Fic: Birds - Chapter 1

[rusakko]

In early spring, when winter is still doing its best to cling to the world, Tuuri waits for the birds.

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Chapter 1

In early spring, when winter is still doing its best to cling to the world, Tuuri waits for the birds.

It’s not that all the birds fly away in the autumn. The sparrows stay despite the cold, and flit around the cowsheds and sheep pens, keeping an eye out for spilled oats and hayseeds. The great tits brave the weather, too. They start singing earlier in spring than any other bird, just a month or so after the winter solstice. Optimistic, even during the coldest weeks of the year. And then there are the magpies, with their handsome, glossy tails that Tuuri can’t help admiring, even though Onni has told her that their rough chatter is an omen of bad luck.

Then there are the chickens and ducks and geese that are always underfoot. There’s limited land for grazing on the island, and immune livestock is expensive to buy, so many families don’t have any cows, sheep or pigs. No such problems with poultry. Even the poorest people in the village have at least a few chickens pecking at the dirt around their cottages, and fresh eggs to eat every day.

Still, Tuuri waits for the migratory birds to return. It’s partly because they signal that winter is over, that the days of eating six-month-old leathery potatoes with every meal are nearing their end. Once spring comes, there will be dandelions, nettles and false morels, and later, the first fresh peas, the first new potatoes, the first wild strawberries – the tastes of summer, of sunlight, of warmth.

There hasn’t been a real famine on their island in Tuuri’s lifetime, but she has heard old people speak of the first years after the world changed, when people subsisted on scavenged canned goods until they ran out, and had to supplement the scant flour from their first attempts at growing rye with pine-bark to make it last longer, when parents had to force-feed their children crushed lingonberries, unsweetened, because they had nothing else to keep scurvy at bay. Grandma still gets a pinched look on her face if Tuuri or Lalli ever complain about not liking their food.

Most importantly, though, the return of the birds is a sign that the rest of the world is still there – that somewhere far, far away from their little island, from Saimaa, from the Known World, there are strange lands just waiting to be discovered. If the birds can go there, and even come back, why couldn’t people?

That’s why Tuuri rejoices in every skylark and chaffinch, every wagtail and swallow. She takes pleasure in listening to their song, in watching them build their nests and, later, teach their young to fly. And when the nights grow long and the mornings frosty, she bids them goodbye without bitterness. She can’t go where they are going yet, but her time will come. She’s sure of it.

One day, Tuuri will follow the birds.

(She told her grandmother this, once, on a windy autumn day, with the wild geese honking mournfully as they passed above the lake.

“Everyone follows the birds, in the end,” Grandma replied.)