Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 9. May 4 1981
Short Story — Future Fairy Tale no. 45
Short Story
Future Fairy Tale no. 45
In a land far from our time (or is it), in a contorted jungle on an eerie landscape lives a strange and mystical black bird. It twirls around the jungle floor searching out its odd food of ten headed waspy beetles or one legged centibees. Its kind had long ago lost their ability to fly, the three wings it has jutting irregularly from its body making the operation impossible. It is indeed a strange bird, with its rotational, twirling method of movement and its long curling beak that juts from a small head well sunken into its fat little body. So why then is this bird mystical and why is it to be respected? The answer is simply because it is there; it has survived. During this species' existence it has seen many other living things disappear completely from its planet's surface. But this mystical, twirling non-flyer is still living out its day to day life, still eating, still breathing; yes still breathing.
Can one really say, though, that this fantastic monstrosity is even a bird? Does the presence of wings (albeit three) or a beak allow it to be definitely classed in the same category as our two-winged, oft brightly coloured or gaily calling, flying creatures? The answer is again simple that, yes, it is a bird; not necessarily through the presence of wings (albeit three) nor through having the feature of a beak. This thing is a bird because it knows it is a bird.
Tales have come down from ancestor to ancestor that long ago, before the Dark Time of Confusion, its species indeed were birds, and birds as we know them. They flew and sung and caught other sorts of insects and predominately lived in nests. They shared their existence with the existences of many species of plants and animals, most of which have gone from where the twirling thing lives. But there was one odd species of animal alive then that drew particular attention to itself. These creatures were odd in that their ways did not fit in with the living habits of any other creature that either walked, flew or burrowed on, over or in that whole planet. Instead of living off the surroundings the Creator gave them all, the odd creatures built sprawling amounts of gigantic square caves and lived away from the natural environment. This type of arrogance showed more, for these creatures "made" their own animals and landscapes and obtained their food from these. Also they could be seen all day and much of the night, rushing around between their square caves, pursuing activities that never seemed relevent to their existence. They often meted out death to their own kind but to what avail there was no clue. This had the birds of that time puzzled, and they preferred to keep away from these "Odd Ones" as they were called.
But among the birds there were some ambitious species who thought they could gain from a co-existence with these Odd Ones. They flew amongst the square caves and dwelt in niches that they could make in them. Their diet was supplemented by various bits of food that the Odd Ones thought of as waste and threw away. And these birds would occasionally fly to the surrounding forest and would boast to the mystical bird's ancestors that the cave-dwelling life was the better one. They claimed too that so great was the power of the Odd Ones that they could replace the Creator himself. And if the seemingly impossible situation of an ending to the Odd Ones ever came about, then so great would the destruction have to be that nothing could survive their end. The cave-dwelling birds knew this for they had heard the Odd Ones say it themselves.
However, on a hot summer's morning, the forest birds witnessd the end of the cave-dwelling birds. This finish was heralded by a blinding glare from the direction of the masses of square caves, followed by a terrible wind and then a thunderous report as a great dark cloud bigger than any creature had ever witnessed before, pushed up, curling and rumbling towards the heavens.
All the forest birds flew away in a great panic and only after many days did they return to where the square caves had climbed upon each other in mass profusion. But on the forest birds' inquisitive return they found only a huge, smoking, blackened area that had not only claimed every single square cave that had been built, but also much of the forest that the birds had since inhabited. Of their cave-dwelling cousins, or of the Odd Ones themselves, there was nothing. Nor were they ever seen again.
The forest birds tried to return to the remainder of the forest but it was not the same forest that they had left. There was some imperceptible difference. The feeling of the forest was not the same, It seemed as if all life merely stood there, just waiting to die. Perhaps their cave-dwelling cousins had been right. Now the Odd Ones had gone so then would they all go.
An immediate death, however, was not to be had, but there were changes. They took the form of a decaying, a slipping away of healthy life to an existence of an awaiting rottenness. The plants of the remaining forest showed it first. They took on unnatural tinges in their form and showed wonderful and varied colours. There were leaves of red and blue, stems of purple or pink and trunks of colours not of a known spectrum. And at night the plants emitted a faint luminosity and would give the impression of a continual shadowless moonlight. Then in a crumbling rather than withering way, some of the plants started to die. And the same fate came to many animals, especially the larger ones. The birds looked on with heavy hearts. 'How cruel were the Odd Ones' they thought. 'If upon their destruction all was to end why could they not have made it a quick and painless end?' And the birds awaited their finish too. Soon many of their different species crumbled away too, and the final end seemed mercifully in sight. And merciful it would have been too, for those that had so far lived on were plagued by strange illnesses. Even worse their environment had changed and so had climatic conditions. Often glowing hot rain would fall from luminous clouds or a pale sun would be seen to hang listlessly in the skies which too were of various changing hues. Summers would come with great intensities of heat but would last only three days or so, followed by winters of murderous cold that in turn would finish after no more than five days. Then the cycle would continue. There were winds that would blow different ways at the same time which made the birds' flying virtually impossible. Indeed all was virtually impossible in that Dark Time of Confusion.
After a time there were a few plants, birds, and animals for which the end never came. And finally the many changing seasons stabilised. The offspring of the generation after the end of the cave-dwelling birds, although grossly changed in some appearances, having grown grotesque appendages and last other hitherto normal ones, managed to etch out an existence in the new environment they had ben born into.
So life, that had once seemed to be fading, was now returning to the planet. Although it was in a new form, it was suited to the new prevailing conditions. And the adaptations continued generation after generation until, for an example, a great, winged, soaring, hunter of a bird became centuries later a little, fat, black, twirling thing. But the twirling thing knows it is still a bird, although the criteria for this title differs from of old. It knows that through it birds will always exist in one form or another. And as it spins along its strange jungle floor catching its waspy bettles and centibees, it is happy in the knowledge that its distant and long-gone cave-dwelling cousins were wrong. For the disappearance of the Odd Ones had not meant the end of life for everything but rather the flourishing of a new, safe and more content life without them.
T.W. Bernard