The Three Feathers - The Magnificent Journey of Joshua Aylong (2 page)

And so he began to cross the large meadow. This was much easier said than done. The snow was iced over at points and large patches of the grass were still frozen and stood out like huge spikes from the ground. After he was halfway across, he realized that the sun was way past the midpoint and that in a few hours it would be dark. He wanted to make it to the edge of the woods before nightfall and find shelter in one of the trees. By now, he was convinced that he would return to his flock the next morning. And then he heard it.

It was a low cry, distant at first, but moving closer fast. Joshua dropped to the ground. He realized that his red feathered coat made him visible against the white snow and the green and brown grass. When he saw the owl—its wing span three times his own, her talons double the size of his and a beak that could break his legs in one bite, he felt as if death itself came for him. He lay frozen on the ground not breathing and almost trying to make his heart stop out of fear of being detected. When he turned his head slightly he saw her, gracefully gliding against the sky, circling overhead. He was sure she was about to come for him any second, diving down and grabbing him, lifting him up into the air to take him to a spot where she could start eating him only to leave the head and feathers behind when she was done. But to his surprise she didn’t come toward him. Instead he followed her flight path with his eyes until the realization hit him full force: the pen! Now unprotected, the hens had no warning. The owl would have easy prey. She could effortlessly kill three or four birds before the rest would be able to flee under the coop.

Joshua had always warned the hens about birds of prey. He had seen the owl several times way before any of the hens would have even been aware. Once he spotted a hawk. When he had seen him approach, not more than a spec before the low sun, he cried out and the hens jumped under the coop to safety just in time.

He knew from the moment he saw the owl’s flight path that it would be too late. He cried out as loud as he could and jumped and ran toward the barn. There was no way he would be there in time to warn them. He flew when he could, stumbled several times and once even crashed head first into a snow drift. Time seemed to thicken like syrup and Joshua thought it an eternity before he finally reached the pen. What he saw there was an image of horror. There were feathers everywhere. Two hens and a younger chick lay dead on the ground inside the pen. He frantically tried to get inside but to no avail. There was no jumping off point to get high enough to fly in. He circled the pen trying to see who was left. He saw some commotion under the coop but he couldn’t see anything under there.

“I should have stayed,” he thought to himself. “I should have watched over them.” The thoughts had, at first, barely any emotion connected to them. He just very rationally realized his part in the death of his flock. He felt removed from himself as if outside looking in on the scene in front of him.

“You left us,” one of the hens looked at him from under the coop. “You were supposed to protect us and you left. This is your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Joshua replied. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t know…”

A second hen looked at him. “What are you still doing here? You left us. Go. Leave! There’s no place for you here anymore.” And with that she turned away from him and went back under the coop. The other hen looked at him for a moment longer, then turned and disappeared as well.

He stood there, grasping on the periphery that his life as he had known it until now, was over. “I’m sorry about what happened,” he thought to himself. “I’m so sorry.” As if waiting for an answer he looked at the place where the two hens had just stood. Maybe they would come out again, look at him and tell him that it was okay, that it wasn’t his fault and that he could come back into the pen and continue to live with them. But they didn’t come.

3.
D
EPARTURE

The chill easterly wind from the bay ruffled his feathers. He didn’t know why he stayed at the spot where he had spoken to the hens, but he did. It felt hard for him to move. “I can just sit here for a while,” he thought. “See what happens.” He sat and watched the coop for any movement from the hens. As the sun began to set over the hills, the lights in the farm house came on. Then the door opened and the farmer stepped outside. He came straight toward the pen, not paying any attention to Joshua. When he saw what had happened, the farmer cried out. His face red from anger, he cursed at the sky while he collected the limp bodies of the dead chickens. When he came out of the pen he went straight toward Joshua. He dropped the chickens to the ground and tried to grab him while still cursing and yelling. The farmer’s large callused hands almost caught Joshua twice, once grabbing one of his wings. He eluded him but barely. In the end, the farmer kicked at him until Joshua escaped into a nearby tree. From there he watched the farmer eventually collecting the dead chickens and walking off toward the house.

