Feathers

Alan Dwight

alantfraserdwight@gmail.com

Silently, the boy strode through the forest, his searching eyes automatically registering all he saw. Slender and strong and tanned by a summer in the sun, his body glistened in the warm sunlight filtering through the trees. Over his shoulder, three rabbits were slung, bouncing gently against his back as he moved. He smiled contentedly to himself, thinking of the pleasure the rabbits and the feathers he had collected in his wandering would bring to his mother.

It was summer, and the hunting was good. She had taught him well how to hunt, and experience had taught him more ─ how to conceal snares to trap unsuspecting game, how to stand or lie motionless, waiting for a deer to come within range of his bow, how to spear the succulent fish in the streams.

He emerged into a small clearing, in the center of which stood a bark-covered hut. His mother was there, stitching deer hide, making a shirt for him. It would help keep out the cold of the coming winter. For thirteen summers now she had made clothing for him.

In the early years, before he was able, she had done the hunting and trapping and fishing herself, first carrying the boy on her back and later walking along slowly so that he could keep up. The boy had watched her closely and, by the age of three summers, had begun catching small game. He was a quick learner.

While she loved him wholly, he was aware that she often seemed sad and lonely. Sometimes she would sit, gazing into the sky, her eyes moist.

She looked up now as he came into the clearing, and she smiled approvingly at his rabbits. Silently he handed her the feathers. She took them gently, touching them to her lips and then placing them in a bag that lay with many others inside the door of the hut.

In the evening, as the darkness settled around them, they sat peacefully by the fire. He told her of all he had seen that day, of the deer tracks by the river, of the bear spoor in the meadow where the blackberries were ripening.

On other evenings in other years, she had told him of his father and of the clan which had left them behind. The winter the boy was born had been long and cold and hard. As the drifts of snow had risen higher and higher, game had grown scarce, and the supply of dried fruits and berries had gradually vanished. All of the clan had felt the hunger, but she especially. As she had grown thinner, her milk had begun to dry up. The baby, too, had become gaunt and he had whimpered from the pains of hunger which he did not understand.

Her husband had been young and strong, a good provider. He had doted on her and his son, and he had grown increasingly anxious watching them wither before him. Each day he had spent long hours desperately searching for food, although he too had become weaker and weaker.

Others in the clan, the old and the sick, had begun to die. The living, too weak to care for the dead, had simply buried them in the snow.

At length one morning, the father, vowing not to return until he had food, had walked off into the woods. The mother, watching him go, had feared that she would not see her man again.

Three days later, as she had lain in her hut beside her mewling son, trying to keep him warm, she had heard the sound of beating wings in the clearing. Peering out of the doorway, she had beheld an amazing sight. A huge bird, tall as a man, stood in the clearing, its colorful, iridescent feathers gleaming in the sun. Its body shone with blue, red, yellow, and green. Reaching silently for a spear, the mother had stepped quietly into the clearing.

Fearing even to breathe, she had stood watching the marvelous creature. The bird knew she was there. Slowly, majestically, it had walked toward her, stopping no more than a stride away. As if in a dream, she had raised the spear and thrust it straight into the magnificent bird’s heart. Never taking its dimming eyes from her, the bird had settled to the ground and, without a sound, had died there before her hut. She knew it could not be so, but to those to whom she later told her story, she said that the bird seemed to be smiling contentedly.

Unable to restrain her hunger, she had begun to cut up the bird there in the clearing, ravenously devouring mouthful after mouthful. Within a day, her milk had begun to return, and with it her infant son had grown stronger daily.

For some time she had debated with herself whether or not to share her good fortune with the clan. But by the third day, she had decided she must. The leaders of the clan argued among themselves. Some said they should take the food she offered; others argued that the woman was bewitched. In the end, they had shunned her, fearing the dark magic which they attributed to her.

Day after day, she had fed herself and her son. Strangely, the meat had never spoiled. No wild animals had come to claim their share.

At long last, the snows had melted and food again had become plentiful. The surviving members of her clan had moved away from the scene of horrible memories, leaving the mother and her son behind.

One morning, she had emerged from the hut to discover that no trace of the mystical bird remained. Not a bone nor a feather could she find in the clearing.

And so, the mother had continued to raise her son alone, teaching him what he needed to know to survive. She had told him, too, of the strange bird which had appeared as they lay dying that had saved their lives. She told of how she had grown to believe that the bird was, in some mystical way, his father, who had sacrificed himself, using deep and powerful magic to become the mysterious bird, so that his wife and son might survive.

When the boy was still very small, he had found one day a bright green feather as long as his forearm. Pleased with his discovery, he had taken it to his mother, and she, in the way of mothers, had exclaimed over it and had set it aside in a safe place. Thereafter, whenever he had happened upon a feather in his wanderings, he had brought it home to her, and she had added it to her growing collection in a bag kept by the hut door. Sometimes the feathers had been large, like the first. Other times they had been tiny and she had marveled at how her son had found them on the forest floor.

Now, as the boy and his mother prepared to sleep, thunder muttered in the distance and wind began to breathe softly through the trees. The boy lay awake, listening to the approaching storm. As a small child, he had been afraid of storms, but now, he told himself, he was nearly a man and doing a man’s work, and he was no longer afraid. In time he dozed off, the rain drumming steadily on the bark hut.

He was awakened by an explosive crash of thunder. For a moment, the hut was filled with light. In the blackness that followed, he heard a stirring by the door. Thinking it was only his mother, he closed his eyes and once more fell asleep.

Sometime later, as light was beginning to seep into the hut, he awoke once more. Something stirred by the door, and he remembered the noise he had heard in the night. Peering through the dim light, he saw a large form by the doorway. Softly, he called to his mother, but there was no answer from her sleeping corner.

Rising silently, he went to the doorway and pushed back the hide covering it. Morning light shone in and revealed a large bird standing, silently watching. The boy gazed at the bird in wonder. Then, wanting to share this magic moment, he hurried back inside to awaken his mother, but she was not there. It wasn’t until he turned toward the door again that he realized that the bag of feathers was also missing.

He stepped out the door to gaze again at the beautiful bird. Could this be his father come back? The bird was very much like the one his mother had described, though not quite as big. It had more yellow and red feathers glistening among the green than he had imagined, but perhaps his mother’s memory had changed with time.

All day long, the boy and the bird remained in the clearing. When he went to the stream for a drink, the bird followed and drank alongside him. When he lay down in the grass and gazed up at the puffy clouds floating in the sky, the bird nestled down beside him.

At night, he spread a sleeping hide on the grass and slept; the bird settled at his side.

Sometime in the night he awoke. The full moon was glowing high in the sky. In the middle of the clearing the bird stood, calling, plaintively, softly. From the sky came an answering call, and then a powerful beating of wings, and another bird, larger than the first, alighted. The two birds looked at each other and seemed to communicate with each other for a moment. Then the smaller bird led the new arrival over to the boy. The large bird gazed at the boy and nodded, while the smaller one placed its beak ever so gently on the boy’s cheek. Together, the two birds turned and rose into the air, disappearing together over the trees.

From that night on, the boy lived alone, but he knew he could fend for himself.

Years later, he joined a clan migrating through the area. While he was accepted by the clan, he was always regarded as someone separate and strange. In the evenings, he held the clan’s children spellbound with strange stories of magical creatures and events. Their favorite story was of a father who turned into a bird to save his family from starvation, of a little boy who collected feathers for his mother, of a mother who, using the feathers, transformed into a bird, of a father returning for his wife, and of two birds flying off into the night, leaving their son alone but content that his mother was finally happy once more.