A Hummingbird Tale

          The little bird was lost in a roaring sky.
    
          Three days earlier she’d risen above her home-forest and set out over the coastal waters. It was early fall; the call to migrate was strong in her small body, beating in her blood. But she hadn’t seen the high wall of stormcloud bearing down from the southwest. Soon its shrieking winds were all around her, thunder booming as lightning jagged from the swollen cloudmass.
    
          She was a hummingbird, no bigger than a grown man’s thumb. But hummingbirds are fierce and strong, and she fought the great winds. Even so, her powerful wings were soon almost useless, and all she could do was try to stay upright. For three days and two nights she battled the northeastward sweep of the storm, never glimpsing the mountainous gray waves churning and foaming far beneath her.
    
          Staying airborne for many hours was nothing new to her; migration took her thousands of miles each season, much of it over open water. But the storm’s fury had drained her strength, and she began to lag, dropping amid the battering winds until she forced herself upward again.

          Finally the winds began to die, and the black clouds slowly parted. Above her she saw blue sky for the first time, and looking down she scanned the gray, foam-streaked waste of the still tossing sea. As the storm-howl eased to a whisper and sun beat through the torn clouds, she looked out and saw land—great cliffs rising over surf-lashed rocks.

          It took all she had to reach them. Exhausted, she settled on a low, wind-gnarled holly bush.
    
          Then she slipped further in among the glossy leaves and slept in the chill air, a sleep so deep her little heart slowed almost to a stop—sleep without dreams, almost without breathing. The new sun passed overhead. Stars rose, wheeling across the sky. She didn’t rouse herself till the sun again glinted at the eastern edge of the world. On the tiny branch she raised her head, ruffled her feathers, and looked about.
    
          This wasn’t her world. It didn’t look right, or smell right. The land was a rich green, but already high clouds were misting the sun. She felt uneasy, sensed danger. A passing shadow startled her, and she looked up to see a hawk high overhead. Hawks she knew; she’d attacked one once that came too close to her nest.

          But she knew she must eat—everything within her told her so. So she lifted from the bush, perfect wings whirring, and streaked off over stone-walled fields to the only stand of forest she could see.
    
          It was not her world, but there was food to be had. A few late flowers at the feet of the crowding trunks; flying insects to be snatched mid-air; the struggling captives of spiders’ webs, which she nipped out with her long thin bill. As her weary day of hunting and scrounging came toward its twilight, her hunger began to ease.
    
          It was then the man saw her. He was wearing dark clothes and boots, a cloth cap on his head, and had come to the forest hunting mushrooms. As he bent to examine one, a sudden flash of movement caught his eye. He froze. Perhaps it was a rabbit—dinner. But when he caught the motion again he gasped.
    
          There in the tangle of branches and leaves he saw it—a tiny shape, hovering on blurred wings. The light was failing, the forest growing thicker with shadows. As he strained to see, the little being flickered this way and that, emerging from darkness and disappearing again, here and there among the welter of trees and underbrush. His heart was racing. He was a country man, he knew birds, of course—but this was like no bird he’d ever seen. Saints in Heaven! he thought. Could it be…?!
    
          Suddenly the thing appeared before an open flower, bending toward it in mid-air—graceful, effortless, its wings as if delicate glass, sparks of color flashing from its tiny body, the glint of its small dark eye. Before he could make out anything more it was gone.
    
          He ran all the way home. When he came to the white cottage with its thatched roof, pigs and chickens wandering in the little yard, he pushed the door open and rushed inside.
    
          “Biddie!” he shouted. “I’ve seen one!”
    
          His wife turned to him from the kettle on the fire. “One what, Angus?”
    
          The man looked over to see an old woman sitting in the chair near his wife. “Och, Amanda Gillory, sure it’s God’s grace you happen to be here—for who should want more to hear what I’ve to tell than a storyteller?!”  
    
          “Tell what, Angus?” his wife asked again, stamping her foot. “We’ll perish with curiosity before you get a word out!”
    
          “Well then, it’s only this,” he said excitedly, pulling a chair from the table and straddling it backwards. “That I’ve been just now in Keenan’s woods and seen—a fairy! As I live and breathe! Honor bright! Sure, I’ve heard of them in a hundred tales—many from your own mouth, Amanda. But to actually clap my own two eyes on a breathin’, flying’, shimmerin’ fairy! What else could it’ve been? It was hovering before a flower, wings blurrin’…”

          He leaned forward as he began the story.
    
          Above the little house, night was settling over the world, blue smoke from the stone chimney lifting into darkness. Back in Keenan’s woods the light was fading too, as the little bird perched on a high branch and settled herself.
    
          She was still uneasy. This new world might not provide what she needed, and the gnawing of fear still worked at her. There were dangerous days ahead. But it was night, and darkness brought rest as it always had. Thousands of miles from home, the tiny exile stilled herself in the alien forest and let sleep take her.
    
          She felt nothing as a light rain came and went. Nor did she see the full moon as it rose, silvering the numberless leaves and branches around her, silvering her own small form among the dripping trees.    

          And she had no idea that the man in the dark clothes had come and gone, or that a new story had been born because of her—the story of a mushroom-hunter who glimpsed one of the little people with his own eyes, glimmering among leaf-shadows in Keenan’s woods—a story leaping even now from mouth to mouth, cottage to cottage, across the Irish countryside, as word of Angus Ryan’s good fortune began to spread—a story that began and ended with her own perfect beauty—

          —a fairy tale.




Could a hummingbird cross the Atlantic and be mistaken for a fairy?
Though most fairies reported before the twentieth century had no wings and were far larger than hummingbirds, many reports of smaller, winged fairies exist, from Shakespeare’s time on. Ruby-throated hummingbirds inhabit eastern North America to Nova Scotia—and many tropical storms follow our coast, then wheel northeastward to Europe. The distance is roughly the same as to Central America, where ruby-throats spend the winter. Under normal conditions they can't build up enough body fat for such a trip—but it seems at least possible. They've been sighted a thousand miles and more out in the Atlantic, by people on ships.
Far more enchanting to me, though, is the fact that such creatures even exist.
After all, if you'd only read about hummingbirds in magical old stories—wouldn’t they seem too beautiful to be real?

Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, and lecturer at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. His children’s books have won recognition from the New York Times, NPR, the Smithsonian, Nickelodeon, and others. He has published over 110 poems, won a first prize in a poetry contest judged by John Updike, released a poetry chapbook, won a major prize in science fiction, was nominated for a Pushcart for an essay, and has published much other fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. He recently won the West Coast Songwriters Saratoga Chapter Song of the Year award. His website is  www.TimMyersStorySong.com.