The King of the Birds Read online

  “I will be king.”

  Iolar flew through clouds. The white fluffy balls looked so warm and soft, but were always damp and cold. A dusting of water droplets dappled his wings like jewels.

  He rose higher still.

  Soon, there was no one beneath him. A seagull had hung on for a surprisingly long time, but had given up as the sun began to rise on this, the shortest day of the year. The seagull had slowly drifted back to the ground leaving Iolar alone in the sky: he was the king of the birds.

  “I am the king,” he said. “I am the king of the birds.”

  On the ground Relige and the two swans watched the distant black dot rising high, high, higher into the sky. All around Eo Mugna, the Great Oak, birds were resting, lining the branches and bushes, gathered in small groups on the hard ground. They too were looking up, watching the eagle soar into the heavens. And, as the last solitary black-headed seagull fell back to earth, leaving the Golden Eagle alone in the skies, it was clear that Iolar would be king.

  There was no point in going any further. He had won. Tilting to one side, Iolar began to fall back towards the earth. When he was closer to the earth, he would close his wings and plummet shockingly fast, frightening the smaller birds. At the very last minute he would open his great wings and stop, hang in the air and then drop lightly on to a branch. It would be a dramatic demonstration of his power.

  The eagle twitched.

  Something moved in the feathers on his back. He shrugged. It would blow off as he fell through the icy air.

  He felt it move again. And then a familiar tiny voice said cheekily, “Thank you.”

  Iolar twisted his head in time to see Dreolin the wren take flight off his back, wings beating furiously as it rose up into the sky. It began to sing, a delicate triumphant sound.

  Iolar shouted and opened his wings, beating them furiously to catch the wind. But he was exhausted and had already dropped quite far, while the wren, who had hitched the ride on his back, was far, far above him, and rising fast on fresh wings.

  “Come back,” Iolar shouted. “Come back. That’s not fair. I’ve won.”

  Dreolin peered down, eyes twinkling mischievously. “Not yet you haven’t. Catch me if you can.”

  The wren continued rising higher and higher. The eagle desperately attempted to catch up, but its wings were tired, each flap becoming more of an effort. He began to drop lower, slipping further away from the still-rising wren.

  “Just you wait,” he whined.

  The wren flew higher, singing, singing, singing.

  Furious, Iolar plummeted towards the ground, only opening his wings a few feet above the soil. They snapped him to a stop and he slid to a halt before the barn owl, long talons digging grooves into the frost-speckled earth.

  “Not fair. Not fair,” he attempted to shout, but it came out as a shrill shriek. “That’s not fair. He cheated.”

  Relige smiled and looked from the furious eagle up to the tiny bird flying far above their heads. The wren dipped and spun in an intricate dance, snatches of its song carried down on the wind.

  The barn owl looked at the two swans on either side of them and they whispered together for a few moments.

  “Well?” Iolar demanded.

  “Being a king means not only being big and strong and powerful, it also means being clever and thinking ahead and planning,” Relige said. “The wren did that.” The barn owl drew in a deep breath, puffing out his chest. “From this day forth,” Relige announced loudly, voice echoing and re-echoing through the ancient forests, “Dreolin the wren is the king of the birds of Ireland.”

  And abruptly the ancient forest came alive to the vast flock singing, “The wren, the wren, the king of all birds …”

  We opened a creative writing centre in Dublin’s inner city in January 2009. We called it Fighting Words – a temporary name that immediately felt like a good idea. We didn’t conduct extensive market research to see if it was wanted. Nor did we seek to align it with the formal education system. We took our belief in the enterprise from ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson, in Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”

  We wanted to address the absence of outlets for children and young adults in Dublin to engage with creative writing, and the lack of time allowed for it in the school curriculum. It seemed daft, in a country that prides itself in being a land of writers, that there was so little space for writing.

  From the very beginning, the interest has been colossal. We host 10,000 students each year – mainly children and young adults – at creative-writing workshops and programmes. They are all free. Most of the students come with their schools, but we also host sessions outside of school time attended by a wide range of special-needs groups, as well as individual children and teenagers. Our tutors and mentors are volunteers. We have more than 400 of them.

  We had our own inspiration: we’d visited 826 Valencia in San Francisco, a creative-writing centre established by the author Dave Eggers. We’d loved what we’d seen being done there – the way little kids were invited to put pen to paper, and the way monosyllabic teenagers were persuaded to write thousands of their own words. Since that project launched, similar creative-writing centres have opened all over the world: as well as our own Fighting Words here in Dublin, there are centres in Milan, Stockholm, London, Barcelona, Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Sydney, with plans for ones in Belfast, Vienna and Buenos Aires. All of these creative-writing centres are linked together informally. They communicate regularly, sharing ideas and experience.

  Writing is a solitary occupation – eventually. But having witnessed it again and again over the last five years, we know that if it begins as a collective exercise, as a bit of fun, then by the time the children start to write by themselves, they produce better, more confident work. They’ve seen what they can do, the simple things that can make a good line brilliant, and they’re keen to give it a go themselves.

  Quite soon after we opened, often at the suggestion of artists from other disciplines who wanted to get involved, we started to run programmes tailored towards other types of writing, including film scripts, plays, graphic novels, radio drama, journalism, songwriting and film animation. As with those we run for creative writing, the demand by children to participate is consistently staggering, and their creativity is extraordinary.

  We think creative writing is an essential part of every child’s education. We want to give as many children as possible the opportunity to engage with their imaginations and see what possibilities are then opened up for them. Fighting Words is not state-funded, and our existence is dependent on people who believe passionately in what we do – like the writers and artists who have written and illustrated these brilliant stories. We are especially grateful to a great friend of Fighting Words, Sarah Webb – the creative- and driving force behind this wonderful collection.

  Roddy Doyle & Seán Love

  All profits made from the sale of this book go to Fighting Words, a registered charity.

  If you enjoyed this story, then tap the cover below for more tales of adventure, magic and wonder …

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Michael Scott writes for both adults and young adults. He is considered one of the authorities on Celtic folklore and his collections, Irish Folk & Fairy Tales, Irish Myths & Legends and Irish Ghosts & Hauntings, have been in print for the past twenty years. His New York Times bestselling YA series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, is available in over twenty languages and thirty-eight countries.

  Check out his website:

  www.dillonscott.com/the-secrets-of-the-immortal-nicholas-flamel

  Chris Haughton is an Irish designer and illustrator. His first book, A Bit Lost, is available in nineteen languages and has won many awards including the Dutch Picture Book of the Year. Chris’s latest and third Picture Book is Shh! We Have a Plan and was published in 2014. Chris’s aim is to create children’s books that can be read without words, so that children from across the
world can understand everything just by looking at them. Chris lives in London.

  Check out his website to see more of his work:

  www.chrishaughton.com

  About the Publisher

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  HarperCollins Canada

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  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

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  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

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