– The Henlings
“Remind me,” Pancho asked Amelia and the others as they circled over a well-tended grassy hill, “why we’re here at the Academy for Western Mudlarks.” Stretching her claws forward to land she caught the rich scent of grass greener than anything they got in the East. And soft, as it turned out—Harriet stumbled her landing, even Bobbi wore a look of hard concentration.
“Because we can,” Amelia replied casually, landing perfectly, as always. “And because it’s always worth seeing what’s available. Look,” —she pointed to a pair of richly plump, soft, twittering henlings— “there’s Jackie and Hélène. Hello!” She called out to them. They looked like interchangeable twins to Pancho. “Everyone,” Amelia continued, “meet Jackie B’dazzled-Blue and Hélène Papaya.”
As they greeted the twins, Pancho nudged Bobbi and pointed at Amy, who was all eyes for the Western teacher.
“What’s her name?” Amy asked their new friends.
“Dr Radhakrishnan,” one of the twins replied—it might have been Jackie, Pancho wasn’t sure. “Surely you know her? We call her Rada. Isn’t she just the most gorgeous mudlark?” Amy was still staring. Rada had a tiny head, long nostrils high up on her beak, the teensiest sign of webbing between her toes, and the scaliest legs ever.
“She’s literally to die for,” Amy said eventually, breathlessly.
“Don’t let Serenity hear you say that.” Bobbi giggled.
“Oh she’s fine,” Amy said. “She doesn’t mind where I get my appetite just so long as I come home for dinner.”
“What’s that glass on her eye?” Harriet asked.
“Jewellery, I expect,” Amelia said, looking at her own feet. She wiggled her toes and admired her new ring.
“She calls it a monocle, darling,” one of the interchangeables told Harriet. “But it’s Batesian mimicry, pure and simple.”
“I’ve never heard of the Batesian kind,” Harriet said, looking closer at the glass…it made her look…threatening somehow. Dangerous. Like she was going to attack at any second. Harriet sat with a sudden thump.
“Now you have,” the other interchangeable said with a not unfriendly laugh. “It’s the one where harmless creatures evolve to look like deadly ones. But in this case, she can’t be bothered waiting for evolution, let alone putting it before EvComm. She says it inspires her cocklings to listen to her lectures.”
Harriet probably didn’t doubt it.
The henlings, Eastern and Western alike, settled in a group around Amelia—Pancho and Bobbi to one side, hunkering comfortably as the first pair of Western cocklings waddled up to a raised mound topped with flattened grass.
“Clément and Joaquin,” Rada said for the benefit of the Eastern henlings.
Pancho dismissed them—something about the way they held their heads so high. Too cocky.
“Hey, Bobbi,” she said instead. “I’ve been thinking about something I saw…did you…did you see the Capper that was talking to Felix yesterday?”
“The one that looked just like him?”
“So you thought so too? Do you reckon they’re related?”
“I think we’d have heard if there was a Capper in Felix’s family.”
“I heard him say his name was Officer Friendly.”
“You were confused. That’s just a name Ms made up to keep the cocklings in line.”
“You know no-one else I asked actually saw him? Just you and me it seems.”
“He was real, Panch. As real as the square root of negative one. And he looked every bit the Capper. Tough. Hard.”
“So nothing like Felix after all, then?” Pancho said with a grin.
But Bobbi didn’t smile. “Nothing friendly about him at all,” she said. “I heard him tell Felix to pick Amelia.”
“I knew I heard your heart fluttering,” Pancho said. “Right when Felix looked at you.”
“Before or after he asked Amelia on a date?” Bobbi sighed.
“You can still choose him at Graduation,” Pancho tried to console her friend. “We’re the ones doing the choosing, remember?”
“No. No way. Not now. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was over the freaking moon when he finally noticed me yesterday. But I’m not choosing someone who doesn’t want me. And he just made it very clear who he does want.”
“But she doesn’t want him, does she?” Pancho glanced at Amelia. “He was going to choose you. I know he was. He was staring right at you. I mean, really, right at you.”
Bobbi shrugged. “But now he’s not. Now he only has eyes for her.” She sighed again.
“Oh hawk. You’ve got it bad.”
“I’ll get over it,” Bobbi smiled half-heartedly as a second pair of mudlarks took their turn in the grass clearing.
“Neil and Richard,” Rada informed the flock.
“Eventually.” Bobbi continued. “That capper though…I can’t put my primary on it but…I trust him. I can’t explain it, he’s just the kind of bird you’d tell your secrets to. It’s like…like I’ve always known him.”
