Expert Advice

– Manfred

The Tick and Cow, probably the best lorikeet bar this side of the black stump, had an impressive outside-size—it was in one of those giant fig trees the apes had planted everywhere—and Manfred was only sorry his new friend couldn’t see it in the dark. On the outside, two great rows of trees, whose roots had broken the tar ribbons and shattered the concrete-bottomed houses, whose branches interwove and interlocked so far that if one came down they all would in the next once-in-a-century storm.

But on the inside…

Right on cue, a knot in a trunk opened, and a beautiful warm yellow light flowed and melted around them, bringing the delicious scent of frying maggots with it.

“You coming?” Manfred, holding out a wing of welcome, grinned at Felix.

“What is this place?” Felix asked, beak open and dribbling, eyes wide and shining. Even Teri’s jibe, complete with elbow nudge to Manfred’s ribs, about how she would hang around if they needed a guide later on account of there being cicadas the size of small birds in the area had no effect as far as Manfred could tell.

Manfred grinned and half-pushed, half-dragged the stunned bird inside, wiping his claws clean on the sign glowing in the branch at their feet:

“Who owns this place?” Felix asked as he hopped to keep up.

“Are you kidding?” Huma asked as the three of them took in the spacious room. A serving bar panelled with dazzling arabesques occupied the centre. Decorations covered the walls: seashells, small stones, butterfly and dragonfly wings, cicada skins, lizard bones, fishing lines; even pieces of wood and metal. Moonlight shone through the domed ceiling high overhead, highlighting an intricate coloured-glass mosaic. As far as the eye could see, even on high zoom, birds of every kind filled innumerable perches, their drinks resting on tables of driftwood, upended plastic pots, and scavenger mammals while they engrossed themselves in drinking, arguing, laughing, and game-playing. Everywhere was filled with the soft lights of thousands of fireflies.

“The place is at least a factor of K bigger than the feather-dresser’s,” Manfred said with a shake of his head. “And he has to ask who owns it?!”

“But I thought—” Felix stopped as a lone voice started singing a song.

“Farewell and adieu, you sweet eastern curlews,” it sang.

“Farewell and adieu, you hens of the north,” another countered.

Raucous singing broke out all around them then:

“For you’ve stocked up for winter
And you’ve gots to be moving,
But we hope that we’ll see you again before long.”

Felix gritted his beak and looked away, blinking.

“Right!” Manfred said, steering him to the bar. “My shout. What do you want?”

“Errr,” Felix clearly hadn’t thought this far ahead so Manfred was about to choose for him when Felix surprised him by asking the boobook owl behind the bar, “What do you recommend?”

“Try this,” she said, her yellow eyes eerily wide and unblinking as she hooked a pair of plastic bottle tops into one claw and turned to a rack of upside down tetrapaks affixed to her side of the counter. She squeezed one of them and a honey-coloured liquid streamed into the bottle tops. “The best drink since the evolution of beaks.” She plonked them on the counter. “And a honey pale for you, Huma?”

Huma nodded. “Thanks, Rashidi,” she confirmed.

Manfred footed over a scattering of sunflower seeds, some kind of peregrine earthworm, and a brazil nut.

A voice slurred across them as they raised their plastics. “Cloacas up,” it said.

The voice apparently made its way from the currawong-esque bird Felix had perched himself next to: ‘esque’ in the sense that a currawong was normally twice the size of a mudlark, had glossy black feathers with the occasional flash of white, a piercing pair of intense yellow eyes, and a hook on the tip of their beaks vicious enough to tear living flesh right off the bone of any creature smaller than themselves; while this bird was triple their size if you counted her hanging gut, with soot-and-dirty-grey feathers, murky brown eyes, and a polished rounded finish to a beak clearly incapable of threatening mashed banana.

Felix cheersed her with his drink. “I’m Felix P Brown,” he said. “But everyone calls me Bumpy.”

“Chloe Goldngreen.” The currawong-esque extended a wing. “My first piece of advice,” she nodded at the already empty bottle top in Felix’s claws, “is to not drink your next one as fast as that one.” Saliva flew from her beak on the ess sounds. “That’s not your everyday nectar you know, and it’s gonna go to your head, you especially.”

“Why me especially?”

“Because you don’t have the guts for nectar, you’re insectivorous.”

“I am not!” Felix defended.

“Stay in your flight path,” Manfred chided. “Chloe may be ‘one of those’, but never lose sight of the fact we’re still all small birds sitting with a currawong.”

“But she—”

“Is a she,” Huma said with a shrug that said that was all that mattered.

“You eat insects, Felix,” Manfred explained.

“I know, but she called me—”

“An insect eater.”

“Oh.” Felix said. Manfred noted his embarrassment: his wings rose stiffly as though he was fighting to hold them down. “But she said I don’t have the guts.”

“Well, you don’t. Your guts are designed for protein, not carbohydrates.”

He was losing the fight with his wings. “So…Teri?” he asked.

“Also insectivorous. But more importantly, it’s your shout.”

“Same again, love?” Rashidi started pouring. “How do you want to pay? And I don’t have change for glass this early in the evening.”

“Errrr.” Felix clearly hadn’t thought this far either. Rashidi blinked. “I errr…” he confirmed. Huma rolled her head. “Put his down as Swill credit, Rashidi,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling he’s not going to cost me too much.”

“So,” Chloe drawled. “Word in the air is that you want to know about long-distance flying.”

“Yes!” Felix sat up straight on his perch. “What can you tell me?”

“What exactly do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with everything,” Felix said.

“Ok, let’s see,” Chloe swigged her warm beer. “That’ll be wind, then. So how about southerlies? They’re the ones you want to avoid first. And then there’s those hot westerlies. You’ll want to avoid those for all the grain in Siberia.”

“What about Hadleys? And Ferrells?”

“Who? Never heard of them. You don’t want to go sticking your beak into any of your foreign winds.”

“But—”

“No, you want to trust me on this,” Chloe said, taking another swig. “We’ve got plenty of good ol’ Aussie-made wind, why go searching for yer foreign stuff?”

Felix deflated.

Manfred nudged him. “Don’t worry about it, mate. There’s plenty more birds in the bar. We’ll get you your answers yet.”

“So, Manfred,” Chloe changed the subject. “Have you found yourself that perfect henling you keep dreaming of?”

“Not yet, Chloe. But you know what? I couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t tell me even if you did, I know, I know.”

“Well, I could but I’d have to kill you,” Manfred added.

Felix choked on his drink. “You’d…errr…what’d you just…”

“Don’t let him fool you, Felix,” Chloe said. “He’s only half full of it.”

“I’m not half full of anything.” Manfred waved a dismissive wing. “It’s a well-known fact, scientifically proven, is what it is.”

“What is?”

“Jinxing.”

“What?” Felix objected. “That wasn’t in Ms’s science lectures! At least,” he corrected with a distant look in his eyes. “I don’t think it was.”

“See!” Chloe said. “Manfred here,” she leaned in to impart her secret without lowering her voice even a single decibel. “Thinks if he talks about a henling he likes, then he’ll lose her.”

“Well, that’s what happened last time.”

“You mean you’ve mated already?!” Felix asked.

“Almost. But then I told everyone all about it. And we were kaput. Finito. Solved like x on a triangle.”

“So now,” Chloe added. “Manfred has sworn never to beak and tell again.”

“Is this really true?”

“All of it. And Felix, if you ever meet the hen of your dreams? Do not. Tell anyone. Who. She. Is. Do you understand?”

“But—”

“Uh-uh,” Manfred held up a wing. “This I tell you as your new best friend. Now let’s have another drink! Who’s shout we up to?”