Tales from Virdinia

Broken Bird

Her son was broken, or so they said. A bird without wings.

"Just listen to him," her husband would despair, "he will not speak, only squawk like a bird!"

It was true enough, his mother thought, as she watched her son draw in the dust at her feet. Since his birth, he had been different and, for the longest time, he had remained silent. He had not cried, he had not screamed, and at first she had seen it as a blessing. Now, as she watched the other children play, she wondered how she could have been so wrong. He had no interest in the other children, no words to speak to them, and nothing in common. Their games and toys, their jokes and laughter, it was all alien to him.

The change had come suddenly, on the day that she had nearly lost him. He had vanished from their hut, and she had searched the settlement for him in vain. All around her, the wind had whispered through the branches of the rainforest and she had never felt so afraid, so helpless. She had screamed his name, running the length of the tree line, yet never daring to enter, not on her own. Other women had joined her, along with some of the men who were not hunting, and they had combed the rainforest around them. The river, the caves, the cliff-top and the orchid, they had searched it all without success. Her son had vanished, and she had felt something die inside of her. For the longest week, she had carried an impossibly heavy stone in her chest, until, in the first light of dawn, her son had wandered back into their midst.

He had made sounds then, though none that they understood. Squawks and shrieks, the trills and whistles of the birds in the trees. They were his language now. With this new change had come others, the worst the pull of the rainforest that always seemed to be upon him. One ear always seemed to be to the trees, to the depth of the rainforest, and he would cock and bob his head along with the calls of the creatures within. It was a constant, exhausting battle to keep him within the confines of their settlement, to stop him vanishing once again.

The other children had ignored him before, but now they laughed. He was a game to them, the 'bird-boy' who was to be chased and baited. She had tried to protect her son, and the other adults had shown understanding, to a point, but different was different. However hard they tried to accept him, to make a place for him, he simply would not fit in. He would sleep on the roof, dash towards the tree line, or simply stand, calling and shrieking to the canopy above.

Her husband had grown tired of it all, and longed for another son. He would never say, he still loved the boy, yet the differences tore at him all the same. Her son wanted freedom, she could see it in his eyes, he hating the cage they forced him into, its bars forged from love.

One morning, as the sun crept above the horizon, the boy woke suddenly. He sniffed the air, instantly picking out the scent of a new flower. He did not recognise this one. What would it look like, who would it attract, how would its nectar taste? Silently, he padded across the wooden boards of his family's hut, prying open the door with delicate ease.

The sky was burnt with reds and gold, the shadows still long on the ground as the boy loped through the settlement and across the tree line. Life flowed through him, around him. The brief touch of branches on his skin, the cool feel of moss on his feet, he felt and understood it all. Every sound, every smell, it all painted vivid stories that blazed through his mind. Just yesterday, something had marked this territory as its own, forcing another, older male away. High above, golden flowers unfurled in the growing light. Only the blue and dappled green butterflies would feed there, he knew. All around him snatches of stories blossomed, they brought to him as sounds on the wind, as scents and tastes, or in the touch of the world around him.

As he ran through the rainforest, the scent of these new flowers overpowered all, his mind honing in upon it. Finally, in the shade of a vast cliff, the scent became overwhelming. He was not the only one who thought so, the air full of a multitude of brightly-coloured insects.