CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

This is a humor/fantasy short story I wrote a little while ago. It's based on my novel's world, and stars one of the three main characters of my novel. You don't have to have knowledge of my novel to enjoy this little side-story, though. Ara Macau is a long-lived man who has the ability to speak with birds.

This was inspired by the chickens belonging to my friend and neighbor, Tiffany. Anyone who's raised chickens should get a special kick out of this.

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Conversations with chickens




Ara Macau decided to wander out to the chicken-yard. He listened to the birds in the trees as he walked through Castle Gerherlaxia’s courtyard, out to the palace’s animal-pens. The sparrows and the grackles were engaged in their usual conversations – about scavenging the scraps from the castle kitchen when the maids took out the garbage, about nest-building, about the palace cats and harrowing tales of narrow escapes from their claws.

His feet fell softly on the cold courtyard stone. He was barefoot, and felt no need to put on his boots for such a short journey. He was just going out to talk with the chickens, after all. The cooks were preparing chicken for dinner tonight. Ara Macau had eaten the flesh of birds before. He could speak with birds, and understand their various languages, so he was often reluctant to dine when it came to eating a meal of poultry, but he had done it on occasion. It was the way of nature. Many of the bird species he spoke with ate their fellow creatures of feather without a second thought. The hawks and the eagles survived this way.

He’d had the occasional meal of pheasant or grouse when he lived in the woods and when he was traveling. He’d been eating a lot of chicken and game hen lately, as prepared by the castle cooks. Ara did not feel entirely guilty about eating certain birds. Chickens, in his experience with them, were so unintelligent, they barely were aware that they were even alive in the first place.

Still, he felt this day that he wanted to make a trip out to the chicken-yard to listen to and talk with Castle Geherlaxia’s chickens. It was a hot day, so he was clad only in pants. The sun glistened off his tan shoulders and off the various light-pinkish, puckered scars he bore from his life as a warrior. He glanced at one on his left arm. It was fading, like so many of his old wounds had before. The fading made him sad. He remembered that wound. He’d gotten it when he was courting his lost love, Sarafia. He was wounded while defending her honor in a swordfight. The old scar was one of the few things he had left to remember her by.

Ara stepped into the dusty pen and closed the gate behind him. All around him was the sound of shrieking.

“Monster!”

“Monster! Run!”

To anyone who did not innately understand the speech of birds, the sounds in the chicken yard were merely the squawks and clucking of chickens. To Ara Macau, they were screams of terror.

He sat down in the dust and spoke softly to the fowl in the pen.

“Be not afraid,” he said gently, “I will not harm you.”

A fat white hen stopped in her tracks and looked right at him. He smiled. The clucking of the other chickens died down to “Oh! What is that?” “Bug!” “No, that’s my bug!” and the other simple things that chickens talk about.

“Whaaaa?” the hen clucked, slowly approaching him.

“Yes, little one,” Ara said to her, “I shall not harm you...”

The hen continued to stare. She stood with one of her rough, scaly feet curled, looking at Ara Macau curiously. Ara shifted his weight to a more comfortable position. The hen fled from him as he made that sudden movement. “Monster!” she screamed.

Ara sighed. He heard another hen clucking in one of the nesting boxes in the coop. “Ugh!” she squawked, “Ungh!”

The man smiled and scratched his beard. She was laying an egg. The diminutive red-feathered creature shifted and stood up.

“Oh?” she clucked. “What’s that?”

Ara Macau slapped his forehead. He tried to remember the last time he listened to chickens. Somehow, he didn’t remember them as being quite this stupid.

“It fell out of me!” the young hen clucked. “Neat!” Then she sat down on it, warming it with her breast feathers. Ara could sense that the hen didn’t know exactly why she was sitting on this strange, round object that had just come from her body. It was instinct.

The yard’s lone rooster crowed. He pushed his way into a group of several hens, flapping his wings and flaring out his tail. “Mine!” he said. “Get out of my way! Shoo, women! My food!”

The hens backed up, letting him through. A few fled. The rooster pecked the dirt where the hens had been gathered, pecking up kernels of corn. One large hen, the white one that had been staring at Ara Macau before, pushed her way up to the rooster, and started likewise pecking the corn. He pecked her.

“Git, woman! My food! Mine!”

The hen trotted away, knowing her place in the pecking order. “I’m the man!” the rooster crowed. “I protect you. I get food first!”

A shadow crossed the dusty yard. In moments, all of the chickens were shrieking again. The rooster was the first to run to the shelter of the coop. “Sky monster!” the chickens cried. “Sky monster!”

Ara Macau looked skyward. A hawk was soaring overhead. It disappeared over the wall of the castle. The chickens soon forgot that any danger was ever near them.

“A wiggly!” one of the small pullets said, pecking at the ground. Soon, every chicken in the pen surrounded her, pecking and scratching at the ground. Ara caught a glimpse of the object of their desire through the melee – a tiny green caterpillar.

