Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

My chest deflates with disappointment. Is the world everywhere as it is here? A garden, but not for us?

Even Barefeather sinks at this news. “We are the last flock, then. We are a flutter before the wind dies. We are alone.”

“No,” Green says. He lifts his head. His good eye grows keen. “We are the last flock, but we are not alone. I saw them.” He shakes his wings and rakes his claws in the dirt. “I saw the gods.”

And then he falls into an exhausted slumber.

I watch over him through the night, glancing in wonder at the tree line.

Green dies the next morning. He traveled too far, ate too little, suffered too many winds. Clucking and clicking with grief, I rake an embankment of dirt around him. The flock gathers leaves and twigs to cover him.

Insects and worms will return his flesh to earth, but I am thinking forbidden thoughts. We are so hungry. We are dying. Why don’t we feast on the body Green no longer needs? There’s no need to vocalize it. We are all thinking the same thing. But Barefeather straightens herself and stands tall. She spreads her wings, and in their span we find rebuke.

We do not eat our own.

It is not our way.

I cannot hold it in any longer. “Why? What is the purpose of this custom?” I regret speaking, but I cannot stop. I must go on. “Our ancestors did things with purpose. But we just mimic. We squawk litanies, not even knowing what they mean. And while we make noise and imitate, we perish.”

The squawks of alarm sound far away, dimmed by the slam of my own heart. To challenge Barefeather is to challenge the flock, and to challenge the flock is to challenge everything. I fear the slap of wings. I fear being ripped by beak and talon. Green might not be the only one to die today.

But Barefeather lowers her wings. “Let Dullclaw be,” she says. “Gather seeds. Gather nuts. Go.”

The flock shuffles away, leaving me with my great-great-grandmother and the mound covering my dead brother.

I look at my feet and scratch.

“He is thin,” she says. “His flesh shared among the flock wouldn’t sustain us. He would nourish us for hours while depriving us of who we are.”

I raise my eyes to her. She speaks not of tradition. She speaks of practicalities.

“Are we that near to the end, Barefeather?”

She draws closer and pecks bits of dirt from the back of my neck. “That depends on two things,” she says very softly, so only I can hear. “It depends on you. And it depends on the gods.”

This must be what it feels like to fly for the first time. To step off a sturdy perch with the ground far below. You know it can be done because you’ve seen it done, but you don’t know if you can do it.

Under the dark sky, I take my first step.

Then the next.

And another.

Another.

I am falling. Tumbling helplessly toward the hard ground.

But, no.

This is merely walking. Leaving my flock. Going past the tree line. And I will continue across the river and beyond our range and I will leave the forest and ache in the desert. I will float across a sea and climb a mountain and survive in frigid, thin air. I will find a new forest. I will find new foods. I will save my flock.

I cannot fly, but I can do this.

I was wrong. I cannot do this.

Splintered talons.

Feathers, heavy as stone.

Not a fruit, not a nut, not a seed I can eat.

Stomach, clenching with pain.

Burning sun.

A floor of thorns.

Flesh scoured by wind and sand.

Insects that bite but elude capture.

Air burning my lungs.

Frost sealing my eyes.

Green did this. Everything I am suffering now, my nest brother suffered, and he endured. He did not die until returning to the flock.

So I take a step. And the next. And another. Ever forward.

I can do this.

When I finally come upon a new tree line, I am disappointed by how much this new forest is like the one I left behind. The trees are the same, and they bear the same meager fruits and tiny seeds. My flock can live no better here than at home. But I push into the shady coolness because I cannot go back with nothing but emptiness.

After another day, my hunger and fatigue are finally rewarded. It is not another flock, and not a new source of nourishment, but it is something I have never seen before.

Standing at the top of a ridge, I look down into a broad hollow where stands a massive sort of rock, pocked with deep gaps. It is like a mountain cavern, with the mountain eroded away and leaving caves behind.

There are markings on the side of the cave. They look old but reverently maintained, perhaps with berry juices to keep them whole.

I scratch the shapes into the dirt to remember them.

Entrance.

Parking.

Fox Hills Mall.

Flashes of movement, murmurs of noise leak from the caves, and I hide in the brush. Orange firelight flickers within. And voices. Much of it is unintelligible, but here and there, I recognize words from our flock’s chants. Just fragments, just crumbs, but enough to convince me this is where the gods dwell.

Then they come out into the night with flaming sticks and gather in a circle. I have not seen creatures like this, except possibly in the dirt scratchings of Barefeather and the other elders. Two legs. Featherless wings. Nut-shaped heads, fringed with fur. All else is bare flesh.

Yes, these are the old gods. It is their words we repeat in our litanies. It is their world we dwelt in when food was plentiful and we could fly.

And now, finally, I understand why we recite the litany. It is for this moment, this time near the end, when we most need the gods, so that when we speak to them, they will know our words.

I make my way down the hill and approach them with hope and terror. My wings tingle, as if they’re begging me to take flight and flee but are frustrated by being anchored to this heavy body. I feel like I could fall into a sleep, so great is my fear. Or maybe it’s hunger.

My foot lands on a twig, and it cracks sharp and high, like thunder shredding the sky. The gods raise their fire sticks and shine light on me.

“Polly wanna cracker?” I say.

And the gods do something unexpected. Their eyes grow wide. They clutch each other. They shriek. Even in these strange beings I recognize fright. I do not understand how I can inspire fear in gods.

It is only when they creep closer to me, some holding sharpened sticks, that I see what I could not from a distance.

I was told since I was a hatchling that the gods were giants. That we once perched upon their shoulders. But I would crush them if I tried. They are half my size. The gods have withered and diminished.

Or…

We no longer fly. Perhaps we have changed in other ways as well. Perhaps we have grown.

The gods form a circle around me, and step by cautious step, they make the circle smaller.

Are they hunting me? These little things with their splintered wood?

“Who’s a pretty bird?” I ask them.

They flinch and quiver, but the circle grows tighter.

And so I have no choice.

Wing slaps.

Sharp kicks.

Beak strikes, puncturing soft bellies, digging into their hot insides. The sweet flavors of intestines and livers and kidneys and hearts.

Yes, I do believe we have changed. I have changed in the span of a few seconds. I have tasted the flesh of shrunken gods.

The gods cry and run, and I pursue. The pounding of my feet against the earth mimics the magnificent pounding of my heart.

Sated by a full belly, I begin the journey back home. It is perilous, and difficult, and sometimes torturous. But I left the flock afraid and starving. I am no longer starving, and I know I can survive the return to my flock, so I am no longer afraid.