Chapter Twenty-One: The Flock

 

Arthur stood on the stone bridge staring at the spot where Lily had been taken. It took a moment for what had happened to sink in. It was all so unexpected, so horrible. The sights and the sounds of the Rookery came rushing back to his senses. Behind him in the gallery, Sigmund was literally bouncing off the walls, Horatio was composing sonnets at lightning speed, and the bats chased each other up and down, squeaking in excitement. He could hear rooks chattering excitedly in victory, and one or two of his choir members had broken into song. No one had seen Lily go; no one knew that this battle was far from over.

Arthur’s whiskers twitched, first one, then the other, and then his mind sprung into action. And at just that moment, Nathaniel the vole scurried up, and tapped him gently on the shoulder. The look in the vole’s eyes matched that of Arthur’s and he knew that Nathaniel had seen the kidnapping as well.

“Right!” Arthur said to the vole. “Much to be done. Much to be done.” And he immediately made for the Rookery door. He scampered through the crowd with surprising agility—even for a mouse—and skidded to a halt near his piano, where he began to pace back and forth. His mind was racing as he formulated a plan to get Lily back. Hundreds of ideas flashed through his mind, and when he finally settled on a course of action, he took a deep breath, looked around the Rookery one last time, and headed for the door. But just as he reached the doorway, Titus’ booming voice, buoyed by his victory against the hawks, echoed throughout the Rookery.

“Mouse!” he shouted. The animals halted their congratulations at once and all eyes fell on Arthur.

Arthur stood frozen in front of the company of revelers. He couldn’t disguise the fact that he was headed out the door and away from the party.

“Where are YOU going?” shouted Sigmund, too excited to sit still.

“Yes, where?” sang the bats in unison.

“I’m sorry everyone, there’s no time to explain. I must go immediately,” Arthur replied as he tried in vain to push his way toward the door.

“But where?” Titus tried again, flummoxed by his friend’s strange behavior.

 “It’s just…” he stammered, pacing madly, “…it’s Lily.”

“What about Lily?” Titus knew by the look in Arthur’s eyes that something awful had happened.

“She’s been taken, Titus,” Arthur said, a slight tremor in his voice. “She’s been taken by the hawks. By Alistair.”

Terrified murmurs spread throughout the Rookery.

Arthur shook off his emotions and started again for the door. “And I am losing precious time! If you will please let me through!” he shouted, the slightest hint of panic in his voice.

“Not so fast, sir!” Titus roared over the commotion.  “Silence! All of you!” The murmurs immediately ceased. “Do you honestly think that you will be going after that dreadful hawk alone?”

“Well, I—”

“Do you truly believe that after all that you have done for us, after all that you’ve said, after all that you have...become…Do you really think that we have not heard your call? I am ashamed of you, friend! We go together or not at all. That is friendship. That is what it means to be a flock—and wings or no wings, in my book, you, Arthur, are the best of rooks! We will simply not allow you to go alone.”

Titus glared fiercely at his friend as Arthur’s eyes began to glisten with tears. “We go for Lily together or not at all,” the rook commanded. And his glare softened into one of his very rare smiles.

“Together!” shouted Sigmund and the otter in unison.

“Yes, yes, together!” the bats chimed in, and all around the hall, cries of, “Together!” came from animals of every kind. The rooks crowed their agreement, and field mice ran up and down the Rookery walls. The beavers slapped their tails on the hard ground sending up little clouds of dirt, and Jack the owl was so excited that instead of, “Together!” he could only cry “Who, Who, Whoooooo!” at the top of his lungs. From high above, many of the rooks who had roosted themselves for the night, exhausted from battle, dropped heavily to the ground with weary cries of, “Together!” and the damaged Rookery, for the first of many times, became an amphitheatre, projecting a dissonant, disorganized, but beautiful sound into the dark night sky.

“What do you say, brother?” Titus said, walking over to Arthur who stood at the head of the rag-tag rescue party.

“Forgive me, Titus. I had forgotten you all. I would be honored. But we must hurry. Lily is in terrible danger.”

“Lead the way, then,” Titus said with a quick tap on Arthur’s back.

For the third time that day, Arthur scrambled to the top of his piano. As quickly as he could, he relayed to his army the details of the mission. “Our friend Lily has been taken by a particularly cruel hawk named Alistair. I have no doubt that he has taken her to the crags just at the edge of the forest overlooking the sea. It is a long journey, but we must make it quickly. We haven’t time to spare. We must plan our attack on the fly. Quite literally. Titus? May we earth-dwellers ask a favor of you?”

But Titus knew what must happen even before Arthur had asked it of him. And with one glance at the rooks, the plan was set in motion. All over the Rookery, the earthbound animals and the rooks, owls, and bats began to form groups of twos and threes. Sigmund climbed somewhat clumsily on the back of his friend, Jack. The bats allowed the field mice to cling to their bellies. The rooks welcomed passengers of all sorts—from moles and voles to weasels and even stoats (as a demonstration of their new found sense of honor). The water-going animals took to the stream, which would lead them by a different path toward the cliffs, and before Arthur could protest, Titus knelt, indicating that Arthur should climb on his back.

“Thank you,” Arthur said, for much more than just the escort to the cliffs.

“The pleasure is mine, old friend,” he replied. He took to the air with Arthur clinging to his jet-black feathers and shouted to the animals below, “Right! Let’s be off! Tonight, we are all rooks!”

A great shout went up all over the Rookery, and just as the winged animals took flight with their odd cargo, Arthur spotted a fluffy red tail retreating around the edge of the Rookery door. Within mere moments the Rookery had all but emptied, save the few rooks who had been injured in the battle with the hawks, and the flight to rescue Lily had begun.

From above, the forest looked, oddly enough, like a huge briar patch. Its sharp branches pierced the night sky for miles and miles around before giving way to the thick gray fog that covered the moor. Arthur had never imagined just how strange the world would look from above. And he had never dreamed that flying would be so exhilarating, or so frightening. He tightened his grip around Titus’ feathers.

“Don’t worry,” Titus called over the rush of wind. “We’ll get her back. It will all be over soon.”

“Yes,” Arthur replied absentmindedly. The sea had drawn very near now, and its silvery glow made the world seem colder. But behind him flew owls and bats and mice and weasels and rooks, and somewhere below beavers and otters and turtles and perhaps even a fish or two swam toward the same goal—they had come to stand beside him, and that somehow took the chill out of the air, and gave him more courage than he had ever known.

One by one, the birds dropped out of the sky and back into the forest, dodging sharp branches on their way to the ground. When the flock had landed, the smaller animals tumbled, most of them terribly relieved, to the earth. Slowly, with the expert stealth only prey animals can achieve, the small animals led the way through the last hundred yards to the cliffside.

Arthur and Titus emerged from the trees and found themselves at the top of a two hundred foot drop that ended in the rough waters of the North Sea. The roar of the waves, though far below, was more felt than heard. It rumbled like thunder.

It wasn’t difficult to see where Alistair had taken Lily. The cliffs were stark, standing out brightly grey against the black of the roaring sea, save for one bright spot on the other side of the cove. Near the summit of the jagged cliff, a dim orange light flickered from a cave into the night. “There it is,” Titus whispered to Arthur over the hiss and boom of the waves, “the home of the hawks.”