He stayed all night on his branch high up in the tree. His dreams were dark and filled with the small and lifeless bodies of his flock. The two hens cursed him over and over, their eyes dead and their feathers bloody. Several times he awoke in the dark, wishing himself back inside the soft warmth of the coop and the small rustling sounds and familiar features of the others. He could not yet fully grasp that this part of his life was irrevocably over, gone like fog in summer’s sun, erased and not belonging to him anymore.

At first light, when everything was still quiet except for the wind in the tree tops above, he flew down from his branch and made his way to the meadow. He did not look back. Several times he thought he had to, but he stopped himself each time.

“The sooner I forget, the better,” he told himself. As he began to cross the meadow for the second time, a cold, steady rain set in, soaking his feathers down to his skin. There was no tree to stand under, no bush to find refuge in. The openness of the seemingly endless field was unsettling. Joshua caught himself looking in all directions many times over, spotting creatures where there were only shadows. He saw a fox in the shape of a distant snow drift, a raccoon in a patch of grass that seemed to move in his direction. His eyes played tricks on him until he thought to himself that there was no use in even thinking this way. If any predator wanted to eat him, there was nothing he could do about it.

When he finally reached the trees, he was exhausted, hungry and needed water badly. His left talon started to hurt him and he needed a place to rest and eat something really soon. Under a large oak tree he found a couple of worms who had made their way out of the ground during the rain. A small trickle of a stream provided water. He was hoping to come across a large pine tree to find refuge for the night but none of the trees had leaves on them. So he spent the night on a slippery branch in the rain, his body close to the stem of the tree for protection from the wind. He did not want to miss his flock but he did. He missed them all terribly—the ones that were dead, the ones who still lived, and even the hens that had cursed him.

The next few days passed in a haze for Joshua as he made his way through the forest. The rain stopped for a while, then continued on and off. The cold was his constant companion and except for one night, where he slept in the remnants of an old fallen down barn that smelled like mice and induced the terror of a fox coming for him, he slept in the rain, somewhere high up in a tree out of reach for at least some of the predators. His thoughts circled around his flock and the horrible mistake he had made in leaving them. There was no place for him to go and he saw the remainder of his life before him, extending into infinity in an endless spiral of regret. This wasn’t what he had in mind.

In the evening of the third day, Joshua saw a patch of blue sky through the trees and, as he reached the edge of the forest, he watched the sun set in the eastern sky, flooding the land before him with golden light. But even as he stood there gazing at the horizon and the gloriously beautiful painted sky over the valley, he could not find peace. He was sure it would elude him until he died.

4.
W
OLF

The next morning, Joshua arose at exactly 4:44 AM and without even thinking, he crowed his wake up call until he realized there was nobody to wake up. He sat on his branch high in the tree and wished himself back into the coop until bits and pieces of last night’s dream came back to him—a dream of feathers so fragile that when he touched them they crumpled until what was left of them was only dust. Of the glorious dream he had, before he decided to make this journey, only a distorted image stayed with him, not reminiscent of the original powerful vision but merely an after image. And he began to question even that. “I’ll never make it,” he thought to himself. “I’ll probably get lost somewhere in the wilderness until I finally become just another meal for a fox.”

As the light increased, a blanket of thick layered fog appeared, resting in the valley before him. As Joshua followed the fog with his eyes all the way to the other side of the valley, he saw the peak of a high mountain towering above the fog. For the smallest of moments, the shape of the mountain stirred deep inside him the memory of the dream. He thought briefly that he had seen it in his dream somewhere in the cave’s ceiling. He knew suddenly and unmistakably where he had to go. His eyes fixed on the snow covered peak in the distance. Somewhere beneath it lay the three feathers waiting for him in the dim shadows of the massive cave. And perhaps his own redemption lay there as well.

