Chapter Ten: The Prisoner and the Puzzle
Silas flew back with Mitch and Mack towards the oak tree, a wincing Hawk Cooper in tow, saying he was right behind them. Silas felt suddenly too tired, like all the exhaustion from the last few days — all the sleepless nights — had decided now was time for Silas to pay his tab. He pressed on, flying harder, pushing through the air like it were wet cement.
Silas could tell something was wrong. Sadie the squirrel was in their nest, holding something. They landed.
Laying motionless on Sadie’s fluffy tail was a robin. The first thought Silas had was that it could not be his Crystal: this bird was too beautiful — too peaceful. But it was Crystal — his Crystal, Crystal Oaktree, motionless in a tranquil tableau.
“She’s dead,” Silas said quietly. He had been too late. Like he had been too late for all the others — always there … but after the fact, when he was useless, just a useless observer….
“She’s not dead,” Sadie said. The squirrel’s voice was soft. When she looked up to meet Silas’ eyes, Sadie’s look was gentle and kind. This alarmed Silas more than anything. Just this morning she was hard as tack around the feeder, warning him Crystal needed him, Silas, to pay attention to his wife. Silas hated Sadie just now, cradling his motionless wife, speaking in that funeralific voice.
“Get off her,” Silas hissed. “She’s dead. Let her go.” Silas felt a wing drape around his shoulder. To comfort him. No, to restrain. He tried shrugging it off.
“She’s not dead,” Sadie said again. “Crystal is alive.”
“Then why is she not moving?!” Silas shouted. He went to hop forward, to pluck the eyes out of Sadie’s face. Wings held him back.
Rose Topbranch was there. She hopped into the nest, over Crystal’s body. “She’ll be fine, Silas. She’s unconscious. That’s all. Knocked out. Or … She might be drugged.”
Might be? Silas did not know what he had ever seen in Rose. Her dull feathers looked like sick-up dirtying his newly remodeled nest. Rose leaned into Crystal, prying open her beak with her own. Rose poured something into Crystal’s mouth from her gullet. Clear, like water. Like poison. If it was Rose who’d done this … trying to finish off Crystal, move in on Silas….
Silas went to lunge again, but those damn wings held him back again. He would break them, see their owners never flew again….
Then Crystal coughed. Rose gently rocked her with a wing; Sadie supported her head. A slit of Crystal’s eye opened. Everyone was still, watching her. Her beak jibbered, weakly, not catching enough air to craft into words. Then she found her voice, tentative and faint.
“My eggs….”
The eggs.
What an idiot Silas had been. How had he not remembered Fox’s threat? How had he not seen what was right before him? Silas broke free of the wings holding him back. He came forward, looking around the nest. He nudged under Crystal, checking. He lifted part of Sadie’s tail to check under there for the eggs, his hard beak poking the meat of her tail, making Sadie yelp. Silas didn’t apologize.
The eggs were gone. Fox had gotten his revenge; dead, lying at the foot of a cliff, on a pyre of sharp sticks, the cunning fox had reached out, striking at Silas one last time.
“My eggs…” Silas echoed. He felt hollow.
Hadn’t Silas promised himself — promised Crystal — even promised each little round sapphire egg — that things would be different? Hadn’t he watched his mother prune his brother Benedict from the nest like a gardener might a sprig from a plant? Hadn’t Silas seen so many other bird parents cast aside their children — sometimes even eating their own eggs — as they played Mother Spider, determining who lived and who died, rather than fight to give each of their young a chance?
And here he was, hanging around an empty nest. Silas’ ideals had been for nothing. Not just one, or even a few of the eggs were lost. They all were.
Mitch was nudging, pulling on Silas, saying something. Silas eventually tuned in.
“We’ve got to go. Go find the eggs,” Mitch said. Silas shook his head. They would have to start by pumping the stomachs of every animal in the forest. Fox had had too many animals in his paws — controlled too many to count; it could have been anyone. Maybe even an animal they wouldn’t suspect. Thinking this, another part of Silas reared up, changing his mood like he’d been doused with cold water.
That doesn’t mean I won’t try, Silas thought. Not knowing won’t stop me ripping this whole forest down — tree by tree — until I find who did this.
“Let’s fly,” Silas said. Sadie called out — maybe for them to wait around, probably to try and force them to dawdle about Crystal, to coddle her, when she was obviously fine — but Silas was already sailing past the outer branches of the oak, Mitch and Mack and Cooper following. A flock of birds was intercepting them in mid flight. As they came closer Silas could make them out. Rob Robin, Bud Turkey, the warbler voice coach, a few other birds, and — Harvey.
