American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,98

near him felt sure their futures were bright and rosy.

The fourth was shrewd and practical, and could think up cunning plans and clever plots while other birds were dumbfounded.

And the fifth baby bird was incredibly strong and fearsome, and could overcome any foe or obstacle.

The mother bird was so encouraged by this that she laid many eggs and hatched many baby birds besides these, but all of them were far younger than the first five, and did not know much of the wider world.

Yet soon there were so many birds in the tree that it began to bow down with their weight. The bigger the little birds got, the more it bent, and someday—probably soon—the tree would break apart under their weight. The mother bird realized she would have to find somewhere else for them all to live.

So one day she told her younglings, “Stay here, and wait for me. Each of you should obey the next eldest while I am gone, and you should never harm one another or anything else besides. If you do this, you shall not perish or come to any harm, and you will see me again.” And the baby birds all agreed, and they wept as their mother flew away.

They waited and waited for her, worrying day and night. Then one evening a terrible storm broke open in the skies, and it seemed as if the tree would break in the wind. But then they saw a speck on the horizon: it was the mother bird, and though she was returning to them she looked weary and tired and faint.

When she landed the trunk of the tree began to creak, and crack, and groan. They knew it would not be much longer.

“Climb on my back, all of you,” the mother bird said to them. “Those that can, carry the unhatched eggs with you.”

“But where are we going?” asked the baby birds.

“To someplace safe and quiet, far away from here,” she said.

All of them crowded upon the mother bird’s back, and with one great leap, she took off to the skies. This huge leap was the last straw for the tree: with a great snap! it fell apart, branch by branch.

All the baby birds watched as their home was destroyed. Yet as the second-eldest bird watched, he noticed something. Was there another bird following them, winging its way through the rain? It could not be, for how could there ever be a bird so large, so ungainly, so ugly, and so cruel-looking?

Yet then they entered the night sky, and all was dark, and the baby birds were fearful.

“Will it be long, Mother?” they asked her as she carried them through the darkness.

“No,” she said. “It will not be long.” But her voice was no more than a whisper, and her breath rattled in her chest with each beat of her wings.

Soon they saw their new home: it was not a tree, but a huge old mountain. She swooped down to its peak, yet her landing was not graceful: she struck the ground with a terrible force, and collapsed, yet all the baby birds were saved.

They all climbed off and looked at their mother. She was gray and weak, falling apart just as the tree was. The flight had destroyed her.

“She will die,” said the first baby bird, who could perceive much.

“She is dying now,” said the second baby bird, who was wise.

“It is true,” she whispered to them. “I am dying.”

All the little birds wailed to hear this.

And she told them, for the second time: “Stay here, and wait for me. Each of you should obey the next eldest while I am gone, and you should never harm one another or anything else besides. If you do this, you shall not perish or come to any harm, and you will see me again.”

And then she died: her feathers were blown away by the wind until there was nothing left.

“She will come back some day,” said the third baby bird, who had hope.

“Why should you believe such a thing?” said the fourth, who was practical. “She is gone, gone forever.”

“How dare you say such a thing after we have just lost her?” asked the fifth baby bird angrily. And she, who was hugely strong, picked up the fourth and threatened to throw him down and dash him apart on the mountain.

“Do not do it!” said the third. “She forbade us from violence! And besides, we must find a home here.” And he led them down the