Dear Olly (2 page)

To begin with, it was because she knew Matt would have wanted her to do it. But the more she watched them the more she became absorbed in their lives. She loved their elegant agility in flight, their dogged perseverance, and their faithful and total devotion to their young. Always reluctant to leave her swallows, she had to be bullied and pestered and cajoled to come in for supper each evening. She was very careful to remove the ladder each time she left the hide, just
in case there was a cat on the prowl. And if she ever saw a cat anywhere nearby, she would turn terrier and chase it off.

This time there were only three fledglings, three yellow beaks peeking out of the nest – such ugly, scrawny-looking birds to start with, Olly thought, and then, so soon, sleek and blue and beautiful. Olly wanted to be there this time, to see the moment they flew. Each morning she checked the nest before she left for school, and every afternoon she raced home from school and up the ladder.

She was sitting up there in the hide one September afternoon when her mother came home from work. “Haven’t they flown yet?” she asked from outside the garage. “They’d better hurry. They’ll need to be on their way south very soon
now. It’ll be October next week. You tell them. Then come in for your tea.”

Olly stayed with them for a few moments more, willing them to fly, and then telling them to as well. “You’ve got a long way to go, d’you hear me? Africa. It’s thousands of miles away. That’s where Matt is. You can’t just sit there feeding. You’ve got to get going.”

She left the fledglings gazing back at her, beady-eyed and blinking. She ran inside, downed her tea in a few gulps, picked up a sticky bun and a packet of crisps and was out again within minutes. Two of them had already flown and were now up on the garage roof, side by side and begging to be fed. She checked in the nest. The last one would fly at any moment. Determined not to miss the moment, she waited and watched. He was perched on the edge of the nest, hopping about, flapping his wings, but he wouldn’t take off, he wouldn’t fly. No matter how much Olly willed it, he just would not fly.

Some time later, her mother called her in again, for supper. Olly protested, but it was no use. Her mother was adamant. She sat her down in the kitchen
and made her eat a proper meal. When Olly ran back into the garage, a large black cat shot out right past her. She had left the ladder up. The nest had been completely destroyed and lay scattered on the ground. The last fledgling was nowhere to be seen. She found him, eventually, wings spread out and still as death, behind a watering can in the darkest corner of the garage. Olly gathered him into her hands and rushed indoors.

The kitchen instantly became a casualty ward, her mother deft and calm as she examined him under the light. Olly stood by the sink, crying in her grief and remorse.

“Well, his wings aren’t broken and there’s been very little bleeding,” said her
mother after a moment or two. “I think he’s just stunned, traumatised. I’ll be honest with you though, Olly, his chances are still not very good. I’ll give him a few drops of glucose to get his strength back, and then all we can do is keep him warm somewhere, and just hope he’ll recover.”

The glucose seemed to have no effect whatsoever. They laid him down in a cardboard box close to the stove, and Olly sat over him and watched him. Only his eyes moved. Sometimes, it appeared he was looking directly up at her, and their eyes would meet. Olly stayed with him all evening, sitting by the box, hoping, praying. She wanted to stay up all night, but her mother wouldn’t allow it.

“Worrying over him won’t help, Olly. We’ve done all we can. You’ve got school tomorrow.” And she took her off to bed.

Quite unable to sleep, Olly crept downstairs in the still of the night. The swallow had not moved. She reached in and stroked his head with the back of her finger. “Come on,” she whispered. “Live. Please live.” Her mother found her by the box an hour later, fast asleep, and led her up to bed where she slept heavily for the rest of the night.

Olly was woken suddenly. “Olly! Olly! Come quickly!” Olly took the stairs in threes. Her mother was standing by the stove. She had the swallow in her hands, and she was laughing out loud. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried. “He’s just raring to fly. You can feel the strength in him. You know what we’ll do, Olly. We’ll put a ring on his leg before we let him go. It won’t take a second. It won’t hurt him. Then we’ll know him when he comes
back next year, won’t we? Have a look in my bag of tricks. There’s a packet of rings in there I keep for the bird sanctuary. It’s in there somewhere, I know it is.”

Olly rummaged in the bag and found what she was looking for. The ring was slipped on in a trice – a bright scarlet ring.

The two fledglings were still perched on the garage roof, as Olly had hoped they would be, the parent birds swooping overhead. Olly fetched the ladder and held it fast while her mother climbed, very gingerly, one hand on the ladder, one holding the swallow. At the top, she reached out and set him down on the ridge, harried all the while by two very agitated parent birds. The rescued fledgling fluttered his wings, scratched himself and shifted along at once to join his two siblings.

