‘The hoopoe is right!’ he cried. ‘Dragons do feel related to birds and snakes. And all mammals. And the fish in the sea. A dragon is life incarnate, in all its variety. This one wouldn’t hurt a single feather of any of you.’
The hoopoe uttered his cry of huphuphup again, and flew to a cracked column very close to Ben. In view of the bird’s long beak, Twigleg had to force himself to stay put, rather than disappearing into the pocket of Barnabas’s jacket.
‘It’s not exactly common for a human being to be friends with a dragon.’ The hoopoe’s crest stood up as it examined Ben with its cool, bird’s gaze. ‘What kind of help are you looking for here? I’m sure you haven’t come for the usual reason.’
‘May I ask what the usual reason for humans to come to this temple is?’ asked Barnabas, joining Ben.
‘Snakebite.’ The hoopoe caught a fly out of the air. ‘You humans think throwing the snakes off the walls in clay pots acts as an antidote to their venom. Pretty silly, if you ask me.’
He uttered another sarcastic huphuphup, and many of the other birds joined in. Ben thought he sensed the gaze of those countless eyes on his skin. Round, black eyes, so different from his own. He wondered what the birds came to ask Garuda for. Were their requests the same as human beings made to their gods?
Barnabas cleared his throat. It wasn’t easy to get a hearing in all the noise made by the birds. ‘I have heard,’ he called, ‘that many of you come to this temple from very far away. Has any of you present, by any chance, ever met a griffin on your travels?’
The silence that followed his words was as complete as if the birds looking down at them had all been turned to stone.
The bird that finally flew to the hoopoe’s side had almost as long a beak, but much more colourful plumage, shimmering in shades of orange, green and turquoise blue.
‘A green bee-eater,’ Twigleg whispered to Ben. ‘We don’t necessarily have to believe what it says. They have a reputation for being enthusiastic liars.’
The bee-eater didn’t speak English.
‘My cousin three times removed,’ Twigleg translated its excited twittering, ‘came upon a whole pride of griffins only a few days ago!’
‘Oh, really?’ said a bird ironically, spreading turquoise wings. ‘And where’s that supposed to have been, O master of all beaked liars?’
‘That’s an Indian roller,’ Twigleg whispered. Ben hadn’t realised that the homunculus knew so much about birds. On the other hand, what didn’t Twigleg know about? When Ben walked in the forests around MÍMAMEIĐR with him, Twigleg could tell him the name of every beetle.
‘Not far from here,’ chirped the bee-eater. ‘Near the temple of Mahavishnu.’
The Indian roller uttered a scornful whistle. ‘By the claws of Garuda! Nothing lives there but a flock of half-starved vultures! Griffins? They’re a fairy tale, that’s all! Thought up by human beings who can’t tell an eagle from a lion!’
The bee-eater began twittering in such agitation that Twigleg couldn’t even attempt to interpret – especially as the hoopoe was looking at him with so much interest that it was really hard for him to concentrate.
‘You! Spider-man!’ the hoopoe croaked when the homunculus finally returned his glance, annoyed. ‘I think you’d taste delicious. What are you? A descendant of Apasmara?’
Twigleg turned pale. Apasmara – even a long beak didn’t excuse anyone for comparing him to a dwarf considered a byword for stupidity!
‘If you don’t mind,’ he cried in such a high register that his own voice sounded to him like the shrill notes of a bird, ‘I’m a homunculus – and no, we don’t taste good at all,’ he added in perfect Hindi, to show how educated he was. ‘Far from it. We’re extremely poisonous.’
‘What did you say?’ Ben whispered.
‘Nothing,’ Twigleg replied, crossing his arms in front of his thin chest. ‘I’m just tired of these idiotic birds.’
‘All the same, my highly esteemed homunculus,’ Barnabas said quietly, ‘I’d be very grateful if you would go on interpreting. I get the feeling that there’s something else the Indian roller has to say.’
If that was the case, she was taking her time so as to heighten the suspense. The roller stuck her beak in the stone on which she was perching, pulled out a struggling, protesting insect, and with relish put her prey, countless legs and all, inside her hooked beak. Then the roller swallowed, cooed with satisfaction – and gave voice to a torrent of sounds that Ben couldn’t understand at all.