Silas collided into his brother, suddenly furious. “Where were you?” he shouted into Harvey’s face. Harvey’s reaction was a beat late; he panted, flitting around in air to stay airborne.
“What?” Harvey said, out of breath, his huge cheeks puffing air in and out. “Calm down, bro! Heard there was a battle going on. Wanted to help out.”
“You’re late!” Silas shouted. “Nevermind! Someone took my eggs, knocked out Crystal! We’ve got to find them.”
Surprise lit a dim light in Harvey’s eyes. “What? Someone took your eggs?”
“Yeah! C’mon! We’ve got to find them, fast! We don’t have much time!” The other birds nodded their agreement. They knew the statistics on missing eggs. Every minute more the eggs went missing made it only more likely they would be lost forever.
The birds split up, deciding they could cover more ground that way. Mitch went with Silas. Maybe out of instinct, maybe out of ingrained flight patterns, they passed by Corey Chapman’s feeder. Maybee was on the deck, laying like the Sphinx under the feeder. Her tail swished as they landed. Some undoubtedly cutting remark was halfway out of her mouth when Silas cut her off. He didn’t have time to indulge her ritual of scathing repartee. Silas lit into the fluffy white cat with his questions. He asked if she’d seen anyone come from his oak tree, which was close, on the other side of the back lawn. Silas’ eyes blazed, demanding an answer, hating Maybee’s ugly, squashed looking face.
Maybee began licking a paw, moving it over her head to clean behind her ear. Silas’ predicament seemed to have revived her. “You knew who to come to first in your hour of need. I must say, I’m flattered….”
“Not today, Maybee,” Mitch said. He started preening nervously — Mitch had always been nervous around the cat — then caught himself, stopping. “Did you see anything or not? If you did it — if you took the eggs — we’d love to tell Barnes about it. How’d you like that?, a bird bigger than you for a change? You’d talk then.”
“More to feast on,” Maybee said, purring. “But don’t knit your feathers, Birdsly. Haven’t I always been the helpful, friendly neighbor to you, my little forest friends?” She turned to Silas. “How about it, Oaktree? If I give you information that helps you find your eggs, wouldn’t that be worth something to you? How about leaving your yellow friend here as a snack….”
“C’mon,” Silas said to Mitch, who was preening again. “Let’s go. We don’t have time for this.” They bent their legs, getting ready to take off, when Maybee said,
“I always thought he was a weird one. Even by the measure of you primitive forest animals….”
Silas turned back to the cat. “Who? What did you see?”
Maybee went back to grooming. “Like you said, you don’t have the time…”
“Stop playing!” Silas yelled. “If you’ve seen something, I need to know! Who’s the weird one?”
“The one who’s been around Ralph’s little shanty house over there all day,” Maybee said. “Didn’t see me here watching from the deck. Speaking of Ralph, that wretched mutt’s been making a racket, but he’s been lying there quiet for a while now. I’d lie down and give up, too, if I were born such an ugly mixed breed. Fortunately for me…”
Silas wasn’t listening anymore. He was looking into the lawn next door. Like Maybee had said, Ralph was lying in the lawn, outside his doghouse, his food bowls off to one side. Silas could sense something was wrong.
They flew to Ralph, Silas’ gut telling him to circle first before landing, but everything apart from the stillness of the dog was normal. But what was wrong with a dog lying downing in the yard? After all, Ralph normally napped in the afternoons. Maybee was probably just wasting their time, being her usual vile self …
Ralph was leashed per usual, the green lead hooked to his collar, tied to a spike outside his doghouse. Silas and Mitch landed, hopping closer to Ralph. Horror rose in Silas. Bile rose in his gut. He went to throw up vomit, but held it in, swallowing it into his gullet.
Ralph lay on his stomach, completely still, and Silas knew why. A sour smell rose to meet them as they hopped closer. Ralph’s head rested between his two front paws. His lips were peeled back in a frozen growl, showing his teeth. Froth was painted on his teeth and the sides of the dog’s mouth, the outer crust drying. A puddle of vomit — kibbles and stomach juices — pooled in front of Ralph’s partially open mouth, a tiny rivulet still flowing out his mouth feeding it, coming between his canine teeth, over his lip, into the grass.
