Eric Flint - Grantville Gazette.Volume XII

"Yes, very nice." Pam hesitated. Oh why the hell not? "I would like to ask you something. In your travels have you ever seen a bright red bird? It would be a new creature; it came to Germany with us."

"A red bird?" The peddler was somewhat surprised at such a question. "Why, I see many birds and animals in my travels, out on the open road as I am."

"This one I think you would notice. It's a beautiful bright red and has a black mask around its bill. On the top of its head is a pointy crest, like a hat." Pam's description was accompanied by a sort of pantomime of the cardinal's features.

The peddler nodded, a look of comprehension came to his eyes. "A red bird, face is black! Yes, yes, I have seen such a bird! I was down in Bavaria… here, I show you!" Pam's eyes went wide. The peddler ducked his head under the wood awning and proceeded to shift some of the items on his top shelf around. "Yes, here it is!" He pointed. Against her will, Pam followed the course of his finger to the shadowy upper shelves.

It was a bird. A red bird. A cardinal.

Stuffed.

Pam stood frozen in horror. The cardinal was posed with its wings outspread as if about to leap into flight from the gnarled branch it was mounted to. Glass orbs replaced living eyes, the beak open as if frozen in mid-song.

"Pretty nice, yes? A trapper sold it to me. He snared it in the woods last month. What a pretty bird, a nice display for your home!"

Pam started to cry.

Hours later, Pam sat at her window side table, a bottle of what was passing for whiskey these days half-empty before her. She poured herself another shot. Her bird guides, notebooks and precious painting supplies lay scattered about the floor behind her.

"God damn people!" The anger welled up again and she felt her face grow hot. She was on an emotional boat ride through fiercely stormy seas, rising on crests of towering wrath, sliding down into depressions of black despair. She hadn't eaten and the whiskey was only making her head hurt, the fiery liquid in her belly failing to warm the icy sense of helpless loss.

At five o'clock Gerbald arrived to begin the evening's work. Drunkenly Pam ordered him to go home. "No birds tonight," she said, her voice thick with pain and anger. Her head slumped onto the table with an audible thump, mind reeling with images of dead cardinals mounted in dead trees, forgetting Gerbald was even there.

The unflappable German's face creased up in worry, an emotion rarely seen there.

"I get Dore," he told her, exiting quickly.

Dore came through the door huffing and puffing. She was a bit on the heavy side and had run as fast as she could all the way to Pam's little house. Gerbald followed, barely having broken a sweat but face grey with concern for Pam. They found her still at the table, mumbling incoherently. One on either side, Gerbald and Dore gently lifted her, moving her over to the overstuffed loveseat. Pam began to weep softly, Dore held her close like a child, murmuring comforting words as she stroked Pam's hair. After carefully picking up the items Pam had cast on the floor in her despair, Gerbald paced about the room, his strong arms crossed in helplessness.

After a time, Pam became coherent enough to haltingly detail what had happened. Her friends listened closely with heartfelt sympathy. Dore made some thin chicken broth for her, gently feeding it to her as one would a small child. Pam had calmed down now and become sleepy, Dore helped her into bed, giving her a fond kiss on the forehead before turning out the light. Pam softly thanked her, the forgetfulness of sleep coming soon after, a welcome darkness.

Pam safe in bed and sleeping off her day's tragedy, Dore sat down on the loveseat. Gerbald sat in Pam's usual chair at the window side table, his brow furrowed in deep thought. Dore steepled her fingers contemplatively in her lap. They shared a long look of painful concern for Pam, whom they had begun to think of as a well-loved younger sister more than an employer. Pam didn't know how protected she truly was by these two strong-hearted Germans.

At last Dore spoke softly so as not to wake Pam in the bedroom behind her. "This bird. Show me."

Gerbald nodded. Opening Eastern Birds, he found the cardinal, Pam had shown it to him and he well knew it was her favorite. He walked the book over to Dore. "This one, the red one. It is special to her."

Dore studied the small painting carefully. "I can see that! It is an American bird from up-time, yes? " She used the English term for the concept.

"Yes. Some few of them came here with Grantville. She searches, but we haven't found one yet. Now she finds a dead one, it is too sad for her."

Dore nodded slowly. "Tomorrow we start," she announced confidently as she began the process of extricating her bulky form from the lumpy old loveseat. Gerbald brightened, giving her a hand up. She patted his arm affectionately.

"Yes. We will." He grinned.

"It is a red bird with a pointy hat," Dore told the women she worked with at the laundry.

"It has a black mask around its beak," Gerbald told the men he did construction work with during the day.

"If you see one, you must remember to tell me," Dore told the vegetable farmers who had brought their produce to market from the outlying farms.

"If you see one, do not kill it!" Gerbald told his companions at the tavern over a lunchtime pint of dunkel beer.

"It is an American bird," Dore told the mail riders at the post office.

"Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors."

"Tell everyone! The red bird must be found!"

Pam recovered from her upset more quickly than she might have expected. It was dawning on her that she had changed since the Ring of Fire. Her depressions had grown shorter and she hadn't the time for the long sessions of self pity she had once indulged in. The stuffed cardinal had been awful, a terrible waste but it was also evidence that at least one of her cherished birds had survived two German winters! There could be more. In retrospect, the incident lifted her hopes more than dashed them.

Her list of American birds had grown by a large number this spring, more and more species were emerging from the woodwork: tufted titmice, redhead ducks, turkey vultures, killdeer, ruby-throated hummingbirds, scarlet tanagers-it was incredible! She had even witnessed a confrontation at her feeder between a gray and orange Eurasian jay and an eastern blue jay! The American blue jay had triumphed, boasting loudly in harsh jay tones as the native jay presumably fled back to the safety of the Thuringerwald-but for how long? It had some new competition!

It was strange how in that first year the American species had vanished from sight. Pam supposed it wasn't really unusual for animals to go to ground for extended periods when threatened. Perhaps the Ring of Fire had affected birds more powerfully and in different ways than it did mammals, which had continued their daily existence seemingly physically unaffected by the event. Birds had different senses, particularly migratory birds with their feel for Earth's magnetic fields. Who could know what havoc something like a journey through time and space would play on avians? Pam continued her project with a very welcome new wrinkle: Translating the names of the transplanted American birds into German!

Gerbald came up the road at a flat out run, his sage green coat tails flapping behind him. Pam, sitting on a lawn chair by the front door enjoying a pleasingly balmy May afternoon watched in amazement as he leapt from the road over the short decorative fence at the corner of the yard to cut across the rows of sunflowers instead of ambling up the walk as he always did. Pam couldn't help but chuckle seeing his goofy misshapen hat bouncing just above the cheery yellow discs of their blossoms as he zigged and zagged his way up the yard. She stood up quickly, now worried that something bad might be happening to provoke steady Gerbald into such flight!