‘She says she knows a female parrot who’s met some griffins,’ Twigleg translated. ‘The parrot is a chattering lory who got away from a bird collector of some kind. Obviously there are many fugitives who have escaped from cages in these parts.’
‘And where can we find this parrot?’ asked Barnabas.
The Indian roller pointed her beak to a doorway leading into the interior of the temple. The darkness beyond competed with the feathers of two drongo birds who were as blue-black as if someone had dipped them and their extravagantly long tail feathers in ink. Twigleg was not at all happy about such darkness, but he knew from experience that gates like this one held a magical fascination for his young master.
‘She’s sitting above the niche where people leave gifts for Garuda. She thinks that if she doesn’t eat, and just sits there day in, day out, Garuda will have pity on her some day and take her home.’ You could tell from the Indian roller’s voice what she thought of such hopes. She herself came here only for the tasty insects that lived in the old temple walls.
Barnabas took Ben aside. ‘Do you think you could go looking for this lost parrot yourself ?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘She might be less frightened of a boy than of a grown man. I’d really like to send Twigleg to her on his own, because he’s about her size, but a parrot might only too easily…’
Barnabas stopped when the homunculus cast him a glance of alarm.
‘Sure!’ said Ben. ‘I’ll be happy to look for her. But if I do find her,’ he added, glancing at Twigleg, ‘I may need an interpreter.’
The homunculus looked anxiously at the dark gate behind which the lost parrot was said to be hiding. But he couldn’t say no to anything Ben asked of him. And they had been in dark places together before.
‘I’ll take good care of you,’ Ben promised. ‘Word of honour!’
It’s your own fault, Twigleg, thought the homunculus as he climbed up to Ben’s shoulder. Why didn’t you pick a master who was happiest among bookshelves, and found the rest of the world as disturbing as you do?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Very Far From Home
I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chains –
I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
Twigleg wasn’t sure what he thought of torches. Darkness stimulated the imagination so much less than the probing beam of light that Ben was shining on the interior of the old temple. Every image carved on the weathered walls seemed to waken to life as the torch picked it out from the shadows, until Twigleg was firmly convinced that Garuda himself was prowling after them, with golden claws and a beak that could break the limbs of a homunculus like matchsticks.
The sounds were almost worse than the images! All the fluttering and scurrying that came to his maddeningly sensitive ears… no, he really wasn’t born to be an adventurer. But he had given his heart to a boy who didn’t know the meaning of fear, and who was intent on looking into every nook and cranny of this world.
There!
What was that?
Twigleg clung to Ben’s jacket so tightly that he almost broke his own stick-thin fingers.
Didn’t it sound like a snake?
No, Twigleg, he reassured himself, this is a temple of Garuda. They throw snakes off the walls in clay pots here, didn’t you hear the hoopoe say so?
Oh!
Something or other was fluttering just above their heads. But all that Ben’s torch showe
d them was a huge bat. Not that Twigleg was sure whether it would turn down a tasty morsel of homunculus. At his size, you were on the menu of an alarmingly large number of creatures.
‘There!’ whispered Ben, running the beam of light over a frieze of stone birds. They surrounded a niche where dried fruits and grain lay in front of a weather-beaten statue. It was difficult to say what god it was meant to be, but Twigleg thought he saw a hint of wings.
‘That could be Garuda, don’t you think?’ whispered Ben.
Twigleg was shaking too badly to manage a convincing nod.
‘Can you say something?’ Ben asked quietly. ‘Something like: we come as friends. In some kind of Indonesian language? Or in South-Asian Parrot, if such a thing exists.’
‘It definitely does,’ Twigleg whispered back. ‘I can speak twelve of the eight hundred and fifty-three known dialects of Parrot!’
‘Excellent!’ replied Ben, turning the torch on a very alarming ledge shaped like a snake that ran along the ceiling above them. ‘Try it! Tell her we want to take her home.’
He wasn’t afraid of anything! Not the faintest trace of fear in his voice!
With his limbs trembling, Twigleg brought out a mixture of chattering, cooing, shrill screeching, and hoarse squawking that sounded to his own ears very much like parrot language.
No reaction.