“Ralph,” Mitch said, almost too quiet to hear. Mitch flitted onto the top of the dog’s brown head, moving down towards the face. Holding fast with one foot, he used the other to pry open a closed eyelid.
“Pluck!” Mitch cried out in surprise, flying. They had seen the staring dead eyeball, the blood vessels and mucous like something washed up dead on a beach.
Ralph was … Well, there was no question. He was dead. Mitch had landed off to the side, on the side of Ralph facing away from where they had come in on. “Silas…”
Silas came over. He looked where Mitch looked, at Ralph’s exposed flank. Shiny red letters, as tall as the dog’s flank, were painted on the fur:
PINROSER
The I and R were circled.
Mitch was mouthing the letters, trying to figure them out. But Silas had already unscrambled the word, had saw it unscrambled in the instant he saw the letters painted on Ralph’s side, over the green leash pulled taught as it ran back to the spike in the ground. So Ralph had been straining against his collar as he died … retching up as something was killing him, unable to get away.
Prisoner.
Ralph had been a prisoner. Silas had remembered all those times he had visited Ralph, had used his beak and talons to unclip the leash. Silas went to the food bowl, leaning in to confirm his suspicion. Silas knew what had killed Ralph. Other memories were spiraling through his mind, flashes of the last couple days, a collage of animals gathered, in a clearing, the feeder, in battle, on a clifftop … of dead bodies, words written on walls and trees … of Zig Chickadee, warning Silas to put nature in balance before it got out of control.
Silas felt an otherworldly clarity. Answers were all around him — they had been all around him. He had been too clouded with his own theories, his own agenda, to pay attention.
He knew where the eggs were. They would be right behind him, in the doghouse. A last challenge waited for Silas, the sum of all the pointless, violent bids for his attention over the last four days.
Mitch was still maneuvering around Ralph, not looking at the doghouse. Silas was nearly through the opening of the doghouse, into the dark space inside, before Mitch pulled his eyes away from Ralph. “Jumpin’ Mother Spider,” Mitch was muttering, “I can’t believe they got Ralph too…. Silas, we should — Silas? What are you doing? Don’t go in there! —”
Mitch’s instincts sensed what Silas already knew. But Silas had to go into the doghouse. His tail just cleared the door when a light went on inside. Silas was blinded, heard a metal clatter and thud behind him. His eyes were adjusting. A metal mesh grate had slammed tight over the entrance, sealing Silas in. He tried at the metal wires, but it was pointless. Mitch was on the other side, shouting, slamming inconsequentially into the bars.
Silas turned back around, studying the interior. Along the wall to his left were his eggs, lined up in a neat row. They were spaced apart on top of a plank of lumber, cut to exact size to fit the depth of the doghouse. Each blue egg rested in an upside down thimble like a miniature eggcup.
Taut black string ran in a web like museum security lasers, on and around the plank holding the eggs; Silas followed the string up, his heart leaping into his crop seeing the bricks hanging precariously by the black string directly over the eggs. An electric lantern lighting the doghouse hung high up in the peak of the roof.
A regular ticking sound paced Silas’ heartbeat. The wall opposite the door was surfaced like a blackboard. Written on it was the riddle that was on the tree where Council Member Peter Mole had been pinned. Under the riddle at ground level were multicolored letters — refrigerator magnets — split into two groups:
Silas solves the case of the missing cubs when he —
STACCK IR
Silas jumped at an audible click from a grey box along the wall to his right. The audio crackled as the recording turned on. Silas didn’t recognize the voice, the smooth cadence and friendly tone of someone explaining to a friend his greatest passion.
“My friend. My dear friend Silas Oaktree — you wonderful bird! I knew you would make it here! I know it is you, and not some other animal, who has made it to this final trial. You have come all this way, stuck to the trail all this week, because every fiber of what makes you Silas Oaktree compels you to act.
“You see, I understand you, Silas. You might even say we are the same bird. When you fought those pigeons yesterday … I felt — felt — your anger, as you beat into those apathetic, worthless vermin! They had been given life, their flesh and feathers kept alive by wasted beats of their hearts!, and they just … squander it! I hope you hurt them bad …
“But, here we are! The last two years of our lives, it’s all led up to this moment! See, I know you just fly at the chance of just — doing things! If there’s something that needs doing, chances are you’re already on it! And believe me … this right here: This is something that needs doing! …
“You see, Silas, I need you to complete this test more — more maybe than you do! Prove yourself, and all will be well. You see those half bricks up there? Can you see what I wrote on each of them?”
