The Boy Who Wished to Be a Bird

The boy hid behind the hedges, watching the witch feed her chickens.

She wasn’t as ugly as the townsfolk claimed. Her skin was neither green nor gray, but a pleasing combination of the two. She sported a thick beard that would have been considered attractive on any man. In fact, if you looked past the mountain range of warts on her cheeks, her knobby, horse-sized knees, and the second nose growing where her left ear should have been, she was quite lovely.

A black and gold chicken flapped its wings and clucked at the witch.

“If you don’t like the breadcrumbs, try the grilled crickets,” she said to it.

“Cluck-cluck,” said the chicken.

“Don’t be rude. You try achieving a perfect medium-rare on an insect the size of your thumb.”

The chicken growled.

“Shush. I think our guest has arrived.” She inhaled with both noses. “Yes…I can smell the pubescent body odor from here. Worse than an ill-kept zoo, it is." The witch whipped around to stare at the hedge where the boy hid. “In case you’re wondering, boy, I do mean you.”

The boy stepped out from behind the hedge.

“There. Told you. See?” She stooped low to jab a good-natured elbow at the chicken.

“Cluck-cluck,” said the chicken.

“And what do you want, boy?” the witch asked. “Come to gawk? To heckle an innocent old woman?”

“Innocent?” asked the boy. “But you’re a witch. Didn’t you make a pact with Satan or something?”

“Dear me,” the witch said to her chicken. “He’s come to tell me what being a witch is. Finally, my life’s greatest mystery is solved!”

“I only meant—”

“Be gone, child, and take your disgusting acne with you. Unless you want to be turned into a toad.”

The boy didn’t move. He’d often been advised not to poke a bear. To let sleeping dogs lie, and leave well-enough alone. However, he’d never been told to leave a witch to her chickens. “Could you really do that?” he asked. “Turn me into a toad?”

“You are dangerously close to finding out.”

The boy pumped his fist triumphantly. “What about a bird? I’d awfully like to be a bird.”

The witch smiled like a donkey presenting its teeth for inspection. “A brave boy, is it? Come, then. Let’s see if we can’t grant your wish.” She tossed some breadcrumbs and disappeared into her cottage.

Now the boy hesitated. He’d absolutely been warned against entering witches’ cottages. That kind of thing led to children baked in ovens. Boiled in stews. Lightly seared and served atop salads with extra croutons.

He addressed the chicken. “Am I making a mistake?”

“Cluck-cluck,” said the chicken.

He didn’t know what that meant, but imagined the chicken was saying something to the effect of, “why are you asking me? I’m just a chicken.”

It was a valid point. Besides, mistake or no, the boy had gone through heaps of trouble to get here. He’d crossed Forbidden Forest. Scaled Prohibited Peak. Swam across the Outlawed Ocean. To turn away now would be a waste of all that effort. Not to mention, he’d have to do it all again in reverse to get home.

He thought how much quicker the journey would be if he had wings.

The boy entered the cottage to find a flock of chickens standing atop one another. They attended a cauldron. The topmost chicken held a spoon in its beak and stirred the bubbling, imperial purple liquid within. The witch lounged in a rickety old chair, watching them work.

It was exactly the opposite of what he’d imagined a witch’s lair would be: the shelves of books looked recently dusted and organized alphanumerically; the eclectic assortment of unspeakable ingredients and sharp instruments weren’t scattered haphazardly, but kept in neat little jars or toolboxes where they couldn’t accidentally impale someone; neither cobweb nor spiderweb ingratiated themselves into the cottage’s otherwise unoccupied spaces.

“Is something the matter?” the witch asked.

“Your home isn’t what I expected,” said the boy.

“The chickens keep it well. Without chores, they get bored.” She flicked a forked tongue over her black lips. “What did you expect?”

“Besides a bit more grime? Only what people say about this place,” the boy said, truthfully. “That it’s ‘a sensible one-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom cottage, complete with a kitchenette and finished basement.’”

“It was the half-bath that sold me on the place,” said the witch. “Seems extravagant until that second cup of rat milk comes knocking at your back door.”

“Umm,” said the boy. “Eww?”

“I made it in time,” the witch said defensively. “I’m saying I wouldn’t have, if I had to go all the way upstairs.”

The black and gold chicken brushed past the boy and hopped upon the witch’s lap. “Cluck-cluck,” it said.

“Of course I have manners,” the witch snapped. “He’s the one who showed up unannounced. You expect me to offer him tea and cookies?”