“A proper little hero,” said Olly’s mother as she stepped down off the ladder. “That’s what he is, a proper little hero.” They stood back to watch and admire.

“Hero. Hero. We’ll call him Hero,” said Olly. “The perfect name for him.”

When at last one of the parent birds flew down and fed him, Olly and her mother hugged each other in triumph.
And when some minutes later he took off, flew across the drive and landed safely in the cherry tree, they cheered him all the way.

Hero stayed about for a few weeks. Olly watched him avidly as he learnt the whole repertoire of swallow acrobatics: diving, swooping, skimming, hovering, twisting, turning, gliding, soaring. Through binoculars, Olly could sometimes still spot her scarlet-ringed swallow amongst the dozens of swallows now lining up on the telephone wire. She often
thought she saw him – a young swallow on his own – out of her classroom window, swooping down to drink from the puddles in the play-ground, or sitting perched on the wall by the school gate. She hoped it might be him, but he was too far away for her to be sure and she knew it probably wasn’t.

Then one afternoon, on her way home from school, she saw that there were no swallows any more on the telephone wires, none skimming over the cricket pitch, none playing chase amongst the chimney pots. They were gone. Hero had gone. It left Olly feeling very empty and very alone.

“He’ll come back. Most of them do, you know,” said her mother that night when she came in to say goodnight to Olly.

“You think so? You really think so?”

“We’ll look for him next spring, next April. Fingers crossed.”

“He’ll be going where Matt is, won’t he? To Africa,” said Olly. “Maybe they’ll meet up, you never know.”

“Do you know what I wish?” her mother said, sitting down beside her. “I wish I was a swallow, just like Hero. I’d fly all over Africa till I found Matt.”

“And I’d go with you,” said Olly.

H
ero joined the others as they flocked to a nearby lake, and for several days he hunted there, skimming over the water after midges and mosquitoes. He was safe here with his family, in amongst the thousands upon thousands of milling swallows and martins; and all the while his strength grew within him. At dusk they gathered to roost in the trees and reed beds around the lake. Every night in the roost the air of expectancy grew. Every night the birds were slower to settle to their silence and their sleep.

Then one morning, early, the hobby falcon came gliding high over the lake. They heard his killer
kew-kew
call and
scattered in terror. Down came the hobby, swifter than any bird Hero had ever seen. Hero felt the wind of him as he passed by, and swerved aside only just in time. But the hobby was not after him, he was after a young martin, slower and more stuttering in flight than Hero – and for the martin there was no escape.

The flock flew that same morning, a spontaneous lift off, swirling out over the lake, a whispering cloud, darkening the sky as it went. They wheeled south, south towards the sea, hoping they had seen the last of the hobby falcon. But the hobby was not far behind, for he too was bound for Africa. He would fly all the way with them, picking off the youngest, the slowest, the weakest, whenever he felt like it. He had done it before.

Out over the coast of France he struck once again. Hero knew, as they all knew, that they must stay together, stay close and never fall behind. They flew high, where they could see the danger, where the flying was easier anyway, where they could float on the warm air. But they had to come down to drink, to feed, and that was when the hobby falcon pounced. He
would appear in amongst them out of nowhere, wings cutting through the air like scythes, shadowing them, stalking them. He took his time, but once the hobby falcon had singled out his prey, there could be only one outcome. No amount of fancy aerobatics could deceive him. He would simply follow, close and kill. He was remorseless, tireless, merciless. There was always a strange sense of relief when he had killed – the survivors knew they were safe, then, for a while at least.

On they flew, on over the vineyards,
on over the mountains.

It was evening over Spain, and the air was heavy with a gathering storm. The birds tried to rise above it, but the storm was suddenly upon them and could not be avoided. They bunched as they flew into it, desperately seeking each other’s shelter, but were scattered at once by a whirling wind that whipped them about the blackening sky. Hero found himself alone. Lightning flashed and crackled all around him. Pounded by the rain and by hailstones, too, Hero dived earthwards, faster now in his fear than he’d ever flown
before. Still the storm was all around him, still he could not see the ground. Then, below, a glow of sudden light, some small hope of escape. But Hero found that his sodden wings would not beat as they should. He was falling like a stone – down, down towards the light. He could only spread his wings wide, willing them to take flight again. When at long last they did, he found himself floating down into the pool of light, a light dazzling bright and full of noise. But Hero was not afraid. He was out of the storm and that was all that mattered.

It was a football stadium. He sought out a convenient perch, the crossbar of the goalpost, settled and fluttered the wet from his wings. Here he would rest.

