Instead of Salt I Taste Mangos

Contains depictions of violence, gore, animal harm/death, and suicide.

Mangos. The tree is full of mangos, perfectly ripe, some even oozing flame-colored juice. I tremble slightly at the sight, my hollow belly aching. How many days has it been since I’ve eaten fruit? Or anything at all? For a moment I’m paralyzed, unable to choose with some many succulent options. But I’m so hungry that I finally force myself to select a mango the same rosy red as the sunrise. I open my beak to take a bite-

And the mango screeches at me, nearly bowling me over with the force of its protest. Panic fills me. Mangos don’t screech! I let out my own screech and spread my wings to flee, intent on putting as much distance as I can between myself and the monstrous mango. But it’s already on top of me, pinning me down. I struggle fiercely against its weight, squawking, and slash at it with my claws. Juice splatters all over me, but it’s not the sweet orange nectar I was expecting. This juice is hot and red and salty and-

There’s another screech, and my eyes fly open to meet those of my mate. Her gaze is dark like mine, and brimming with pain and agitation. She squawks loudly at me as the nightmare dissipates, leaving a different one in its place. It took only moments to confirm we’re still in the dim hold of a metal boat. I’m pinned not by a mango but by the crush of half a dozen other parrot bodies, unable to reach the filthy food and water on the other side of the cage. We’re surrounded by dozens of other birds in the same predicament, everything from hummingbirds stuffed into paper tubes to a heron tied up in the corner.  

Just as we’ve been ever since the humans snatched us from our nest. How long has it been? Days? Weeks? I have no way to know in the darkness. 

My mate clacks her beak angrily at me. Her shoulder is bloody, and a quick glance downward reveals that my claws inflicted the injury in the throes of my nightmare. Guilt floods me. I give a soft, apologetic squawk, but she hisses and tries to shuffle away. There’s nowhere to go, however, and I refuse to be deterred. I begin to preen her neck, chattering soothingly. We’ve been together for more than a decade, and I know every one of her gold and cerulean feathers better than my own. She relaxes slowly, eventually accepting my apology with a soft warble. She’s just started to preen me when there’s another screech.

I jerk my head up with a scream as the boat shudders. There’s another screech and then a horrible rending sound, metal scraping on metal as dozens of birds cry out. I instinctively try to fly, as do my mate and the other parrots in the cage. But it’s too cramped, and all we do is slam each other into the sides of the cage in a confusing tangle of beaks, claws, and feathers. My mate screams in pain a second time, and then the floor jerks out from under us as our cage falls off the shelf.

We land with a crash, cage door bursting open. I scramble free with my mate, crying out as one of my tail feathers catches and then rips free with a lightning bolt of pain. The cage tumbles again, trapping the remaining parrots. Other cages tumble off shelves and hooks all around us, and I startle back as a cage of tanagers nearly obliterates me. Around us, it’s a cacophony of terror and pain-filled screaming. Some birds have managed to escape like us, and the air is thick with flying bodies when another explosion rips a hole in the side of the boat.

Blood rains down on us as the shrapnel shreds the flyers. Light pours in through the opening, and I have to shut my eyes against the agony of the first sunlight I’ve seen in days. But there’s no time to adjust. Water is pouring in through the hole, dark and salty and freezing. I scream a warning to my mate, who doesn’t need to be told twice. We launch for the open sky, the cries of the other trapped and drowning birds in our wake. 

Free of the boat, we fly circles around the wreckage. A cloud of escaped birds swirls around us, calling out in confusion and fear. On the water below, the boat is rapidly sinking. There’s a yellow raft bobbing next to it, half a dozen shouting humans aboard. But other than that, there’s nothing else in sight. The horizon is water in all directions. 

I descend toward the raft, my mate on my tail. Every instinct screams at me to flee my captors. I even recognize the one who grabbed me, his tattooed arms bulging with enough muscle to choke the life from me. But there’s nowhere else to land, and I need to rest. 

Ahead of us, a gray hawk with a striped chest and tail has had a similar idea. He lands on the edge of the raft and shakes water from his feathers, trembling with exhaustion. I see a bad gash on one of his wings from the shrapnel, the feathers around it soaked in bright red blood.

The tattooed human shouts and hits the hawk with his paddle, knocking him into the ocean. The hawk cries out and begins thrashing, but he’s too weak and stunned to get enough lift to leave the water. My mate and I wheel sharply away from the raft, narrowly avoiding a second swipe from the human’s paddle. I screech indignantly at him as the hawk continues to cry out, beating the water with his wings. We circle the raft, unable to do anything but watch as a shadow darkens the water behind him. I cry out a warning as a white-tipped fin slices out of the water, but the hawk barely has time to turn before the shark snatches him. His cries cut off in a swirl of bloody foam.  

Squawking with horror, my mate and I ascend back to the cloud of escaped birds. But it’s barely a cloud any more. There are only six birds left besides us - a hummingbird, a woodpecker, an aracari, a heron, a tanager, and a falcon. The rest must have already fled or succumbed to the sharks. 

We circle a few more times, hesitating. The boat is now completely gone, and the human raft holds no promise of safety. We’ll have to fly for shore. But which way?

My mate lets out a squawk, and when I look at her I’m relieved to see she’s flapping determinedly toward a point on the horizon. She’s always had the better sense of direction. I quickly catch up to fly at her side, our wingtips just brushing, and behind us I sense the other birds following. We’re a motley flock, but for the moment I don’t care. I just want to see land again. 