“Cluck-cluck,” said the chicken.

“What? Because his arrival was foretold, I must be hospitable? And where would I have found the time to bake? I’ve been grilling crickets all morning!”

“Ba-gock.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

“You knew I was coming?” the boy asked.

The witch rolled her eyes so that her pupils looked at her brain. “I thought it obvious from the brew my children have been preparing.”

One of the chickens walked up to the boy and pecked at his shin, drawing a bead of blood. The boy cried out, but was ignored. The fowl returned to the cauldron and spat the blood from its beak into the liquid.

The boy rubbed at his shin. “That’s for me?”

“Who else would it be for?” The witch laughed a very cackly, witchy laugh. “He’s already got the bird brain, eh?”

Despite a lack of facial muscles, the chicken in her lap managed to look offended.

“Being a bird should vastly improve his appearance, at least,” the witch continued. “Nothing more awkward than a teenage boy.”

“But why are you helping me?” asked the boy.

“Suspicious, are we?” The witch picked a bit of wax from her ear and flicked it across the room. It landed in the cauldron. “Don’t think a witch can have a charitable streak?”

The boy grinned. “I knew it! I knew they were wrong about you. The people of my town said you were selfish and evil. And that you don’t grant wishes, but curses. I told them they had to be wrong. No one is purely evil or selfish on purpose. There’s good in everyone, even witches who live far away from anything, and keep only chickens for company.”

The chickens chose to ignore the casual disrespect.

The witch would have arched one of her eyebrows, if they hadn’t been blown off in an experiment the week before. “A kind heart, you have. Should serve you well as a bird.” She watched the chickens pick ingredients from the shelves. “Tell me: why a bird?”

“Birds can fly,” he said with a wistful sigh. “They have beautiful feathers, and travel in flocks. Some have great vision. Others sing wonderful songs.”

“I know what birds do,” said the witch. “For the spell to work, I need to know why you want to be one. And nothing surface-level, mind you. The want must come straight from your heart.”

“Oh. I hadn’t given it much thought beyond the obvious.”

“Typical child. Best do so now. Elsewise, it’ll be the toad life for you."

The boy sat upon the floor and thought. He watched the chickens working together, and admired their cooperation. He listened to them clucking at one another, gently, with never a reprimand for an honest mistake.

He thought of his father, forcing him to learn shoemaking. His mother, always scolding him for dirtying his clothes. The village kids, teasing him for his long, skinny neck.

Well, birds couldn’t make shoes for a lack of fingers. They didn’t wear clothes. And a long neck was a prized thing in the avian community. So it was that the boy could tell the witch honestly, “I want a new life, and a family that loves me.”

The witch wiped a bit of pus from her eye, and the boy wondered if she was crying. “I can work with that,” she said, and rose from her chair.

The chickens all clucked and ba-gocked and fluttered haphazardly, leaving the boy and the witch alone in the cottage.

She muttered a spell over the cauldron. It was no language the boy had ever heard, but the effect was immediate. A sudden thundering boomed in the distance. Time stopped for three-tenths of a second. Somewhere in the world, a man named Phillip lost his lower-left incisor.

Such are the unpredictable effects of a witch’s magic.

The witch ladled the potion into a stone mug. She offered it wordlessly to the boy.

He didn’t reach for it. “What will it cost me?”

“More than you’ve got,” the witch said.

From his pocket, the boy withdrew all the money to his name; fifty-two cents and a peppermint he’d been saving for a special occasion. He offered the money to the witch.

She took his offering and snatched the mint as well. “Wouldn’t want it getting stuck in your fancy new gizzard.” The witch placed the mug in his hands. “Drink this, and you’ll have a new life. A flock that loves you. Wings.” She caressed his cheek more warmly than his mother ever had. “You shall become a bird.”

With joyful tears blurring his vision, the boy drank.

As feathers sprouted from his skin, he felt proud of himself for not listening to the townsfolk’s warnings about the witch.

His arms turned to wings, and he wondered how anyone could have been so afraid of such a wonderful woman.

He shrank, becoming bird-sized, and found himself angry with the people who’d judged the witch on her appearance alone.

With his new beak, he snapped up an overcooked grilled grasshopper, and he knew he’d never know hunger or shoemaking or clothes ever again, and that he would live forever on with a family that loved him.

The witch picked him up and tickled the place beneath his beak that used to be his chin. “How do you feel, my child?”

“Cluck-cluck,” said the chicken.