Freedom or Chained Beauty…?

“Grandma please tell us a story,” begged the chil­dren in chorus.

“Which one would you like?” asked the old lady.

“Please grandma, tell us the one with the bird and the beau­ti­ful princess!”

“Al­right my darlings, but get into your beds first.”

When all the chil­dren were safely tucked into their beds, the old lady with dreamy eyes, lost into a past only she knew about, star­ted to speak gently:

Once upon a time, in the beau­ti­ful but deadly jungle, among many other spe­cies of an­im­als, there lived a fam­ily of birds, called The Birds of Para­dise. They did not know where their name came from. It could have ori­gin­ated from the place they lived in – a great forest so green and so full of flowers in every col­our of the rain­bow that one wouldn’t know which one to look upon first. There were orch­ids and car­ni­vore plants; there were mighty trees so tall and so an­cient that it would take one a whole week to climb them from the ground floor to the canopy.

It was a dis­turb­ingly pleas­ant scenery, but one that hid many secrets. Be­cause of its wealth in plants, the mighty forest at­trac­ted many types of an­im­als: from tiny in­sects to gi­ant snakes. Some were harm­less and sweet –some would call them ’prey’ – while oth­ers were deadly pred­at­ors. The lat­ter the little fam­ily of Para­dise Birds had to stay away from, as they were part of the former cat­egory, feed­ing only on the fruits and seeds they would pick from the treetops.

Thou­sands of spe­cies of an­im­als lived every­where one could see with one’s eyes, hear with one’s ears and smell with one’s nose. They also lived where you could not see them, some of them spend­ing their en­tire life in the up­per can­opy of trees, never touch­ing the ground, and some bur­ied them­selves in their bur­rows in the ground, never see­ing the golden rays of sun­light. Some lived for one day while oth­ers’ life span stretched on for dec­ades. What all these an­im­als had in com­mon was the fact that they obeyed one single law: Sur­vival of the fit­test, also known as “The Law of the Jungle”.

The Para­dise Birds that lived here might have taken their name from the en­vir­on­ment. Al­though it was more likely that the reason they were called this way was be­cause of their looks. They were really at­tract­ive and dra­matic, dis­play­ing beau­ti­ful ar­rays of feath­ers in won­der­ful col­ours like night black or the purest white, em­er­ald green, blue that matched the heaven’s sky, yel­low that hurt your eyes to look upon, and red, oh and what red – red­der than the sun­set, red­der than blood spilt on the first snow. How amaz­ingly col­our­ful they were!

They also liked to dance, and may I say, they were very good at it. Not even the most skilled bal­let dan­cer could com­pare to them and not even the most pas­sion­ate tango artist matched the en­thu­si­asm and aban­don­ment with which they performed.

These amaz­ing birds also sang elab­or­ate songs that re­ver­ber­ated in the en­tire forests, so power­ful and mu­sical their voices were. You could stay in one place, star­ing at them and listen to their melodic strange voices for hours, for­get­ting everything else: where you came from and what for hav­ing no more im­port­ance than a grain of sand on a golden beach. They were magical!

And yet, noth­ing is per­fect in this world. Un­til now, I only talked about the won­der­ful Para­dise Bird males. With fe­males, things were dif­fer­ent. When look­ing at one, you wouldn’t be­lieve they came from the same spe­cies or even be­ing re­lated to it. The ladies were a far cry from their male coun­ter­parts in terms of com­par­ing beauty. Their plumage was on the or­din­ary side, quite drab, one might say, in col­ours of dull light brown re­mind­ing more of night­in­gales than their stun­ning males. Moreover, they usu­ally were the ones charged with all the house­hold chores: nest­ing, sit­ting on eggs, help­ing the hatch­ing chicks, feed­ing, rais­ing, and also teach­ing them to fly.

Our ladies knew no bet­ter and were happy with their lot in life. Of course, there are al­ways ex­cep­tions to the rules.

High up in the tree­tops, there was a nest with three chicks. There were two older broth­ers named Blacky and Night and their little sis­ter, Eden. The boys had been born on the same day but Eden, by some twist of fate, didn’t hatch un­til a week later, so all of them were very happy when she came into the world and every mem­ber of the fam­ily loved, cher­ished and pro­tec­ted her.

Weeks went by and the chicks grew up, as in birds’ lives weeks are sim­ilar to years in hu­mans’. The three sib­lings were now teen­agers and while the boys had de­veloped as­ton­ish­ing feath­ers and heav­enly voices, Eden re­mained the same drab and brown little bird with no sign of ever achiev­ing her broth­ers’ col­our­ful appearance.

She was really un­happy and, al­though she felt af­fec­tion to­wards her broth­ers, she be­came jeal­ous of them. Non­ethe­less, they loved her unconditionally.

“Oh,” she of­ten used to say to her­self, “if only I were as stun­ning as my broth­ers! If only I had their won­der­ful plumage and ma­gical voice!”

With the passing of time, she be­came em­bittered and her envy grew stronger.

“I would give up all and everything to be as won­der­ful as you!” she of­ten com­plained to her brothers.

“Why would you want to look like us?” Her broth­ers kindly responded.

