Poppa Fox spoke was the Colonial War between Thrushia and Finchland, a bloody conflict that pitted the serfs of both countries against one another for three long years. Thrushians and finches represented the ruling class in the two colonies, and the serfs were any bird who was not either a finch or a thrush. Swallows, chickadees, wrens, warblers, starlings, and sparrows were the soldiers on both sides.

  “I lost me leg to another sparrow who was fighting on the opposite side, for Finchland,” said Poppa Fox. “He was a fox sparrow like me, and I swear we looked so much alike that I thought I was lookin’ at meself. The two of us stared at each other, suspended in midair with our switches at the ready, and then, I kid you not, we swung our blades and cut each other’s leg clean off.”

  Junco was dumbfounded. “What happened then?”

  “The rest of the war is what happened!” said Poppa Fox. “A swarming mess of birds and blades. I never saw that sparrow again.”

  Junco was eager to hear more, but they were interrupted by the arrival of a throng of villagers, including Covey and Cyrus.

  “What’s going on, boys?” Poppa Fox asked, scanning their faces. Getting no answer, he turned to an older sparrow, a grizzled-looking farmer. “Joseph? What’s happening?”

  The old sparrow removed his wide-brimmed hat and stepped forward. “Poppa, may we speak to you for a moment . . . in private?” he said, glancing warily at Junco.

  Junco thought that perhaps this was a good time to take her leave. “I’ll go check on Gabriel,” she offered.

  “I think it’s best that you stay where you are for the moment,” Joseph said abruptly.

  Junco did not like his tone and puffed out her feathers.

  “Don’t mind Joseph. He’s a bit gruff. . . . It’s his way.” Poppa Fox sighed. “Please stay. I’ll be back in a moment.” Junco nodded, and Poppa Fox hopped over to join the others, who immediately began speaking in hushed tones and giving sidelong glances in her direction. Junco’s heart raced. Had they somehow figured out that she was one of Blue Jay’s pirates? She knew that Briarloch was under colonial rule but didn’t know where the sparrows’ allegiance might actually lie. Piracy was a high crime throughout the colonies, and harboring such a criminal was a felony punishable by death. Turning a pirate over to the authorities would also bring a handsome reward . . . a reward that the poor little village of Briarloch could surely use. Junco was beginning to look for a possible escape route when Poppa Fox returned to the table with a grave expression.

  The innkeeper sat down, looking Junco directly in the eye. “These boys were searching for your fisher when they ran into a few wood thrushes who talked of a ship that went down in the forest last night a few miles from here. Which suggests to us that you might be one of the crew from that ship. Might that be true?”

  Junco tensed at the supposition.

  “Don’t worry,” Poppa Fox whispered. “Yor amongst friends here. But the crew of that wrecked ship are in terrible danger.”

  “What sort of danger?” asked Junco.

  “They went down near Black Point,” said Poppa.

  “Teach’s territory,” said Junco.

  “Exactly,” said Poppa Fox. “The disabled ship was seized by Teach’s
mob last night, and from what I hear, the sailors on board did not fare well.”

  Junco grabbed the innkeeper’s shoulders. “Tell me what happened!”

  The innkeeper’s head drooped. “Many died in the wreck. As for the rest, they’ve been marooned by Teach. He rendered them flightless and threw them to the ground. I’m afraid that if they didn’t find shelter, they’d be helpless against predators and may not have survived.”

  “Marooned! Those are my mates out there!” Junco said anxiously. “I must find them immediately!”

  The sparrows in the room fell silent and stared at Junco.

  Poppa Fox tucked in his chin, and his eyes widened. “Yor a pirate, then?” he said.

  Junco involuntarily touched the handle of her cutlass and scanned the room, anticipating a challenge, and said in a clear voice, “I am the navigator of the Grosbeak, and I answer to no one except my captain, Blue Jay!” At this pronouncement, the sparrows gasped. Junco could tell that they were aware of Blue Jay’s legendary reputation. That may have been a mistake, thought Junco.

