The Chick

Sandy, listen to your mammy! One spring, a very tired quail – tired since she was coming from far, far away, from Africa – alighted on a plain of green wheat, close to a stand of saplings. After she rested for a few days, she started to gather twigs, dried leaves, straws and loose stalks of loose to make herself a nest somewhere upon a mound of earth, lest the rain should flood it. Then she laid an egg in each of the next seven days – seven eggs in total, as small as candies – and started to hatch them. Have you ever seen how a hen hatches her eggs? That's how she sat but, instead of sitting in the barn, she was sitting outside, in the field. It was pouring and pouring but she still did not move, being careful that not a single drop of water reached her eggs. After three weeks, the chicks came out and they were not bald like sparrow chicks, but they were covered in yellow down, like hen chicks, but smaller, as if they were seven silk cocoons, and started to search for food through the wheat. Sometime the quail caught an ant or a grasshopper and crumbled it into small bits which they took fast peck! peck! peck! with their little beaks. And they were beautiful, good and well-behaved. They were going around her, here and there, and, when she cried quick-wi-wick! all of them hurried back very close to her. Once, in June, when the peasants came to mow the wheat, the eldest of all the chicks didn't run quickly at his mother's call and, since he wasn't able to fly, gotcha! a chap seized him under his cap. Oh, he was so scared when he found himself caught in the fellow's hand! Only he knew how much! His heart was beating like my pocket watch, but he was lucky because an old peasant was there and pleaded for him: "Put it down, Marin, it's a pity, it'll die. Can't you see it's as small as a pipe?" When he saw himself set loose, he ran scared to the quail to tell her what had happened to him. She took him, caressed him and told him: "See what happens when you don't listen to me? When you grow up, you'll do what you want, but now, since you are small, you should listen to me and be dutiful, because you may come to a bad end." And thus their life was quiet and happy. During the wheat mowing and the bundling of sheaves, a lot of grain had been shaken down on the stubble and they ate them and, even if there was no source of water close by, they were not thirsty at all since they drank dewdrops from the blades of grass in the morning. During the day, when the heat was too great, they sat in the shade of the tree; in the afternoon, when it cooled down, all of them went on the stubble; during the cold nights, they gathered under the protective wing of the quail as if under a tent. Little by little their down started to turn into feathers and fluff and they began to fly with the help of their mother. The flying lessons took place in the morning, at the crack of dawn, when the sun rose, and in the evening, when the sun went down, since in the daytime it was dangerous because of the pigeon hawks, which were beating about over the stubble. Their mother asked them: "Ready?" and they answered: "Yes." "One, two, three!" and when she said "three," they frrr! all of them flew from the margin of the springwood far away to the forester's house, near the road and back. And their mother told them she would teach them to fly for a long trip, which they were supposed to make soon when the summer was over. "And we are going to fly high in the sky, day and night, and we are going to see great cities and rivers and the sea below." One afternoon, at the end of August, when the chicks were playing quietly on the stubble around the quail, they heard a carriage coming, which stopped on the path by the trees. All of them raised their heads showing their little eyes like dark beads and listened. "Nero! Go back!" a voice was heard shouting. The chicks did not understand it, but their mother, who understood it was a hunter, remained frozen. Their salvation was the clump of trees, but the hunter was approaching from that part. After a moment of thought she ordered them to hide cleaving to the ground and not to move at any price. "I am going to fly away but you remain still. Who flies is lost. Understand?" The chicks blinked that they understood and continued to wait in silence. They could hear the swish of a dog running on the stubble and the man's voice once in a while: "Where are you going? Come back, Nero!" The swishing was getting near, and look at the dog! He remained spellbound with one paw up and with his eyes glued to them. "Don't move," the quail whispered, creeping a little further. The dog stepped slowly after her. The hunter got close too. Look at him: his leg is so close to them now they can see an ant climbing up the upper part of his boot. Oh! How their hearts are beating! After several moments, the quail flies very low, two steps from the dog's nose, who follows her. The hunter leaves shouting, "Come back! Come back!" He cannot shoot, being afraid of hitting his dog, but the quail pretends so well she is hurt that the dog wants at any price to catch her. And when she thinks she is out of the range of the hunter's rifle, she flies fast to the trees. Meanwhile, instead of remaining still like his brothers, the way their mother had asked them to do, the big chick flew up. The hunter heard the fluttering of his flight, turned and shot. He was pretty far. Only one shot got him. He did not fall. He was able to fly to the trees, but there, since he had moved his wings, his bone – which only snapped at first –fairly broke in the end, and the chick fell down with a dead wing. The hunter knew the thickness of the trees and, seeing it was just a chick, did not bother to take after it, thinking it is not worthwhile to search through the brush. The other chicks did not move at all from the place the quail had left them. They listened in silence. Once in a while they could hear the bangs of the rifle and the hunter's voice shouting: "Fetch!" Later, the carriage headed toward the hunter on the path of the little wood; the bangs and the shouts became gradually weaker, fading away, and only the song of the crickets could be heard in the silence of the evening. And when it got dark and the moon rose over Cornatsel, they clearly heard their mother's voice calling them from the end of the stubble: "Quick-wi-wick! Quick-wi-wick!" They flew quickly towards her and found her. She counted them: one was missing. "Where is your big brother?" "We don't know. He flew away." Then the quail began to call him desperately, louder, listening to sounds from all sides. She heard a soft voice from the trees: "Peep! Peep!..." When she found him, when she saw his broken wing, she understood he was lost, but she hid her dismay not to dishearten him… then began the sad days for the poor chick. He looked in tears at his brothers who learned how to fly in the morning and in the evening. And one night, when all the others were sleeping under their mother's wing, he asked her: "Mother, will I not be better? I'm going to fly with you too and you'll show me great cities and rivers and the sea, won't you?" "Yes, sugar," the quail answered, trying not to cry. And the summer passed. The peasants came with their ploughs to plow the stubble. The quail moved together with her chicks in a neighboring cornfield, but after a while people came and gathered the corn, cut the stalks and turned over the earth. Then they moved to some wasteland at the margin of the wood. The long and beautiful days were replaced by short and gloomy ones. White frost started to form and the leaves of the trees lost their leaves. In the evening, belated swallows flew low and other flocks of migrant birds passed by and, in the silent and cold nights, one could hear the cries of the cranes, all heading towards the same direction: to the south. The poor quail felt a harrowing inner struggle. She would like to have been torn in two: one half would have left with the healthy babies, who were already suffering from the autumn cold; and the other half would have remained together with the lame chick, who clung to her in despair. The hostile cold blast of the freezing wind, which started suddenly, forced her to make a decision. Instead of seeing all her chicks dying, it would be better to see only one… and without looking back, so she wouldn't weaken and change her mind, she flew with her healthy chicks, while the wounded one forlornly cried: "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" He tried to crawl after them, but he couldn't and he remained where he was, following them only with his gaze until they disappeared into the distance towards the southern part of the field. In three days' time, the surroundings were clad in the white and frozen coat of winter. After a snowstorm, the sky became glass clear, which brought a terrible frost. At the margin of the trees, a quail chick, with his wing broken, is shivering with cold. After all the tremendous pains he has felt until a short time ago, he is feeling a pleasant drowse. His mind is flashing with scraps of visions… the stubble… an ant climbing the upper part of a boot… the warm wing of his mother. He is wobbling on one side and then the other and falls dead, with the fingers of his claws together as if crossed.


by Ioan Al. Brătescu-Voineşti (1868-1946)