“Everything in life serves a pur­pose. Our beau­ti­ful voices and feath­ers, our end­less dances serve only to at­tract the ladies, and even so we of­ten fail. You, on the other hand, have the choice of any male bird you want without hav­ing to make a dis­play of your­self and without any ef­forts. You are free to fly and roam the forest as much as your heart desires.”

“I don’t care about any of that”, she selfishly re­spon­ded. “All I ever want is to be beau­ti­ful no mat­ter the cost.”

And what do you know? One day, in a most pe­cu­liar way, her wish ac­tu­ally came true. How? I will tell you immediately.

Yet be­fore do­ing that there is an­other story I would like to share with you. This tale con­cerns an­other heroine…

Bey­ond the great forest, bey­ond the blue ocean, even bey­ond the ho­ri­zon, in a faraway coun­try, there lived a very beau­ti­ful hu­man girl called by her par­ents Lyria. She was the young­est daugh­ter of an ar­is­to­cratic fam­ily and the most beau­ti­ful of all her sis­ters with skin as white and smooth as the pre­cious por­cel­ain, hair as black and lus­trous as mid­night and azure eyes like deep, bot­tom­less crys­tal­line lakes. And yet she was not happy at all! She hated her looks. Up un­til re­cently, her par­ents had never really no­ticed her. She grew up in the care of nan­nies and gov­ernesses, as was the fash­ion in those times. If she some­times felt a pang of loneli­ness gen­er­ated by her par­ents’ ab­sence and ap­par­ent neg­lect, it would pass quickly. She was free to roam the coun­tryside and she was happy.

But ever since her par­ents took no­tice of her looks, everything changed. She was taken to the city, locked into a beau­ti­ful house, like a bird in a gil­ded cage, dressed in the most ex­quis­ite dresses that one can ima­gine and paraded every­where like an exotic and beau­ti­ful ex­hibit. She was al­ways watched, ad­mired and en­vied. She got the at­ten­tion of a be­loved pet, al­ways pampered and fluffed and puffed. Her sis­ters hated her for all the at­ten­tion she re­ceived. Such at­ten­tion she had never wanted and never asked for.

All this fuss around her served a pur­pose and only one. She was sup­posed to at­tract the best match in the realm, to marry above her sta­tion and bring fame and higher status to her family.

She was taken to all sorts of parties and soir­ees in or­der to con­tract a good mar­riage. Lyria walked and talked and sang and danced like a beau­ti­ful bird with rain­bow-like feath­ers. She com­peted with other girls for a cer­tain gentleman’s at­ten­tion chosen by her par­ents as her pos­sible fu­ture husband.

Her fam­ily was thrilled, but poor Lyria’s eyes were al­ways sad. Gone was the sparkle in them, gone was her laughter from her face, gone her joy of life. As time went on, she grew sad­der and sad­der, a shell of her former self. She got ill. Her par­ents fi­nally no­ticed her un­hap­pi­ness and in a des­per­ate at­tempt to cheer her up, they or­gan­ized a voy­age across the world. They crossed the great ocean and plains that stretched bey­ond the ho­ri­zon un­til they reached a majestic rain­forest. The camp was made there and it was de­cided that the fam­ily would rest at the edge of the forest for a few days. Lyria was slowly be­com­ing her old self again. But she already dreaded the mo­ment of her re­turn home as she knew her free­dom would be forever ended the mo­ment they set foot on her country’s shore.

One day, as she was tak­ing a walk, she came closer to the edge of the mighty trees of the forest. She no­ticed that there was move­ment in the can­opy and she could hear all sorts of beau­ti­ful and in­triguing sounds from in­side the forest. She took a step in­side and a ma­gical place opened up: thou­sands of flowers in all the col­ours of the rain­bow, spark­ling in­sects with shiny wings and all sorts of amaz­ing an­im­als she had never seen or heard of be­fore ap­peared. Lyria stood there trans­fixed for like an etern­ity: a beau­ti­ful girl in Para­dise. It felt like home, a real home like this was the place where she be­longed. All she could think of was:

“Oh, how I wish I could live here, how I would like to be a bird, even a little spar­row or a night­in­gale. How won­drous free­dom must be! Oh, the pos­sib­il­ity of flying…”

And in that ex­act mo­ment some­thing strange happened:

She began to de­crease in size, be­com­ing smal­ler and smal­ler, her arms trans­form­ing into wings, her toes into claws, her mouth and nose into a beak, the beau­ti­ful clothes she was wear­ing fad­ing into tones of dull brown and morph­ing into feath­ers. The girl’s place had been taken by a small, or­din­ary Para­dise Bird female.

Mean­while, our pre­vi­ous heroine, Eden was still mop­ing in her nest when she saw a shadow des­cend­ing upon the tree. She began to grow, her size in­creas­ing, her body no longer fit in the little nest, her wings dis­ap­pear­ing and be­ing re­placed by a pair of arms, puzz­ling ap­pen­dices the bird had never seen before.

What do think happened…? Yes, you are per­fectly right. The two creatures switched places:

The girl be­came a bird, free to fly to her heart’s de­sire, and the bird be­came a beau­ti­ful girl, chained in all the rules im­posed by so­ci­ety but happy non­ethe­less. Or was she? I wonder…

What happened next is everyone’s guess.

Or maybe I will tell you my story to­mor­row night.

(sub­mit­ted Decem­ber 6 2019)

Alina Lobos