The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate Read online

  1. A RARE EGG, INDEED

  2. MOBBING CALL

  3. JUNCO’S VIGIL

  4. STRANGE HATCHLING

  5. AN AWKWARD GOD

  6. THE DOLDRUMS

  7. SHIPWRECKED!

  8. FISHER’S PREY

  9. TEACH’S MOB

  10. BRIARLOCH

  11. HILLARY

  12. A DARING RESCUE

  13. TUNNEL OF HORRORS

  14. LOST AND FOUND

  15. THE PIRATES’ TALE

  16. SEEDS OF DISSENT

  17. THE CROWS’ FORGE

  18. BATS

  19. BLACK POINT

  20. FLIGHT FROM BRIARLOCH

  21. SWIMMING IN CIRCLES

  22. CROOKED WISDOM

  23. THE HUNT

  24. THE BATTLE AT ECHO LAKE

  25. A LONG NIGHT

  26. BATTLE FOR THE GROSBEAK

  27. MIGRATION

  Whilst fighting fearsome Finch’s fleet,

  we’ve sung out, “Yo! Heave ho!”

  And hearing hawks hanging high

  have I nobly faced the foe;

  Then put round the grog, so we’ve

  that on our prog,

  We’ll laugh in strife’s homely face,

  and sing, “Yo! Heave ho!”

  We’ll laugh in strife’s homely face,

  and sing, “Yo! Heave ho!”

  The captain of the Grosbeak had some strange and terrifying lore connected with his name. It was said, for instance, that Blue Jay would eat two or three songbird eggs for supper every evening. For this unspeakable horror, more than a few birds viewed him as a cannibal. Other reports held that he was immortal, an evil wizard, a shape-shifter, a scallywag, and generally the most bloodthirsty and fearsome pirate to sail the high skies. As a result, few ships’ captains offered any resistance when they spotted Blue Jay’s ship, the Grosbeak, flying the Jolly Robin, a black flag that bore the chilling image of a Thrush’s skull laid over the crossed bones of the same.

  Those who sailed with Blue Jay knew better and enjoyed a hearty laugh over the steady stream of stories regarding their commander’s gruesome reputation. Yes, Blue Jay and his pirates could put on a spectacular show that would frighten the feathers off the crew of any ship they pursued. But, truth be told, the ghastly rumors amounted to a pack of lies. But this never bothered the pirate captain. Blue Jay understood the value of perpetuating useful lies, and he worked hard at keeping his reputation as loathsome and awful as possible.

  As ruthless as he reportedly was, his crew knew him to be a stalwart optimist who was a fair, brave, merciful, and sometimes even wise captain. Mostly, he was a restless, intrepid adventurer whose enthusiasm infected the crew, and as a result, they would follow him to the ends of the earth to realize his audacious schemes and magnificent obsessions . . . Which brings us back to the subject of eggs.

  The truth about Blue Jay and eggs was that he took great joy in stealing them, not as food but as treasure. He loved them as objects and had no interest at all in eating them. Hence, his egg collection was vast, filling an entire cabin with an extraordinary assortment of colors, shapes, and sizes. Occasionally, one of his collection would hatch, incubated accidentally in the warm hold of his ship. In fact, some of his crew had originated from eggs he collected: Blackcap came from a subelliptical, creamy-white egg with fine, purplish-brown speckles; Thrasher from a long, greenish-blue egg with red-brown speckles; and Chuck-Will’s-Widow from a large, elliptical, pinkish egg mottled with gray, purple, and brown.

  “The trouble with eggs,” Jay would often joke to his adopted offspring, “is that they sometimes grow legs!”

  As convenient as it might seem to hatch your own crew, pirates like Jay are not the most dependable parents and are not well suited to having fluffy little chicks underfoot, tugging at the pirates’ frocks and looking for someone to regurgitate food into their greedy, gaping mouths.

  So, in recent years, Blue Jay had sworn off eggs in favor of other things that happened to fascinate him at any particular moment: jewels, contraptions of all sorts, weapons, and anything metal or shiny. As a result, his egg collection had had no new acquisitions for some time.

  Then, one glorious spring morning, Blue Jay came to possess a new egg that was to change the fate and reputation of the pirates forever.

