Love and Peace of Mind

by Krista Farmer

Steam rose off the baths, clouding the highly colored murals of the bathhouse. Each of these murals depicted a different scene from the surrounding area. One was of an orchard, evenly spaced and abundant with fruits throughout; another was of a meadow, its sloping mounds rich with wormy earth; another was of a field of wheat, its stalks so swollen with shiny kernels that each could be seen individually from a great distance. The fourth was of a row of trees, their branches sturdy enough to support several generations of nestlings, while remaining lush enough to conceal these should the need arise. Above all, covering the broad expanse of a heavily raftered ceiling, stood a painted sky. A depiction of the fowl-folk’s own embattled domain, across which wild winds swept in long, stylized sweeps.

The bathhouse’s most conspicuous feature was the large bath at its center. This bath’s outer walls were covered in an ornate blue tilework, its basin was a pure, gleaming, sugary white. The water within it stood at no more than two-inches, ideal for such activities as wading and splashing, and had been steeped all morning long in various rock salt concoctions, resulting in a pale lavender hue.

A swallow stood at the edge of this blue-tiled bath, peering sideways down at the lavender colored water. Pink steam rose about his blue-cobalt wings, and around the wooden bath token lying at his breast. The bath token read, in carefully etched letters, Love and Peace of Mind.

A constant, warbling babble inundated the bathhouse, punctuated by the occasional scuttle of an attendant’s feet. The swallow felt several of these attendant’s gazes slide over him as he continued to perch at the edge of the bath. Something was wrong, although he couldn’t quite place what. A certain uneasiness, thoroughly incongruous with the setting. It nettled him, up until he decided what he really needed was a show of joy to contend it. He spread his wings and dove, trilling and screeching, into the heart of the bath.

There was a pause in the commotion in the bathhouse, as though it had been thunderstruck. The swallow, heedless of this, carried on with his singing and splashing, revelling in the feel of all the dust and weariness melting off him, when there was a sudden flash of movement over his shoulder. He turned to face small, yellow eyes regarding him from the edge of the bath. He recognized this creature as one of the bathhouse’s attendants: a small, green frog with a yellow kerchief tied neatly around his neck. He sat drumming his toes along the edge of the bath, obviously awaiting the swallow’s acknowledgement, whereupon he cleared his throat and began speaking in a low, muddy voice: “There’s been a mistake.”

The swallow blinked twice, uncomprehending, before hopping closer. “A what? A mistake?”

“Yes,” the frog said gravely, fixing the swallow with one side-cocked yellow eye. “I’ve just been informed, by one of our superiors, that this bath has already been reserved. From approximately the sun’s mid-point, all the way to its—”

“Reserved,” the swallow interrupted. “Of course, it’s been reserved; it’s been reserved by me.”

The frog ceased drumming his toes. “One of our patrons—”

“Enough,” the swallow interrupted again. “Look here, I am a patron. Is this not the particular bath token for this particular bath?” The swallow strutted closer, puffing his chest out with every step.

“This bath of ours—”

“Enough!” the swallow shouted, waving his wet feathers at the frog. “I said that’s enough. Check the records. Check with that fussy brown marmoset who checked me in this morning. It was I — I tell you — who reserved this bath from exactly the sun’s midpoint, all the way to its gradual burnishing of the leaves. It was I who—”

It was the frog’s turn to interrupt. He cleared his throat with a muddy sound before leaping stiffly away from the edge of the bath in a sudden vortex of steam.

The swallow eyed the spot recently vacated, thinking he’d won that argument rather too easily. He waited for one of the other attendants to show up. He could hear several of them speaking together nearby, but he couldn’t make out any of what they were saying, nor see anything above the high walls of his bath.

Shaking himself, spreading lavender droplets as he did so, he began strutting from one end of the bath to the other, hoping to burn off some frustrated energy. So wrapped up was he in these problems of his own that he failed to recognize when the steam from his own bath, as well as from several others, began to thicken and cloud in the air around him.

The bathhouse was suddenly inundated with cries of alarm, as well as the sound of wooden ladders being torn out of wooden shoots. There was a mix of shouted orders, with one surly marmoset, already wiping invisible sweat from his brow, quickly emerging as leader. Following in his wake were several teams of water-rats, a member from each of which carried at least one of these tall wooden ladders. Together they rushed over to the base of the walls where, higher up, nearer the rafters, there stood a long row of adjustable, wrap-around windows.

Unbeknownst to these attendants, an outsider had been sitting perched outside in the trees all morning, just waiting for such an opportunity. As soon as one of these windows was propped open, he swooped down and landed upon its inner sill.

