***
My daughter did not, to the best of my knowledge, have any sort of resurrection magic, but rescuing a wounded bird was definitely the sort of thing she would do, and I had taught her some basic herb craft. And circumstances aside, how many girls fitting her description could there possibly be in the world?
The swallow who told me the story did not know who the rescued swallow was- no one from her flock, certainly, but perhaps from the flock of the one she’d heard the story from? After much maddening back and forth, I learned that the flock in question had not yet begun their migration, and had not plans to do so for another month or so.
That being the case, I decided to go to them.
It took me a half moon to locate the proper flock, and when I did I discovered that the rescued bird did not, in fact, belong to that flock. But at least this time the bird I interrogated was able to assure me that the bird in question- whose name was Bluebeak- absolutely did belong to a flock whose territory was further to the east.
And so I traveled on.
Summer was wheeling its way towards autumn, and every day greater and greater flocks of birds flew over my head. Sometimes I would call out to them, but they did not answer. Sometimes I would say a prayer and cast a spell of Command, and then they would descend, and answer- but for nothing. None of them was Bluebeak, or knew of him.
Until the day one did.
Autumn had begun in earnest, the fields ripening gold, the leaves a riot of flame, and the sky a hard and distant blue. I knew time was running out to catch a swallow- only the stragglers remained, so in my desperation I used the last of my Command spells- and this time the nervous flock I called down did know Bluebeak- and his strange story.
They said he had injured himself the previous year, fallen behind at migration time, and they had counted him as one dead. But then, miraculously, he had returned to the breeding grounds in the spring, healed and obsessed with the tiny woman he said had brought him back from the brink of death. According to Bluebeak, when he’d fallen to the earth below he’d fallen into the earth, where he lay in the cold darkness as one dead, until suddenly he was not dead; he was warm, and covered in flower-down, and being tended to by a woman with a kind voice and a kinder touch. She’d nursed him all through the long winter, and he although he could see how unhappy she was to be living beneath the ground, he could not convince her to leave with him when the spring came.
“Who knows if it really happened, or if it was just a fever dream,” said a swallow. “But he was convinced it was real, and convinced he had to save her. When the time for migration came again, he left, saying he was going to bring her with us. We haven’t seen him since.”
“But where? Where did he go to?”
“He said it was off our regular path- when he fell behind he tried to join in with one of the flocks that winters closer by, but of course he couldn’t keep up with them, either.”
“That tells me nothing!” I said, and something in my eyes caused them all to try and flee, but of course they could not, not until I let them go. One of the other birds fluttered,
“A corn field! He said when he fell it was into a corn field!”
A corn field! I laughed aloud, a sound somewhere between mirth and despair. Could it be- could she have been there all along, but underground? I released the flock, and they exploded back into the air. I must retrace my steps one last time.
I moved quickly, much more quickly now that I was not stopping to examine everything for signs of birds, and before the moon completed her change I was within sight of the copse. The day was a beautiful one, the sun high and warm, the air perfectly clear. So clear that, as I grew closer still, I was able to make out a single swallow burst up out of the stubble that remained of the cornfield. So clear that I was able to discern his outline was odd, almost as though he had a tiny rider between his wings.
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