The goalkeeper looked up at him and laughed. “Hello, friend,” he said. “Stay as
long as you like. I’ll be doing my best to see you’re not disturbed, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

Hero knew that he could not rest for long, that all the while the flock would be moving further away, would be more difficult to find. He had to go, and go now. He fluffed up his feathers and shook himself ready. At that moment, the television cameras found him and focused on him. There he was – a giant swallow – up on the big screen.
Twenty thousand voices cheered him as he took off and flew, up out of the light into the darkness beyond.

Even in the black of night, even without the others to guide him, Hero sensed in which direction he must go, where south must be. But he could not know where his friends were, how far away, nor how high they would be flying. Hero heard the storm still rumbling overhead. He would fly low, low and fast, and just hope to find them at first light. It was the dread of losing them, of being left behind altogether that gave new power to his wings.

All night long Hero flew, but as the sun came up and warmed his back he saw he was still quite alone. He fed constantly on the wing, and the feeding was good, the flies fat and plentiful.
There was water whenever he needed it, which was often. It was as he was drinking, as he was skimming the blue stillness of a mountain lake, that he felt a sudden cold shadow pass over him. He saw the reflection in the water below. The hobby falcon! He shrieked in his terror and tried frantically to gain height and speed, twisting and turning to avoid the talons outstretched just above him, ready to snatch him from the air. One claw ripped a feather from his back, but did not touch the flesh. Then Hero was up and away, climbing towards the sun. But the hobby falcon came after him, his wing beats stiff and strong.

Now, Hero’s only chance lay in his agility, and in his ability to deceive his enemy in flight. For sheer speed the hobby falcon would have the better of him.
He feinted, he weaved, he dodged – but the hobby was always still there, right behind him, and waiting for just the right moment. For hour upon hour the chase went on over the parched high sierras, along lush river valleys, in amongst the roofs and chimneys and aerials of hilltop villages and towns.

Hero was tiring, and tiring fast now. There was a forest below filling the valley. He saw his one last chance. With the hobby still on his tail, he dived
suddenly down in amongst the shadows of the cork trees. He flitted through the branches, flashed through the dappled light, seeking the darkest depths of the forest. A glance back, and then another. The hobby was nowhere to be seen. On he sped, just to be sure, to be very sure. His eyes scanned the forest about him. The hobby had not followed him. He had lost him. He was safe at last. He landed, his heart beating wildly, and perched there for some time, on the lookout all the
while for the stubby-tailed silhouette he so much dreaded, listening for the killer
kew-kew
call he never again wanted to hear.

Hero had stayed long enough. He had to go, he had to risk it sometime. He lifted off his perch out of the dark depths of the forest and flew away south, straight as an arrow, high over the sunlit sierras.

The hobby came down on him like a bolt from the blue, missing him by only a whisker at the first pass, so close Hero could see the dark glint in his eye. The bare sierras stretched away to the horizon – they offered no hiding place. Hero dived, and the death shadow followed him. He cried out, steeling himself for cruel claws that would tear the life out of him.

A gunshot blasted the air about him.

Hero saw the hobby stagger and stutter in flight, and hurtle to earth, where he bounced and bounced, and then was still. Hunters came running over the hills with their dogs.

Hero could feel the wind off the sea ahead, and the heat of the desert beyond, beckoning him on. The sea was quickly crossed. He drank from a swimming
pool, beside a hotel of white marble, in Morocco. Children were playing there, laughing with delight every time he came swooping down to dip into the blue of the water beside them. But once the children had gone inside, once he had drunk and fed his fill, Hero set off across the desert. He flew by the moon, by the stars, keeping low over the sand.

The great red sun came up over the desert and chased away the cold of the night. Still no water, still alone. Hero cried out for his friends again and again as he flew.
Tswit. Tswit. Tswit.
Never an answering call, never a sign of them. All day and another night and another day, Hero flew, gliding, resting on the thermals whenever he could, for he felt his strength ebbing away fast. Without water he could not go on much longer.
And now there came a hot desert wind blowing against him, slowing him. He saw the billowing sandstorm in the distance, and heard its dreadful roaring. To be caught in it would be certain death. He would have to fly over it. With the very last of his strength he beat his way skywards. Try as he did, Hero could not entirely avoid the stinging lash of the fringes of the storm, but at least the murderous heart of it had passed safely beneath him.

Hero glided now because there was no power in his wings to do anything else. He was completely exhausted. That last stupendous effort had finished him utterly. He floated on the air as far as he could. He called out desperately for his companions.
Tswit. Tswit. Tswit.
Suddenly, the whole desert seemed to be
answering him. He called again, and from the heat haze below came a clamouring chorus of welcome. The haze darkened and became trees – an oasis of palm trees amongst the sand dunes below him, where every tree was alive with birds, all of them singing out their greetings.

