The Bird That Wasn’t A Spell

At the edge of the salty sea, amidst grey fogs and white spray, there stood the Black Castle. In the castle, there lived a skeleton and a bird.

The skeleton had once been a magician of considerable power. All the spells he had known, however, had evaporated from his head, when his skull had cracked like an egg, rendering him dead and soon devoid of flesh and skin.

The bird, perhaps reminded of the shell it had once crawled from, had taken the skeleton’s skull for a home and had, over time, added choice leaves of grass and straw to its nest. A most curious mop of hair for the skeleton, indeed!

One day Caja, the Crimson came to the Black Castle. „It is I, Caja, the Crimson“, spake the Heroine of the West, the Saviour of the North, the Bane of the East and Pirate Queen of the South. „On behalf of Moonage, the ethereal sorcerer I come hither, to wrest from thee the sole spell still remaining in your skull. For a powerful spell it is, a spell to roar like lightening and to clap like thunder. A diamond radiant as an elven prince the sorcerer hath promised me in return.“

And so she took from the skeleton’s skull the bird in its nest. The skeleton continued wandering the castle, feeling quite alone and more whimsical by the day. It adorned the walls of its now lonely prison with curious pictures of wings and beaks, and arranged the rocks on the beach in such a fashion as to toot and whistle like birds, but not like any bird known to the living, but birds that dwell in dead men’s skulls. And these eerie sounds and these pictures on the crumbling walls inspired Durthan, the Bard to his epic of the Fall of the Fire Bird, and a war was lead centuries later against the Gods Below because of it, for men believed in the fiery bird that would free them from mortality and fill their skulls with wonder, so powerful was that epic inspired by the sad skeleton’s clumsy attempts at art.

Moonage, the ethereal sorcerer, however, did never receive the bird from the hands of Caja, the Crimson, for the animal escaped not long after the warrior princess had left the castle. It fluttered away and rose and rose into the night sky, until it reached the moon and nested there, and from its egg sprang Avilnor, the pale dragon that eats the moon and vomits it back up again and makes it half and full.

The skeleton has long since fallen into pieces and not one of its bones has been turned into a flute, a dagger or a magic wand, but all have gone to dust, as all men shall, and every sorcerer and spell, and even the moon, come time.