Only a blue lizard showed up by way of an answer.
But when Twigleg turned instead to the dialect of Lorius garrulus, the chattering lory, there was a rustle above them, and a red-feathered head looked out of an opening in the weathered roof.
‘There she is!’ whispered Ben.
From the size of the beaked head, Twigleg worked out that the bird looking down at them with mingled panic and dislike was at least five centimetres taller than him.
‘Ask her where she comes from!’ hissed Ben.
The parrot replied to that question with such angry squawks that Twigleg was tempted to creep into one of Ben’s pockets, but he felt too bad about his own cowardice to do so.
‘What’s she saying?’
Twigleg spared Ben the imaginative terms that chattering lories applied to human beings. Thieving vermin was the most flattering. No wonder she spoke her own language, although even the homunculus often caused ordinary animals to use human language. She had a strange name for him, too: she called Twigleg a jenglot, whatever that might be. Maybe Twigleg would have taken it as a compliment if he had known that jenglots were dwarf-like zombies who drank blood and were much feared in Indonesia.
The parrot went on squawking and screeching abuse, but Twigleg knew enough about fear to recognise it in others. The bird’s black eyes were wide with fright, and Twigleg saw in them a sadness that he knew only too well. So he cleared his throat, and departed slightly from the gist of what Ben had told him to translate.
‘It isn’t easy to be the only one of your kind,’ he said in the dialect of Parrot that she had used herself. ‘Believe me, I know what it’s like. But my master here has a kind heart, and you can be sure that he won’t do you any harm. Far from it. He may be able to help you to get home, but if he’s to do that, you must tell us where you come from!’
The parrot craned her red neck to take a closer look at Ben. Then, to the surprise of Twigleg and Ben himself, she gabbled something in English.
‘Me-Rah comes from the thousand times one thousand green islands,’ she croaked, ‘and her heart is as sore with homesickness as the back of a donkey.’ Then she let out a plaintive screech, and disappeared into her hole again.
‘The thousand times one thousand islands?’ whispered Ben. ‘That could be Indonesia!’
He lowered the torch so that Me-Rah wouldn’t feel threatened by its beam.
‘Your English is very good, Me-Rah!’ he called up to the parrot.
For a moment nothing moved, but then Me-Rah put her head out into the open. ‘So why does that surprise you? Parrots can imitate every sound in the world,’ she snapped. ‘And I’m only too familiar with the primitive language you use. The man who shut me up in a cage spoke it too.’
Ben didn’t explain that his mother tongue was German. He was sure that Me-Rah would consider that no less barbaric.
‘Maybe we can help you to get home!’ he called to her. ‘Is it true that there are griffins on your islands?’
Me-Rah had crept right out of her hiding place now. She was a sad sight. Her feathers were crumpled and dull, her beak dusty and splitting, as if she had been gnawing nothing but the stones here for days.
‘Griffins? What’s a griffin supposed to be?’ she squawked suspiciously.
‘A great big bird!’ Twigleg spread his arms wide – then let them sink when he realised that he could barely give any idea even of the wing-span of a sparrow. ‘With a lion’s body and a snake for a tail.’
Me-Rah tilted her head, looking scared. ‘Are you by any chance talking about the lion-birds?’ She let out a couple of whistling notes so shrill that the dark passages of the temple filled with the squeaking of alarmed bats. ‘Oh, they’re terrible! They can pluck a great gibbon out of the trees like a caterpillar! Even the sun bears and binturongs run for it when their shadow falls on the jungle!’
Ben exchanged a triumphant glance with Twigleg.
‘Can you lead us to them?’ he called up to Me-Rah. ‘And of course we’d show our gratitude by taking you home!’
Me-Rah fluffed up her untidy feathers and gave a yearning coo, but then she shook her red head very firmly.
‘If you fly to where the lion-birds live you’ll never come back!’ she squawked, as urgently as if she were repeating something she had been told as a chick. ‘They’ll line their nests with your feathers and adorn their treasure chambers with the horn of your beak. They’ll use your bones to skewer their prey, and they’ll feed your beating heart to their young!’
She turned around, and in a flash she had gone back into hiding.
