A Far Shore

A bitter wind whipped the marram grass and pelted Mother with sand. She closed her eyes and settled more adamantly on her nest. Winter was coming – she smelled it in the air and heard its whisper in the waves. It was nature’s announcement, a solemn promise of death and rebirth.

The wind died down. She looked about for danger, then stood and stepped back. Four olive-colored eggs made a rough diamond shape within her shallow nest. Three had myriad cracks, while the fourth was pristine, which should have meant dead, only a bright red circle glowed within it, the perfect symmetry reminding her of the shimmering wheels that carried screaming demons over black earth.

That night three of her eggs hatched, while the glowing one remained. She sat over her clutch, closed her eyes, and entered semi-sleep. The wind grew blustery again, tearing at her feathers and muddling the grass so it complained with its usual dry hiss.

She dreamt of a far away shore, calm and warm and smelling of small fish baking on hot sand. Her yearning for that place was as profound as her love for the chicks under her breast.

~

That season there had been no humans at the beach or anywhere else Mother had flown. The rolling demons were gone as well, their black earth paths quiet. The all-back, stretching from shore to the sea, which usually had demons crawling on it day and night, was empty. This season the birds owned the beach. Sometimes a dog barked in the distance. One day a brown stallion galloped along the water’s edge, tossing up mist and great clumps of wet sand. No people, though, as if they and their shiny familiars had all migrated out of season.

Many nests had red glowing eggs in them, and none had hatched. They lay abandoned, half buried in sand. At night they glowed among the grass like embers.

Then one day a man arrived.

It was midday and hot. Mother was feeding on the shore with her clutch, who were nearly grown and already strong flyers. Still, they huddled to her as if she provided them magical protection.

As she burrowed her long beak in the sand, she kept an eye on her peers. She read their thoughts in their movements. If she had known the human term for a grouping of her kind – an omniscience – and if she could have understood the meaning of it, she would have considered it a fitting description. They were many, and yet they were one.

They had grown so used to no people that the man was at the edge of the tall grass before anyone noticed him. A young male issued a shrill call and took flight, and the rest of them followed. Mother and her clutch came to rest in a tall pine.

The man looked like death. He wasn’t covered the way humans usually were, so his sex was apparent. He was thin and bald and the sun had etched him red. His skin broke and oozed everywhere it was burned. The same red circle that Mother had seen glowing inside her egg was embedded in his chest.

He took a few lurching steps onto the open beach. There was a noise in the grass like small twigs snapping, and the red lights there, bright even in the full sun, lifted into the air. The unhatched had hatched, and each chick had a glowing red ring around one eye. They were too young to fly, and yet they flew, landing on the water in two straight lines that made a path.

The man waded between the floating birds, walked until the top of his head disappeared under the water, and was gone.

Some time passed before anyone returned to the beach. When they did, they eyed the new hatchlings warily.

Mother stayed in the tree. She and hers were done feeding for the day.

~

Migration. Mother didn’t know how she knew it was time, she just knew. It happened like this -- a large part of the flock headed out over the water, and the rest followed because they had to, as if they were an extremity pulled along by the larger body.

She lifted from the water line, her clutch in tow. They chased the leaders over the stretch of water that separated their island from the mainland. The late hatchers, as she now thought of them, glided beside the flock, separated but keeping pace.

Once over the mainland, she saw that the earth was ominously barren. Here and there human nests were on fire. Giant beasts lumbered about on legs the size of trees, far larger than black earth demons, yet seemingly made of the same sun-brilliant material. Each had a glowing red circle on its head.

Hours later, the sun settled in its watery cradle and the day surrendered to night. She closed her eyes and entered semi-sleep, feeling her steady wing beats and hearing the occasional squawks of the others as if in a dream.

To the side of her glowed the late hatchers, reminding her that the world wasn’t at all how it was supposed to be, and at some point, they would have to land.

~

Early dawn brought terrifying screeches and jostling. Mother woke to everyone diving and swooping about in apparent confusion. A terrible fear gripped her as she realized her chicks were not beside her.

She dove to get away from the mishmash, and saw the late hatchers attacking the flock leaders. As she watched, one of the leaders dropped from of the sky like a leaf, hit the water, and disappeared.

She flew into the fray, claws out, intending to take purchase of the closest late hatcher and peck its eyes out, but it moved too fast and was gone. A moment later something hit her from the side, stunning her, and she woke falling. She caught the wind before hitting the water, but the fight had been knocked out of her. She circled low as she watched her flock torn apart. Dead bodies fell to the water and floated there, forming small feathered islands, one of which she landed on.

A giant hole opened in the sky, whole clouds spiraling into its depths. It looked like the largest feeding hole in the world, made by some invisible and enormous beak, and her harried mind wondered what sustenance lay in the clouds.

The flock was gone, save her, and the late hatchers were disappearing, one at a time, into the hole. Unsure what to do, she made a series of undulating whistles. If her children had still been alive, they would have come to that call.

One of the late hatchers drifted out of formation.

She called again, and the meandering late hatcher flew down. It landed before her and twisted its head to stare at her with one eye, then the other. Its glowing red circle temporarily blinded her. Late hatchers never spoke, but this one opened its beak and let out a deep, resonant blat. It took flight, the last one through the mysterious migration path beyond the clouds, the hole closing silently behind it.

All was quiet. The tangerine sun bobbed on the distant horizon. The water was an endless black skin. Clouds drifted lazily over the spot where the strange hole had once been.

To the flock, nature promised death and rebirth. To the individual, it promised nothing.

Shaking the stiffness from her body, with only her instincts to guide her, Mother took flight.