69 - His Name Must be Silly

“Oh, you enlightened bird stop, give me that back, come back here!”

Dag sat down abruptly on the stairs.  ‘Her’ bird had snuck out of the main flock once more and sneaked into her rooms again. This time while she was sorting her laundry, and had snatched one of her veils out of the basket and run off with it.

When she sat down the bird stopped as well, all the way down at the bottom of the stairs where it had already dragged her veil to ruins, even before pulling it, flapping, over the mud and sand and grass down here in the valley bottom.

It turned its head sideways at her one way, then the other, a billowing cloud of green mist fabric clenched in its beak. Expensive, delicate, hard-to-replace fabric.  It stamped and squawked at her, a muffled sound.  She compressed her lips together, hard, to not scream at it, and frighten it.

“You shouldn’t be doing this!  You should be over there!” Dag waved at the flock of young birds spread along the river, the valley floor, ridden by the feather-spitters assigned to them.  The young man who was supposed to be training this bird to take saddle and hood, was just now trudging up from the water’s edge to re-capture his charge.  “You should go play with the boy!  Go on!”

It cocked its head, waved it back and forth with the motion of her wave, then lowered it almost to the ground, cheeping around the beak full of fabric, an absurd sound for something that had shot up from knee high to eye-level in a matter of weeks.

“You go back and be good for Hami, you silly bird!”

It groaned and croaked, spit out the wad of cloth, head still hanging around its feet, swinging back and forth as Hami walked up with the saddlepad over his arm and a hood in the other hand.  “Come on, you.  You don’t want me to get the bird goad now, do you?" were the first words out of the young man's mouth.

The bird stretched its head out straight and sank into a full crouch, which put its back at about eyelevel for Dag now.  It didn’t stop cheeping, though it slowed to almost a groan.  Dag stood up and came down the rest of the way.  “Hami... has this one done anything that you’ve asked it?”

“No, Nasera.”  He shrugged and sighed.  “It doesn’t attack me, it sometimes lets me saddle it up.  But it will not take the hood no matter what I do and when I get the goad out it runs and stuffs its head into the crack in the rock behind the cisterns so that all I can see -- or reach-- is its behind!  And then it screams at me and howls like I’m torturing it.”

She shook her head.  A dozen of the hatchers had already found that the birds that had imprinted on them from the egg were indeed tame, but desperately wanted to be with their hatch-mothers.  The program director had already decreed it was easier to train the girls to be warriors than try and force this hatch to work with the already trained.  Some of the birds took to almost anyone and they were working as a fighting flock already.  “You silly thing.”

It turned its head flat on the ground, blinking at her pathetically.  “Why don’t I help you, Hami?”

“Thank you, Nasera Dagdovah.”  She stepped up and reached across the bird’s back and together they settled the saddle onto the featherless shoulders of the young bird.  It stopped cheeping.  Dag tickled it under its chin, getting it to raise its head up.

“Stop sulking, Silly.”

“Is that the name you’ve called it?” Hami asked. “It responds to it.”

“Oh dear.”

But no matter what they did, no matter how Dag scolded, Silly would not accept the hood that would let a rider blind him.

Hami finally hooked a finger, instead of the goad hook, into one of Silly’s nostrils and he froze, panting in distress as the feather spitter began to force the hood on.  “Wait,” Dag said and Hami stopped, stared at her, then shrugged.

“As you say, Nasera.” He unhooked his finger and when he let go of Silly’s beak, the bird swung its head around and nestled it against Dag’s chest as if it were a much younger chick.  Its beak still hung open, tongue protruding.  She noticed that Hami’s hand had a smear or two of blood on it and Silly had blood trailing on his beak.

It was a usual practice when training a riding bird; more humane now that they could safely use fingers instead of the goad, but Silly didn't deserve that kind of treatment. She couldn’t stand by and watch this new kind of bird receiving it.

She sighed and scratched all around Silly’s earholes until he quit panting.  Then she tapped the saddle and he crouched all the way to the ground, for her.  She swung her leg over, hiking up her skirts shamelessly, tucked her knees under the fighting straps, setting the toes of her slippers into the loops, securing her veils under her knees.  “Hami... would you hand me the ruins of my veil, please?”

He looked annoyed but handed it up, Silly snapping at the trailing end as it went by.  Dag let Silly grab the tough silk and leaned forward to catch the other end.  Silly shook his head and she let him, then pulled on one end so that as he tugged... the same way he played tug-war with her... his head came around and he looked at her with one eye.  Then she ‘let him win’ so he shook the fabric, and then she pulled his head around the other way.

The feather-spitter had his arms crossed over his chest, frowning as she repeated the game, with Silly still crouched on the ground.  “So... I’m to tell our Director that you’ll be training as a warrior now?” He was almost rude, watching her invent a new way to control a warbird.

She clucked to Silly to get him to rise and stand.  He’d learned that, first thing, and responded promptly.  “We’ll see,” she said, from her higher viewpoint.  “Troops need support as well as more warriors.  I’ll tell her myself.”

He sniffed, making his plain warrior's veil bell out, and took himself off.