Silas looked up. On each there was a word, something he hadn’t noticed before. There were five bricks in total, one above each of the eggs in their thimbles. Each word was from the murders — SIGHTLESS ; COWARD ; SICKLY ; PRISONER. The fifth brick said SILAS. The voice on the recording resumed:
“That’s right, Silas. Those are the themes of this soiree; they all come together for this last, little, finale. Those things … those words I wrote for each one of those wretched sacrifices, the ones written up there … You are none of those things! I am not accusing you of any of them! Never think that, Silas! Except for your name, of course.
But that’s why you’re here. You must prove to us that you are none of those things, that you are the Silas Oaktree I know, that I believe in! Being blind, a scared, ailing excuse for a life, trapped in your own prison of flesh! … That is for the other plucked animals in this forest! But not you. Not Silas Oaktree. You … You are going to show us you are something more.
“You hear that ticking? That’s an egg timer, closed inside that Kleenex box over there. It should have — oh, say — a little more than four minutes left. One minute for each sacrifice, how about that?
“There is only one thing that can stop that timer, Silas. There is a small token slot in the side of that tissue box. See that? Good. In the next four minutes, you need to find a token and put it in that slot. Then your eggs will be safe. Without that token, when the timer runs out, those bricks will drop. But if you stop it in time, your eggs will be safe to hatch and go on, and — with Silas Oaktree as their father — no doubt go on to lead meaningful, if small, lives….
“Oh! One teensy weensy detail, my friend. You see how those eggs, the tissue box, those bricks — well, just about everything! — is wired? Don’t try tampering with my test, or those bricks will drop! Then the eggs will be good only for the frying pan!
Good luck, Silas. Show us why you are my hero …
“… Four minutes! Chop chop!”
The recording still crackled, but the voice, mercifully, went quiet. Mitch had heard the whole thing, looking through the bars at the door of the doghouse. “What did that voice say? Four minutes? Silas, how are you going —?”
“I don’t know,” Silas clipped. He looked around, fighting a rising panic. “Maybe if I fly up there, break the right strings on those bricks, I can —”
“You heard it, Silas!” Mitch said. “You do that and those eggs are smashed! If someone could set this up, I’d believe them.”
Silas was only half listening. He flitted onto the grey voice box. The controls were jammed, the Play button depressed by a weave of the black string that was wired everywhere. Silas flew to the top of the tissue box. The only opening was on the side. There was the token slot the voice had mentioned; it was small, only twice the dimensions of an unshelled sunflower seed. He pecked at the cardboard, trying to break in, get to the egg timer. He punctured the side, a pinprick perforation from his beak; Silas bit at the hole, trying to widen it, but the cardboard was tough.
“Silas, you don’t have time for that!” Mitch cried, watching from the door.
If Silas remembered from seeing them around Grace’s house, tissue boxes had an opening on one side. Since Silas couldn’t see the opening in the cardboard cube on any of the exposed sides, then it must be on the side resting on the ground, or where it abutted the wall of the doghouse. Silas tried prying where the box met the wall, stopping suddenly when a slight movement of the box caused the black strings running up the wall to rattle violently. The intricate network of strings shook, causing the bricks over the eggs to clack against each other. Silas held his breath until the strings’ quivering subsided, and the bricks were still once more.
He gave up on the box holding the timer. Silas went to the far wall, the one with the refrigerator magnet letters under the riddle. He muttered to himself,
“ ‘Silas Oaktree solves the missing cubs when he —’ When he what?” He studied the refrigerator magnets, the rainbow mesh of letters;
(STACCK IR)
Silas began moving them around. Just like the scrambled words at each murder, here Silas was sure the unscrambling of these magnets held some sort of answer.
Or another clue. I don’t need another clue!, Silas thought, his mind racing. He studied the new arrangement he made with the magnets. It was a nonsensical mess. Mitch was yelling out guesses from the door, only serving to scatter Silas’ concentration more.
“ ‘Stick Rica’ … ‘Track Sic’ …” Mitch shouted out, a stream of conscious. “ ‘Risk Cat’! ‘Risk Cat’! … No, um —”
“Shut up!” Silas roared. But Mitch was on a roll, trying to get Silas to arrange the letter magnets with the wild guesses he shouted out.
