As free as a bird?
“Fanny Godwin? Do you present any knowledge to transform us this afternoon?”
The teacher’s biting tone stings my skin through the stagnant air of the classroom as his pipe dangles from protruding lips.
Ooh! I love the pipe. A cane rests in his hand, ready for the slip of a chanting tongue.
Each boy’s pair of passive eyes stares as I heave myself out of my seat, knees quivering, lips hanging open with the suggestion of speaking. Trembling, I twirl a strand of coffee-brown hair around pallid fingertips.
Outside, newly sprouted buildings teeter into the sky, exhaling dusty fumes. I ignore them and glance up at the careful zig-zag of the chalkboard boring into my mind.
No more of this.
“As I sit, amidst the golden melodies of falling leaves, it is here I drink in the cry of the roaring river calling to the essence of my being. The wind begins to flow, with it’s fresh breath as free as a…”
“No, no, NO!” I jump as the teacher appears to slam his cane on my wooden desk like the very sword of Napoleon, face red and commanding in its fury. Savagely, he rips the slate from my lingering grasp. “What is this poetic nonsense?”
Titters of laughter fill the air in a derisive chorus. My eyes prickle with burning, fiery tears.
“Gentleman, please learn from our dear student,” the man drawls, puffing out streams of smoke with a sneering smile. Careless black eyes set my heart ablaze with dangerous fury — it yearns to be freed from this icy cage.
“Young ladies should not be writing fanciful or imaginative tales. Next time, Fanny, exercise your logic and restraint for us. Yes sir?”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Pain courses through my body as I struggle to lift a coffee-brown wing chained to the cold, metal floor. My claws scratch the silvery surface, screaming to escape from their fetters.
My world is one only of restraint. Logic. The vertical bars I have been forced to call my ‘home’. The occasional smattering of seeds thrown in by the monstrous human. Every now and then his eyes bulging in at my feathered form, perhaps giving a poke. My desperate pleas for help, for release, with a faltering cuckoo cry.
My words falling on dull, ignorant ears.
Time is irrelevant in this emotionless existence. The eternal monotony of dark, light, food, dark, sleep is all I can recall. Hope seems a dwindling promise at the end of a non-existent tunnel.
It wasn’t always like this.
At this point I just want to tell you how hard it is to flaw this. I recall sorrowfully the clear azure of the sky, the dusky pink hues it would emit as the glowing light began to dim. The translucent waters waving beneath me, the flowing zig-zag of the grass, the flowers bending their heads in polite, gentle nods.
Time would flow effortlessly past as day gave way to the crisp, cool throngs of night. I can still imagine the stars raining their bright breath over me, blinking innocently as they twirled and spun in sublime expanses of speckled colours smeared through the clouds.
Complete freedom to explore every crack and crevice of mind and body, united with the natural realm, unrestrained by society.
Until: the caging.
This came at a perfect time. Towards the end of the last paragraph, I was still following but my engagement was weakening. Then I was brought back into it wonderfully here. Excellent job!That dreadful moment when a smoke-blowing, sneering human turned every colour to grey with one thrust of his red hands.
I still remember benevolent humans whose eyes would dampen to see my companions injured, or underfed. Some would scatter seeds and bread on nearby pathways, the small ones would clap in delight.
It is for these memories that I continue hoping. Hoping there is goodness in the essence of this complex human — who can be so kind and sympathetic one moment, so cold and cruel the next.
My spirits elevate as a lithe, pale girl emerges from the blackened sky behind her. Her infrequent visits bring innocent smiles and gentle benevolence.
It is her emotions alone that preserve my yearning for that same humanity.
“I am awfully sorry to have left you alone, beauty,” she sighs dispiritedly, extending a hand overflowing with nuts and seeds through the bars. “At last Mr Godwin let me finish all those dreadful chores…”
I am concerned to see her face slump at the words. These days, the names of William and Mary Godwin seem only to bring oppressive sadness.
Bending down, her brow furrows to see my rusting chains.
“As free as a bird,” she whispers. Tears filling her emerald eyes, she reaches in to stroke my brown, striped feathers. “If only it could change.”
“It can, it can!” I cry, helplessly rattling the chains grasping my claws. But her back is turned, and my visionary hope is swallowed once more into billows of smoke.
* * *
The evening breeze gestures me down to Winchester’s River Itchen as I enter the temple of it’s presence. Willow fronds brush my forehead gently as their curtains slide open. I smile as flecks of light bounce off the cool water onto sunburnt planks of wood. The sky is awash with the sun’s final blessing, misty clouds intermingled with mellifluous pink and orange light.
Mellifluous is a word used to describe sound, and you've used it to describe light. Consider picking a new word It is here, with time interrupted only by the comings and goings of the tide, that I am completely united with the essence of my being.
“Logic and restraint,” I mutter, turning reluctantly from the brilliant blushing light shining onto dancing waters. “Exercise your logic and restraint…”
I lean back on the delicately arching bridge with slate pencil poised for destruction.
Silence washes over me with a calming hand, soft and sonorous, far removed from the roar of authority. It’s a solitude that hangs on your every thought and feeling, allows them to transform the dictation of the social realm.
Grimly, I ravage my memory for vestiges of the logical ideas my teacher commands me to spit back in his face.
All the moment offers is bright blue water, wandering white clouds, gleaming red rays illuminating a rippling horizon. Three shades crying out for change.
