In an autumn faraway in the past, in a village too small to be named, one day it stopped raining. After three weeks of ceaseless rain, the streets were so muddy that they merged into the oil-seed rape fields. “Haaah!”, they sighed relieved. While the clouds were making room for the last hours of afternoon sun, a bird that had never been seen before arrived in town. He flew over the whole village in one deep breath and alighted over a rusted and precarious exterior staircase of a cylinder-shaped theatre that had always been sealed.

This strange heron was oddly coloured: it seemed to have a white vest, a black cloak and a black crown. On its back, a long white feather sparkled nervously and royally. The bird would perch on those stairs all day, and he would go around the nearby wetlands only at night, when everyone was asleep. On top of that theatre, he could see everything. Every day, for months and months, the bird watched the life of the village: the hammer strokes coming from the blacksmith’s shop; the glasses slammed on the counter of the sole pub in town; the arrivals and the departures of the carts that would come from distant cities, and would bring things never seen before like soaps, exotic fruits or curling irons for ladies that none of the ladies could afford. The sole children of the village
were not used to play or to stroll, and it was hard to see them around.

In fact, they were put to work from an early age and they would stay all day around their parents to help. It had been like this for years, by that time: the blacksmith would be at work with his son, the baker would be up before dawn with his three daughters, the miller, the shepherd and so on. Every day, life would proceed at the same way, and the village too small to be named would wake up, barely earn its living and then drag itself home at night: and all this, under the eyes of the heron. At times, some old ladies would give it a look and mutter between the broken teeth, “that bird, I wonder what it wants from over there! It stands there, with its black crown on its head, and watches us like the conscience of a murderer! Go away!” And, obviously, the heron wouldn’t move at all. It would stay there, and observe. After the hot and dry summer, one day, in autumn, the first clouds started drawing closer, loaded of rain. These arrived tumbling down the sky like sea lions on the sand; slowly covering the sun, they began to pour handfuls of water.

That day, when this happened, it was almost evening: in front of the little theatre, the people of the village were hurrying home, hastily closing their shops and pulling the animals and the children in. And it rained. It rained all night, never taking a breath. When the dawn arrived, it arrived with the rain. And even though the sound of the deluge was deafening, some screams, coming from a house, disrupted it for a moment. Other screams followed, and then other laments did too, and even cries could be heard. Within few minutes, most of the inhabitants – not that many in the village – gathered on the streets fumbling around in the thick rain. Such was the confusion that it took a while to understand what was going on.

But after a little more than an hour, the whole village too small to be named gathered under the porch of the cylindrical theatre, and made a discovery: all the children had vanished. Some people thought of a mischief. The blacksmith, for example, was furious: “if I find that brat, he’ll never see the end of this!” The miller, instead, wondered how he would manage to work alone that day. Some mothers were almost choking for sobbing, convinced that it was a kidnapping, some others, instead, excluded it immediately: after all, who would kidnap all the children of a village that is so small that it doesn’t even have a name? Among the confusion, the desperation and the anger, the voice of an old woman rose hysterically: “look over there, the black-crowned heron is gone!” Everyone turned towards the rusted staircase that was running through the right side of the theatre, and they saw that the bird wasn’t there anymore.

Although many were sceptical, the coincidence seemed clear indeed: that heron, in one entire year, had never moved from there during the day, not even when it had snowed during the winter months, not even when it had hailed at the beginning of the summer, not even when one of the theatre’s drainpipes had almost fallen on its head! The old woman went on, “that bloody bird has something to do with this, for sure!” And another woman, “we need to find it! It’s its fault!” One of the farmers then said, “I know where it goes when it flies away at night!” and pointing the southeastern wetlands, he waved vigorously and started marching. All the men followed him. They walked for hours under the rain and on the mud: there was water everywhere. With those drenched lungs that were taking the breath away, the struggle was unbearable.

But, at a certain point, the rain stopped. Then, the farmer who had started marching first, wiped his eyes with his palms and began looking around. The others slowly came closer, breathless: they all ended up in a enormous reed bed. Moving forward with small and hesitant steps among the reeds, they found themselves facing a swamp, and stood still, all astonished, for a moment. Before them, just few steps away in fact, they saw all their children in the company of hundreds of herons. Some children were running up and down the meadow, some others were playing the wheelbarrow race, some more were singing along with the birds. The parents, hidden in the reeds, could not understand immediately what was going on: that sound of laughs, so loud, wasn’t familiar at all. The baker’s daughters were all absorbed in watching one of the herons stirring with a wooden spoon the pastry cream on the stove. They were laughing for the excitement. One of them suddenly turned for a second and sighted her father among the reeds: “Dad, dad! Look! We know how to make pastry cream!” and started running towards her father. The baker moved to tears, and the joy pushed him out of the reeds towards the child’s hug.

In the meantime, the blacksmith, who was looking for his son in the midst of that clamorous confusion, found him seated on an acacia log intent on playing marbles with the black-crowned heron. The little boy was laughing and clapping his hands of joy. The blacksmith was beside himself with rage. He shouldered the rifle that he had brought with him, and pointed at the bird. He threw himself out of the reed bed with such a fury that, for a moment, everything felt silent. The shot made every heron fly away, and the child didn’t even have the time to turn over, that the bullet knocked him down like a giant’s push. The blacksmith stood petrified. “But, but I… I just wanted to,” and he started crying, “I was aiming at that bloody bird! It was its fault! It was it who dragged my son here! My son should have been in the shop! I just wanted to…”. And the blacksmith reached his son, who was lying exanimate on a meadow of marbles, and he slumped on him inconsolably.

Everyone, grown-ups and children, stood still for few minutes with their mouths open and the arms outstretched: they looked like clay statues holding their breath at the bottom of the sea. The only audible sound was the one of the heart beats that were snapping for the wonder and the dismay. The smell of burned cream woke up the kids which, then, broke the silence to run to meet their fathers. The adults didn’t hesitate to hug them tight, and felt as if that was the first time they were holding their own child in their hands.

From that day on, in the village too small to be named, the children’s laughter blossomed at every corner. In the morning, the cart of one of the farmers would bring them to school in a nearby town; in the afternoon they could be seen running after the hares in the oil-seed rape fields, or at home helping with the housework. In the bakery it was possible to buy pastry cream tarts, prepared by the baker’s daughters and, now and then, the miller’s sons would get some slices for free, sneaking under the windows.
The blacksmith started repairing the little cylindrical theatre; after few months it was re-opened and would offer shows to which, for just few pennies, anyone could go. The external staircase was re-painted, but the black-crowned night heron never came back again. It was elsewhere, elegantly perched on other children’s lives.

text by Sada Ranis
illustrations by Zaelia Bishop

Published on DROME 18 – The Childhood issue