Trill

Originally published by Creative Colloquy.

The Duchess had molted and emerged anew. Her brown speckled plumage and white belly were displayed like the headdress of a Mardi Gras Indian. After a brief spring, she had found her mate and was now perched proudly atop a nest of a single candy cerulean egg. She willed the fragile being to life with the trill of her beak. The time of flight was approaching, and she would embark on her journey from north to south. She listened to the wind gently blowing a soft breeze through her home in Delaware. This year would be a good year for the first-time mother. The Duchess was prepared for The Great Migration.         

Yet, something was immediately wrong. Her egg, though a miracle of nature, would not hatch. It possessed an otherworldly quality. It almost glowed in the morning sun. Most veeries lay three, four, or even five eggs, but the Duchess had laid just one. The Duchess worried about her small family’s ability to take flight in time, but her mate, The Duke, attempted to soften her fears by reminding her that both of them had taken flight when they, too, were young. He proposed that the egg would hatch just in time for the family to join the other birds. 

The days went by, and other fledglings grew into birds who could spread their wings, find food, and find their voices. The Duke and Duchess’s egg had still not hatched. That was a troubling sign. 

Veeries were known for possessing a special meteorological talent that humans had not yet perfected. They could predict the strength of a hurricane season. This came to them through the wind, the rain, the temperature of the water, and even deep within their mating rituals. Some veeries flew from Canada to the Amazon Basin in Brazil and back each year. The Gulf Coast was the midway stopping point on the journey, and since veeries migrated during hurricane season, they needed to listen to their instincts as each season changed. 

The Duchess lamented. Her fears were real, as they were not made to withstand cold winters in North America.  The Duke, thinking matter-of-factly, concluded that they would fly, even if just a few days behind. The Duchess knew that it could be weeks before they took to the sky, but she refused to abandon her chick. The Duke reminded her of his duty and loyalty to his family. The Duchess began to cry in exasperation, her feathers wet with tears. She was entirely uncertain of what they were going to do. 

The next month, on a night in August, the Great Migration began. Hundreds of veeries from the trees of Delaware took flight into the sky. It would take them approximately two weeks, plus a break in the Gulf, to complete their trip to Brazil. Veeries always fly at night and can fly over a mile high in the air. During migration, veeries never stop flapping their wings. This year, the trip started early because the veeries felt a strong hurricane season heading into the Gulf of Mexico. Whenever hurricanes were detected, the veeries left early to avoid them at their midway resting point. This year, 2005, presented the possibility of bad weather, so the veeries migrated early to avoid catastrophe. 

Dark clouds were looming in the near future, and they felt their feathers shiver as if they were peering into a darkened crystal ball. The timing of the journey was important. The Duchess was unsure they would survive their flight, but she was certain they would not survive a harsh winter. The choice, and the little life that hinged upon it, weighed on her.

For the next week, the Duke and the Duchess spent most of their time curled together, incubating the spotted sapphire jewel that had become their everything. They took turns hunting in order to stay fit for migration, but food was becoming sparse as caterpillars turned to butterflies and berries wilted in the late summer heat. They were long past joining The Great Migration now. Their friends and family had long since been in Brazil. Yet they were determined.

It happened early in the morning. A slight crack. It awoke The Duke, and he curiously looked at the egg but saw no movement and shut his eyes to go back to sleep. Then, the sound again. An ever-so-slight crack. This time: movement. 

The Duke jumped up, elation and surprise in his eyes, pecking lightly at The Duchess for what she already knew: the egg was hatching. The two parents watched as the new chick fought its way out of its spotted blue shell, cheeping and gasping as it did. It was magnificent in all its unfeathered newness. The chick had earned its life. Its mother and father knew that each breath was a fight, each movement of its head, a struggle. But it was alive and it was fighting and most importantly, it belonged to this world. 

The Duke and the Duchess fed their chick as much as possible in the days following its hatching. It became clear that they had a young male veery on their wings, and after a lot of debate, they settled on the only name that had resonance: The Prince. And so it was.

Weeks went by as The Prince grew larger, but to the dismay of The Duke and The Duchess, not stronger. He was feeble, afraid of flight, and unable to capture the sustenance needed to assist him on their long flight South. The days had started growing shorter and hotter, and each new one brought a new urgency to the family’s plight. They would need to fly as soon as possible, and the Prince was failing to thrive.                

The Duke consoled The Duchess as she quietly cooed their son to sleep each night, with singular tears falling from her almond-shaped eyes. They loved their son with everything in their small bodies, but the promise of storm clouds forming in the Gulf kept marching them toward a slow death. Whatever the case, they resolved that they would never abandon each other. They kept hope, and hope was all that they had. They knew that one day, the winds would change.

It happened on an August morning. The Prince, feathers darkened from a fledgling into a young veery, saw some particularly luscious-looking berries growing on a bush just beyond the nest. He confidently perched atop the nest, spread his wings, and flew to the bush to begin feasting on the berries.