Hero floated down to join them. They were there in their thousands, swallows and martins, and swifts, too. Hero landed where he needed to, right at the water’s edge. It didn’t matter a bit to him when a camel came down to drink beside him. Camel and swallow drank together, oblivious to anything but the sweet cooling relief of the water.

When Hero had finished his drinking, he bathed himself, dunking himself again and again, and then preening his feathers clean. He had a feast of flies that evening too, before he settled to roost in the trees, amongst his family, the smoke of the Tuareg fires all about them.

Morning brought the sound of Tuareg children playing around their tents, and Hero fluttered down to watch – he liked to be near children. Camels chewed and groaned and grunted nearby, and Hero fed hungrily on the flies that hovered over them. As the Tuareg knelt to morning prayer, they heard the call of departure sounding through the oasis,
then the murmur of thousands of shivering wings as every swallow and every martin and every swift lifted in unison out of the trees and swirled southwards and away out over the desert.

Another day, another night, and they left the desert behind them. Below them now were the first scrubby trees, here and there a village, and then the wide grassy plains of Africa, waterholes and rivers and great lakes. Here they could feed and drink as they went. Here, everything seemed plentiful. There were great herds of wandering wildebeest drifting over the
plain below, loping giraffes as tall as the trees, leaping impala, slumbering lions, elephants browsing, wallowing, trumpeting, and new birds that made new sounds.

Then, from somewhere below him in amongst the trees, Hero heard the sound of excited voices and a sudden squawking. Several swallows peeled off the flock and drifted down to investigate, and Hero went with them. Here was a solitary baboon squatting on a rock, here a herd of zebras startled into a snorting stampede, and all the while the babble of shouting voices and that strident squawking. Hero
flew on so entranced by it all, so intrigued, that he had not even noticed that he was alone. He swooped down through the canopy of the trees, down towards the voices, down towards the squawking.

The net, a giant parrot trap, was stretched from tree to tree right across the clearing. Hero did not see it until he flew into it. He fought to extricate himself, but his leg and his wing were caught fast. The more he flapped and struggled the more he became entangled. He cried out in his pain and terror.
Tswee, Tswee. Tswee, Tswee.
Below him and above him, hanging there in the net like Hero, hopelessly enmeshed, were several small grey parrots and one larger, brightly coloured parrot that squawked louder than all the others. The hunters were hauling down the net, plucking out the
parrots they wanted to keep and stuffing them into their sacks. Hero was grabbed, tugged and twisted, and at last wrenched free of the net, before being thrown aside like so much rubbish.

He was quite unable to move. A few metres away from him, and lying in the long grass, was the scarlet ring. It had come off in the struggle. As the bird hunters finished their business, Hero drifted into unconsciousness. When he woke the world was silent and still about him. His leg hurt him terribly, but he could hop on the other one, with the help of his wings. That was when he saw the cobra, poised above him to strike, puffing himself into a fury. Hero flapped away frantically, half hopping, half flying. The cobra’s first strike
missed. By the second, Hero was airborne and well out of danger. He found he could manoeuvre only clumsily, but he managed to fly up through the trees, up towards the open sky. Once there, he cried out for help, cried out for his companions. But he was alone in an empty sky, and completely bewildered. He had no idea where he was, nor where he should go.

He was driven by one powerful compulsion, simply to keep going for as long as he could. For many days he flew on, deeper and deeper into the heart of Africa, stopping ever more frequently to rest his damaged leg. Landing was difficult for him. He could perch on only his one good leg. The crushed claws on his left leg hung loose and useless. But he could drink, he could hunt, and he could fly.

Early one morning, as Hero was flying over lush mountainsides, skimming the treetops, he found himself suddenly lost in a blinding mist. He flew down, and after several false attempts, landed at last in amongst the dense foliage of the jungle. There was a stream below to drink from and all the insects he could wish for. He sat on lookout, until he was quite sure it was safe, and then dropped down to the stream to drink. He was in mid-flight when he heard a thunderous pounding close by, and then a great crashing in the undergrowth. Hero flew up in alarm and perched to watch.

A massive silverback gorilla was coming down to drink, and he was followed by his entire family. Afterwards, they settled down right below him to do
their grooming – grunting and groaning contentedly – until at last they all fell asleep in a huddle, all except the silverback, who went and sat on his own some way off. Hero called to him.
Tswit. Tswit,
and the silverback looked up lazily and considered him for a while with his great brown eyes, before he dozed off.