Blue Jays, red-winged blackbirds, and grackles especially. When we stray too near their nests, they cackle and squawk at us, and it isn't such a leap to imagine that they're hurling vicious insults at us. This is my idea of what would happen if they could talk (An excerpt from the As Yet Unnamed Story):
Diddle tottered unsteadily, the
rotted beam beneath his feet swaying as a gust of wind howled through
the missing wall of the old barn.
“Curse it, Anajyrosima,” he muttered
under his breath, clinging desperately to the wall. “You always choose the worst
moments.”
The wind seemed to laugh in
response.
Diddle waited for the beam to stop
rocking as the wind faded, and then cautiously began edging his way forward out
into the rafters of the barn. If the beam gave way now, there would be nothing
to grab onto. Fortunately, the great weather goddess seemed to be in a good
mood.
Once he got to the end of the beam,
Diddle found himself in the supporting triangle structures that held up the barn
roof. They were in better condition than the beam and the rotted ladder he’d
used to get up there, but he was cautious anyway. Below him, a pile of moldy
straw that was almost as old as Diddle himself lay strewn in a towering heap
across the floor, peppered with the occasional black pit where the floor had
caved in.
If Diddle’s mother had been able to
see him, she would have skinned him alive and hung his hide on a pole in the
front yard. She never seemed to understand why her son had to risk life and limb
for the sake of satisfying his curiosity. It was worth the risk, though; Diddle
had discovered a nest of giben birds.
He’d caught sight of the male a few
days ago; a huge, crow-like creature with a feathery crest on the back of its
head and bright golden eyes. It had pitch-black feathers, peppered with flecks
of gold that were densest around the hackles. They hunted in pairs—the female
distracting the prey while the male swooped down to catch it—and they nested in
the early summertime.
Diddle had traced these two back to their nest over the
past couple days, and had lain in wait until the parents left. As soon as they
were gone, he set about climbing the old, rotted walls of the barn, his goal a
messy lump of willow twigs perched precariously on the beam in the middle of the
ceiling. He was very close.
The boards creaked in protest with
every cautiously-placed step Diddle took, his back hunched so he could grip the
beams with his hands. He must have looked strange from below; a small, wiry,
scruffy-looking boy crawling around in the rafters of a barn like a monkey. He
was glad there wasn’t anyone to see, since, strictly speaking, he wasn’t allowed
on this property. It didn’t help that his neighbor didn’t really like him
anyway.
A sudden squeal of shifting wood
warned Diddle just in time to jump away from the board he’d been about to set
his weight on as it wrenched free of its notch and plummeted to the floor. It
missed the hay pile, and instead snapped in two against an old milking stall.
Diddle took a shaky breath.
“That was me,” he warned himself as
he proceeded, taking extra care to test each board before setting his weight on
it. Finally, he reached the nest, which was built alongside an old pulley rope
that dangled from the rafters, an old tire swing trapped against the ceiling to
prevent the rope from pulling through. Diddle used it as an anchor as he kneeled
down next to the nest and cautiously peered over the edge.
“Beeeek!”
cheeped an angry voice, followed by a chorus of tiny, indignant protest as all
four inhabitants of the little nest caught sight of Diddle. The boldest
hatchling rose up onto its tiny legs, flapping its stubby little wings and
clicking its oversized beak. The half-formed crest on the back of its head rose
threateningly, reminding Diddle of a pincushion. He laughed as the other three
hatchlings followed suit and waddled at him with their wings raised.
“You’re fierce, aren’t you?” he
said, wiggling a finger at them. The lead chick snapped at his finger and tried
to swallow it, but he pulled away in time.
“You’ll have quite the glib tongue
when you grow up, won’t you?” Diddle said fondly, resting his chin on the side
of the nest. The hatchlings folded their wings, and a couple of them cocked
their heads towards him as if they were listening. Diddle
grinned.
“I’d wager you can understand every
word I say,” he said. The lead chick ruffled its wings, and then squawked a
single word:
“Mam!”
Diddle’s grin dropped; they weren’t
looking at him at all.
“Idiot! Jerk!” shrieked a voice, right into
Diddle’s ear. He yelped in surprise and tried to duck out of the way, but the
owner of the voice was relentless and angry, and she attacked Diddle with her
claws flashing and insults rolling from her tongue in a cacophonous barrage of
gibe.
