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Authors: Danbert Nobacon

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Chapter 14

THE BLACK BIRD

“
W
hat’s that?” said The Fool, rubbing his eyes and pulling himself up on the couch bed.

“I said, it really is time she met the Bird,” said an exasperated Witch in the Ditch. “I just coaxed a message bird down, see? Comes from Bald Mountain, but it tells news from King Jude in Rockport.”

“What news?” said The Fool, shaking himself awake.

“The Oosarians! They have an army of boats up the north coast sailing beyond Rockport. They will soon be sailing up the mouth of the Lumbiana, he says. Powered by slaves, he says. Wance they reach River Bald Falls they ”

“Boats. Boats. What boats?” gasped The Fool.

“They’re like floating cities, says Jude. Five hundred fighting men on each of ’em. Quare creatures makes up many of their number. He says there’s ten ships. No one’s ever dreamed it. Gwynmerelda says … it’s all addressed to Walterbald of course. She says he has to get his ass back there as fast as he can fart.”

The Fool was wide awake now. Glamour came into the room, rubbing her eyes. “What’s all the ruckus? It’s barely past sun up.”

“Mergnecy in Morainia,” howled her mother. “Go wake the girl.”

Stormy was asleep, but not for long.

“You mean the Oosarians are about to invade Morainia? But, but how? Why?” clamored Stormy, clutching her mug of tea. “It’s all my fault isn’t it?” she burst out. “For killing that stupid Prince! And I didn’t mean to!” she wailed.

But then she stopped. The thought came to her: It was
his
fault.
I might not like it but I can’t undo what I’ve done.
From which it will be seen that Stormy was indeed changing.

“Well, there be another prince or two on them warships, no doubt,” quipped The Witch.

“Mother!” Glamour said, looking at Stormy. She sat beside the Princess, put a comforting arm around her, and gave The Witch a disparaging look.

“No, it’s okay, thanks,” Stormy said grimly to her friend. But she squeezed her hand as she said it.

The Fool stood up and began pacing. “This has nothing to do with you, other than the fact that you are Morainian. The
why
is simple. Since as long as we can remember, Oosarian rulers have eyed Morainia’s metal reserves jealously.”

“Hah!” interrupted The Witch. “They be jealous, is why! Never met an Oosarian who could stand to see someone else having a good time. That Mercurio was bad enough. But them other two, his brothers, Toromos and Braggardio, are war wolves to be sure.” Her eyes narrowed.

“Nukeander and Mercurio, and the courtship deal was a ploy,” spat The Fool. It was all a diversion, while the war fleet sailed north.” He laughed, but there was a proud look in his eye. “Didn’t know they’d get
you
, though, did they, Alexandra Stormybald Wilson?”

Stormy frowned. “We have to find my dad!”

“I sent out word already,” squawked The Witch. As if on cue, a bird flew into the half-open front door, clattering across the floor in a scuff of feathers.

It was a humble message bird, smaller than a hen. The poor thing looked exhausted. The Witch scuttled over to relieve the bird of its burden, lifting it on to the counter where a bowl of water waited. After the bird had gulped bird-sized gulps, The Witch untied the note wrapped around its leg, and unrolling it, read aloud:

Keep your hair on, comrades. Eat a good breakfast. That is very important. I will be with you before it has settled.

“It’s signed M’,” cooed The Witch.

“Holy Joke!” ennunced The Fool. “Has the Bird ever come down the Mountain to visit upon anyone?”

Stormy looked perplexed.

“I mean wan has to go and find the Bird. He doesn’t come to you,” explained The Fool.

“Is he on his way, Ma?” said Glamour with strange excitement. “Really? Truly?”

“I never knowed it before, but that’s what he says,” said The Witch.

To Stormy’s surprise, Glamour blushed. But she avoided her friend’s eye, and bustled about making breakfast.

The next moments were filled with breakfast and speculation. Time passed slowly. But in the time it takes to cook up some eggs, eat them, and have a second cup of tea in the time it would have taken that cup of tea to cool were it not drunk still hot, a shadow crossed the eastern window.

All in the room heard the beating of giant wings outside.

“You’d better come out,” said a voice in a deep bass growl. “I wouldn’t take kindly to ruffling my feathers on your hovelposts.”

Stormy, who was nearest the door, led the four of them into the warming mountain sunlight, and there, preening his enormously long feathers, stood the Black Bird.

“Fool. Witch, and you must be Stormy? My, you have grown. And you are?”

“Glamour, sir!” said The Witch’s daughter, blushing again. To her surprise, and even with other things to think about, Stormy suddenly saw that her friend had a crush on the giant Bird.

And why wouldn’t she? Standing some twelve or more feet tall, the Black Bird looked part grackle, part raven, part raptor, and part handsome devil. Unusually, however this bird had teeth, which made its giant beak very severe looking.