  The pirates were digging up treasured acorns that they had buried during a previous journey along the shore of Long Pond. They were hauling a bundle from the sand when Junco, the ship’s navigator, was nearly flattened by a very large egg that suddenly rolled out of the grass and onto the thin ice of the pond. It was chased by a half-crazed raccoon who had apparently stolen the egg from a nearby nest and was determined to have it for his lunch. The raccoon paused briefly at the icy shore and chattered angrily at the pirates, his back arched and fur spiking in every direction, making sure the crew understood that this was his egg and his alone. He snarled and bared his teeth as he loped and slipped across the icy surface, which promptly cracked, dunking the striped bandit into the frigid water below. This did not do much to slow the raccoon’s progress as he plowed determinedly through the brittle ice toward his lunch, which was spinning like a top on the surface of the pond.

  The sight of that egg rekindled an old flame in Blue Jay’s heart, and once again he was smitten. More than any that had come before, he just had to have that egg as part of his collection.

  “Crayee!” he cried. “That’s a rare egg, to be sure, and ours for the poaching!” He dispatched three of his crew — Junco, Thrasher, and Blackcap — to provide a distraction for the raccoon, and the pirates gleefully launched a relentless assault on the raccoon’s head while Jay prepared to collect his prize from the pond.

  “Lower Tarsus Six!” he called to the first mate, Crossbill.

  “Lower Tarsus Six!” Crossbill echoed, and the order rang from the rigging, through the hold, and into the belly of the pirate ship floating in the air above them.

  “Tarsus Six! Tarsus Six!” repeated the crew.

  Tarsus is a word for a bird’s leg. Jay’s flying ship, the Grosbeak, had twelve tarsi altogether, or six pairs. Each of these was crafted out of hardwood and bits of metal, fashioned to perform a specific function. Some served as anchors; some were for cutting or bashing or drilling. Tarsus Six was used exclusively for grabbing.

  So, Tarsus Six was lowered. Its large wooden claws shot open and then closed, ever so gently, around the shell. The egg was lifted from the ice, carried through the air, and set to rest on the deck of the Grosbeak. Once the egg was safely aboard, Junco, Thrasher, and Blackcap ceased their attack on the raccoon and promptly flew back to the ship. The poor, bewildered raccoon was left swimming in circles with nothing but the cold, sluggish fish and sleeping turtles in the frigid water deep below.

  Chuck-Will’s-Widow, a burly plug of a pirate with a particularly mean disposition, carried the weighty treasure down to the cabin in the belly of the ship, where Jay’s egg collection was stored in a gallery. Chuck was a strong bird with sturdy legs, wide shoulders, and powerful wings, but his most prominent feature was his extraordinarily wide mouth, which extended from the tip of his sharp beak down to the top of his chest. Chuck was followed belowdecks by Junco, who, in contrast, was a modest ball of slate-gray feathers and was half the size of Chuck. She had a white chest, dark eyes, and a black cowl around her face that played up her pink beak. Junco was a brilliant navigator, a master sword fighter, and an earnest, scrappy sailor.

  Chuck set the huge egg down carefully on a satin pillow, then stood back and frowned. Apart from its considerable size, the egg’s appearance was unimpressive when compared wi
th the colors and patterns of other eggs in collections past. “Rather homely mudder, says I!” Chuck stroked the bristles around his bill. “Hardly resembles a bird egg!”

  Junco, who was inspecting the shell for cracks, was evidently annoyed by the comment. “Oh, it’s a bird all right,” she said in the egg’s defense. “And prettier than the one you hatched out of, I’d wager.” She then produced a soft cloth from the pocket of her waistcoat and began to polish the shell.

  Chuck slapped the egg hard and laughed. He had a laugh that sounded like a wet cough. “Haw! No, ma’am! That’s no bird egg! That there is a turtle! Likely a snapper, to boot! Haw!”

  This ignited an argument between the two that went something like this:

  “It’s a bird!”

  “Naw, I reckon it’s a snake!”

  “A bird!”

  “Maybe a rattler! Hissssssss!”

  “This is a bird egg, you idiot!”

  And so on, until Blue Jay entered, whistling a familiar hauling song:

  Roll! Roll! Roll in the egg, boys.

  Roll in! Roll in! Away!

  Pull! Pull! Pull the lines in.

