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I went to the Crows, who would not have me.
I went to the Sparrows, who would not have me.
I went to the Hawks, who would not have me.
I went to the Eagles, who would not have me.
I was alone. The geese had all gone south and there were none left to take me with them. No flock; no food. I was still small. I wandered far away from the birth-nest. I slept in the cracks of trees, in the wind off the eastern moon, cold and afraid, afraid of the Falcons, afraid of the shadow of the birth-nest. I cried in my sleep, and my tears were quiet.
There was a morning, once, when I was a year old? Two? Time is different for geese. A bird bigger than anything, bigger than a Falcon, found me up in my tree, my wings pulled up over my head. He pushed at my feathers with his warm beak. I looked up, into his eyes. They were red, orange, white—fire colors.
“Why are you crying, little one?” he said, and his voice was like sunlight on the wing.
“I am alone,” I told him, and shivered, fearing his great bronze talons.
“I am alone, too,” he said. His feathers were the same as his eyes—the colors of embers, of flames licking at green branches, and his tail was a shower of gold. “If you want to come with me, neither of us will be alone. I will teach you how to catch moles when they peek out to see the sun, and how to steal cherries from orchards without being shot, and where there are fresh wells without dogs to guard them.”
I sniffed at the cold air—but the bird was warm and crackling, and I felt no shivering clouds on my feathers. I was hungry; I did not know what a cherry was. So my webbed feet flapped against the bark and I climbed out of the tree and into the wind.
I didn’t have anything to say. All I knew about were worms and scraps of meat the Falcons dropped, and that some trees have birds already living in them. The Firebird cleared his throat.
“Are you lost as well as alone?” he asked politely.
“I… I think so. I think I had a mother once, and she sent me away, but it’s hard to remember. I keep searching for anything that looks like me. The Falcons bite me. The Crows call me names. I can’t find anything with gray feathers and webbed feet and a long neck.”
“Well, then,” he said gravely, “it is doubly important that you learn about thieving, because it would not do at all for you to starve before you find your gray feathers and webbed feet and long necks. Luckily for you, you have fallen in with a Zhar-Ptitza, a Firebird. They are the best of all possible birds, and I am the best of them. You’re only a baby, and you will need looking after, at least until the summer comes and the geese come back. For you, my chick, are a goose. At least, I think you are. I’ve never known one before, not really. But don’t you worry, little gray-winged dear, I shall tell you all you need to know. I shall tell you about my best thievery…”
CALL ME LANTERN—AND DON’T LAUGH. I WAS always gentle, and my mother thought it better to name me after a little sweet flame in a glass than a fire which eats up trees and children and granaries. Firebirds are normally not particularly social creatures, but I was always too fond of family, and I stayed nest-side far longer than other proud scarlet drakes.
I was gentle—but I was also the best thief in my flock, and I could pluck the tiniest mustard seed from the hand of a princess and she would not even know it had gone until she went to plant it in her garden. And so it was that when my cousin was sitting on an ashen nest with a clutch of eight orange eggs—quite a clutch!—and complaining of a terrible need for cherries, the brighter the better, I was begged by all to fetch her some before her sisters pecked her to death in order to buy some measure of quiet. Cherries! And only certain cherries would do, only those sweet and glossy enough to feed the mother of eight.
I loved my cousin, even if her caws pierced my ears—what hen does not have the right to demand strange things when she is at her nesting? I flew off to fetch the fruit.
Now, in a land far distant from ours, which lies in the desert, there was a Sahiba in those days called Ravhija, and her orchards were as famous as her beauty. She spent her twilights tending the trees until each of them bore fruits without blemish or brown, each sweeter than the other, glistening and heavy. I have told you I was a fine thief—but none yet had managed to steal from Ravhija, whose cleverness was as famous as her orchards. It was these cherries my cousin longed for, and so I resolved to be the first.
