Bird Brain Read online

  BIRD BRAIN

  BIRD

  BRAIN

  by

  MARIE-FRANCINE HÉBERT

  Illustrated by Philippe Germain

  Translated by Sarah Cummins

  CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Hébert, Marie-Francine, 1943-

  [Un oiseau dans la tête. English]

  Bird Brain

  Translation of: Un oiseau dans la tête.

  ISBN 1-896764-17-7

  I. Title. II. Title: Oiseau dans la tête. English.

  PS8565.E203713 1999 jC843’.54 C99-930305-8

  PZ7.H3527Bi 1999

  Illustrated by Philippe Germain

  Originally published as Un oiseau dans la tête

  by Les éditions de la courte échelle

  Copyright © 1997 la courte échelle

  Copyright © 1999 Second Story Press (English language edition)

  Copyright © 1999 Sarah Cummins (English translation)

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges

  the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council and The Canada Council

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Published by

  SECOND STORY PRESS

  720 Bathurst Street, Suite 301

  Toronto, Canada M5S 2R4

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  BIRD BRAIN!

  CHAPTER TWO

  BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS

  CHAPTER THREE

  LET SLEEPING CATS LIE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SAVED

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SHADOW IN THE SKY

  CHAPTER SIX

  HEAD IN THE CLOUDS

  AND FEET ON THE GROUND

  CHAPTER ONE

  BIRD BRAIN!

  BIRD BRAIN! SHE CALLED ME a bird brain! Me, Poppy! She blamed me for something I never did, in front of all the other kids. Just wait till I tell you.

  It was a Friday morning, a late spring day. I was happy, because soon Mr. Gusto, our art teacher, would arrive.

  “Yoo hoo, I’m here!” he would say.

  Sometimes he’d sing it out, sometimes he’d whisper, other times it would be in mime. He’s quite a card. Mr. Gusto has even come to school wearing shoes of two different colours. He says he does it to develop our powers of observation.

  I couldn’t wait to get started on my drawing. I’m not very good with my hands, but Mr. Gusto says the important thing is to learn to look around you and to see with your very own eyes. Whatever!

  In our class.map we were doing a project on birds. The week before everyone had to draw a picture of a real bird. Now we were going to draw an imaginary bird.

  We were supposed to look into our imagination and see with the mind’s eye.

  So that was why I was smiling when the class.maproom door finally opened. At first I thought Mr. Gusto had disguised himself as a weird big cat. But it wasn’t his cheerful voice that I heard.

  “Your teacher is away today. I am the substitute teacher. My name is Mrs. Chester.”

  The smile froze on my face. Then some smarty-pants behind me asked, “Are you related to Chester the cat?”

  Chester is a neighbourhood tomcat who hangs around our school. We’ve adopted him as our mascot. You know!

  And here this supply teacher had the same name, and even looked a bit like Chester. She had yellowish eyes, thin lips, long nails like claws, and a striped dress. Her hair was twisted on the top of her head into two little buns that looked like the ears of a cat.

  Everyone smirked, bending over their desks. Everyone, that is, but me. I sat there with the smile still stuck on my face. That was all it took for the teacher to accuse me of making that stupid joke!

  Her face took on a threatening look, like Chester’s when he is hungry and stalking prey — some little animal to chomp on.

  “There is nothing to laugh about, young lady,” she said sharply, pointing the long nail on her index finger at me. “I will not allow you to mock me! You are a bird brain, that is all. If you think you can take advantage of me, you are very much mistaken. I will be keeping my eye on you, miss.”

  A lump formed in my throat. Or else the cat got my tongue — I swallowed all the words I might have said in my defence. Anyway, Mrs. Chester gave me no chance to speak.

  “One more word and you will be sent to the office! That goes for everyone in the class.map.”

  Then she ordered us to get out our drawing supplies and start drawing.

  “I am told you are supposed to draw an imaginary bird,” she said disdainfully, putting “imaginary bird” in quotation marks, so we would know it wasn’t her idea. She sounded like a real bird had just landed on her hand and was about to poop.

  Then she sat down stiffly on her chair and stared at me with her yellow eyes. She looked just like Chester when he’s waiting to pounce.

  Not surprisingly, no imaginary birds came flying into my imagination. When the bell rang for recess, my sheet of paper was still blank.

  Mrs. Chester thought that I had refused to draw a picture. She made me stay in from recess and told me to get to work on my drawing right away.

  You should have seen me, a coloured pencil in one hand and my head resting on the other. My mind was totally blank, as blank as the paper. I hadn’t the tiniest idea of a bird. I felt as if I might doze off at any moment.

  Speaking of dozing, I soon heard the sound of regular deep breathing. I figured it must be Chester. He often takes a nap on the windowsill.

  But no! It was MRS. Chester snoring away. Great! At least she would leave me alone.

  I closed my eyes in hopes that an idea would come to me. “Be patient,” Mr. Gusto would have said. “Ideas are like eggs. You have to give them time to hatch.”