  Pull in! Pull in! Aweigh!

  With a sweep of his wing, Jay motioned for Chuck and Junco to leave the cabin. Without a word, Chuck stepped out of the gallery, but Junco stayed behind, standing her ground with a certain, stubborn resolve.

  “What’s this?” said Jay. “Are you stuck to the floor there, Junco?”

  Junco seemed flustered and blurted, “No, sir, I just thought you might want me to finish polishing the egg.”

  Jay inspected the egg. “You’ve done a fine job already,” said Jay. “You can report on deck now. Make ready to sail. I need you at the helm, Junco.”

  But Junco remained.

  Jay raised his brow disapprovingly, and after a brief stare-down, Junco turned and left the gallery and joined the crew to haul in the lines and set sail, away from the skies over Long Pond.

  Alone in the gallery, Jay went back to inspecting the giant egg. He stroked its smooth surface with his wing feathers, rocked it from side to side, pecked at it a couple of times, and finally cawed loudly at it. Reasonably satisfied that the egg would not hatch, Blue Jay went back to the business of captaining a pirate ship, which entailed wandering all over the earth searching for big, fat ships to plunder.

  “Billy! Wake up! Wake up, you fool!” came a voice from the darkness. The young sparrow startled, flapped his wings, and twitched his head every which way in an attempt to appear as if he was, and always had been, awake.

  “Wasn’t s-s-sleeping, Henry!” he slurred at his companion. “’Twas thinking, that’s all. Thinking!”

  “You were snoring!” said Henry, whose stern, stubby beak poked out of the hooded shawl that covered his head. “If Poppa Fox finds out that either of us has been sleeping on our watch, he’ll have our flight feathers clipped and we’ll be grounded for the season, slavin’ in his kitchen for the rest of our lives, mark my word!”

  The two sparrows were perched high in the tangle of vines that surrounded Briarloch, a poor farming village sitting near the banks of a nameless, thinly frozen pond in the middle of Paxwood Forest, which sprawled across the northern reaches of Thrushia. Briarloch was home to sixty or more sparrows, and as it was the middle of the night, most of them were sound asleep in their homes while a few stalwart sentries, including Billy and Henry, kept a watchful eye out for intruders. The two sparrows ruffled their feathers against the cold night. Though it was early spring, winter seemed determined to linger about and play cruel pranks on the season, dusting new blossoms with snow and glazing the soil with a crust of ice that foiled the farmers’ attempts to till their fields.

  The long winter had depleted much of the sparrows’ stores, and food was dangerously scarce everywhere. These harsh conditions made for desperate times that turned even decent, honest birds into thieves. Lately it seemed as if the forest — if not the entire colony — was swarming with all manner of thieves, bandits, migrants, and other ne’er-do-wells such as crows who thought nothing of plundering the stores of Thrushian villages. The Thrushian army was supposed to provide soldiers to protect their village. Lord knows they paid for it in the grain that they were forced to give the government after each harvest. Half of what they produced was shipped off to the capital every autumn, leaving the sparrows with barely enough food to make it through the winter. However, the residents of Briarloch had not seen a Thrushian soldier or official for five months, since the day their grain was shipped away. Since then, it seemed that the Thrushians were more interested in protecting their own stores rather than those of the poor farmers. With no assistance from the government, the sparrows had no choice but to defend themselves as best they could. The sparrows stored their grain in an area named the silo, a large, dome-shaped cave of briars that formed a nearly impenetrable shelter from wind and rain. It was so well protected that it was considered to be the safest area of the village, which was why younger, less experienced birds were chosen to sit watch there. It was considered a rite of passage, a step toward adulthood.

  Henry and Billy were the best of friends and were especially pleased to be assigned to guard the silo together. They thought it would be good fun to stay up all night, eat breakfast before everyone else was awake, and then be able to sleep away most of the next day. Henry had warned Billy to get as much sleep as he could the day prior to their watch, but Billy paid him no mind and spent most of the afternoon practicing his sword and switching techniques. Now in the middle of the night, he was paying the price, and it wasn’t long before he was once again dozing off to sleep.

  “BILLY! YOU’RE SNORING AGAIN!”

  “WAS NOT!” said Billy.

  “You most certainly were!” said Henry.

