Another metallic crash, like the mating call of rain gutters.
“Now you take those tin cans and fan ’em out,” said Fisher-Bird. “And you raise them real high over your head and you rattle ’em together and you’ll sound like the tallest, sexiest stimp in creation.”
Stronger stared at her.
“What?” said Fisher-Bird. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s like flexing your muscles for the ladies. Except the ladies in this case are magicked-up herons.”
“You want me to do a bird mating dance?”
“Shit, son, you put it that way, it almost sounds weird.”
“But what happens then?” said Stronger, taking out the tin cans and looking at them in disbelief. “Do they come looking for me?”
“And risk gettin’ shown up? No, they’re gonna try to make themselves taller and prettier. They’re gonna be hopping up and down in the swamp, doing their best jumps for the ladies. You look out over the reeds then, you’ll see a whole bunch of stimps going up and down like jumping jacks.”
Stronger looked blank.
“And that’s when you shoot ’em with arrows,” said Fisher-Bird. “Son, I got eggs that would have latched on to this plan faster than you are. Unfertilized eggs.”
Stronger gave her a hangdog look. Then he sighed, held the cans up as far as he could, and drew his thumbnail down over the short edges, like fanning the pages of a book. An ordinary man might have cut hisself to ribbons, but Stronger had the blood of gods thick and oozing in his veins, and the cans rattled and clattered like a stimp’s crest in his hands.
Fisher-Bird took to the air and watched stimp heads shooting up all over the swamp, like chickens hearing a hawk yell.
Stronger rattled the cans again and again, and the stimps craned their necks, looking for the source of the sound, each one worried it might one of the others. Then they stood up straight, raising their crests as high as they could go, and they started to bounce up and down, leaping into the air, each trying to make themselves look like the tallest stimp of all.
Fisher-Bird circled back to Stronger and said, “Now’s a good time.”
“Thank god,” said Stronger, shoving the cans into his belt. “Ain’t dignified.” He pulled his bow off his back, pulled an arrow from the bucket—it made a wet sucking sound—and took aim.
Fisher-Bird was a little bit worried, what with the stimps leaping back and forth, but Stronger’s aim was good. He pulled back on the bow till the wood moaned, then fired.
Thwap! Tar exploded over the nearest stimp’s neck feathers, and the bird dropped with a yell of disgust.
Thwap! Thwap! Sometimes Stronger missed, but mostly he didn’t.
Fisher-Bird winged in next to the first stricken stimp and saw its feathers splashed with black tar. The bird was frantically trying to scrape the mess off with its beak, preening at the feathers like any bird would, and pretty soon the rat poison started to kick in.
“Don’t feel so good . . .” muttered the stimp. It stopped worrying about its feathers and went staggering off into the swamp, wings trailing. Fisher-Bird cackled. There probably wasn’t enough rat poison to kill something the size of a stimp, but after the dead beaver, she wasn’t feeling a lot of remorse.
“Is that all of them?” asked Stronger. “I’m nearly out of arrows.”
“All the boys,” said Fisher-Bird. “Ought to be enough to move them along.”
Fisher-Bird went looking for the tallest stimp and found it at last, bent over like an old man, with tar rimming its beak. “This is your doing, Fisher-Bird,” said the stimp. “Don’t lie.”
“Didn’t plan to,” said Fisher-Bird. “Ain’t ashamed of it. Your people’ve made a mess outta this swamp, and it’s time you moved on. Plus, you were right little shits to my cousin, and I ain’t forgotten.”
“Used a human to do it, didn’t you?” The stimp’s voice was no longer so icy and precise. “Saw the arrow hit me. Some gall you’ve got, claiming we made a mess. You seen what humans do to a swamp?”
“Sure,” said Fisher-Bird. “I ain’t stupid.”
The stimp tried to step forward and its leg almost gave out under it, so it wobbled sideways and nearly fell, but its eyes stayed locked on Fisher-Bird.
“Go!” said Fisher-Bird. “Get gone! You’ve got no fish, no frogs, no food, and the human’ll sit out here and cover you in tar every time to try to dance. This ain’t no place for you anymore.”
“Oh, we’ll go,” said the stimp. “You’re not wrong there. But you’re not as smart as you think you are, Fisher-Bird.”
“Oh?”
“Heh,” said the stimp softly. “Heh heh heh.” And then it whipped its neck around so hard that the bones crackled, and Fisher-Bird was just a hair slow getting into the air, so the slash of the stimp’s crest took her low across the belly and knocked her down into the rotting mud.
Stronger came plodding through a long time later. “Bird?” he called. “Bird? The stimps flew away, the ones that could fly. Bird, where are you?”
He slid and squelched into the clear spot that had been the tallest stimp’s dance floor, and caught sight of Fisher-Bird. “Bird, no!”
He went to his knees next to the little limp bundle of feathers and picked her up with hands that were stronger than anyone else’s. “Bird, don’t die. It worked. Please don’t die.” He cradled her in his palm, and her wings hung limp at her sides, a girdle of dried blood across her white feathers. “You helped me. You’re the only one, aside from my cousin, who’s given me the time of day. Please don’t die.”
Fisher-Bird didn’t speak, didn’t move, just lay there with her eyes closed and her beak gaped open.
Stronger put his forehead down against her feathered breast and started to cry. And I ain’t saying the tears of a hero with god-blood have any kind of power, but I’ll tell you the only thing I know, which is that Fisher-Bird pecked his eyebrow, hard.
“Ow!” Stronger jerked back, nearly dropping her. “What the hell was that?”
“You damn near squashed me,” said Fisher-Bird. “I ain’t feeling all that well, all right? Damn stimp had rat poison left on his feathers. Serves me right for letting him get too close, I guess. More fool me.”
“I thought you were dead!”
“Can’t even have a bit of a lie-down without some damn fool crying all over you.” She pecked him again for good measure. “There. You got your stimps cleared out. Your mother-in-law can’t say you didn’t, and the swamp’ll be better for it in a season or two.”
“Can I take you back to your stream?” asked Stronger, who was raised polite.
“Yeah, I’ll let you,” said Fisher-Bird, who didn’t want to let on that she wasn’t feelin’ too much like flying right then. So he carried her back on his shoulder and set her down on her favorite branch, and bid her farewell.
“Hmmph,” said Fisher-Bird. “You finish up your jobs and get away from that woman, you hear?”
“I will,” he promised. “I will.”
Anyway, you all know the rest of the story. There were some golden cattle—or maybe some golden apples, depending on who you ask—and Old Man Hades’s guard dogs with their fine snapping teeth. Stronger did it all, without complaining too much, and finally his mother-in-law had to let him go.