Free To Fly

A Short Story

A young girl walked through the park by herself on that bright spring day. A light breeze jostled her short black curls as she strolled through the sunlight. She had strayed from the family picnic, but was careful to stick to the path as her mother had instructed.

The girl spotted a bench up ahead in an alcove to the side of the gravel path, surrounded by an assortment of carefully cultivated bushes and trees, all adorned by marvelous flowers. The park was renowned because of the famously skilled gardener who nurtured its beauty for the public, creating a space for bright colored birds and dainty flowers to charm the visitors. Drawing closer she saw a boy on the bench staring off into the branches of a nearby conifer.

The girl approached and stood at the far end in the shade for a moment, away from the boy. He had a handsome, stoic face that was calm in its focus despite his youth.

“May I sit here?” she asked.

“If you like,” he replied nonchalantly with a shrug. He gestured to the available space without averting his gaze and she interpreted it as a friendly enough gesture to sit.

The boy ignored her as she did, continuing to look at something in the evergreen tree about ten feet away. She quickly assessed he couldn’t be much older than her, probably eight or nine maybe, with light skin and freckles that streaked his cheeks in such a number that they resembled the Milky Way ornamenting a clear night sky. When he still hadn’t returned her look, she followed his line of sight to see that perched upon a low lying thin branch in the eastern hemlock on the other side of the path was a beautiful blue jay.

She couldn’t help but admire the bird’s delightful plumage and how calmly it stayed on the branch despite the presence of relatively nearby humans. The bird tilted its head a couple of times and fixed its observant eyes on the two children.

Then it let out a sudden trill which startled the girl and abruptly changed her mood.

Something was wrong. The bird kept looking about, bringing its watchful gaze back to the bench with every few swivels of its little head. What she first considered alertness she now interpreted as anxiety. The perturbed girl looked at the boy to see that a slight smile had graced his face, like the spark that births a fierce and deadly flame. She glanced back to the bird to see the blue jay flap its wings rapidly but remain on the branch. Her thoughts were clouded with confusion. She turned and saw the boy’s smile had spread to the rest of his face, a broad beaming smile with an innocent chaos behind it. Her concern flared up as if it had been set alight.

“What’s wrong with it?”

The blue jay flapped its wings again, beating them loudly for a few seconds before stopping. She could see its breathing was labored. There was a panicked accent to its movements

“Why doesn’t it fly away?” she asked hesitantly, fixing the boy with her big, worried blue eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle which he handed to her.

“Super glue?” she asked reading the label.

“Yep,” he said taking the bottle back with a grin and popping it in his pocket. The boy then stood and beckoned for her to follow.

“But why?”

“I put it all over the branch so that it can’t fly away,” he explained, “Isn’t she a beauty?”

“But why did you do it?”

“So she wouldn’t fly away!” the boy repeated with a little irritation. He picked up a large white domed cage that had been sitting out of sight next to the bench on the ground and walked up to the branch where the blue jay was desperately trying to flee, dragging the thin branch slightly as it pulled at its restraining limbs.

The boy took the branch at its base and carefully snapped it off, alarming the bird and causing a fresh frenzy of wing beating. He then carefully brought the branch down to the opening of the cage and placed the wild bird and the branch it was stuck to gingerly inside. The cage had clearly been designed for a much larger bird and there was plenty of room for the confined blue jay, but the girl couldn’t help feeling wounded in her heart, as if she had witnessed a terrible crime.

“What are you doing?”

“I love birds,” he replied with a simple grin, “Aren’t they beautiful? Come with me, I want to show you something cool!” With that he turned with his cage and his prisoner and began striding quickly down the path. When the girl didn’t immediately follow, he spun about and beckoned to her excitedly. She was very nervous about going, and the feeling of foreboding she had was begging her to turn and return to the safety of her family, to get away from this boy and his sad caged pet.

But the boy wouldn’t continue without her and so she finally complied and started after him.

---

---

He patiently waited until she caught up and the two walked down the path in silence until they turned the corner and he eagerly waved her around a tall manicured hedge. On the other side was a large white conservatory building with tall glass windows that reached up to its old painted frame roof. The sunlight beamed off of its flaky white coat revealing dark spots of mold and decay where the building had not been properly maintained.

The boy approached and pushed the rusted white metal door open with his back, ignoring the loud squeal of its corroded hinges and cautiously pulling the cage through after him. The girl couldn’t see through the dusty windows due to the shadows inside being too dark and gloomy so she was hesitant to follow.

There was an ominous feeling about the place, and a faint smell of urine that made her unbearably uneasy. Her youthful curiosity kept questioning the building’s contents however, until it eventually got the better of her when the boy didn’t return. She had come this far after all, a peek couldn’t hurt. What could he want to show her?

When she stepped through the door she gasped in shocked horror and wished she had never been to the park that day. The first thing to hit her senses was the stench of poo and piss, the ammonia stinging her nose along with an uncomfortable undertone of something rotten.

Stacked in disorganized towers to what she thought were dizzying heights was an extraordinarily large collection of metal cages, each with its own small avian captive. Some were square, some were domed, a few were painted but most were plane metal cages, numbering more than fifty in total by the young girl’s estimation.

There were cardinals that burned a bold red and common grackles with a beautiful iridescent sheen when they turned to look at her in their agitation. The boy had captured mourning doves and crows and innumerable small sparrows, all standing helplessly in cages, with their feet still attached to whichever branch he had used to entrap them. A few of the birds had damaged or visibly broken wings from their distressed attempts to fly for freedom. One had accidentally snapped its leg when its foot hadn’t come free from the branch it was caught with.

The girl felt an immense despair bubble up uncontrollably from inside until she could contain the tears no longer and softly began to cry.

“Look at my collection!” the boy announced triumphantly, turning to present himself before his prize “Look how many I’ve caught!” A bright smile hung on his face as he held up his newest jailbird with pride.

The girl flinched as many of the birds shrieked at his declaration, both in fright and agony, trilling and peeping in their sorrowful, sonorous voices. Among the distressed flapping of wretched wings, she was disgusted to discover that the rotting smell was originating from many of the birds forgotten in the cages that made up the bottom of the wiry metal mountains, who were already dead and in various states of decay. Feathers and feces littered the ground mixed with urine soaked straw that had fallen haphazardly from where it had been tenderly applied to the floors of the prisons as a meager layer of bedding.

With a final glance at the young boy, looking at her with baffled expectation, she turned with her tears and fled from the cursed building into the bright sunshine of that awful spring day.

---

© 2025 Sebastian Arends | Sincerely Seb. All Rights Reserved

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution of this story or accompanying image is prohibited.