“Look, I didn’t know about that bit when I married in. Anyway, that’s what the jobs are for. I finish these, and I’m free and clear and they let me go. I’m gonna move west and never talk to these people again.” Stronger rubbed his forehead. “And it wasn’t like that with my cousin. I just went and asked politely. Wasn’t much of a job. I think my mother-in-law was hoping she’d be mad, but I explained all about it and brought her a bottle of the good stuff, and she said my mother-in-law was always a bad one and she’d be happy to do anything to spit in her eye.”
“Well, gettin’ away is good,” said Fisher-Bird. “I approve of that.”
Stronger nodded gloomily. “I don’t even like most of them, and that’s leaving aside that my mother-in-law keeps trying to kill me.”
Fisher-Bird, no stranger to family infighting, nodded wisely. “Some people come outta the egg mad.”
Stronger finished flaking the mud off his face. “You’re still a bird,” he said, almost accusingly.
“Yeah, I’d get used to that.”
“If you’re a bird, then why can you talk?”
“Shit, son,” said Fisher-Bird, and let loose a long string of curses that made Stronger sit up and take notice. “I’ve always been able to talk. Question is how you’re listening.”
Stronger shook his head. “Dunno. Never could before.”
Fisher-Bird scratched her beak. “Any of those snakes bite your ears?”
The man looked puzzled for a minute, then put his finger in his ear and wiggled it around like he was cleaning earwax. He winced. “Yeah. One got me right up there by the ear.”
“There you go,” said Fisher-Bird, pleased. “You make a friend of a snake, they’ll lick your ears, let you hear the language of birds.”
“These snakes weren’t friendly.”
“Yeah, but spit’s spit.”
He thought for a few minutes. “Huh. You know, I got some birds I gotta clean out for my mother-in-law. You think this’ll help me?”
“What kinda birds?” She hopped down a little closer.
“Weird ones. Feathers like metal. You shoot at ’em and it bounces right off and makes a noise like you’re shaking buckshot in a tin can.”
“Oh, them. Stimps.” She grimaced as well as one can with a beak.
“What?”
“Stimps. They’re herons, more or less, but their great-great-granddaddy did a favor for the Iron-Wife and got her blessing. Now they got iron feathers and think they’re better’n the rest of us.”
“I’m supposed to drive ’em off. They’re a real menace over at the lake. They drop feathers that’ll cut you all to ribbons.”
“Hmm.” Fisher-Bird thought it over. She had no great love of humans, but he’d apologized about the fish and that was a pretty fine thing. And she had even less love of herons, who took fish and frogs and a lot of other critters that rightly belonged in Fisher-Bird’s gullet, let alone magic herons who thought they owned the place. But most of all, she had an active loathing of stimps, who’d chased one of Fisher-Bird’s cousins out of the swamp and had a few nasty words for her when they did it.
“Yeah, okay.” The chance to get one back at the stimps was too good to pass up. “Best do it soon, though, before they start nesting. Once you get a couple dozen of them together in a tree, cackling and raising up eggs, it’s a problem. And it ain’t right to mess with other people’s eggs, even stimps.”
“So I should just ask ’em to leave, then?”
Fisher-Bird rolled her eyes. “Not unless you got a few hours to waste, listening to a stimp insult you. No, they ain’t gonna go on their own.”
“Well, I can’t get to them. They’re in a marshy bit, and if I walk out there, I’m hip-deep in muck. I try to grab one, they’ll be miles away, throwin’ those nasty sharp feathers at me.”
Fisher-Bird preened under her wing. “Come back tomorrow,” she said.
“What?”
“Tomorrow. Come back then. Maybe I can help you; maybe I can’t.”
Stronger looked like he might argue for a minute; then he closed his mouth and nodded. “All right, then. Thank you.”
Polite sort of human, Fisher-Bird thought. Worth helping out the polite ones. Particularly if it got rid of those stuck-up stimps.
Just the thought made her chuckle. “Krk-krk-krk-krk!”
* * *
“All right,” said Fisher-Bird, when Stronger came back the next day. “What you want is poison. You got any?”
“I had a whole bunch of dead cottonmouths,” said Stronger sourly. “But I didn’t realize I’d need them.”
“Nah, that wouldn’t have worked. That stuff dries out too fast, goes all to lumps. Need something nasty that’ll mix with tar.”
“I got rat poison back home,” said Stronger.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Now, you got arrows?”
“Arrows?”
“Shit, son, don’t tell me humans don’t use arrows no more.”
“I guess . . . ?” Stronger looked doubtful. “I haven’t shot a bow since I was little. I got a gun.”
“Can’t poison a bullet, son. You need some arrows, and you need to wrap the point with some cloth. Then you mix up some tar and some rat poison and dip the points in that. Make it good and drippy.”
“If I can’t put a bullet in the stimp, how’m I gonna put an arrow in one?”
“You ain’t,” said Fisher-Bird. “You’re gonna smack ’em with the arrow and leave goop all over those shiny metal feathers of theirs. Then they go to preen and they’ll get a mouthful of rat poison.”
Stronger thought this over. “Ye-e-e-e-s . . . ,” he said slowly. “Could work. But I still don’t know how to get to the stimps in the first place. They’re out in the marsh and the mud, and I can’t get a clear shot at any of ’em.”
Fisher-Bird flicked her crest. “You come back when you got you a bow and poison. Bring along a couple tin cans, too. Then we’ll see about getting you your shot.”
Stronger came back to Fisher-Bird’s stream two days later, carrying a pack and a bow over his back and a metal bucket full of arrows. “These things are nasty,” he said, setting the bucket down.
“Hello to you, too,” said Fisher-Bird. “The family’s fine, thank you kindly for asking.”
Stronger sighed. “My aunt’d ding my ear for rudeness, if she was still alive. Sorry, bird. Hope you’re well.”
“I’m good,” said Fisher-Bird. “And how’s your family?”
“Mostly dead and the live ones are mean,” said Stronger. Fisher-Bird cackled.
She hopped down from her branch and landed on the rim of the bucket. (Fisher-Bird never did learn to walk very well, but that didn’t slow her down much.) She peered down into the mess of black sludge, with the arrows sticking up out of it like porcupine quills. “Damn. Looks godawful, anyhow. You got them tin cans?”
Stronger slung the pack off his back and opened it up, revealing half a dozen empty cans.