Simone Bolivar: Chapter 1

Simone Bolivar

by

Nancy Hoffmann


PROLOGUE

Once, long ago, while dinosaurs still roamed the earth, a cosmic force too wise for us to ever understand released a beam of light carrying a small segment of its own intelligence and sent it coursing into the black void of Space. The beam traveled for eons as the earth changed and became the world we know. Finally it pierced the atmosphere of our planet and in less than an instant ended its flight in Brazil. It enveloped the chick inside an egg that lay in a nest securely built in a large hole in the trunk of a giant tree that towered high above the deep, green rainforest. The moment of penetration went unmarked.
The day came at last when the egg in the nest first quivered, then vibrated, as the small entity within began its laborious breakout into the world. Once free, the tiny featherless creature was immediately shielded by the attentive pair who began at once a long, loving, and arduous parenthood.
The nestling grew quickly and was soon feathered in the colors of its kind; the body scarlet, the wings scarlet too, but edged in vibrant shades of blue and yellow. Her face, chalk white, boasted a large and useful beak the color of pale ivory.
Weeks passed and the small bird began to move confidently about the edge of the nest. She quickly learned all the skills her parents taught her, and was early to fly. She did everything sooner than had their older offspring or any of her cousins, her parents noted with pride, and she was singularly beautiful.
Had scarlet macaws been given to envy about such things it might have been difficult for her but, happily, they were not. She flew in joy with her brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and all her close and distant cousins, in a large and raucous living rainbow, over and under the treetops of the vast green rainforest. The sun shone, food was everywhere, the family was together and life was good.
But not for long.












CHAPTER 1

It was dark when they came, moving stealthily, cautious and silent, through the trees. They came with axes and nets and felled the tree, while the clan of birds in the nests that filled the many holes in the venerable giant huddled together in what they believed was their safe refuge.
The tree fell slowly with a roar of wood striking wood and branches cracking. Leaves swished and ripped and filled the air with bits of green, invisible in the dark, and when the giant came to rest on the ground below, they swarmed over it and covered it with nets to cage the birds they knew they had trapped. They scooped up the babies and young birds and threw them into large boxes, covering them as they were filled.
They took the older birds as well, with less care than they had shown the babies; older birds had little value in their illegal markets. Then, with no thought to the victims trapped beneath the tree in inaccessible niches, nor the injured birds they left to die because they were no longer of any value, they gathered up the many boxes they had filled and filed quickly back through the darkness of the rainforest, out into the land beyond.
The young scarlet could hardly breathe. She was packed in so tightly between her cousins that her feet could barely touch the bottom of the box. Her heart sank when she realized that her parents, brothers and sisters were not in the box with her. There were only distant cousins from nests farther down the tree. She was alone.
It was dark, and the smell of fear grew stronger each time the creature carrying the box lurched to one side or the other. Her heart was pounding, but while her cousins struggled and screeched, the scarlet became calm realizing that there was nothing to be done, that screeching would just exhaust her. She began to listen.
The strange voices of the creatures that had wrought this terror were always there as they moved. She listened attentively and realized with surprise that she could understand some of what they said. The creatures had names, they spoke of their families, but there were other things they spoke of that had no meaning to her at all.
Useless, she thought. I can understand only part of what they say. I will have to listen and learn. She said as much to the cousin pressed close to her on one side, but could tell that her cousin didn’t understand them at all. Neither could the cousin on her other side, nor the others all around her. Why am I the only one who can understand them, she asked herself?. I’m not different in any way from my cousins, but they can’t understand these creatures at all---and I can. The idea frightened her, and she pondered it as they moved along, suffering in the darkness.
The trip dragged on. From time to time the column would stop and the creatures would put down the box. They would open it and throw in food. Once there was water too, but they did not clean the box and soon it was filthy.

After what seemed like forever, something changed. They were moved faster with even more shaking and bouncing. There was shouting outside as they came to what she knew must be a very different kind of place. It had a wet and salty smell, and for a short time she heard loud unfamiliar calls of other birds.
The bird calls disappeared when she and her cousins were carried upward, then steeply downward into a hot, still place. Soon after some of the creatures, with no coverings on their upper bodies began to move the birds out of the boxes and into large cages bolted to the floor in what looked to be a dark and cavernous space. The scarlet was shocked. She had not expected to see feathers---these monsters were certainly not birds of any kind---but she had expected a decent covering of fur. She had long since decided that these were monkeys of some huge and nasty variety, but to see that they had no fur called that into doubt. No wonder they covered themselves. All that empty skin!
The scarlet dismissed them from her mind, but then, as they went about their work they made new noises that were very pleasant to hear. The sounds were rather like those of smaller birds in her forest home that had lovely calls one could remember and repeat. Strange that such beautiful sounds could come from these frightening creatures. She listened and watched as they picked up the silent unmoving birds from the bottom of the boxes, threw them into bags and took them away.
There was food in the cages, and water. Oh, how thirsty and hungry they were, all of them. Once satisfied she settled on one of the several bars in the cage and had just begun to groom her feathers when some of the creatures appeared with what looked like long snakes in their hands. But from these snakes came water, a fine soft spray like that at the end of a gentle rain. The bath made her feel clean at last, and her spirits rose as she ran each wet feather through her beak aligning the locking segments properly. The familiar ritual was reassuring and soon she, and the two cousins with her in the cage full of strangers, began to relax. It seemed that this would be a home for them for a while at least. It meant, perhaps, that things might get even better. The scarlet was tired, her muscles aching from the journey, and before she even thought to tuck in her foot and hide her head in her feathers, she was asleep.
Suddenly, harsh and grinding noises from below startled her awake. Then a rumbling vibration began. Not long after there was a new feeling of motion. Then the rumbling steadied and became a rhythmic pattern. After an initial moment of fear all the birds calmed and the scarlet went back to sleep.
Time passed slowly. There was no night or day in this place. The creatures came and went, talking to one another, and sometimes making those nicer sounds she enjoyed as they brought food and water and carried away the many birds that continued to fall to the bottom of the cages. She realized that she understood more and more of what they said and knew now that the sounds they spoke were words. The words told her that these were men. What covered their bodies were clothes. They were in something called a ship, and they were going to a place called Hong Kong. She knew as well that the birds they carried away empty of life, were dead, The scarlet resolved that she would not be one of them. She would live to go to the place called Hong Kong.