Amelia watched the pair, deep in quiet conversation. The rest of her friends were busy critiquing the cocklings in the clearing. She wiggled her toes again but no-one noticed. She twisted the ring. Twisted it again. Lifted her foot to admire how the sun reflected off the shinier parts.
“Oh for the love of Hawk!” Harriet blurted. “Stop fiddling with it and just come out and tell us about it!”
“Oh?” Said Amelia. “You noticed my ring?”
“Yeah and don’t even try and pretend it’s from Felix,” Durba said, crossing her wings across her breast. “So…out with it…who’s your mystery cockling then?”
“Oh but I can’t say,” Amelia opened her eyes as wide—as innocent—as they would go. “Because that’d jinx it.”
“What garbage,” Harriet said.
“Yeah,” Durba said. “Come on, tell us.”
“I can’t. It’s superstitious.”
“Since when?” Harriet scoffed, folding her wings across her breast.
“Well…it might be,” Amelia said. “And I don’t want to jinx this.”
“Since when does a species that can prove the entire universe is reducible to thirty-two mathematical parameters also believe in jinxes?”
“It’s a stupidstition is what it is,” Durba agreed.
The next pair of cocklings stood in the clearing. This time Pancho sat up straight. Rada introduced them as Richard and Miles. Pointing to the fatter and healthier of the two she spoke with clear pride.
“That one’s Miles,” she said. “He’s my star student.”
“E to the M to the C to the squared.” Miles clicked his primaries and swayed rhythmically as he duck-chanted. Pancho sat even straighter.
“I buy the best worms,” Richard opened the duet, wings rising.
“My mother owns a seed stockpile,” Miles upped the ante, his own wings rising as Richard’s fell.
“I ride in pelican taxis.”
“My mother has the best nest-builders.”
Pancho’s ears rang. The world darkened at the edges and spun crazily as time stood still. There was nothing and no-one else—just her and this cockling, alone on the entire planet. She zoomed in for a closer look. She hadn’t noticed the incredibly fine feathers at the base of his beak before. Hadn’t noticed the way his eye caught the sun, the way the light spilled back out of it and cast glittering refractions of loveliness. Hadn’t noticed how fresh the air smelt today, nor that particular shade of cerulean blue in the sky before, the sweetest breeze on her beak.
Harriet’s harsh tones cut across her reveries.
“Boring.”
The world returned to its bright, jarring, empty normality: the chant was over. She stared as the pair left the mound, thanking their teacher before returning to their cockling friends. She watched as they settled in the grass and tried to listen as they laughed with their friends. She sighed and turned to Bobbi—who was grinning from ear to ear.
“What?!” Pancho felt her wings rise.
“Talk about having it bad,” Bobbi teased.
“Have you seen their runes?” An oblivious Harriet continued as the next pair approached the mound. “Nothing but the highest quality here: shiny metal ring pulls, metal bottle tops, bright copper wiring; these cocklings really know how to show off their wealth.”
“Manfred and Neil,” Rada informed the henlings.
If Pancho hadn’t already been looking towards Amelia she may not have noticed her eyes widen, her heartbeat quicken, her breast rise and fall faster. But then one of the cocklings spoke and every henling did the same.
“My name is Manfred Magenta,” he said in a rich melodic voice. “And I’d like to welcome the beautiful Eastern Melody henlings to our humble Academy. I’m sure we’re all charmed to meet you and we hope you like what you see.”
He led straight in with their duck-chant. “F to the M to the A.”
Then the pair crooned. There was no other way to describe it.
“I wanna be your lover, henling;
“I wanna be your bird.
“Love you like no other, henling;
“Like no other could.”
Manfred sang high, Neil sang low, in perfect harmony. Until a raucous change made Pancho jump:
“I wanna be your bird,” they screeched together.
“I wanna be your bird.”
Pancho found herself irresistibly drawn to grading them. They switched voices—Manfred low this time—threw in a key-change for extra points, and crooned again:
“Tell me that you love me, henling;
“Let me understand.
“Tell me that you love me, henling;
“I wanna be your bird.”
They sang the last line over and over, clicking their primaries, their voices growing softer and softer until the henlings had to strain to hear them.
The silence grew. For a long time, nobody moved, not even Rada. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
It was Harriet who broke it.
“I don’t get it. You’re all just sitting around like those apes were in that movie…you know, where that guy goes back in time in that fancy car and plays Johnny B Goode before it was even written?”
Amelia let out an awkward laugh, and the rest of the henlings followed suit.
“So that’s what they’ve been working on,” Rada said. “Deceptively simple.”
“It’s a memory I’m never going to delete,” one of the interchangeable Western henlings said.
Evolution: it's for the birds 