On each foot, his dangerously sharp talons were made up of three forward-facing claws, and a fourth opposable thumb-claw. Each claw was the girth of a man’s thigh. And just when it seemed the bird could impose his presence no more, he flared his feather
pants.
Hunching his shoulders back so the wing tips crossed behind him, he looked all the more regal.

The bird was indeed black. Black feathers, black beak, black legs … black mouth lining as he opened his beak wide, yawning. But his eyes were different. The milky white-ish nictating membrane that protected them masked a brilliant fiery red ring around black pupils. Then the strangest thing happened. The bird blinked, and his third eyelid rolled back revealing those red eyes. With a birdish shake of the head, the vivid red faded, revealing a more natural looking brown, with unusually bright eye-whites. Shocking as this sudden transformation was, it gave the bird an altogether mellower and more approachable appearance.

It was, in truth, a most staggeringly noble-looking Bird.

“Just shaking the flight-sight,” he said to no one in particular. As if flexing that brain inside its massive head, the Black Bird shook his crown and bowed toward Stormy.

“Hmmm,” he said, “you have a look of your mother.”

Stormy bowed back. “You, who you … You know me?” she stammered.

“Ah yes. But first you should know me. I am, in no particular order, the Black Bird, Black Beak, Red Eyes, Wolf-Bird, known to my friends as Emmeur, or M for short. Scientically as well, my kind defies the usual classifications so most people call me The Gricklegrack. The grackle part is scientically a misnomer, but it stuck. I was a good friend of your mother, and through her I became friends with your father. You won’t remember, but I met you when you were two winters old.”

Stormy didn’t remember, and even if she had, the idea that this monster, majestic as he was, had been friends with her mother was more stunning. “You knew my mother?” said Stormy dreamily. And then, like it was pushing off from the bottom of a deep pool, a more urgent thought broke the surface bursting for breath: “Do you know where my dad is?”

“Yes and yes. Yes, your mother was the bravest young woman I have ever known, and I hope for no less from her daughter.” At this, the Black Bird looked sternly at Stormy, who immediately straightened her back.

He gave her a look of qualified approval. “And yes, I know where your father is. I’ve come to take you to him.”

“Oh oh,” The Fool whistled. But the Black Bird turned a quelling eye his way, and he was still.

“First …,” the Bird went on.

“But what about my dad?” bawled Stormy, stepping forward.

“Stormy. Before bravery comes wisdom. And before both comes patience.”

Stormy took a breath, stepped back, and the Bird nodded his approval again.

“I have brought something of the greatest importance,” the Bird explained, “to leave here in safety until we can return for it in happier times. After it is safely bestowed, then we’ll go to your father.”

At this, Stormy, The Witch, and Glamour looked perplexed. The bird plainly was not carrying anything with him.

Stormy found herself moving sideways and looking around behind him, but still nothing. And as she did so, the huge bird squatted slightly, as if he were about to do his business. The feathers around his eyes and face formed the faintest of grimaces, as if showing the business in progress. It was a mark of his great strength of personality that all of this looked quite natural, and not funny at all, as it might have looked if you or I tried it.

“My undercarriage,” said the Bird, answering an unasked question.

A moment later, emerging from below his probber’s nose came a sphere, which became an ovaloid, which became an egg as it fell onto the dirt. The Bird shuffled gracefully around, scraping a shallow hole in the dirt with one talon. The Gricklegrack stood the egg upright with a deft movement of his other talon. The egg was about three feet tall and looked like a gray-blue rock. Old and pockmarked as it was, at some time it evidently had an overall sheen, a few traces of which remained.

“Aaaghhhh!” The Witch hissed.

“Whaaatizzit?” chorused Glamour and The Fool.

“The Egg of Geddon,” cried The Witch. “It spells doom.”

“Mother! Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“It is in the prophecy!”

“Which prophecy? If you could keep track of all the prophecies you have made, been party to, or read about, we wouldn’t be able to turn over a stone without fear of unleashing every volcanemon that ever spouted fire into the air! Honestly!”

“The Egg of Geddon was in your father’s leaves,” said The Witch, turning a staring eye upon Stormy. “Tis said the creature who will be hatched is all knowing, all seeing, and wiser than the Ancient Ones. Tis said the creature within will eat the world!”

Glamour looked a little more interested now, while Stormy was beginning to see The Witch as a serial harbinger of doom and gloom, in a world that could not possibly get much worse.

With all attention on the egg, The Gricklegrack resumed its crouch and, from a secret hiding place, brought out a plain wooden box, which clattered on the ground. The Bird drummed his left talon rhythmically on the box while he waited for the bickering to peter out.

“I have a double harness in here,” he said, still drumming on the box. “It won’t be comfortable, but it will do the job.”

At this, The Fool groaned. “I knew it,” he muttered. “My fear of heights won’t stand this!”

The Bird ignored him.

“I leave the egg here, Witch, in your good hands.””

“No! No! Nooooo!” wailed The Witch.

BOOK: 3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale

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