The Bluebirds Were Her Friends 2/5
CHAPTER FOUR
Mrs. Bluebird woke her husband by gently nudging him. It was dark, but when Mr. Bluebird looked into his wife’s loving, round face, he realized that the long-awaited moment had now come. He double-checked with Bonny, just in case.
Mrs. Bluebird told him that, yes, it was time for her to lay her two eggs. Tawny was astonished. Two eggs? He had thought there would be one. Two eggs were… well, it was twice as special, that was what it was. Bonny had doubled their chance of growing a family. Tawny collected himself and stood beside his brilliant wife. Whatever she needed from him, he told her, she would have. He meant it. He would even fight the giant if it came to that. Mrs. Bluebird glanced about nervously, hoping it did not.
The time to lay her eggs arrived, and Bonny did her best. In the end, it all went well. Before the sun was up, an exhausted Mrs. Bluebird sat on two new eggs with snowy white shells and brownish-yellow spots. Mr. Bluebird had witnessed the egg-laying process up close and now sat silently in the nest, eyes wide with surprise and understanding.
He was so stunned that he did not hear the large snake slithering around on the ground beneath them.
CHAPTER FIVE
The snake was a type of long, venomous constrictor known to inhabit the massive jungle that encircled the planet Triarion. They were known as Tash Snakes, named after the way they hissed when they struck. Despite their well-camouflaged green and brown bodies, Tash Snakes had an obvious marking that made them almost impossible to miss. Their heads all bore a distinct “X” made of reflective yellow scales. Scholars who studied such things attributed the mark to evolution, concluding from its color and location that the snake had evolved a clever way to absorb and retain the sun’s heat. There was also an ancient Triarion myth that said the gods who gave the Tash its strength and venom had also clearly marked its weak spot to punish it for betraying them.
The Tash Snake flicked its forked tongue, tasting freshly laid eggs in the air. Silently, the snake slithered toward the pheromonal plume billowing from the bluebirds’ nest. The scent hung in the air like a cloud. The snake climbed a nearby tree, stretched out its body, and dropped onto the roof of the human’s home. The snake checked the air for any sign of the human’s body heat and detected nothing. The human was not around; there would be no better time to strike. The snake raced along the mossy slate shingles, bobbing its raised head. It caught sight of a bluebird alone in its nest; it looked exhausted and scared. This, the snake thought, must be the new mother. Good.
The Tash Snake reared up and glowered down at the solitary bluebird. It was about to strike but stopped when it felt something, tug, ever so lightly, on its tail. It looked back at its other end and saw another bluebird. The little animal was using its beak to pull on the snake’s tail with all its strength. This one is the father. He was small, and weak. The snake decided to deal with him later. It returned its attention to the mother, but she was gone. The Tash Snake believed that she was gone, anyway.
She was not.
When Tawny grabbed the snake by its tail, the creature looked back. That was when Bonny fluttered away, up into the air above the Tash Snake. She dove at it, striking the snake in its beady black eye. She attacked with her beak as she held on with her small, sharp claws. The snake violently shook its head as it fought to dislodge Bonny. While it was distracted, Tawny attacked the snake’s other eye. He clung to its face with a fierce tenacity that mirrored his wife’s.
The snake hissed loudly and threw itself off the roof to get away. The birds let go of its face as it fell. The Tash Snake’s body was all muscle surrounding a long tube, so the short drop did nothing to harm it.
The bluebirds flew back to their eggs. They checked to make sure they were undamaged. They were but they were also cooling quickly, and that posed a danger to the chicks inside. Bonny and Tawny each sat on an egg to warm them up again.
The Tash Snake slithered away into the trees so it could heal and think. It had never had to fight for a meal before; certainly, it had never been denied its prey. The bluebirds had surprised the snake with their aggression, and it panicked. Now that the panic had passed, the snake was left with a new emotion: rage. It was furious that it had been scared and hurt by the birds. On top of that, it was still hungry. The snake decided to rest. When its eyes stopped hurting, it would come back and devour those troublesome bluebirds. Eating their eggs would be a delectable bonus.
With its inflamed eyes burning, the snake wound its way around to a well that was behind the human’s home. It climbed down into the well, sliding along protruding bricks that jutted out like steps. It came to a space where one of the bricks had been pushed out by a tree root. The Tash Snake squeezed its long body into the empty space and curled up to rest. Its eyes were already feeling better; everything would be fine again tomorrow.
CHAPTER SIX
The next day, Tawny hopped about in the grass behind the giant’s home. Bonny was at home, asleep with the new eggs. Tawny planned to pick around the grass for some seeds, bugs, and maybe, if he was lucky, a fat wriggling grub. Anything to help his wife regain her strength and stamina. Yesterday had been the most tiring day of her life and fighting the Tash was the closest she had ever come to dying. He had to find something to keep her spirits up.
Mr. Bluebird found what he was looking for in the cool shadow of the giant’s cave. It was an earthworm, a big, midnight-blue one. Tawny chased after the worm with his beak open and his pink tongue poking towards it. The worm felt the earth beneath it vibrate and moved hastily away from the source of those vibrations. It wove through the grass this way and that, an evasive maneuver designed by nature to help the blind, ground-bound creature escape from a broad spectrum of potential hunters.
Mr. Bluebird closed in on his target, while behind him the Tash Snake lifted its X-marked head above the grass.
The Tash attacked, its namesake hiss cutting through the air. The little bluebird realized its danger and tried to run, but it was too slow, too committed to its previous course. The bird looked over its shoulder in time to see the snake’s open mouth and gleaming, dagger-like fangs, wet with poison.
When Tawny saw the snake coming, he shut his eyes. He could not help himself. It was a reflex, a natural reaction to his face being threatened. Mr. Bluebird froze and waited to die, but it never happened.
“I know you must eat,” he heard a voice say. “But he is such a tiny bird.”
Tawny opened his eyes and saw a giant, but it was not the giant he knew. If anything, this giant made the other one look small by comparison. On top of that, it had skin the same color as leaves. This new giant held the Tash off ground by the back of its neck, squeezing its jaws so that they stayed open.
“I am going to let you go now.”
The leaf-colored giant carried the snake over to the well it lived in and placed the creature on the ground in front of it. The snake shot up and over the short wall that ran around the top of the well, scales dragging on stone. When it was gone, the giant returned to Mr. Bluebird. It squatted down to speak to Tawny. The bird was surprised to find that the giant was more than just fluent in bird-tongue; it actually spoke with an accent Tawny recognized from his childhood tree.
“Hello,” the giant said in flawless bluebird. “Is Zareen around?”
