I Guess I'm Here Too

"It should be the strongest of birds," said the great mountain vulture. "It should be the most beautiful of birds," said the rainbow-feathered lyretail. "It should be the bird that sings best, the sweetest-voiced," said the melodious nightingale. "It should be the sharpest-eyed of birds," said the passager-falcon.

A long time the quarrel went on, but no decision could be reached. Finally a hedge-sparrow said, "The owl is said to be wise, and has not spoken. Let us ask the owl." And that seemed a good enough idea that the birds went straight to the great crested owl, who sat in a tree hard by where the parliament had been taking place, dozing the day away.

The birds woke the owl and said, "Wise one, how shall we choose what bird among us shall be our Queen or King?"

And the owl looked south and north, and west and east, and over its own shoulder, seeking the answer. Finally it said, "The deepest truth of being a bird is that one flies. Therefore let the Monarch of Birds be the one who flies the highest."

And this advice seemed good to all the birds gathered there in parliament. So it was agreed and then sung and cried far and wide for every bird to hear, both great and small; from the great dragon-eagle to the tiny wren.

The wren in her holly-bush, when she heard this news, smiled to herself. "There are more truths to being a bird than flight," she said, "and more kinds of wisdom than are owned by owls. I have an idea which bird may yet fly highest!"

So the day came when all the birds of the world assembled, and all flew to see which one might fly the highest. Up and up they went in great waves of flight, so that the sky grew dark with them, and in their dwellings humans looked up in alarm, saying "What devilry is the Shadow planning now?" For the Dark was only a few lives of mankind gone, and humans’ fear of Its malice was greater than their wisdom.

However, the birds cared nothing for the fears of human beings, and only strove to see who would rise highest. The birds of field and hedge dropped away first, and then the birds of the treetops and the tall forests. A while longer the birds of the upper sky rose up together, the hawks and eagles and the mightiest seabirds. But one by one they all fell back and could fly no more through air that was too thin and cold for them; and at last the only one who remained was the greatest of eagles, a Darthene dragon-eagle, grey-pinioned and golden-eyed with a spiky crown of feathers.**

And that dragon-eagle beat his way up and up until it seemed the blue of the sky was starting to go darker and the horizon might to a keen eye be starting to show the shadow of a curve, and even for a bird who was so often neighbor to the great heights, breathing had become hard. And looking around and seeing no other bird had kept pace, the dragon-eagle cried out in triumph and folded his wings to fall back toward the world and his waiting kingship. But as his wings folded down, a tiny grey shape started up from between them and flew, and kept flying upwards. It was the wren, who had hidden herself among the dragon-eagle’s feathers, and now flew higher than he—a tall tree’s worth of higher; two trees’ worth; five.

The dragon-eagle was nigh spent, and could not follow her. He let himself fall back to earth until he knew there would be enough air under his wings for them to bite into. Then he made his way swiftly to the place that had been set aside for the crowning of the ruler of birds. But not too far behind him came the wren, falling as fast as he into the upper airs, and finally to the grove and glade where the representatives of the bird-parliament awaited the winner.

Great was their confusion when the wren came down to perch on a tree-branch in the center of the glade and cry, "I am your ruler, for I flew the highest!" And down in his turn came the dragon-eagle, full of wrath, though he kept his dignity about him. "She flew higher than I," he said. "That much is true. But I flew all the way on my own wings from a treetop perch right up into the great heights where the sky grows dark and the air grows thin. And all that long way the wren hid amidst the down of my back, so that I carried both myself and her all that way. The feat of the highest flight is therefore far more mine than hers, and I am your king by right!"

And hearing these two claims, the birds in parliament began to squabble and argue the merits of each side, until the whole place sounded like a great noisy rookery at sunset. Yet they could find neither answer nor decision; so at last they turned to the Goddess.

As always, where many call upon Her together, there She is, whether She be seen or no. And here, since there was need, swiftly She was seen. To them She looked of course like a bird, mighty and radiant: and all bowed in awe before Her. But the awe lasted only a short while, and in little time the birds began to quarrel before Her over the issue they had begged Her to resolve.

Quite soon, "Peace, my dears, have pity! You’ll deafen me with your noise," the Goddess said, when the commotion had swollen to the point where even a deity might not hear Herself think. "Set out your case, now, so that I may judge."

So they laid it all out before Her, glossing nothing over and leaving nothing out. Then all waited in breathless stillness for Her verdict.

Due consideration She gave their issue; and then spoke and said, "The agreement you all made was that the bird who flew highest should be set as ruler above you. No one said that the bird who flew highest must also fly all the way."

