The Spring Prophecy

The domesticated mockingbirds that dwelled above my home took my message. I would use them to speak to the Treetop tribe but this was the first news the birds have imitated that could be considered hopeful. My words were mimicked along the sky as the flock soared to the far ends of the Sequoias, past the intertwining ligneous terraces that were home to the other treehouses. 

“Spring is here!” The birds tweeted.

“When snow melts we begin our new lives,

CAW!

Carry on as usual and don’t leave yet,

It's dangerous to leave,

CAW!

Leave only on Alphas’ command,

CAW!”

Their calls mingled with the thawing sound of the snow leaving the branches, falling to the unknown white land that lay below us. 

It went to the treehouses that were designated for each family, mine having only one other blood member left now, and he lived below me. They soared past the communal treehouse which the tribe would socialize, have meals together and also where we’d keep supplies such as our gliders which was guarded by the Nightingale family. Everyone in the tribe contributed. 

The bird's message was to make the beginning of spring official, but we all sensed the new sun, a source that had never been felt until right now. Spring had finally come, five hundred years late for nature, but for the prophecy, it was on time. 

The prophet was an ancestor of mine, the reason I am the leader now, as my family had been before me. The prophet predicted five hundred years ago, when life was on land, that there would be an endless winter. The ones that listened survived, the reason we are here now and established a high-rise civilization.

“Those who leave and fail to wait for the snow to melt will die. There are dangers hidden in the frozen snow that will kill the impatient.”

In the generations spent up here, little was known of land, including what was harmful laying underneath the snow, why we had to wait for it to melt. But everything spoken in the prediction had held true, and I could not help but to recall what I was told it said about me. How five hundred years ago my fate had been woven and sealed.

“It will be around five hundred years from now, you will know for certain once a girl from the tribe is born. Her stomach will consist of a red mark of death, bearing no child. She will marry the last of my lineage, who will live to rebuild life, and see spring along with the tribe, embarking a new beginning.”

I watched the birds soaring as my feet touched the wooden terrace again. The door of my house opened and I saw her wide strawberry blotched stomach first, followed by my wife, waddling outside, her eyes widened and she smiled. 

“Sofia, be careful, it's slippery!” I said, going to her. 

“Wow...it's really true... it's so warm...how I always imagined.”

“You should be in bed resting, it's not good for you or the baby to be up,” I said making my way to her arm guiding her to the chair. 

She shoved away my hand.

“All you make me do is rest, I'm not that delicate,” Sophia said plopping down in a chair in the sun, “Let me have this. It’s the least you can do since you've confiscated my glider.” 

“Only for now,” I said while rubbing the back of my hands, crouching them to my chest, “You can’t use it while pregnant obviously.”

I looked over at her, rubbing her stomach holding what made my insides unable to unclench as she took in the sun to her pale face. She was always the same. I told her before we got married that one day we will see the spring and rebuild life as the prophecy said, but it seemed to me that she was doubtful. Maybe it was because she didn't want to let her dreams be spoken out loud, that it would cause it to not come true. She always wanted to see flowers bloom. It was an arranged marriage since birth, the generation we were born into was firm to follow what the prophecy saw completely, and freewill was questioned as how much could be strayed away from. Even so, the tribe knew this way was necessary. No one dared to do anything that disobeyed the prophecy in fear of it preventing what we all wanted more than anything, to see spring. Our freedom was not worth risking this, including for me and Sophia. 

The sound of footsteps came from the latter of the deck below us, my muscles tensed with each clamor, finding it hard to keep my breath steady as my brother Bishop's head inched up more from the deck below.

“That message you sent out was weak little brother,” Bishop said halfway upstairs making his way in, “and to think mom appointed you leader over me.”

“She had no say in it, you know that, and it's not weak for me to inform my tribe it's in their best interest to stay.”

“Great plan,” he said curtly, rolling his eyes with a smirk.

“What are you getting at?” I asked, my expression remained stoic, concealing how I had always felt about my older brother. There was always unspoken tension that went as far back as before my birth. 

“Don't be naive,” Bishop began, taking out his knife and carving into the calendar a marking of today's date, “did you seriously expect no chaos when spring finally came? It's been five hundred years of waiting, the tribe wants to leave.” 

“Leave now?” I asked.

“Well certainly not until the snow melts like how you want.”

“I follow the prophet’s system, it has nothing to do with my wants, it never has.” 

Bishop came closer and lowered his voice looking over at Sophia, “The prophecy never mentioned you having a child. Failing to mention it would be one thing, but the lineage was supposed to die with you, don't you think that’s odd?”

Hearing my greatest fear be said aloud made my insides twist. I had wanted more than anything to have a child, something I was told would never be possible.”

“This could be different,” I said so that only he could hear me. 

“And that's why people are having doubts if the prophecy should continue to be followed, it makes us think what else isn't true, what else could be done,” he paused, wincing at what he said.

“Us? So this is including you?” I asked.

Bishop ignored my question.

I shook my head not making contact with him and stared at the letter “B” he carved into the wooden banister when he was young, before he had me as a brother.  

“We have gliders,” Bishop began, “It would be a safe journey down... staying any longer for what might not even be dangerous is wasting time... we gotta live our lives.”

I looked at Bishop, to see him staring down at the white melting snow. His arms gripping the banister as his veins protruded, wanting to break what had kept him trapped.

“It sounds like you want to go,” I said.

“I can understand not wanting to wait. For thirty years I've been up here. I was born here, all I've known is a few miles radius, and now is an opportunity I never believed I’d live to see.”

There was silence after he spoke, and he made a noise with his mouth like he was about to say something, backed out, then deciding on saying it anyway, “Mom wanted to go.”

I made no acknowledgement of this statement, as I watched the flock of mockingbirds return to their dwellings in my tree.

