Zeno Closes In
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Keeper Ruth had always taught her students to treat creatures with the utmost respect and care. But when Pouli burst into song an hour before sunrise, Zoe forgot her lessons and caught him inside the bread basket.
Unfortunately, this didn’t do much to silence him. Zoe tried to curl back up on the cave floor but couldn’t ignore his rageful little screeches.
“Do you think maybe if you use that seal, you can magic us to wherever your parents are?” She mumbled from somewhere beneath her cloak.
Philothea had long since given up on sleep and was now sitting with her back to the rock wall, watching Pouli’s yellow beak shoot in and out through the holes in the wicker. She knew the little bird had awakened some deeply unpleasant emotions in her friend. Zoe hated the idea of traveling anywhere with him.
Philothea wrung her hands. She didn’t even really know how she had restored Pouli.
“I don’t know,” she answered. She looked back at the little basket where Pouli was now shouting angry exclamations like, “Away with you, naughty thing!” and “No biting!” and “Bad bird! No grapes!”
“I’m going to let him out,” Philothea stated.
“Can you not?” Zoe requested.
“Look, we’re already awake, and he’s only doing what birds do naturally,” Philothea answered. “It’s not his fault, he’s a bird.”
“Actually, it kind of is,” Zoe pointed out. “He’s the one who insisted you turn him back.”
Philothea glared at her.
“Pouli?” Philothea asked sweetly, scooching toward his prison. “I’ll let you out on one condition.”
“Naughty girl! Away with you!” Pouli replied. “Go back in your cage, you naughty thing!”
“Pouli, if you sing the song that made Zeno hate me, you can come out.”
Pouli went silent for a long moment. Zoe peered out from her cloak cocoon, trying to see what miracle had silenced her tormentor.
Philothea, interpreting the silence as a “yes”, removed the basket. Pouli shot out of the cave like a dart.
“And… he’s gone again…” Zoe stated. She grumbled something else under her breath, rubbed her eye with the base of her wrist, and sat up.
Philothea figured he would be back once he’d flown off all his rage. She suggested that they pack the rest of the bread and look around Pouli’s collection of items to see if they could find anything else that might be useful.
They had with them only what they were wearing when they fled the temple. Simple, off-white ankle-length dresses, their cloaks, and the little multipurpose knives they always carried on their belts.
Unfortunately, Pouli’s belongings were hardly practical. It seemed like he had two hobbies: collecting shiny items and destroying things.
His bed, if you could call it a bed, was made up of threadbare blanket scraps that had been ripped and then tangled together in a circular, nestlike fashion.
Philothea was delighted when she found a rope, but dismayed to discover that it was frayed from one end to the exact middle as if Pouli had been pulling the strands apart individually. (She cut off the good half.) There were a number of wicker baskets which had also been destroyed strand by strand. The only one in good condition was the one that had been holding the bread.
Philothea used the rope to extend the handles so she could wear it over her shoulder like a satchel. It was clumsy, but serviceable. They found a couple of shiny bottles which they put into the basket, along with the leftover bread. Then they started searching for any lightweight items they might be able to sell if they came to a village. There wasn’t much on this front-just a trowel and a few coins.
As they continued their search, Philothea suddenly became aware of a strange feeling–it was like a thousand icy needles pricking her all over. And something else… a furious power, swirling and burning within a distant heart. Someone was approaching, and that someone was a force to be reckoned with.
Philothea scrunched her brow, wondering how she knew that and where these feelings were coming from.
“You alright?” Zoe asked.
“It’s…” A nervous laugh caught in Philothea’s throat, making her choke on her words. “I think we should go.”
“Alright, let’s just try and see what else we can find first,” Zoe started.
“We need to go now,” Philothea giggled.
Zoe stared at her and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could question Philothea, Pouli shot back into the cave and exclaimed:
“Zeno is coming! Got to hide the baby! Got to save the princess!”
“You need to be quiet, is what you need,” Zoe stated.
“We have to go,” Philothea insisted.
As the words escaped her, they both heard the sound of voices moving through the trees in the distance.
The girls glanced at each other.
Zoe nodded. “Yes, let’s.”
Zoe and Philothea slipped down the hillside, trying to stay hidden behind the trees and brambles. They heard the voices of men in the distance, the sound of horses whinnying and snorting, and worst of all, the barking of hunting dogs.