“You fat-faced, slimy thief! May you rot in the demonlands and lose your eyeballs to the genies! May your
ugly face be pounded flat by the demons! I’ve never seen anything more
disgusting! You filthy, evil pilferer! Why, I’ll—”
Diddle tried to kick the female giben bird with his free
foot, but all she did was latch herself onto his ankle and claw at his pant leg
while cussing and hurling insults at him with unbridled fury. The chicks were at
it, too, cheeping out half-formed insults as they waved their stubby wings and
hopped around excitedly.
“Jeeeeerk!”
one squeaked. “Eeeeevl jeeeerk!
Maaaae oo rot en the deeeeemnlaaa!”
Another squawk from the entrance to
the barn threw Diddle into a panic; the male! Between the mother and the father
giben birds, they’d likely rip him to shreds. He needed to get out of
there!
His eyes searching frantically for
an escape route, Diddle lit upon the old pulley rope. It was old and frayed and
didn’t look like it would hold much. He briefly glanced at the approaching male
giben bird, and without second thought, he leaped for the
rope.
He managed to seize the rope in
midair, his arms very nearly popping from their sockets as his body’s falling
weight suddenly yanked on his shoulders. He fell for a few meters—his legs windmilling frantically and the rope burning his
hands—before he finally managed to bring himself to a
stop.
He quickly twisted the rope around
his legs and tightened his grip with his hands, his breath coming in ragged
gasps and his limbs shaking. Thoughts of splattering against the floorboards
were whirling through his brain, fueled by fear and adrenaline. When he’d
collected himself enough to think coherently, he risked glancing upwards at the
giben birds. He was surprised to find that the entire family was staring down at
him, even the babies. They looked like they were waiting for something to
happen.
Diddle heard a loud snap, and then
the rope suddenly gave way beneath him as something up above broke.
Ironically, it wasn’t the rope.
The board that fastened the rope to
the ceiling was one of the most unrotted, stable beams
in the building. Yet for some reason, it chose that moment to give way and send
Diddle plummeting to the ground below.
Diddle shouted frantically as he
fell, but he had sense enough to curl himself into a ball and angle his feet
downward, his muscled tensed for impact. He hit the mound of rotted hay, and
then, with a splintering crash, kept going.
The floorboards underneath the hay
were even worse than the rafters, and they crumbled beneath Diddle’s weight like
toothpicks. He, the rope, and a flurry of hay tumbled into the basement floor of
the barn, crashing through the ceiling and into another mound of moldy hay at
the bottom of an old calf stall. Diddle landed on his feet, but the force of the
landing sent him sprawling flat with his face on the ground, his ribs aching and
his butt sore from punching through the ceiling with it. He moaned miserably
into the ground as the dust and hay settled around him.
Nothing was broken, but Diddle
probably would have laid there all day if it weren’t
for the distant sounds of shouting that drifted down through the hole in the
ceiling. It wasn’t the giben birds this time.
“Crap!” Diddle cursed as he shot up
to his feet, his bruises forgotten as he recognized the voice of his neighbor,
Ian McClillan. The old, retired farmer sounded angry,
and quite willing to take off Diddle’s head if he discovered him in the
barn.
Diddle ran for the downstairs exit,
brushing off hay and splinters and praying all the while that Mr. McClillan would check the upstairs first.
Not for the first time that day,
luck was in Diddle’s favor.
He ducked out of the basement and
dodged behind a nearby bush as Mr. McClillan stormed
by, on his way towards the upstairs loft.
“Curse that rotten kid! If I find
him in there, I swear by Anajyrosima’s tail I’ll wring his skinny little neck!”
the old farmer muttered as he passed. Fortunately, the thick hair growing out of
his ears prevented him from hearing Diddle chocking back a
laugh.
Once the coast was clear, Diddle
shot away from his hiding place as quickly as his feet would carry him, heading
for the small grove of woods that marked his home. He picked hay and wood out of
his hair as he ran, hoping all the while that his
mother wouldn’t notice the moldy barn smell that was clinging to him. It
wouldn’t be the first time she’d grounded him for something he’d only sort of
done on purpose.
I rewrote the beginning of this story about a week ago. What I had before didn't seem like quite enough to introduce such an energetically curious character like Diddle. He needed to start out doing something...something he wasn't supposed to. The next chapter is up as well, so be sure to check it out!