A very sensible reaction, Twigleg thought. They’ll use your bones to skewer their prey? This whole project needed more thought! Seriously, did the world really need Pegasus foals? Why did there have to be horses with wings anyway? Surely there were more than enough of the wingless sort!
But Ben had looked fascinated as he listened to Me-Rah’s alarming description. Oh, Twigleg had seen that expression on his face only too often before. Danger? it said. Bring it on! And who would give up before things got started anyway?
‘Me-Rah! Please!’ Ben called up to the narrow gap in the wall where he knew the parrot was hiding. ‘Just show us which island they live on, and then you can fly anywhere you like!’
But Me-Rah did not reappear. They could hear the rustle of feathers in her hideout, but that was all.
‘I’m so sorry, master!’ said Twigleg. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to look for another guide.’
What a hypocrite he could be! To his shame, he had to admit to putting up a silent prayer to Garuda, or whatever god he had to thank (there were so many of them in India that even Twigleg had lost count), for Me-Rah’s refusal.
But Ben’s face suddenly brightened, and Twigleg didn’t have to look up to know that Me-Rah’s homesickness had overcome her fear of the lion-birds.
Ben held his arm out to her invitingly.
‘Let me introduce you to the leader of our expedition, Barnabas Greenbloom!’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s dead against people like the human beings who caught you and sold you.’
Even if Me-Rah hadn’t understood English, there was so much of the love and respect that Ben and the Greenblooms felt for all wild creatures in his voice that she would surely have trusted him even without knowing what his words meant. And so she flew down to the boy who had won Twigleg’s heart with the same ease, and dug her scaly toes into the arm of Ben’s jacket.
The Pegasus rescue mission had a guide!
If Me-Rah’s lion-birds really were griffins, and she hadn’t just made them up as a way of getting home.
Twigl
eg knew that a small part of him hoped for that very thing. They’ll feed your beating heart to their young… he felt sure that the heart of a homunculus was just the right size for that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Goodbye Present
Wherever you go,
Go with all your heart.
Confucius (551-479 BC)
And now it was time to say goodbye. Firedrake would be flying north, back to the Rim of Heaven, with Sorrel, while Ben went in the opposite direction with Barnabas, over southern India and Sri Lanka and then on to Indonesia.
The others were already sitting in the plane. Hothbrodd had made Me-Rah a perch in the cockpit, using a couple of branches from a mango tree. Ben thought that was very nice of him. ‘Nice?’ was all that Hothbrodd had growled when he said so. ‘Trolls are never nice, dragon rider. But you clearly know just as little about parrots. They eat anything they can lay their claws on! I made the thing solely to keep our new friend from taking my aircraft apart!’
The troll was not exaggerating. Me-Rah began gnawing the mango wood as soon as she closed her sharp-clawed feet around it. Hothbrodd had put the perch right behind the co-pilot’s seat, so that Me-Rah could give him and Lola flight instructions. The rat did not like that one bit.
‘Flight instructions from a parrot?’ she squealed in such a loud voice that Me-Rah, startled, flew down on Hothbrodd’s instrument panel controls. That, of course, led to a quarrel between Lola and the troll. Hothbrodd’s wooden-voiced ranting was coming out of the cockpit window, at the same volume as the rat’s shrill voice, as Ben flung his arms around Firedrake’s neck for the last time. He was glad that the others were already on the plane, and not just because that meant Me-Rah wouldn’t give away the real purpose of their quest to Firedrake. It was bad enough to have Sorrel watching as they said goodbye: she was sitting in what was usually his own place on Firedrake’s back.
‘Well, then,’ he murmured, trying not to look up at Sorrel too enviously. If he had, he might have noticed that Sorrel herself was avoiding the sight of Hothbrodd’s plane. She was even more homesick than Firedrake and Ben had realised. Homesick for damp, green hills and pine forests, for hedgehog-men and rivers where water-sprites lurked, for the ever-cloudy sky of the north and a horizon uncluttered by snow-covered mountains. MÍMAMEIĐR came so much closer to her native Scotland than the mountains of Nepal. But brownies are considerably less sentimental than humans (or so they claim, anyway). Sorrel accepted her homesickness like a bitter mushroom that reminded her of past pleasures. And then again, she was very good at hiding it when she wanted.