White Bars

by David Dagley

  “Sometimes,” replied Fife with a chirp. “Some of them are worse than BBs.”

  Two large ravens began talking loudly off in the dense forest. Carleton set Fife down on the railing next to Soren and went out of the cabin near the fire ring. He searched the trees for the pair of black shadows.

  Carleton looked back at Fife and Soren, “I’ll be around.” He walked off into the forest towards the raven’s calls.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Soren.

  “I think he’s going to go try to communicate with the ravens. I don’t know,” answered Fife.

  “Can he talk to them?”

  Fife shook his head, “I don’t think so. I think he’s curious, and so are they. They have a really big vocabulary of sounds. Carleton will mimic their sounds, the same way we mimic English words, and they’ll follow him around for awhile. Personally, I like to keep my distance from ravens. You should as well. They’re bright, powerful and deserve a great deal of respect.”

  Soren looked at Fife and changed the subject. “So when do you feel you’ll be ready to go on our next adventure homeward?”

  “Soon, very soon,” assured Fife.

  “Good. Maybe in the meantime you could fill me in on our situation. I’ve been thinking about all you’ve said, about us not being from here and how to find home if possible. I guess I want to hear the whole story, when you’re up to it.”

  “Today, I’ll tell you everything. We can also talk with Carleton; he can help us get on the right boat if that’s what we decide to do. What do you say to a morning bath in a warm spring pool, and take off all the shoe polish for awhile?”

  “Is it safe here for that?”

  “Here? Oh, yes. It’s so safe, we may never put it on again, but just in case, we’ll bring a tin along for an emergency if one should arise. I have been thinking of taking you exploring, further away from here I mean. Come on, I’ll explain everything I can at the spring.” Fife jumped to the floor and hopped to the wall between the stove and the door. “Soren, can you grab this tin and bring it with you? Follow me.” Fife flew out the door.

  Soren dropped down, picked up a tin of black shoe polish in his beak and hurried after Fife. They flew off between the redwood trees and followed a stream up into a small group of giant ferns and sunlight.

  Fife swooped down close to the ground and landed at the edge of a flat rock bordering a shallow pool of warm spring-fed clear water.

  Soren landed on a wet moss-covered rock and slid right into the water.

  Fife walked into the spring quietly and sat down slowly. “Aughhhh! This will help the aches and pains.”

  Soren began to flutter his wings rapidly. “Wow, this water is really warm.” The shoe polish began to melt off. The water in the pool became braided with black trails growing downstream as the two birds began cleaning themselves.

  “Soren, I have told you some parts of my past. We were behind white bars together and we escaped. Now it’s time to consider out options again for the future. There’s no telling the future until you’re at its doorstep, and we’ve already opened the door. I’ve told you that there are no other myna birds loose in the wilds except for us. I asked Carleton about it one day, and he brought me a book full of different birds. We found a picture of a bird that looks like us; it’s a myna bird, a relative of the starling family. The starlings are worldwide, huge international family of birds. Carleton and I found out that myna birds live very far from here, across the great body of water you looked at last night with Romeo, the Pacific Ocean. Some of our relatives don’t look much like us or speak the same language, but they’re family nonetheless. I want to cross the great ocean and some how trace my way home, where other birds like us live in the outside world free. I would like you to join me on this quest from here to there.”

  “What’s on the other side of the ocean?”

  “You are what are called a Hill Myna bird. As I told you before, you are from a place the humans call or called Burma. It’s far away, on the northwest side of the Malaysian peninsula. Carleton says we can’t fly there from here, it’s too far. We need to catch a ride on a boat where we can still fly and move about for food and to avoid capture.”

  Soren looked into the water and watched the greasy black shoe polish form droplets and peel off his legs downstream. Then he looked at Fife and asked, “So when do we go?”

  “That’s the spirit. You’re getting strong already. We’ll be leaving soon. Carleton tells me there’s a boat coming into the bay that is heading for Malaysia, called the QEII. He said we couldn’t pick a better ship to sail on. But we have some preparing to do. Once again, like in the pet shop, we are looking to limit our risks and enjoy the ones we do take. Carleton said he could draw us a map with some names of cities and places to memorize. There’s a place called the Taman Negara, a very old rain forest we are supposed to find on our way.”

  “Speaking of risks, Romeo and I overheard a band of raccoons talking about a burglary gone bad. We heard mention of a redheaded girl and a rat that might have escaped. I think it’s the rat, Grease.”

  “It’s him. I’d bet on it. Like us, he was waiting for a way to escape. He didn’t know when that window would open, but it sounds like it did. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him on the same boat on his way to China. Our situations are very similar.”

  “How are our situations similar?”

  Fife shrugged his shoulders and squawked, “He’s wingin’ it!” Fife splashed Soren with a left cross of his wing, drenching Soren with a sweeping heap of water.

  Soren splashed back with a double wing press, sending a wall of water over Fife.

  Fife took in a mouthful of water. Their joyful screams and calls erupted in the forest, heard by no one.

  A breeze pushed against the ferns slightly fanning.

  Carleton walked quietly through the wood towards the cabin carrying a world atlas, the starling book he got at the pet shop, and a copy of the ship list from the travel edition of a recent Sunday newspaper.

  The sun had passed high in the sky before the water cleared in the pool where Fife and Soren had begun planning their next great adventure. A silent fog pushed over the ridge, down the valleys, and through the tall redwood trees, spreading its fingers out for the bay. A foghorn sounded.