The Bright Moon Festival, which was held under the first full moon of spring, was a day of celebration of the birth of Swordbird. The red and the blue had always celebrated this event on the tallest mount of the Appleby Hills, because the view of the moon from there was the best. No clouds dared to rest above it on the blessed night.
The Willowleaf Theater troupe arrived just as the sky darkened. They were greeted with great applause and excited cries. The stage was soon set, the props were in place, and the show began.
“Ladies and gentlebirds, introducing the flying Willowleaf Theater!” Dilby smiled broadly. “First, an acrobatic juggling show. The more hoops, the better, and more trouble if the hoops fall!” Dilby backed out from the stage.
The curtains opened with a high-pitched squeak.
“Need to oil those curtains again,” muttered Parrale under her breath. “And think of it, I oiled them just last week!”
Alexandra the hummingbird darted onstage. Dilby appeared playfully twirling three red, yellow, and blue hoops.
The hummingbird swung around in rhythmic circles, flying through the hoops with amazing poise and speed.
“Faster, faster, faster we go!” chanted Dilby.
Soon the fun made everybird chant, “Faster, faster, faster we go!” The blue jays and the cardinals in the crowd bobbed their heads to the rhythm, while Dilby, muttered, “Oh no…oh no…I’m going to drop them,” and juggled the colorful hoops without missing a beat. Alexandra kept up with the hoops, doing flips and twirls and flying upside down.
The curtains creakily closed with a final note from the music. Deafening applause followed, along with the yells “Bravo!” “Go, Allie!” and “Magnificent juggling, Dilby!”
Dilby returned to the stage for the second time. His feathers were damp with sweat, and his breath was a little heavy.
“Next, a Swordbird play, to honor our guardian of peace!” He bowed and backed away.
Parrale walked slowly to the stage, matching her steps to the sad music. When the wood duck reached the center, she stopped and slowly turned to the audience.
Mournfully she sang in a deep voice:
Kastin and Mayflower came from the right, singing softly in chorus, “Dust and death, destruction and doom, now is a time of darkness…”
They bowed their heads, and the audience listened to the sorrowful melody in the background.
Suddenly a high, sweet voice sang out. “Yet there is Swordbird, there is Swordbird. He will help us all.” And Alexandra appeared from the left.
Backstage, a violinist played a hopeful tune. All four birds brightened and sang in harmony:
Dilby laid down his violin. “It’s time, Lorpil,” he said. They both strapped belts (which were connected to a gigantic kite) around their waists and across their shoulders.
“Ready?” Lorpil put on a backpack and picked up a long wooden pole that was fashioned into a large sword.
Dilby intently listened for the signal notes. “Go!”
The two took off, bursting from backstage and out into view of the audience. They flew high, flapping their wings hard. As they gained speed, the white kite unfurled into shape above them, becoming a giant white bird. The two birds became the claws of Swordbird, and Lorpil’s pole became his sword.
The red and the blue gasped and applauded.
“Swordbird!” Parrale, Mayflower, Kastin, and Alexandra all shouted.
“Swordbird!” the audience echoed.
Lorpil and Dilby hovered above the stage.
“This is my favorite part,” said Lorpil, grinning and winking at Dilby. He shouted to the night sky, “Come, rain!” and waved his sword. Dilby tore open his backpack. A silvery shower of tiny objects fell out of the bag and onto the stage and audience below.
“Rain at last! Rain at last! Thank Swordbird, there is rain at last!” the actors yelled, picking up the candied fruits and nuts in foil wrappers from the ground and tossing them up.
The cardinals and the blue jays laughed as they collected the treats and joined in the shouting. “Rain! Rain!” The play ended with all of the birds, both actors and audience, eating the candied fruits and nuts.
Dilby came up the stage again. “Now is the moment everybird is waiting for: good food between acts and a break for our tiring actors, eh?” Laughter echoed over the Appleby Hills.
Soon the tables were buzzing with merry talk and filled with food of all kinds, the last of the winter store. There was not quite as much as there had been in other years; Turnatt’s thieving had taken its toll. Still, everybird found a favorite treat somewhere on the long wooden tables.
“Pass the cream, please.”
“Mmm…try this raspberry pie, Brontë. It’s great! I’ve missed it; we haven’t had enough berries to make any after the hawk’s thievery. Good thing your tribe did!”
“Hey, little one, aren’t you going to try some Stone-Run stew?”
“But I need to finish eating these grilled caterpillars first!”
“Hey! Who ate all the potato salad?”
“Don’t hog up the food, Lorpil!”
“Best beetles I’ve tasted in quite a while…crunchy and delicious!”
It had been many dawns and sunsets since the laughter of the red and the blue rang sweet and clear in Stone-Run Forest. Now the trees seemed to listen quietly to the birds and rejoice along with them.
Back at Fortress Glooming, Turnatt had decided that it was time to attack the cardinals and the bluejays. The current slavebirds were like leaves trembling in the late-autumn wind, so weak that work on his magnificent fortress was going slower than a snail’s pace. He needed new slaves, and quickly, he thought as he sat alone in his chamber, clutching the Book of Heresy.
Once Turnatt had been an ordinary red hawk, no more fearsome than most of his kind. He snorted in disgust to remember it. In those days he had dwelled in makeshift burrows and had had no ambitions beyond the next meal he could catch. All of that horror had changed one day when he had taken shelter from a rainstorm in a cave, a crack in the face of a tall cliff. There, tucked away in a niche in the wall, he had found an old leather-bound book, the Book of Heresy.
From the first page, the first sentence, Turnatt had been bewitched. He thought about it in the daytime, dreamed about it at night, and even slept with his head resting on the musty, ancient pages of the dark tome. There was one passage in particular that he turned back to again and again. It told him that if a bird ate a woodbird egg every day, he would live for years and years-perhaps forever!
Turnatt had started to raid woodbirds’ nests, but it was hard work; the little birds fought furiously to defend their young, so every egg was bought with scars and bruises. Turnatt did not want to waste his time to battle woodbirds. He found himself a band of crows and ravens and ordered them to do his nest raiding for him.
Then he’d needed servants to care for his army and somewhere for them to live. That was when he had decided to catch woodbirds as slaves and force them to build him a luxurious fortress.
The Book of Heresy had been his cherished companion through it all. It had transformed him from an ordinary bird in rags who lived worse than tramps to a sly tyrant in silks who dwelled better than kings! Turnatt stroked the leather cover with a gentle claw. He had sent Slime-beak out to bring back cardinals and blue jays. They’d be strong, sturdy workers. Soon his fortress would be complete. And everything that the Book of Heresy had promised him would come true!