A mother hen with five fluffy chicks at her feet pushed her way through the crowd, stepping on one of the chicks in the process. “Pi! Pi!” the babies cried. “Mama! Mama!” The chick that had been stepped on let out a sharp chirp of “Ouch!” The hen pressed on ahead, ignoring her little ones.

“There are more caterpillars beyond the fence,” Ara Macau stated, trying to bring peace to the flurry of feathers, beaks, and claws, “I can gather some for you, so that you might all have some.”

He was ignored by most of the birds. He shifted position again and the chickens that noticed him dashed for the coop, crying “Monster!”

One of the hatchlings sped between the legs of the adults that were pecking at the caterpillar and gathered it up in his beak. He ran about the chicken-yard, the other fowl eying him closely. Ara Macau was glad for the little one, and inwardly cheered. The smallest of the small had claimed the prize all the larger, more pushy, and greedier creatures were fighting to get.

The little chick ran around in circles, the caterpillar wriggling in his beak. The little chick ran around like this for several minutes. “Yum! Yum! I want!” cried some of the adults. The other chickens did not chase the hatchling, but simply watched him. Some made moves as if they were about to give chase, but they never did. The chick continued running around with the caterpillar.

It soon became apparent that the child had no idea what to do with his prize. He diligently trotted in arcs and loops, fleeing whenever any of the larger chickens or his fellow chicks got near, however, he seemed completely unaware that the caterpillar he had in his mouth was for eating.

“Eat it, little one,” Ara Macau said gently. “You’re supposed to eat it. Don’t let those big bullies take it away from you.”

The chick stared up at the man’s large frame. The caterpillar stopped wriggling. “My wiggly!” the chick shouted out, “Mine! Mine! Mine! Monster! Monster’s not getting my wiggly!”

The chick fled from him and trotted around the chicken yard some more. The caterpillar hung limp in his beak. He soon dropped it and the other chickens were upon it again. A silky-feathered black hen gobbled up the tiny green corpse.

The chick rejoined his siblings at the feet of their mother. She scratched the dust and pecked, instructing her little ones to do the same. The chick spoke up. “Mama, I’m hungry,” it said.

All Ara Macau could do was sigh. He turned his attention to the coop. In the shade cast by its eves was a little turkey-chick. If there were any birds of the farmyard less intelligent than chickens, in his experience, they were turkeys. The chick sat in the center of a pile of dried corn and seeds, crying.

“I’m so hungry!” the little creature whined. “Hungry! Hungry!”

Ara Macau stood up, to the screams of several chickens, and walked over to the turkey-chick. “All around you is food,” he said gently. “You are sitting on a pile of food.”

“Hungry!” the chick continued to cry. Ara Macau picked the creature up and set it on its feet. The turkey, like the chickens, cried “Monster!” and struggled to get away from his grasp. He held the bird gently and, with his other hand, carefully took its head and made it peck at the corn and seeds. This was similar to how people weaned kittens – sticking the animal’s mouth in the food to make them realize that it’s food. Most birds, even chickens, instinctively knew what was food. In past trips out here, he had seen this turkey-chick eating, so it should have known what was food.

“Ooh! Food!” the chick cheeped, and began pecking up corn. It forgot about Ara Macau’s hands cupped around it. He removed his fingers and let the chick be, relieved that it was not now going to starve to death.

While he was up, he decided to catch one of the chickens. He walked slowly and smoothly, not wanting to startle them too badly. Whenever he got near one, he’d hear a shriek of “Monster!” and the frightened bird would trot a foot or two away – certainly not far from danger if he was a true predator intent on hunting.

He grabbed one of the young chicks. The mother fluffed up her feathers and pecked his hand. The chick cried “Aaaaaaah!” at suddenly being lifted up. After a moment, the mother hen walked away with the rest of her brood, seeming to forget entirely about the chick she just lost. The other chicks did not even notice that their sibling was missing.

Ara Macau sat down again and held the chick cupped in the palm of his hand. It hadn’t been out of the egg for more than a week. The chick cried and kicked as he held her lying on her back. “Monster!” she cried, of course, and she uttered other little chirps of distress.

“Ssh, little one,” Ara Macau said in a soothing voice. He petted the tiny creature’s breast, rubbing the soft, warm down present there.

“Sleepy...” the chick uttered before closing her eyes and letting her head drop. Ara smiled. It was strange, how at ease a chicken could be in the hand of a predator. After several minutes, he put the chick back with her mother. She shrieked “Monster! Monster!” when his movement awakened her.

The other chickens continued to cry “Monster!” as he crossed the chicken yard to the seed-bin to give the chickens some food. He tossed it out across the chicken yard and the chickens soon forgot he existed again. “Food!” they clucked, and various voices cried out “Mine! Mine!”

Ara Macau left the pen and closed the gate. He walked back to the palace to have his dinner of roast chicken.





Copyright S.E. Nordwall, 2004