  “My mates and I mean you no harm,” Junco continued hurriedly. “We are all from poor villages such as yours and —”

  “Say no more,” said Poppa Fox, holding up a wing. His demeanor was urgent but calm. “I have been waiting and hoping for the Grosbeak’s return to Oak’s Eye.”

  Junco was flummoxed by this response. “Our return?” she said. “Why?”

  “I’ll explain that later,” said Poppa Fox. “What we need to concentrate on now is saving yor friends! I’m sending a scouting party out to find them now.”

  “Then I’m going with them!” insisted Junco.

  “Soon enough, my friend,” said Poppa. “But I’m afraid that if you head out now, the crows will capture you in a moment, dressed as you are.”

  Junco looked down at her black vest and white shirt with its billowing sleeves and cuffs. She looked unmistakably like a pirate.

  “No, first we’ll get you a new set of clothes that blend in a bit better.” Here Poppa pointed to his own garb. “Something like I’m wearing. Gray and brown! No one takes notice of us wearing these clothes. We’re just LBB.”

  Junco looked puzzled. “LBB?”

  “Little bland birds. We’re all but invisible in the forest! And that, my friend, is how we like it!”

  Hillary, the star-nosed mole, lived a quiet, solitary life belowground and was generally oblivious of the toil and tumult of the world above him. For the most part, he lived a peaceful, contented life and spent his days digging tunnels and foraging for whatever food he might find underground: sweet roots or, even sweeter, the grubs that lived in the dirt that surrounded him. He loved dirt, the way it felt against his sides as he tunneled through it, the way it tasted and smelled. Dirt was home, and his home was a vast network of tunnels that twisted and turned, dipped and climbed, and stretched on for miles.

  Hillary also loved water but perhaps a little less than dirt. Fortunately, his extraordinarily large paws were excellent for both digging and swimming. Though severely nearsighted (actually, nearly blind), he was graced with a nose that had twenty-two fingerlike tentacles, adept at finding food underground or underwater. He especially liked having fish for lunch and was in Briarloch’s pond by midmorning nearly every day no matter the season. Then early in the afternoon, at the same hour every day, he would crawl back to the pond entrance of his tunnel. If he was lucky and the sun was shining, he would linger there awhile, warm his nose, sniff the air, and listen for news from the sparrows, who were always very talkative at that time of day. Their conversations usually centered around gathering food but would occasionally run to gossip about their little village of Briarloch.

  Hillary wasn’t nosy. He simply liked to hear their chatter. He always greeted them with a polite “Good afternoon, friends. Lovely day, isn’t it?” just to let them know that he was present and not eavesdropping. “Oh, good afternoon, Hillary!” the birds would reply, promptly resuming their conversations and paying no mind to the mole. Eventually, Hillary would wish them “Good day” and head back to his tunnel, never having contributed a word to the discussion but nonetheless feeling content, as if he had been a part of something social.

  This afternoon was different. Before he could even say “Good afternoon,” the birds greeted him in a state of high excitement. “There he is! Hillary! Yoo-hoo, Hillary!”

  This caught the mole off-guard. “Who, me?” he asked.

  “You’re the only Hillary around here, aren’t you, Mr. Hillary?”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “What have you heard about the pirates? We’re dying to know!”

  “What pirates?” asked Hillary, feeling suddenly uncomfortable and queasy.

  “Goodness, Hillary! You haven’t heard? Just yesterday Blue Jay and his crew shipwrecked not far from here, at Black Point. Teach set upon them right away and marooned the whole lot of them. Kept Jay’s ship, the Grosbeak, for himself, he did, and left the pirates to be eaten by weasels and fishers!”

  “Threw ’em off the ship is what I heard!” said another sparrow. “After clipping more than a few flight feathers.”

  Hillary had heard legends of both Blue Jay and Teach. To his mind, they seemed like the sort of dangerous, despicable rogues who existed in adventure tales, not in real life. The stories were fascinating, but Blue Jay and Teach were not individuals you would like to meet in the forest. In fact, he thought that they should probably be avoided at all costs. As a result, Hillary didn’t quite know how to respond to the news.

  “Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Well, isn’t that . . . remarkable?”