"But that should have been understood!" the dragon-eagle cried in his wrath.

"It may often seem after the fact that many things should have been understood from the start," the Goddess said. "But that is not how it goes. When a game is to be rightly played, all the rules must be agreed first. When the game is begun, and won, it must be judged by what rules were decided before it began: not ones thought of after it’s done." And She looked sorrowful. "I was first to learn that rule. Now, it seems, comes your turn."

And She rose up in Her majesty before them and said, "By the rules of the contest you set for yourselves, the Wren is now your ruler." And as the Wren bowed down before Her, the Goddess reached out a pinion and with one primary-feather brushed the top of the wren’s head, which to this day bears the little gold mark She put there—the sign of its new-made royalty, and the Kingdoms’ first crown.

“Here then behold your Queen,’ said the Goddess to the parliament assembled. And some birds bowed to their new-made ruler, and some did not, grumbling among themselves and glaring at the Wren—as they dared not glare at the Goddess, preferring to think of Her as blameless, and as one who had been befooled, even as the Shadow had befooled Her when the world first began.

And soon enough the Wren began to issue commands to her subjects, telling the ravens, "Your harsh voices were better not lifted in song," and saying to the nightingales, "Your voices are fair but you should be still after dark so that others can sleep," and to the sparrowhawks, "You must cease your preying on small birds and confine yourselves to rats and conies and other such vermin." In short, she put forth many edicts that either seemed to favor her own tribe of birds, or were made to show that she by her fledgling royalty might command what she liked whether there was much sense in it or not.

It was not long before the birds began to chafe at this. And one day the Wren saw a carrion-crow swoop down on a pond, where it snapped up a duckling and swallowed it whole; and the Wren became wroth and cried out, "I pronounce you cast out from among your kind for devouring the living instead of the dead!" And no sooner had the scaldcrow gobbled the duckling down than he stared at the Wren on the willow-branch where she sat, and cawed, "Pronounce what you like, cheating little hedge-peeper; you have no power to make me pay you any mind!"

“I am your Queen, made so by the Goddess, and you must obey me!" the Wren shouted in a fury. But the carrion-crow laughed at her and said, "The only thing I need obey is my stomach, which says you will make a good end to my nunch!" And he flew at the Wren, so that only hardly did she escape from him by diving into a hole in a nearby hedge-bank.

Soon word got about that the Wren had no power to enforce her decrees, and that they only had force when the will of those she commanded allowed it. And quickly she found herself being mocked or ignored, and sometimes attacked and pursued by other birds who hated her and tried to kill her. Some of these said "What fools thought a ruler over us would be a good idea? Let’s have no more of this nonsense, but be free!", and others, "Once this monarch is gone, who knows, the next one may be better."

In no long time the Wren wearied of this strife. At last she took her grievance to the Goddess. "Great Mistress and Queen of the World," the Wren cried to Her, "the birds will not acknowledge me to be their ruler! They hate me because I was cleverer than they."

“It is a hard thing to learn," said the Goddess, “that sometimes cleverness is not enough… or too much.” And She looked sorrowful. “I grieve that you have had to learn it so.”

“All this could be put right,” said the Wren, “if only You would simply give me the power to make them do what I command.”

“That would be a change to the agreement that, unchanged, made you Queen in the first place,” the Goddess said. “My sorrow that your change cannot be made so after the fact any more than the Dragon-eagle’s could be. You’ve built yourself this nest, dear one. Now you must lodge in it and hatch out what chicks you can.” And She vanished away.

And so it is that the Wren is yet held to be Queen of Birds, for though she was never deposed, no other bird was afterward ever found wise (or foolish) enough to hold the office, not even the owl. The only court the Wren Queen holds is hidden away in holes and hedges, to avoid her enemies’ sight, and there she raises her chicks on worms and bugs in a nest no bigger than a child’s goblet. Her only state is the flash of gold on her crest, and in all other ways she goes as quietly as she may—in all ways the smallest and plainest of all birds. Whether she ever came to understand that royalty rightly exercised needs far more than mere cleverness, and needs the heart at as much as the mind, if not more, no one can say. For in this making of the world, even the Goddess who made all things has no power to make even the smallest creature wise against its will. In Her next making, may all things run more smoothly!

So they tell the tale in the high South; and in the low North, where folly resides, who knows what tale they tell? But now this one is done.

*Using the class-name here as the closest match to this kind of story in the Kingdoms, which lacks beings corresponding to fairies.