This outsider was a crow. His feathers were a steely black, and he was as big around as a sack of cornmeal, with his cunning worming all through him like a fistful of weevils. In one of his claws he clutched at the partially dismembered body of a leafhopper, a morsel taken from one of his better hiding places, reserved for just such lean times. He’d just settled down to begin his small repast, when his attention was drawn suddenly to a commotion down below.

This commotion, he saw, was largely centered around the blue-tiled bath in the center of the room. Several attendants were already bustling toward the scene, including that one surly marmoset, whom the crow recognized from several encounters he’d had with him before. The marmoset was being attended by two smaller, nervous-seeming water-rats, each of whom clutched at small packets of birdseed.

The commotion was being caused by two birds standing in and around this large, blue-tiled bath. The one in the basin was a swallow, the one perched upon the ledge a harassed but formidable owl. The crow could hear them shouting back and forth to each other, their shouting having already upset many of the smaller birds, who’d begun calling anxiously at attendants for towels. Even some of the larger birds had grown anxious. He noticed one stately kingfisher making nervous sidewise, eye-contact with a neighboring red ibis.

The owl hooted something ominous down at the swallow, who by then stood very prim and upright in the owl’s looming shadow. The crow could see that the swallow’s red breast was thrust all the way forward. He shouted something back at the owl, who dismissed it with an arrogant toss of his massive, horned head.

The marmoset, meanwhile, had just arrived on the scene. He hovered anxiously near the owl’s wing, some of the bristle gone out of him as he spoke now in placating tones and gestures. Beside him, the two water-rats had begun lining up rows of birdseed along the bath’s tiles, trading skittish glances as they worked.

The crow had by then seen enough. He knew an opportunity when he spotted one and had never been known to miss out on an opportunity, particularly when one seemed to fall practically screeching into his lap. Still clutching the dead leaf-hopper, he hopped forward and then launched himself off the edge of the sill, landing at a slight, meaningful distance from the owl.

Neither combatant noticed him at first. It was only after having cleared his throat, and then having sidled a bit closer to the owl, that the crow finally managed to gain the larger bird’s regard. The massive, horned head turned slowly in his direction, the twin yellow eyes piercing him from beneath tufted brows.

The crow cleared his throat and began. “Excuse me,” he said. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I think I may have come up with a possible solution to your little predicament.”

One of the water-rats glanced sharply up at the sound of his voice.

“Hey, you,” the water-rat said. “I remember you. You’re not supposed to be in here, are you?”

The marmoset, having just noticed this interloper as well, was quick to shove the questioning water-rat aside. He fixed the crow with an evil stare. “You again,” he growled.

“Just wait a minute,” the owl said, cutting a wing toward the marmoset. “Let him speak.”

A look passed between the owl and the crow. Little love remained lost between the owl and crow clans, yet there remained certain circumstances under which a tenuous sort of alliance could be formed. This being the result of both clans having been variously maligned over the centuries by other bird clans, and not always for reasons entirely justifiable.

The swallow, meanwhile, had gone from shooting daggers at the owl to glaring sidelong up at the crow. There was a sharp hesitation in the swallow’s gaze as it glanced over the leafhopper still cinched in the crow’s claw. The crow registered this out of the corner of his eye.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” the crow began, still facing the owl. “You say that you’ve reserved this bath from exactly the sun’s midpoint, all the way to its gradual burnishing of the leaves. Is that so?”

The owl nodded.

“And you,” the crow said, turning to the swallow, “say that it was you who reserved this bath for exactly that same period of time. Correct?”

The second water-rat suddenly turned to address the marmoset. “I don’t see any point in letting him speak. We’ve been over all this already.”

“But,” the crow continued, his voice rising above the water-rat’s, “I’m here to tell you that you’re both wrong. Look here, look at this.” The crow hopped forward, brandishing the dead leafhopper.

“It is rather interesting,” he heard the swallow mutter to himself. “I thought the season well over for those.”

“It’s obvious to me that you’ve both misread the season, and therefore the hour,” the crow went on, planting both feet back on the bath. “These are in far greater abundance out there than you’ve both probably had time to realize. It’s the quality of the light lately, with all these recent fires. It’s messed with all our internal bird-clocks, but I can assure you both that I’m telling you the truth when I say that neither of you are scheduled to be in this bath at this hour.”

The swallow and owl traded glances, each attempting to assess the veracity of the crow’s statement by the other’s subtler cues.