“East! East! East!” Pouli chirped as he flew over their heads. “Zeno is coming!”
The girls moved as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves. Yet, with every step forward they took, it seemed the sounds of Zeno’s men came closer. Then all at once, the dogs went into a barking frenzy. Philothea heard their padded paws galloping across the underbrush.
“They’ve got our scent,” she squeaked.
“Just keep moving,” Zoe whispered.
Philothea looked over her shoulder. Now she could see one of the great brown and black hounds trotting after them in the distance. He would be upon them any moment.
“Zoe,” she whispered. “I have an idea.”
Zoe glanced sideways at her as they rushed through the brambles.
“I am going to turn us into birds.”
Zoe raised an eyebrow.
“If Pouli can become a man, we can become birds, right? Then we could fly to my parents.”
“That might be the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” Zoe replied.
“It’s our only chance,” Philothea begged, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the barking.
“No, it isn’t,” Zoe argued. “Stop talking, you’ll attract their attention.”
They continued scurrying through the brush, the thorns and twigs scratching at their ankles. Meanwhile, the barking and the padding of paws grew ever closer. And that strange feeling, that icy tingling that alerted Philothea to the presence of Zeno’s magic, increased, throbbing through her.
Philothea did not have time to argue, as they ran, she pulled the ring from her pocket and slipped it on her finger. Her magic awakened with a burst of energy, causing her to stumble forward into the stinging brush. Shaking, she struggled to her feet and looked around wildly, trying to orient herself to the avalanche of ability the seal had unlocked.
She felt like she could do anything as easily as moving a finger, and that terrified her. She breathed deeply and focused on the thing she wanted to do–turn herself and Zoe into birds.
Zoe glanced over at her and, noticing the ring, said, “What are you doing?”
“We are birds,” Philothea whispered.
Nothing happened.
“No, stop that!” Zoe hissed.
But Philothea ignored her, she could see the rest of the pack closing in on them.
“Birds, birds, birds,” she whispered, hopefully. Nothing happened.
A great hound leap out from the brambles blocking their path. Philothea shrieked in alarm. She turned from the great beast and saw one of his fellows just behind her. They were surrounded.
The pack circled them, barking happily.
Philothea’s heart pounded. The dogs would hold them until their masters caught up. Her only chance at getting past them was getting the ring to work and she had no idea how to do it.
She felt tears on her cheeks. She hoped that this Zeno would at least let Zoe go. She thought of Keeper Ruth and Keeper Eva—how they had tried to protect her. She didn’t want anyone hurt on her account.
She heard a man’s voice in the distance cry, “Over there! The dogs have them!”
They were following the sound of the barking…
She wished to the depths of her being that at least Zoe could escape. That at least Zoe could sprout wings and fly away. And with that deep and honest longing came a loud “poof.”
Philothea looked down at herself. Was she a bird? As the smoke cleared, she could see that she was still completely herself.
“Zoe?” she whispered.
“I’ll kill you for this!”
The voice was like Zoe’s but… distorted, gravely. Philothea looked over her shoulder and saw a little starling standing where Zoe had been a moment ago.
“Pouli?”
“NO!” screeched the bird. “I’m Zoe!”
“I did it!” Philothea cried, her heart leaping. “You can escape now, Zoe!”
All of Zoe’s feathers stuck up so that she looked more like an irate hedgehog than a bird.
“What?” she screeched. “Escape? Are you serious? If you die, I’ll be stuck in bird form forever!”
Philothea ducked down. The dogs were still circling her, barking to draw their masters in.
Zeno’s company appeared on a distant hill, though the emperor himself, wasn’t visible. As Philothea utterly despaired, she heard a scream. She jumped. Not only because it was a scream, but because it was her scream and immediately followed by her own voice crying out in the distance, “Look! They’re coming! Help!”
Zoe’s voice replied, “Be quiet you naughty thing! Zeno will hear you!”
Of course, it couldn’t have been Zoe because Zoe was next to her in bird form.
Philothea’s heart leapt. It was Pouli! Clever little Pouli, leading their enemies away. Philothea decided that as soon as she was returned to her parents, she was going to make sure that he got a whole vineyard of grapes.
“There!” one of the warriors cried, pointing in the direction of the noise. “It was definitely coming from there!”
One of the men whistled and the dogs fled back to the hunting party, giving a few suspicious growls at Philothea and Zoe before they finally left them alone.
The Fables of Para Sympan 