As he made his way through the fog, going from boulder to boulder for cover and glancing in all directions, he heard a howl in the distance. At first, it was far away but as he moved, it got closer. Always to his left, it seemed to hold his own speed. When evening came, Joshua took refuge halfway up a large boulder in a small crevasse. He could not find sleep that night. And when he did, he dreamed that he stood in front of a black hole, frozen in terror. Red eyes peered at him from within the darkness. He couldn’t move, as if his body didn’t belong to him. He tried to scream but no sound escaped his beak. There was a gray shadow coming toward him with immense speed and just before it reached him, he awoke. Joshua realized that there probably would be no moment during his journey when he would be completely safe.

The next day the fog was gone as if it never happened in the first place. Far across the valley—much further than Joshua thought when he saw it first—stood the snow covered mountain in the distance. Joshua tried to hold it in his line of sight as he navigated his way through the high grass of the frozen fields. Once in a while he fluttered up in the air to get a better look, fully aware that he was exposing himself to everything and everyone around him. When the sun set behind the mountain he realized that he badly needed water.

Maybe it was because he was getting tired from the constant jumping up and hopping through the grass when suddenly, after yet another jump, Joshua landed right in front of a hole in the ground. It didn’t register at first. But when he saw the grass around the opening pushed flat into a path leading away from it, he realized in terror that he stood in front of a fox hole.

He froze. Unable to move, Joshua stared into the hole. The small feathers around his neck stood up. He thought it a hallucination at first when two red eyes appeared inside the blackness, staring at him. Never had he seen anything more frightening in his life. He was suddenly certain of his death. Slowly, the eyes came closer until the fox’s head appeared. What occurred next happened so fast he wasn’t sure of the exact sequence of it. He heard a sound on his left, like a fast movement through the grass. The fox, low to the ground, came out of his hole and, without any warning, jumped toward Joshua who, at the same time, flew up in the air. He saw the fox land where he had been standing. While in the air, he could see in his peripheral vision a large shadow moving in and hitting the fox like a battering ram.

When Joshua landed two seconds later he saw the wolf. Gray, large and holding the comparably small fox in his mouth. The wolf snarled and snapped the fox’s neck in one bite. Joshua, still in absolute terror, thought of a way to escape the wolf and could only hope that the fox was enough food for him for a while. Then the wolf dropped the fox in front of him. They looked at each other for a moment.

“I have been tracking you for two days.” The wolf’s thoughts reached Joshua easily. “You should be more careful with your cover. From the air you must be an easy target with your red feathers against the grass.”

Joshua, rather than prolonging this, thought he’d come right out with it.

“If you want to eat me, do it now. I’m tired, I need water and I can’t escape you anyway. So, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather get this over with.”

Was the wolf smiling? Or was it the thought of a smile that reached Joshua. Either way, it was not at all what he had expected. It was rather unsettling.

“I’m not here to eat you.”

The wolf sat down. Even now he was at least three times Joshua’s height.

“I’m here to help you.”

“Excuse me?” Joshua thought.

The wolf lay down.

“I am here to help you.”

“Preposterous,” Joshua thought.

“And yet, you are alive and well and a minute ago you were as good as dead.”

Joshua could hardly escape the logic of the wolf’s argument. “You might keep me alive until after you have eaten the fox,” he thought, looking straight at the wolf.

“You make very little sense at the moment.” The wolf replied. “But you are also probably still scared so I will not take it personally.”

“Thank you.” Joshua wasn’t sure if he meant this ironically or if he just meant it. He was thankful, no doubt about that. A few moments ago, he was certain of his death. Now he was… safe? He couldn’t remember when he had felt like this before. There were vague memories of a warm coop and the closeness of the chicks next to him when he was very young. But since he had been an adult… He realized at this moment that he didn’t even know how very little he had felt safe. Until now. He sat across this scary looking, blue eyed, large wolf who could snap his neck without blinking an eye and he felt safe?