Mystery Henling

– Felix

Felix landed in the middle of his friends, his knees buckling and his ankles twisting. Carlos leapt to one side.

“Hawk you, Bumpy!” Carlos’s complaint was strident.

“What?” Felix said, rubbing circulation back into his knee. “I was in perfect control. I meant to land right next to you.” Carlos opened his beak to say something but Amy interrupted.

“Manfred’s looking for you,” she said.

Felix looked around but couldn’t see him.

“You just missed him,” she explained.

“Wait—” Felix said, frowning. “How do you even know him?”

“I’m a henling.” She shrugged, as if that explained everything. It didn’t, but before Felix could open his mouth it was Ms’s turn to interrupt.

“Bumpy!” She squawked. “So glad you could join us in time for my news.” She raised her voice impossibly louder. “Listen up, cocklings! This morning’s lecture is the last one.”

The cocklings cheered.

“So of course that means this afternoon is nest-test day.”

The cheer stopped. A worried groan came from the back row of cocklings.

“Today?!” Douglas Douglas asked. He looked around for support, but somehow, without any obvious movement from his friends, a gap opened up around him. “We didn’t know it was today.”

Ms laughed. “Ahhh, Douglas Douglas. Always the joker. Are you saying you need extra time?”

“Well,” Douglas Douglas squeaked. “Yes. Yes I am. Thank you.”

“So if spring comes half a moon early next year, like it did last year, you’d ask for extra time?” Her voice was firm. “You’d—hawk forbid—ask the henlings if they could wait until you were ready?”

“Errr…” but it was too late. Douglas Douglas had flown right into her trap. Resigning himself to inevitable punishment, he lifted above his friends to practice hovering until the lecturer arrived.

“Class,” Ms smiled with clear joy. “Please welcome Twisted Wing, professor of Recent History.” Douglas Douglas settled quietly back to earth.

“Let’s face it,” Twisted Wing began, once the obligatory wing-clapping had died down. “By ‘recent’ history we mean the 65 post apocalyptic mega-years to now. That brief speck of time in which the apes rose to rule…”

Felix yawned. If it was such a brief speck of time, why bother learning about it?

“…but that was our comet…”

He leaned over to Orville. “Why do we care if it’s only 65 million years?” He whispered.

“…the next one’s on course…”

“I mean,” Felix continued whispering. “We skipped whole family trees that lasted longer.” Orville continued to ignore him.

“…so keep stockpiling plastic…”

“Like trilobites,” he went on. “How long did they last for? 200-and-something? Why don’t we ever talk about them?”

“We did,” Orville whispered back. “That was that two-day lecture when it rained. Don’t you remember?”

But his classmates chose that moment to break out into furious clapping. Felix joined in, wondering what he’d missed. Twisted Wing flew away, cocklings smiled and back-slapped. It must have been a good lecture.

“Why didn’t we get a file?” Felix asked Orville.

Orville stared at him and shook his head as if in disbelief while their friends took to the air.

“For those of you who weren’t listening, Bumpy and Orville,” Ms said. “I said now get yourselves to Kooragang!”

“And don’t forget,” she added as a thoroughly confused Felix took off to join their friends in the squawking rush. “The henlings will be doing the judging this time!”

---

Felix was surprised when Amy settled in to fly alongside him.

“I thought you’d be judging over at one of the other melodies,” he greeted her.

“Never mind that,” she changed the subject. “We need to talk about something else entirely.”

“Oh! So you don’t want to talk about it?” Felix persisted. “Don’t tell me…you like Carlos, right?”

“This is serious,” she said. “You have to—”

“Or maybe look-at-my-own-beak Douglas Douglas?” He wasn’t about to let her avoid the topic.

“What?!”

“Ah-ha!” he tried not to sound too smug. “I knew it!”

“Oh my hawk. You really don’t know, do you?” she asked. She sounded exasperated.

“What then?” He thought quickly. “Oh! I get it! You’ve done a Durba and already chosen a mate!” he joked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Oh. I was…kind of joking. Really?!”

“Much to our mother’s disappointment.”

Felix’s flight wobbled at around the same time as he frowned. He’d never seen her with any particular cockling before. “Why would she be disappointed?”

“You’ve heard her talk—all she’s ever wanted is for all of her clutches to have clutches of our own. Although…now you’ve stopped all that migration talk…” she shook her head. “Anyway, we’ve already answered an ad in the Cockatoo Connection. But…”

Felix thought harder. In fact, he hardly ever saw her at all any more. This morning was the first time in about a week, when she told him—

“Oh my hawk!” He slapped a wing over his beak and nearly fell out of the sky. “Oh my hawk!” He said again. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!”

But the mudbanks of the Kooragang testing grounds loomed ahead. He stopped talking and gave full concentration to landing. Legs stretched forward, wings pulled back, tail parallel to the ground, beak curved, eyes on the—wait, tail perpendicular…

“Don’t worry,” he continued with a wink as he got back to his feet. “Your secret’s safe with me.” He cleaned the mud from his wings.

“My what?!”

“Your secret mate.”

“You think that’s a secret?” She shook her head.

But Felix was already waddling off to join his friends. “Manfred and his mystery henling,” he chuckled to himself. “I never would have guessed.”