  “I was pretending to snore,” said Billy indignantly, “to fool them prowlers.”

  “Oh, yeah. Brilliant!” said Henry. “You’d fool them all right. You sounded like a snarling fisher cat. Snorrk!”

  Billy joined in —“Snorrrrrk!”— and the two birds laughed till the cold squelched their humor.

  “Crikes! It’s cold!” cried Billy, ruffling his feathers. “I tell you, I almost wish a prowler would come along so I could warm myself by giving him a taste of my switch!”

  “Why don’t you practice, then? That’ll warm you up enough,” said Henry, fluffing up his feathers and pulling his hood tight. Switching was a form of self-defense involving a great deal of acrobatics with a staff or spear. The technique favored speed over strength and was very effective in fighting larger, slower creatures than themselves. Sparrows were required to learn how to use a switch soon after they were fledged, and it was common to see young sparrows practicing their technique for hours at a time.

  On that night, Billy warmed himself by flying from branch to branch with his staff, spinning and lunging at invisible intruders, mostly crows. With each imaginary conquest, he shouted, “DIE, YE THIEVIN’ PIRATE SCUM!” or “VICTORY!” or simply “ARRRGH!”

  Henry laughed. “Quiet, Billy, or you’ll wake up the entire village with your ranting!”

  “At least they’ll know we’re awake and on guard!” said Billy “HA! DIE, HEATHEN!” He spun again and whacked at the briars a couple of times. Then, with a vicious thrust of his staff, he managed to get himself completely tangled in a dense knot of particularly thorny vines.

  For a while Henry watched in amusement while Billy struggled to free himself from the brambles.

  “Don’t just sit there,” Billy cried. “Help me, will ya?”

  Henry flew to Billy and inspected the mess he was in. “You’re really stuck here, mate.”

  “I know I’m stuck!” said Billy. “Please, just unhook me!”

  “All right, then, but hold still! I can’t get ahold of anything if you keep moving around.”

  Henry had just begun to pull away one of the thorns when from behind them they heard, “ARRAH, NOW!”

  The two birds froze where they w
ere.

  “Oh, no!” Billy said under his breath.

  “Is it him?” whispered Henry without turning to look.

  On the ground below them stood a rotund, scowling sparrow named Poppa Fox and two other large, thuggish-looking characters named Covey and Cyrus. Though they were the same age, Henry and Billy did not get along with Covey and Cyrus, who apparently enjoyed nothing more than relentlessly harassing smaller birds as a way to show off their superior size and strength. They smirked cruelly at Henry and Billy’s predicament.

  Poppa Fox leaned on his switch and squinted into the brambles. “WHAT IN THE HECK ’N’ HELL IS GOIN’ ON IN HERE?” he growled.

  Poppa Fox was the owner of the Sooty Fox inn and tavern and was, without argument, the most respected of the village elders. A veteran of the Colonial War, he had lost his left leg in battle and relied on a peg leg fashioned out of a twig to hop from place to place. Poppa Fox had a personality that matched his substantial girth. He could be exceedingly kind when pleased and furious as a hurricane when riled. Poppa Fox was clearly in one of his stormier moods that night. “WOLL?” he bellowed. “I’M WAITING!”

  Billy stammered, “W-well, P-P-P-Poppa, I was p-practicing with my switch, you see . . . I was . . .” Billy’s courage left him, and his voice trailed off behind it.

  Henry chimed in for his friend. “Sorry, Poppa. We were trying to stay warm by practicing our switching.”

  Poppa Fox’s face darkened a bit more. “Yor not here to play games. Yor here to be on the lookout for intruders. Nothing is growing these days, and our rations are low. There’s no tellin’ how long this stinkin’ cold’s gonna last, and we can’t afford to have what’s left of our food stolen!”

  “Yes, Poppa!” said Henry and Billy together.

  “Covey! Cyrus!” Poppa Fox barked. “Don’t just stand there smirking! Help Henry get Billy out of there, will you?”

  The brutes flew to Billy and set to their task eagerly, shoving Henry out of the way and yanking Billy out of the briars, tearing his clothes in the process. Before releasing Billy, Covey pulled him close and hissed in his ear, “You woke me from me sleep, doofus! There’ll be hell ta pay later, mark my words!”