  After a minute, I could feel that something was there. A tiny breath of life. At the very bottom of a nest somewhere in my imagination I discovered a little birdie!

  “Shh,” I said to myself, “don’t frighten it away.”

  At that very instant, a noise pulled me away. It was Mrs. Chester, shifting in her sleep, like Chester the cat when he’s dreaming of munching on a mouse.

  I went back to my birdie, and discovered it had disappeared.

  I was about to give up, when I heard a chirping noise. I looked over towards the window, and surprise! There was the bird that I had seen in my imagination!

  CHAPTER TWO

  BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS

  THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE, you’ll tell me. An imaginary bird can’t appear in flesh and feather on the windowsill.

  It must have been one of the birds who lives under the eaves above the window. A pair of swallows built their nest there, to hatch their eggs and shelter their young.

  I thought that all the fledglings strong enough to fly had left the nest. Maybe one of them had been left behind, and had accidentally fallen out of the nest and onto the windowsill.

  As for my imaginary bird, it must be hiding somewhere in my head. But though I searched for it in all the nooks and crannies of my mind, I couldn’t find a trace of it.

  Suddenly, I heard a noise. “Psst, psst!”

  It didn’t come from Mrs. Chester, who was still sound asleep. There was no one else in the class.maproom.

  Maybe it was just the wind blowing. But there wasn’t even a puff of breeze outside.

  The noise could only have come from my imaginary bird. But how could that be? I must have fallen asleep myself. I must have been dreaming.

  But then I actually saw the bird say “Psst! psst!” again!

  It was staring right into my eyes, as if it were trying to hypnotize me.

  After a second, I couldn’t help but get up and walk towards it — very quietly, so I wouldn’t wake Mrs. Chester up.

&n
bsp; I could see my reflection in the window; I looked like a sleepwalker. Honestly!

  The bird beckoned me closer. It seemed to me that it wanted to whisper something in my ear.

  I would have to stick my head out the window. I hesitated. It was as if there was another world on the other side of the window. A supernatural, unreal world, where the strangest things could happen.

  That’s the kind of crazy idea you get when you’re asleep and dreaming!

  In any case, I felt as if I were being pulled by an invisible thread. Unable to resist, I stuck my head out the window.

  If I wasn’t dreaming, then this was an extraordinary moment. We had to read a lot of books for our project, but I never came across a bird that tried to speak to a human being.

  Of course, I was all ears. But the bird didn’t say anything. It just snuggled against my neck. I could feel its tiny body throbbing with life against my skin.

  It felt too real to be a dream. Really!

  I pulled away. I like cuddling all right, but I was eager to hear its secret.

  To my astonishment, it had disappeared. I looked all around me. And that’s when I noticed the reflection in the window. There was a bird where I should have seen my own face!

  So where was Poppy?

  Guess what! I had turned into the bird!

  CHAPTER THREE

  LET SLEEPING CATS LIE

  I WAS UNDER A SPELL! I had been enchanted, just like in fairy tales.

  How can I explain? It was still me, Poppy, with my same thoughts and feelings, but here I was in the body of a bird.

  Although I was tiny, I had an incredible bird’s-eye view! With an eye on either side of my head, I could practically see behind me. It was great, I can tell you!

  And I could hear all kinds of sounds that the human ear couldn’t. Most of them were difficult to identify, but I could pick out the beating of insect wings. And the scratching sound of a cat’s claws … on the ledge just above me.

  Oh no! Not Chester! I had just started my life as a bird. I hadn’t even had time to learn how to warble!

  Trembling with fear, I looked up. It was Chester all right — I recognized his pointy ears sticking out over the ledge.

  He was keeping still, hoping I would forget he was there. Waiting for the right moment to pounce on his prey — me! I knew his tricks.

  Huddling at the corner of the sill, I held my breath. Maybe my parents would fly to my rescue.

  I had already seen the swallows attack Chester, when he was lurking too close to their nest. They flew at him, screeching “Chee veechee veet! Chee veechee veet!”

  Chester lost no time in getting out of there, I can tell you!

  I was going to be in big trouble. I could just imagine what my parents would say.

  “If we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a thousand times. Don’t hop onto the edge of the nest, you’ll fall out. This is what happens when you don’t listen. If we hadn’t flown by when we did, you would be inside that cat’s stomach right now.”

  And so on and so on, blah blah blah. I know it by heart.

  When I was little, I ran out into the street once without looking. My mother grabbed my ponytail and pulled me back — right before a big truck would have turned me into cat food.

  You should have seen how angry my parents were! It was because they love me, of course. An instant later, they were holding me tight in their arms.

  That was what my bird parents would do with their naughty little bird. They would hold me close and clasp me in their wings.

  I called for them to come help me. In bird language, it sounded like “Peep, peep, peep!”

  Chester didn’t waste a second. With the agility of a mountain goat, he slipped along the wall and landed on the windowsill.

  I felt his stare falling over me like a net. It reminded me strangely of how Mrs. Chester had looked at me. Whatever!