As the sky begins to dance with a conglomeration of colour, my lips can no longer be silenced. The words fall easily from my tongue:
“My heart leaps up when I behold, a rainbow in the sky…
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!” (W. Wordsworth, 1803)
My spirits are elevated by the poet’s glorious new words. As each willow sways freely around me, brushing delicate fingertips against my skin, I can only imagine a world released from the chains of authority into their warm embrace.
I hardly comprehend the sky slowly disappearing into a purple bruise of smoke, the streets beginning to rumble noisily without the sunshine urging them into their proper duty.
My eyes are firmly fixed on the horizon.
* * *
The girl’s face is clear as she bursts into the room with a stream of morning light. It transforms my cage with refracted colours, overwhelming the darkness that hides behind them.
“Hello, girl,” she beams unexpectedly. Green eyes glow with excitement. “Today is the day it will change, you hear me?”
Feverishly, she begins to fiddle with the rusting locks that bind me. Her hands tremble, face flushed inexplicably, as she utters — “Today you will have freedom.”
I am surrounded at once by air. Unhindered space. My heart beats faster, faster until I think it will burst out of my chest.
Is this — freedom?
I exhale a feeble “thank you” as her eyes open wide, watching for my jubilant egress.
Clenching my wings, I hobble determinedly to the edge of the grey expanse. For an instant I stumble and squawk in pain, but before long, my feathers are spread wide and soaring unchained through the open skies.
My heart leaps up with pure joy at the sight of the brilliant clear sky which had awaited me so long, the sunlight dazzling my eyes as it bounces off glistening green leaves.
I glance down ecstatically to see a kaleidoscope of colour covering the ground beneath, red, blue, and white flashing before my eyes. Flowers are clustered in bright bunches that reach out, poking holes in the stratosphere to bask in golden rays of light. Each colour seems brighter, clearer than I had imagined, as if to cry out in happiness that it may freely shine!
Then — black.
Every ounce of joy vanishes as my body is flung into a magnanimous grey building protruding from the hazy air. It’s piercing zenith towers higher than the clouds, as if it were about to topple over from the weight of the burden it carried. Bursts of soiled air infiltrate the sky as they spit from grotesquely twisting pipes.
Everything is enveloped by an opaque smog dimming each colour with it’s own sooty hue. It is redolent of sulphur and coal, mingled with the faintly metallic flavour of blood.
Heart pounding, I swoop lower. Perhaps this is an oddity of nature I had never experienced.
It is then that I see the humans, pouring from every crack and crevice of creation. Humans that are swallowed into yawning black mouths beneath them. Marching with lumps of dark matter strapped to their tiny frames. Thrashing iron helplessly with terrifying weapons. Bending to be beaten by unrestrained men, red hands just like my captor’s.
Rarely reappearing into disappearing green meadows.
More red men stand to the left of the river, which by now appears ominously viscous and reeks of sewage. They point and laugh at large expanses of grass before them, fold their arms across protruding stomachs.
Beside them sit shrivelled figures wearing withered farmer’s hats. Disfigured bodies wracked by hacking coughs. Children left in their own waste as tears burn gashes in sooty flesh. Small damp huts which reek of rotting flesh and crying mothers.
All pleading for a simple human benevolence that doesn't appear to exist.
No one scatters them seeds. No one tears them bread. No one has a tear in their eye, only a plank of wood as they may bark orders while holding others in chains.
This blackened sky was no feat of the natural realm I had so naively yearned for.
Humans.
Without a cage like mine, humans had twisted nature’s perfect world into their own disfigured creature.
Their darkness had covered every inch of emerald grass
This is being picky, but I think you described someone's eyes as emeralf above. If this is the case, try pick a new adjective here to keep it varied. until only spattered blood remained in vision.
And the colours. The beautiful colours of the flowers, red, blue, and white, are painted on a flag that is trampled in the dust on the side of the road.
Is this — freedom?
For at last, I have seen the freedom for what it is — a monster. A black, smoky monster allowed to permeate every emotion until all that remains is red blood of victory.
Somehow, a cold, logical cage seems only too inviting.
* * *
The bird soars high above me with coffee-brown wings outstretched. Amidst the din of steam engines and clanging metal, my heart is lifted to see her released from her own icy cage.
Time eludes us as I watch it scale the clouds, dive through streams of smoke to find each clear patch of sky, completely unbound by the jailer’s fetters.
My heart stops as my friend is stagnated by a thick haze. Flecks of dirt block my vision as the puffing billy rolls past, clouds billowing out of teetering nostrils.
The train hurtles dangerously into the future, never looking back to see the dark trails it leaves behind.
Disoriented, I peer frantically around for the bird’s small, feathered frame to reappear.
When the mist clears, all that remains is emptied, smoky skies.
Surely it is still basking in the warm embrace of willow fronds? Surely it has not returned to chains of reason?
Running, panting, I return to the village with bated breath. My mind races as red, blue, and white flashes past me in a blur of distorted and undefined shapes.
Yet when I reach the teacher’s house, the bird sits placidly on the cold, metal floor of her cage. I peer with horror into her tiny, yellow eyes.
No longer are they filled with restless pain, a creative yearning to be released from her chains. Now, all I see is a dutiful acceptance — that seems almost to long for the logic and restraint of vertical bars.
Grief is heavy on my tongue as I whisper: “As free as a bird?”
I cannot understand.