And eat a mango. I really want to eat a mango. 

Our first casualty comes within the hour. The hummingbird is flying steadily one moment, and the next he’s stopped so suddenly it looks like he’s hit a wall. He pitches forward like a lime green, orange, and midnight leaf falling to the forest floor, landing limply in the water with the tiniest of splashes. It’s only a moment before he vanishes into the mouth of another shark. There’s a whole school of them following, I realize, noting the shadows in the water below. How are they tracking us?

My mate gives a pained call and ruffles her feathers, red drops of blood rolling off to land in the water below. She isn’t the only one injured, either. When I look around, most of the others bear cuts, scratches, and missing feathers from our captivity and escape. The sharks must be able to sense the blood. 

Over the next several hours the tanager, heron, and aracari succumb to exhaustion and injury and plummet to the water. The sharks are quick to finish them each time. I shudder as I watch the heron’s legs kicking from the shark's jaws, and then I give the horizon an anxious scan. The sun is starting to set, and there’s still no sign of land. Every wingbeat causes my body to shake with exhaustion, and I ache for food and water. But it’s either keep going or give in to the sharks, so I force myself to push on. 

Night falls, perfectly black save for dim starlight. The sea is still, and the reflections of the stars on the water confuse me. More than once I grow disoriented and fly toward the water before a warning screech from my mate brings me to my senses. But none of us are fast enough to warn the woodpecker. Somewhere in the deepest part of the night she vanishes into the inky ocean with a splash and a screech. My faint hope that night would deter the sharks goes unrealized. If anything it sounds like more are following us than before.

Dawn breaks to three of us left and no shore in sight. My mate gives a weak cry of despair. She’s struggling to keep up with me now, tearing her wounds open again and again with the flight. I call out to her encouragingly and slow to meet her pace. But she only slows more and more as the day progresses. Soon she’s moving so slowly that I have to keep doubling back to her to keep from stalling. 

Early in the afternoon, my mate begins losing altitude. I call out warning after increasingly-frantic warning, following her as she sinks closer and closer to the water. I try to buoy her up with one wing, but I’m too weak to lift both of us. She fights to fly up, but her fatigue finally wins and she crashes weakly into the waves. I circle, crying out in despair. There’s nothing I can do to help her, and joining her in the water would only mean death for both of us. Still I circle, trying to think of a plan. She cries back at me to flee, voice choking into a gurgle as a wave washes over her. Then a shark drags her down.

I scream in agony as gold and cerulean feathers float to the surface. Our life together flashes before my eyes. Sheltering snugly from tropical storms. Foraging for fruit. Tumbling through the air without a care in the world. Raising nestlings and proudly watching them grow into adults.

All that love gone in an instant. 

For a moment, I want to let myself plummet into the water with my mate. I’m so tired, so hungry, so thirsty. Maybe there are mangos wherever she’s gone. But survival instinct wins out. Crying quietly, I heave myself higher into the air and resume my course. Only the falcon is left of our flock. She screeches sadly at me, but I can’t bring myself to respond. 

Despair fills me as the sun again begins to set. The horizon is still devoid of land, and I can’t bear the thought of dying in the dark. The falcon seems to agree. She looks back and forth between me, the water, the sun, and the horizon for several minutes before she appears to come to a decision. With a determined cry she suddenly tucks her wings to her black and white striped body and dives straight into the water. She enters gracefully, almost without a splash, and simply never comes back up.

I’m so stunned in the wake of the falcon’s death that I can’t even squawk. I’m alone now, flying under a golden sky. How much longer can it be? I narrow my eyes at the horizon, desperate to conjure land. I have to be close now, right? I’ve come so far…

I push on through the sunset, but my mind begins to falter as exhaustion takes over me. Mangos float around me, but they dart out of reach every time I try to bite into them. Sometimes I see my mate flying at my side, calling out encouragement. Once I realize I’m flying straight toward the water, and I shakily pull out of the nosedive mere moments before impact. 

And then I see land. 

Blinking hazily, I stare at the dark blur on the horizon. Is it real? I decide it doesn’t matter, and I plunge toward it with renewed fervor. Twilight starts to fall as I get closer, but excitement builds in me as the coastline materializes. It is real! I can see trees, a river, and even a small town. I’m finally going to have a rest, a meal, a drink…

But my wings start to lock up a mile or so from shore. I battle against the exhaustion, willing myself to keep going, but my body simply refuses to cooperate. Like my mate I start losing altitude, unable to muster the strength to regain it.

I can see the beach’s white sand when I finally crash into the water. It’s so shallow that my foot scrapes against the bottom as I struggle to get back into the air. I’m so close. Maybe I can paddle the rest of the way…

Teeth pierce me from behind.

I let out a strangled shriek as pain rips through me. I’d thought I was past feeling, but the white-hot agony overwhelms me. I beat one wing against the shark’s head, but it’s infinitely stronger than I am and doesn’t seem to notice. I gasp one final time as I’m dragged underwater.

Darkness closes in around me, and I can’t tell if it’s because the water is dark or because I’m losing consciousness. In my final moments, I send my mind back to the forest of my dreams. There’s no monsters there now. Just my mate at my side, squawking happily at the bounty of fruit. 

And instead of salt I taste mangos.