Issue Two

December 2024

Fledgling

Judy Darley

I’m small enough to creep unseen by my granders’ bedroom doorway, past the chair where the slung jacket threatens to stretch and grab, and the couch where a mountain of crochet breathes in and out, sleeping but aware, watching me sneak.

Granddad locks the door at night but if I climb on the hall table and manage not to tip, my fingertips reach the key.

Although the year’s barely beyond halfway, the air that meets me is cool and licks my face like a snow dog

I hear the door click closed behind me.

The moon hangs fat and stapled to treetops.

I know where to go to see the best of them. First, by the side of our cabin where the trash sighs in the dark. That’s where I meet stripe-faced neat-fingered scratchers and skinny, naked-tailed gnawers.

Hello Chickee: original artwork by Anne Anthony

Next down to the pond where the plump splashers sing. Amid beech trees, sharp-faced ear-twitchers tread silently and sliders slide. Silent-wingers swoop at the moon like they’re gleaning its shape afresh each night.

I keep a nose out for the black and white stinker so we don’t surprise one another.

In the hollow between two boulders is the one I’ve started to make.

Moss-winged, mushroom-bellied, crochet-hooked and crowned with downy woodpecker feathers. I tug a tangle from my hair and stitch it to my moss-fungus chick’s throat, adding a scrap of my genes.

Yesterday, I saw a small hole high in a nearby red oak. A throng of peeping gave away what waits inside. With the moss-fungus chick hooked to my wrist I begin to climb.

Grandma says oaks sense shades of red that show them when the sun sets and rises, and warns when winter creaks close, triggering dropped leaves.

She always tells me to curious the details from every day, like a stripe-face sniffing trash and silent-wingers learning the moon’s curve.

I imagine seeing the world in shades of red and the imagining tips my blood. The forest floor is far enough below now to make my breath rush.

I cling to the trunk until I’m steady again.

When I reach a bit of branch beside the hole, I see the black beak of the grown bird keeping her younglings safe. With summer already ebbing, they’ll need to fledge soon.

The grown bird stirs, twitching like I might want to eat her and her young. I show her the moss-fungus chick. “For you. Will you care for it?”

I lie my moss-fungus chick on the branch and wrap a strip of crochet around twice so it won’t fall at once.

Then I slither and scuff my way down to the ground.

Next morning I wake to a day that is sweet and warm and smelling of mud. I’m through the door before my granders can grab me into school clothes and shoes.

I race to the red oak, escaping the fright of classrooms and closed doors.

Above me a shrill racket tells me the younglings are branching. Perhaps they’ve found my creature, caught its threads in their claws, snagged scraps on curious beaks. I crane upwards and then lie flat, letting the forest floor itch against my neck. When I squint I see their jumps and flapping, wanting to meet the whole sky.

Any minute now …

I think of the great-granders before my granders, the ones who boarded boats and carried pillowcases stuffed with memories. Migrations escaping the traps of countries I’ve never seen. Like chicks fledging from trunk-dug nests, they had to trust wings never flown with before.

I hear the shout of my name, and think of my own feathers maybe being numbers and words. The confine of school clothes and shoes might be tomorrow’s wings.

I run back to our cabin, ready to curious the details from this day to make tomorrow as big as the sky.

About the author

Judy Darley

Judy Darley is a writer, journalist and workshop leader living in southwest England. She is the author of short fiction collections The Stairs are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Her words have been published and performed on BBC radio, harbour walls and boats as well as in museums, caves, a disused church and art studios.

Find Judy at:

http://www.skylightrain.com https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.