  “Remarkable? It’s thrilling!” said a sparrow. “A shipwreck! Black Point! Marooning! And a bunch of grounded, desperate pirates on the loose, or whatever is left of them after the weasels and fishers have their fill!” The sparrows laughed in unison, but Hillary did not see any humor in the story. As a matter of fact, he thought it was frightful.

  “And that’s still not all,” said another. “Two strangers showed up at Briarloch this very morning — a dark-eye and a goose! Both of them dressed real peculiar, I tell you, like . . . hmmm . . . pirates? And guess what? They claimed to have killed a fisher. Imagine that — birds killing a fisher!” The sparrows laughed again.

  Hillary couldn’t understand why these birds were so delighted by all of this. Pirates wandering through the forest was trouble, especially if those pirates were capable of killing a fisher. And whoever heard of a goose pirate? These ideas made his throat tighten. He gulped hard. He wanted to ask questions, but the words would not come out.

  Hillary felt exceedingly vulnerable, sitting half in and half out of the tunnel, so he retreated underground completely without saying good-bye to the birds. Once inside his tunnels, he found to his dismay that he still could not relax. He nibbled on this and that and worried about the pirates throughout the afternoon. He tried to do a bit of digging on the new tunnel he had been working on, but his heart wasn’t in it. I’ll take a nap, just to calm my nerves a bit, he said to himself. A nap always helps put these sorts of things into perspective. He curled up and, weary from worry, fell into an uneasy sleep.

  The words of the sparrows —“desperate pirates” and “fishers”— kept running through his mind, and his dreams were filled with vague images of monstrous things: fanged weasels and bloodthirsty pirates. There were muffled shrieks and strange mumbly voices all around him in the dark.

  He tossed and turned for a bit, then startled awake. “What?”

  Instead of fading away with the dream, the mumbly voices were alarmingly more distinct, more real.

  “Crayee! I tell you we’ve been down this way before!” said a voice. “Feel these roots here!”

  “There are roots all over these tunnels!” said another voice testily. “They all feel the same!”

  “Shhh!” said a tinny voice. “There’s s-s-s-something right in front of usss! I can smell it!”

  The voices were silent for a
very long time and Hillary tried not to move, not even to breathe, though his heart was racing so fast that there were no discernible beats, just a steady roar in his ears.

  “Give it a poke,” whispered the first. “It’s probably a dead mole, seeing as we’re in a mole’s tunnel!”

  At this, Hillary became fully awake and animated. His little tunnel was filled with the nasty smell of dirty birds. Good Lord, he thought. It’s those pirates! And then he heard the sound of steel on steel clanging in the dark. Desperate, smelly, dirty pirates with knives! Hillary squealed, flipped himself around, and took off in the opposite direction. He flew through the labyrinth of tunnels like a furry black cannonball, his powerful forearms propelling his body forward with great speed.

  How can this be happening? Pirates, here in my home! He headed back toward the pond where he had been earlier that morning. He shot out of the entrance and dove headlong into the water with such force that every sparrow nearby screamed and scattered.

  Hillary swam to the bottom of the pond and hid among undulating weeds. There he stayed, holding his breath, and listened. The underwater sounds he heard were muted and eerie, not familiar. Hillary sensed something dark and foreboding in the water behind him. What’s happened? Where are all the fish? It was then he remembered what the sparrows had said. A goose! A pirate goose! It must be in the lake! Panicked, Hillary swam frantically for shore. His head broke the surface, he gulped in air, and his ears cleared to a noisy tangle of sparrow voices shouting, “Swim, Hillary, swim! Swim for shore!”

  With sparrows flying and dipping overhead, Hillary swam for his life, all the while bracing for the inevitable pain of being snapped up in the sharp beak of a horrible giant goose pirate who was now out of the water and in the air directly above him!

  Just then, a clear, strong voice called, “Gabriel, hold!” Almost immediately the pressure behind Hillary dissipated. The pirate goose had given up his pursuit. The mole reached the bank and pulled himself up by the claws. He flopped over in the sand, then fainted dead away.