I am not a small bird, nor are my colors inconspicuous. It is a handicap in my profession, but I use it as well as I can. I easily hopped a low brick wall as the sun closed up its deep blue talons, and the last loyal flash of light hid my plumage from any wandering eye. My tail trailed on the soft red soil as I crept, half fluttering, half walking, through the rows, looking for a tree bright enough to hide me. I passed persimmons, apples, limes and pecans, pomegranates, figs and oranges, tangerines, pears and apricots, avocados like fat emeralds and plums like purple fists. All thick with juice, nested in glossy green leaves, swollen to full size, though surely it was impossible for them to fruit all together, and side by side, though some loved frost and some a burning sky. And cherries, there they were, cherries big as a giant’s knuckles, and redder than my own self. I clipped off bunches as I passed, holding them in my gullet like a mother stork storing up fish for her chicks. I swooped up high to snatch the best fruit without breaking the ceiling of leaves and being caught. I was a glimmer of gold in the green, quicker than a blink. It is an easy, practiced grace, and I promise, my bedraggled dear, to show you how to do it.
But I had to find a place to hide until it was dark enough to get back over the wall without Ravhija spying me. And only certain trees will do—in the way of natural camouflage, the Firebird is sadly lacking. But as providence would have it, at the very center of the orchard was the most extraordinary tree I had ever seen. It was made for me; it matched me in shade and fruit, as if that tree had grown me in its branches, and dropped me onto the wind in some distant autumn beyond memory.
It was a pumpkin tree.
Or so I surmised, though all other pumpkins I had known grew from vines sprawled on the earth. The trunk was a deep orange gourd, twisting and winding around itself, tapering from a thick, fat base tangled with sprawling golden roots up to a spindle, deep grooves in the flesh of it gracefully spiraling, up and up. Branches spooled out here and there, yellow and pale green at the tips, each thick as a waist. The whole thing was strung with vines of
red and gold, and from these swung massive pumpkins like lamps, each glowing as though it contained a tiny flame. The whole tree was a festival, sparkling in the center of the fabulous garden like a dancing woman in the center of a dowdy crowd which could only stand still.
I flew to it like a lover. This tree would hide me, this tree would keep me safe, this tree was so bright that in it I would be as a little brown sparrow. It seemed to burn like the flaming trees of my own desert, yet the light was soft and kind, and the tree was not consumed. No gardener could find me in all that gold. I circled its trunk in delight, and then up to the pulpy peak—but a pain sparked through me, a terrible rip which sent me tumbling from those perfect limbs. I was afraid that I would spill out of myself, that I had been cut open by some wicked trident. I fell—such an ignoble thing for a Firebird!—I fell into a snarl of glimmering roots, and when the daze passed from my eyes, I saw before me two perfect feet, green as new shoots.
Ravhija bent at the waist, leaning down to me, twirling a long, ruby-colored feather, still tipped in dark blood, in her slender hand. “And what, pretty parakeet, do you think you are doing with my cherries?” she asked sweetly.
Ravhija looked just like the pumpkin tree. Her hair fell to her ankles in twisted ropes of wet, pulpy orange, and she was clothed in wide, dusty leaves that clung to every inch of skin, spreading around her face in a wide collar. Her face was ruddy, shining like cut squash.
“Why would you go to such trouble for a few cherries? Cherries can be bought anywhere. Why do you come to steal from me?”
I blushed, as much as a Firebird can blush when we are already half crimson. “My cousin craves cherries—she is at nest with a clutch of eight, if you can believe it—and your fruit is famous. Of course I could buy it, but then I would never be able to say that I stole it.”
Her elfin forehead furrowed, and she straightened, still holding my feather against her hip. I stumbled to my feet while she looked up through green lashes at the marvelous tree. She stood that way for a long time, as though she and it were locked in private consultation. Finally, she spoke, her voice all spice and honey and sweet, thick juice.
“It’s my understanding that since I have taken a feather from your tail, you are mine to command. Is that how it is?”