“It is, in fact,” the crow continued, “only about a quarter to mid-sun as it stands, and I can prove it to you both.”

“Hold on,” the owl said, cutting a wing toward him. “I don’t believe you. I saw perfectly well what position the sun was in before I swooped down here.”

“Me too,” the swallow cut in. “You don’t take me for the sort of idiot bird who would do a thing like misread the hour, do you?”

“You are an idiot bird,” the owl thundered down at him. “The fact you’re in this bath at this hour proves it.”

“Well,” the crow interrupted, shaking his back feathers out before smoothing them briefly with his beak. “You can both stand here arguing until the feathers really start to fly, or you can both take my advice and fly up there.” The crow pointed, with his wing, up toward one of the recently opened windows. “Up and around toward the back of this building. All the way toward those taller trees, you know the ones I’m talking about? The bushier ones, with all the nice, nesting branches. Fly up there and ride the currents southward until you start to see the mountains. From there you’ll be able to get a better look at things, above all the haze. Trust me, you’ll see that I’m telling you both the truth.”

The owl and swallow traded glances, doing obvious mental sums. If the crow was telling the truth, it would mean they could both comfortably admit to wrong-doing, and perhaps agree to a more peaceable solution for their little misunderstanding. If, on the other hand, they chose to ignore the crow, things were only likely to escalate from here. To devolve into a gouging of feathers and a pulling of plumage, or perhaps things even worse. Violence was not tolerated in the bathhouse, and any transgression to this rule was likely to result in a lifelong ban away from the bathhouse, an outcome neither of them preferred.

“In just this one instance,” the owl said, finally, his round pupils narrowing at the crow, “I’ll take your word for it. If what you’ve been telling us is the truth, I see no point in us standing around here arguing like fools.”

“And if he’s been lying,” piped up the swallow.

The owl squatted closer to the crow, bunching up his back feathers to look even more imposing. The crow felt a burst of trepidation wing its way through his hollow bones, although he managed, mostly, to suppress it.

“If he’s been lying,” the owl said, “then I’m sure he knows what he’s in for.”

“I suppose it’s settled then,” the swallow said, still eyeing the crow dubiously.

“Settled,” the owl repeated, spreading his enormous wings.

Several nearby birds and attendants ducked instinctively in the shadow of those enormous wings. The owl gave an ominous hoot before launching himself away from the edge of the bath, curtains of mist parting before him as he swooped forward, darting out of the opening the crow had just indicated. Little twists and eddies of steam remained in his wake.

“And you,” the crow said, peering down at the swallow, “Don’t you want to know if I was telling you the truth? That owl will soon know before you ever do.”

The swallow hopped closer, his head cocked a little to one side. “And maybe that owl was a fool.”

“It’s your loss then,” the crow said, waving the dead leafhopper at him. “There’s plenty more of these, over in that direction, but only if you happen to get there during the right times of day.”

The swallow’s eyes gleamed with greed. “We’ll just see about that,” he muttered to himself, smoothing his back feathers down with his beak. “I’ll bet I can fly twice as fast as that bothersome owl. I’ll bet I can.”

The swallow flitted to the edge of the tub, before launching himself forward. After several diving, trilling loops up near the building’s rafters, he cut past all the steam and dove out through that same opening as the owl.

There was a brief silence, in which the bathhouse seemed stunned into speechlessness. The crow then cackled to himself, releasing the tension a little, before turning to his own business. Having polished off the rest of the leafhopper, he quickly set to work on the trails of birdseed. The marmoset, having thus far stood back, stunned into inaction, now came striding forward, all bristling with outrage, ready to grab the crow by the back of his smooth neck and drive him out the door, when another bird’s call suddenly caught his attention.

The call had come from a nearby egret, rather known for his ill-temper. He was calling for a towel now, which the marmoset turned reflexively to retrieve, nearly stumbling over a water-rat in the process. The bathhouse was suddenly plunged into a noisy chaos, with many of the smaller birds, already put at ease by the owl’s sudden departure, crying out at attendants to be helped back into their baths, preferably with fresh pots of steam.

The crow threw back his head and cackled some more. He then dove into the heart of the blue-tiled bath, singing to himself a well-known crow refrain:

I am the black cloud who
Stretches across the sun
I will have my own way
I will make my own fun

A small wren had watched this whole scene unfold from the relative safety of his own private, perched bath and had puffed up with his own laughter, like a small bird on a high wire on a chilly morning. A lightly colored steam plumed around him, mildly scented with juniper salts. The wooden bath token around his neck read, in small, etched letters: In Mirth and Merriment.