  Soon he would pounce and I would be trapped in his filthy paws. Then he would sink his fangs into my neck. And my beak and my head and my feet and my tail. Just like in the song “Gentille Alouette!” That would be the end of my nice new feathers.

  I had already seen Chester kill a bird. There were feathers flying everywhere. It looked like it was snowing.

  “Chester,” I wanted to tell him, “I’m not really a bird. It’s me, Poppy!” But how could he recognize me? I looked just like a bird. I couldn’t even recognize the Chester who purred when I petted him. He had turned into a savage beast, stalking me.

  I thought of calling Mrs. Chester to rescue me. Can you believe it? I must have been really desperate!

  What was the use? If she heard anything at all, it would only be “Peep, peep, peep!”

  If only Mr. Gusto had been there! He would understand that something strange was happening. If Mr. Gusto had been there, none of this would ever have happened!

  If only my bird parents had had time to teach me how to fly! Where were they, anyway?

  Time was getting short. Chester was tensing his muscles, ready to spring. In a second, he would be upon me.

  If I stayed where I was, I was a goner. If I jumped, I would crash to the ground like a crummy paper airplane.

  “Be brave!” Mr. Gusto would say. That’s easy when it isn’t your heart bouncing on a trampoline inside your chest. But there was nothing else to do; anything would be better than winding up in a cat’s stomach.

  I closed my eyes and jumped into thin air.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SAVED

  PANIC-STRICKEN, I had leaped blindly into space. My body was stiff and my wings hung limply the perfect posture for crashing into whatever was in the way

  I was heading straight for a tree. Something had to get out of the way and I didn’t think the tree was going to.

  “Do something!” Mr. Gusto would yell.

  In desperation I batted my wings and just barely avoided a crash. At the last second I caught hold of a branch and hung on, frozen with fear.

  Chester saw he had a second chance. His eyes were mapping out the shortest route to my branch. In a trice he would be upon me.

  Where were the warm, protecting arms — I mean wings — of my mother and father?

  Instead I would soon feel Chester’s sharp claws gripping me. Already he was climbing up the tree.

  There was only one escape: a leap into the unknown again. Ready or not, I jumped off, hoping that the arms of heaven would catch me.

  This time I kept my eyes open. I flapped my wings so I would ride on the air, just like other birds do. And you know — it worked!

  I had taken off! I couldn’t get over it. I was flying! Fight or flight, they say. I was thrilled to be aloft, and I soared higher and higher.

  I couldn’t resist taking a last look at Chester. From high up, he looked so small. I couldn’t believe I had ever been so afraid of him.

  I was free, free as a bird! The whole immense sky was my playground.

  Can you imagine how it felt? My entire being was tingling with joy. I drank it all in with my eyes. There was so much to see.

  “I have to remember all this for my drawing,” I thought. But before that I would have to figure out how to turn into a little girl again. First things first, Mr. Gusto would say. Anyway!

  Try to picture what I saw.

  Below me, the landscape looked like a crazy quilt, with patches of different colours all sewn together. There were so many different shades!

  A dark brown patch was a field that had just been planted. Over there was the soft green of a grassy lawn. On this side, the glossy dark green of leaves and the stands of evergreens, darker still.

  The houses looked tiny, like doll houses, all different shapes and colours. Some were laid out in rows, others scattered here and there in the countryside.

  A few trailed a gaily coloured kite-tail — laundry drying on the clothesline.

  And there was the woods, where my little brother Pip and I had got lost. I had thought it was such a huge, deep forest. From here, it seemed
no bigger than a bush.

  The lake looked like a mirror you could slip in your pocket. The river was a watery snake winding through the land.

  People were travelling from place to place, following the grey lines of the roads.

  Up above, the sky stretched to infinity. It was a strong, clear blue, unlike any of the blues in my pencil box. That colour would be etched forever in my memory.

  My delight was endless as I glided along. I felt as if I was floating on a cloud, but there was nary a cloud in sight.

  Unless you count the big grey cloud that suddenly appeared above me. A strangely-shaped cloud, with huge wings. A cloud that looked exactly like a raptor, a bird of prey. The kind of bird that eats smaller birds.

  Yes — it was a bird of prey. And its prey was me!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SHADOW IN THE SKY

  CAN’T I EVER have just one moment of peace anywhere?

  I tried to fly away, beating my wings rapidly. I twisted, I dove, I shot up. It was no good — the hawk followed me like my shadow. It was a sinister, terrifying shadow, ready to seize me and swallow me up.

  There were no other birds around to come to my rescue. Where were they all? Keeping out of sight, hiding, every one of them. They didn’t care what happened to me. Just like my class.mapmates, the cowards!

  Only a few minutes ago, I had been in paradise. Now I was tumbling from my state of grace.

  Don’t give up so easily, Mr. Gusto would say. That’s fine for him to say! The one day when I really needed him, he wasn’t there! I ask you!

  Well, with the pickle I was in, it wouldn’t hurt to at least call for help.

  I didn’t expect much, but I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Help! Help me!”

  In bird language, that came out as a feeble “Peep! peep!,” lost in the vast empty sky. It was hopeless.