The Prince flitted around, pulling the berries off the bush and stuffing them into his beak as if to show his mother how they tasted. The Duchess was in awe of what she had just seen. Her son had both flown and found a food source. Tears welled in her eyes. The Prince zoomed past The Duchess and back to the berry bush, encouraging his mother to follow him. The Duchess looked back at The Duke, who nodded. The Prince was ready. 

  The Prince spent the rest of the afternoon flapping around, hunting beetles and other small insects, and continuing to gorge himself on the berry bush that had blossomed near the nest. In a few days, he would have supplemented the required fat stores needed to attempt The Great Migration. The Duchess and The Duke found that familiar feeling of hope once again and waited for the day to arrive.

The evening was hot, and the cicadas screamed in the trees like tsunami sirens. The air stood still– a disadvantage to the family who was readying themselves to take flight. The Duchess and The Duke knew their route. It was instinctual. They would fly south from Delaware, towards the Gulf of Mexico, where they would stop for a brief respite before moving on to the Amazon Basin. Both parents carried concerns about their son’s ability to make the flight, but it was now or never. It was late August, and it would take them one week to fly to the Gulf. They must leave tonight. A storm had come, and if they timed it right, they would have just missed the tail end of its depression on their flight south. 

The family took a collective deep breath, inhaling the warm, humid air into their tiny lungs. The Duke began to trill, and the Duchess followed. The Prince shyly joined in. From a branch, the Duke leapt, spreading his great wings and flying high into the air. The Duchess turned around to look at The Prince, encouraging him to spread his own. The Prince hesitated for a few seconds but leapt from a branch and soared, his young wings taking flight into the evening sky. The Duchess followed, her plumage spectacular in the hymn of twilight. 

On the seventh night of flying, the small veery family had reached Louisiana. Flying over Baton Rouge, they agreed they would stop in the bayous as respite for what had been a difficult flight for The Prince. But there was a stink of decay in the air. Something was not right. The storm they had predicted had occurred, but something else, something they did not understand, had happened. 

As they flew over the city, they were forced to circle, looking for a place to land. There were no bayous left. Everything was plunged deep underwater. The flood in the city was not natural. The water carried with it the scent of oil and chemicals. Cars floated along sunken highways while buildings sat underneath the depths of black water. Death flew in the air. No seabirds were present. No trees were standing to perch upon. The devastation meant the family must stay up in the drowned city for just enough time for The Prince to rest, until they could carry on with their journey, running low on energy stores.

The veeries circled, looking for a dry spot to land. The Duke eyed a place on the roof of a house in a neighborhood with minimal flooding, and the veeries began dropping altitude. They circled the area and to their surprise, the Prince dove first. It must have been his lack of experience, or his instincts being overridden by the manmade flood, but he missed the roof of the home and tumbled into an oil-laden puddle below. The Duke, at top speed, went after The Prince and crashed-landed onto the hot asphalt, dead. In the horror of it all, The Duchess, watching The Prince struggle to breathe as the oil in the puddle dragged his feathers below the surface, toppled onto the rooftop, breaking her wing. She hopped, injured, to the side of her son. She could not help him, and eventually, he just stopped struggling.  

The Duchess was overcome. Grief struck her small body in a way she never knew to be possible. She stared at the bodies of the Duke and the Prince, and tears streamed from her almond-shaped eyes and onto the asphalt below. She would not leave them. And so it was.

Days later, long after their bodies had been reclaimed by the Earth, the Duchess went hopping around for food. The Duke had been right to pick a spot in the city where the floodwaters were not as high, so she was able to scrounge for bits of food here and there to get by. The Duchess felt lost in her grief. Her broken wing meant she could not carry on her migration, and that she would likely die in this drowned city. She preferred it that way, to die with The Duke and The Prince. 

On one particular morning, the Duchess had managed to perch herself atop a porch. Unlike the others, this morning was cooler, the sun less intense, and a small breeze blew through. She felt it in her heart before she heard it from her beak: a trill. Her trill. A full birdsong. The Duchess solemnly sang for The Prince and The Duke and for all they had survived. 

Curiously, her singing was answered by the sound of a low trill. Like the flapping of wings in the night or the hatching of a single, blue egg. 

The Duchess trilled, and the sound answered. They played this game until The Duchess saw a human, who looked like an old man, carrying a large, long golden contraption shaped like a caterpillar. 

“Welcome to the Treme, baby! Ain’t you ever seen a trombone before?” It said. 

The Duchess hopped around as she trilled along with the trombone. Veeries are known for their beautiful song. 

“Now what’s that there, little lady? A broken wing?” The human said. 

The Duchess let the man gently place her into his hands. 

“I reckon we can stay together,” he said. “This whole city’s broken, but we don’t have to be. Now what was that song you was playin’ again?”

And the Duchess trilled.