“ ‘Stick Car’ … Silas, it’s ‘Stick Car’! Quick! The mag— Wait, hold on…”
“They were spaced!” Silas said. He remembered now. Eight letters total, the last two letters separate from the other six. He hastened to separate the magnets into two groups. “The last group is two letters. It has to be a word like ‘is’ or ‘it’ … ‘It’. ” He put the I and the T together, trying to guess the first word. Mitch shifted into overdrive with this breakthrough.
“ ‘Stick It’! ‘Stick It’! … Try ‘Racks It’ …” Mitch would not be stopped. “ ‘Tricks It’ … Silas, you need to trick the timer somehow!”
Silas found himself wishing for a sturdier door locking him in, preferably something soundproof. He knew his four minutes were running short, the metronomic ticking of the egg timer in the tissue box a constant reminder. Was the ticking speeding up, or was it just Silas’ nerves? He had to stay cool, had to save his eggs….
His eggs. His four eggs.
“Mitch!” he shouted, his beak a blur rearranging the magnets.
CRACKS IT
“ ‘Cracks It’ … Mitch!” Silas said. “That’s the answer! The fifth egg! One of these eggs is fake; I’ve got to crack it open! The token must be inside…”
Mitch considered. “No, that can’t be it…” Silas nearly screeched in exasperation at his friend. He knew he was right, but if he chose the wrong egg, or ran out of time….
Silas went to fly up onto the lumber plank holding the eggs, then at Mitch’s warning shout flitted back to the ground before landing, his heart hammering in his breast. Mitch was right: The plank was laced with strings all around the thimbles holding the eggs, trip wires, he was sure, as sensitive as those booby trapping the tissue box.
He was starting to panic now. Silas twitched his head around, studying each egg rapidly. They all looked identical; the fake one was either a real robin’s egg, or a masterful forgery. If only Silas had spent more time in the nest, with Crystal, with the eggs, studying the eggs, their shapes, their precious contents … Silas had to make a decision — now — or they were all going to be smashed. Silas wanted to give up … he didn’t have the guts to choose.
“Pick one, buddy! Time’s almost up!”
Then he knew. Silas did have the guts. That’s what the psycho who took his eggs wanted to him to prove. He looked up, found the brick that said ‘coward’, then the egg underneath. It looked just like one of his own eggs …
Silas flitted onto the plank by the egg, landing his legs precisely between the tripwires. He closed his eyes, then — stab. He pierced the shell with his beak.
He was rewarded with a hollow sounding crack of the shell. He took a breath for the first time in what felt like a minute. He picked the egg up in his beak; it was surprisingly light. Silas stood on the thimble to launch himself off the platform, landing on the ground in the center of the doghouse free from tripwires.
Silas broke open the egg. Inside was a tightly folded piece of paper, and what looked like a …
A human tooth. A broken-off human front tooth. His token.
The timer was definitely ticking faster now, mere seconds away from going off. Silas sailed for the tissue box, inserting the tooth in the slot. He heard a dull clang as the tooth landed on something inside the box. The egg timer ticked faster and faster, Silas overtaken by dread, knowing the bricks were about to drop. Then … Then, the timer stopped.
It was quiet. Mitch was silent on the other side of the grate; the ticking of the timer that had ruled Silas’ life for the last four minutes had left a consuming silence in its void. Had it really just been four minutes? It seemed like hours. Then Silas noticed it wasn’t all quiet. There was a white noise, the crackling of the audio recording. It was still running. The voice spoke.
“Silas?”
The voice laughed a triumphant, crowing laugh.
“You did it! You saved the eggs. I knew you would. If you hadn’t, this recording would have skipped to another message, saying — Well that doesn’t matter, because you did it! You proved that you are everything I knew you were … Together, we are the force of change in this forest! We are cleansing it of the unworthy filth clogging our nature….
“Take the paper you found in the egg as a token of my … dedication. To you. I know Fox would move the Bear cubs, try taking those still-innocent babies for his own disgraceful game. The paper has everything you need to find the cubs, safe and sound. That is, if you hurry, before he moves them again. I’ve been a vigilant guardian, much like yourself. Like I said, we are alike, even though you don’t know who I am.
“Take care, Silas. Congratulations on your victory. I’ll say goodbye for now. I look forward to us doing this again.”
The recording shut off. The Play button popped up, tripping the string over it. It set off a series of strings in the web overhead, triggering the metal grate over the door of the doghouse to lift, freeing Silas.
Mitch was waiting just outside. “Is it just me,” he said, helping Silas as he staggered out of the doghouse, “or are you a magnet for crazy?”