The Song Bird (Marzi’s Short Stories)

A long time ago, there was a young girl with an incurable disease.  All the clerics who met with this girl said the same thing: she would die before her eighth birthday.  But this girl was also the daughter of a king, and the king was stubborn.  He sent every soldier under his command to the ends of the world to find a cure for his daughter.

Meanwhile, the young girl sat alone in her tower.  She had very few visitors, as many were afraid of getting sick themselves.  All she had was a window from which she could look down at her kingdom.

One day, the young girl awoke to the sound of a pleasant song.  On her windowsill, there was a black bird with an unusual mask over its face.

“That’s a wonderful song,” the young girl said to the bird.

“Thank you,” the bird replied. “But it is a sad one too.”

When the young girl told her parents about the bird and its song, they did not believe her.  In most cases, birds could not talk, and in all cases, birds did not wear masks.  Even the druids who would collar their birds were not naïve enough to impede their vision, hearing, or sense of direction.  Regardless, the king and queen were kind, and their daughter was sick.  So they humored her.

For many months, the bird returned the young girl’s window.  The bird became the young girl’s only friend.  One day, the young girl asked the bird:

“Is death scary?”

“Dying is scarier,” the bird told her.

This brought the young girl great comfort.  And so, on the eve of her eighth birthday, she was prepared to die.

But she did not.  Rather, she started to feel better.

Clerics from all over the kingdom came once again to visit the young girl.  They all drew the same conclusions: firstly, that the young girl was recovering, and secondly, that they had absolutely no idea how that could be.

After a few weeks, when the girl was nearly healed, the bird came to her window.  The young girl had a feeling that it would be the last time she saw that bird for a long while.  And the young girl had been wondering something for many nights.  As it was her last opportunity, she decided to ask.

“Did you save my life?”

The bird said: “No, I did not and I cannot.”

The girl asked: “Then how is it that I got better?”

The bird said: “Some things are like that.  It’s bad luck to kill a sparrow, and even death bows to luck.”

Eighty years later, the song bird flew back to that windowsill, and the girl welcomed her friend’s return.