“Has anyone left yet?” I asked.

“A few we know of, all family trees. The Castors’. Nightingales’ too. And a couple of extra gliders were missing from the common tree.”

“Maybe the Nightingales snagged a few extra before leaving us,” I spat, irritated. 

The heat from the sun hit my face harder as sweat dripped from me. 

“I need to deal with this,” I said.

I went back to the mockingbirds on the roof. 

“If you leave you dont get to return

If you leave you die,

CAW!”

The birds shouted through the trees.

“Your birds won't be able to stop them,” he said as I jumped back to the deck yet again. The fire in my eyes relit as I grabbed my glider, the only one in the tribe who had one in their home now for precaution.

“Maybe not, but I've got to check on the rest of the tribe, I don't know when I'll be back since we lost a family of hunters and a family of guards.”

Bishop nodded to the ground, then his pupils went softly to Sophia. 

I looked over to her. Her pale face turning red from the sun sinking into her skin. The girl I knew with more aglity with a glider than anyone. Who always tried to get to the ground since we were young, to see flowers, and have no dreams that could be altered. And then there was me, the one stopping her.

“I'll look out for her,” Bishop said.

I looked into my older brother's eyes, who I wanted to believe changed since when we were younger but never accepted it. The same eyes that always looked out for Sophia, but failed to do so with our mother. He understood her need to be free.

I didn't have time to debate with him, not while I was losing those who contributed to this society, the one we were supposed to all rebuild together. My insides turned. I had expected this day to come my whole life, and yet felt so unprepared to do nothing yet but to wait to discover what it was laying down below the snow, and carry on like usual until then. I nodded my head to him, and I kissed her stomach, avoiding the letter hidden in her red birthmark, which to me always looked like the letter “B”, and I took off on my glider feeling them watching me go. 

Everyone was out of their homes as I soared. There were sounds of children playing, and parents being jovial until seeing me.

“Alpha what's the news? When are we leaving?” They asked. 

I had to stop to speak to a few of my inferiors in the communal tree as I reiterated to them what was the only solid plan, which was for the time being, to wait until the snow gets finished melting, and whatever is underneath it is released. 

“If that’s the plan, we are with you,” my right hand man Sage said, speaking for the others.

The group nodded, and for a moment I could release my breath, but the tightness in my chest remained, almost as if my instincts were trying to warn me to not let my guard down, but unlike my ancestor, I could never decipher well. 

No one else seemed to have gone besides the two family trees we knew about, so the tribe's responsibilities to contribute went on as it normally would with the exception of doing them in the new warm weather, and the thoughts of the extra missing gliders, as odd as it was, became not the highest of my priorities. 

The day was spent with me filling in for the hunting that would normally be done by the Castor family, although we were several short, the other hunting families I had were dependable, especially since Sage was alongside me. We took off with our bow and arrows on our gliders as we soared to the usual coordinates when I briefly noticed what appeared to be a cluster of holes forming in the melting snow. I ultimately looked over it. My mind strayed away from this and went back to what I normally would ponder in my head performing my duties.

The scene played in my head. Sneaking out the gliders to try to go far down but not land. Promising to one day be married. To see flowers together. To see the ocean. To build a new life together. That was before I was born, before Bishop and Sophia knew it wasn’t supposed to be him the prophecy was about, that it was actually me who was to marry her. They could do nothing to change it. Their connection with each other shattered from my birth.

I thought of them when we landed in a tree known for overpopulated grouse. The same thoughts replayed with each arrow my bow strummed from, as if therapeutic. As if they could be changed. That it was different now, and yet I never could talk myself into truly believing it. A grouse was bushing up her feathers as she cleaned herself with the water dripping on her, seeing it as innocent and not knowing the dangers and foolishness it would lead to in the one absentminded choice, not knowing her fate. “Alpha, were not supposed to be making the poor things endangered,” Sage said, intervigning while looking at the heavy sack of grouse I collected, “we have more than enough.”

The grouse looked at me as I lowered my bow, and her life was spared. 

“Right,” I said.

She looked at me, as if thanking me for leaving her to be free, and flew away. 

“Ready?” Sage asked. 

And we took off back to the tribe.

I hadn't rethought of the holes until gliding over them again on the way back from hunting.

“Hey Sage. Have you noticed these holes before in the ground?” 

“Huh?” Sage shouted clearly gliding beside me, “I can’t say I have. I see what you mean though..what the hell is that?”

And then it all connected. 

“Sage...do we know how high up these trees are?”

Sage took his eyes off the target he was soaring to and for the first time, I saw fear in his face as the wind blew through him, wondering the same and understanding.

“You think it’ll be a lot higher without all the snow?” Sage asked. “You think… a few hundred meters?”

I gripped the glider tighter as the wild game dangled lifelessly from my back. My knuckles burned as cold blood dripped down me. 

Could it be possible, that it's a hundred meters of snow? And the holes we were seeing...the ones who left...

The letter “B” embroidered into my mind as it had been my whole life, followed me, and I hoped more than anything that the gliders missing were unrelated to Bishop and Sophia. The tightness in my chest remained. 

I landed harder than usual on my deck, not stopping as I ran through my door. 

The danger is going to go away, she knew that it would, everything would resolve itself. She’s changed now, she would wait. Just don’t be gone with my child. My miracle. My spring. The small house was eerie with quietness. The sound of children playing had gone as the day grew a familiar cold to the coming evening. 

My heart sank as I found an uninhabited home, refusing to believe the missing gliders had to do with it until seeing the same emptiness in Bishop's home, what I feared most to be true. Dare I even look down below to find two fresh holes? The fresh holes I now know go down hundreds of meters in the melting spring snow. The winter took them with it, the prophet was wrong, spring for me would never come.