Cody never got to finish the rest of the verse, for he spotted an army of coal-colored birds advancing. They pointed deadly, sharp arrows at the unsuspecting dancers.

“Aska! All of you dancers, duck!” he cried with a note of despair in his voice. “Move!” An arrow headed for Aska, and Cody jumped and knocked the surprised dancer to the ground. The arrow, luckily, didn’t do severe damage. It just bruised Cody’s shoulder.

Noise and confusion broke out in the crowd. Some tried to escape; others turned to fight the intruders. A few decided neither to fight nor to run away but to do tricks; those were the birds of the Willowleaf Theater.

At the time Dilby was still backstage, preparing for his next act, juggling with lighted torches. The loon measured distances with a careful eye and threw his torches toward thick mobs of crows and ravens. He chuckled when he heard the screams and yells.

When the arrows started to rain down, Lorpil, of course, was attacking several pies at the food table. Instantly an idea popped into his head.

“Pie their smelly faces!” he cried to the birds nearby.

“Wh-what?”

“Pie them!” Lorpil threw a large raspberry pie with all his might at one of the ravens. The pastry hit the soldier’s face with a juicy squish, spattering gooey jam all over him and several nearby soldiers.

Alexandra found spoons on one of the tables. She quickly taught nine birds how to sling nuts at the enemies. The soldiers howled and squawked in surprise as the nuts hit them.

Kastin and Mayflower glanced at a gigantic container of hot soup and slowly exchanged mischievous glances. They had an idea, too.

“Here’s a way to help the cardinals and the blue jays, eh, Kassie?”

“Fine by me, May. Let’s tip that bean soup!”

The junco and the titmouse rushed to the steaming pot. They each grasped a handle and flew up, straining to lift the heavy container to a branch of a nearby tree. When a crowd of crows and ravens flew underneath, they tipped the hot liquid on the unsuspecting black birds. Now covered in the sticky bean soup, they plummeted and crashed to the ground.

Despite the Willowleaf Theater’s efforts, Slime-beak and his soldiers kept advancing, fighting any blue jays and cardinals in the way. And soon a new threat emerged: fire arrows. Every few seconds, a volley of flaming arrows would suddenly shoot through the air, like angry snakes slithering across the coal black sky.

Some of the arrows hit the wooden panels of the stage. A few struck the balloon of the flying Willowleaf Theater. Still others of these deadly shafts ruined not only the beautiful tablecloths on the food tables but also the cakes, pies, and puddings. The air stank of burned fruit, cloth, and feathers. The red and the blue fought side by side, helping each other and trying to stop the intruders.

Slime-beak yelped as a sword dug into his shoulder. The captain spun around. The attacker was a cardinal with exceptionally large wings. The captain roared with rage, almost forgetting about his injured shoulder. No sooner had he ended his roar than a hard fight ensued. Slime-beak found himself slashing his sword with all his might to defend his life. He took cuts and bruises from the cardinal and dizzying wing clouts to his head and ears. Ducking behind another crow, Slime-beak dodged a swipe from his opponent’s sword. As the cardinal was forced to face a new enemy, Slime-beak seized the chance to look around.

“Help, Captain!” screamed a nearby crow as he went down, crushed by a determined blue jay.

Many other birds of Fortress Glooming were suffering.

Slime-beak decided to check on the soldiers on the other side of the stage. But as he came down for a landing, he slipped in a gooey, hot mess that smelled…like beans? A dozen of his soldiers dashed to his aid and splashed into the bean soup as well. The sticky liquid coated their feathers and glued their wings firmly to their sides. Now they could not fly.

“Oww!” Slime-beak cried sharply as a jagged piece of roasted pecan zapped him in his behind, followed by a terrible assortment of acorns, pine nuts, chestnuts, and beechnuts bombarding his face and wings. Wincing and dancing in pain, the captain skidded between two battling birds to escape the merciless nuts that pelted his body. Just as he slipped away, another horror attacked him: a large torch flying and twirling, like a vengeful spirit. Getting out of the way, Slime-beak, bean goo and all, ran to a safe distance and watched. The torch struck an unlucky crow soldier, who yelped and immediately perished as the stink of burning feathers reached Slime-beak’s nostrils. Trying to shake the blood-chilling image from his mind, the captain scrambled headfirst into a honey-covered raspberry pie, the jam filling blinding him for a sticky second. Stumbling backward, the captain received a hard, solid punch from an angry blue jay, which sent him spinning uncontrollably. “Yah! Away with you. Stone-Run can’t be conquered!” the blue jay yelled.

The frightened captain lost his wits. He shoved everybird out of his way and turned around.

“Ahhh!”

“Captain Slime-beak! Help!”

“Ow! Ow! I’m going to die!”

“Get me back to Fortress Glooming!”

The cries of his soldiers rang in the captain’s raspberry jam-filled ears. Running as fast as he could, he trailed raspberry jam, soup, and fragments of nuts. He tripped into other soldiers as messy as he was, but nothing kept him from racing to someplace safer. Slime-beak cried out as chunks of piecrust fell from his face and into his beak.

“Retreat! Troops, back to Fortress Glooming!”

11 IDEAS

That evening, as Slime-beak led a third of Turnatt’s army to fight the red and the blue, the slaves at Fortress Glooming were discussing the event. It was an early-evening gathering rather than the usual campfire discussion. Tilosses had been eavesdropping lately not only on Turnatt but also on the soldiers at dinner and the cook, Bone-squawk. The old slavebird had picked up a lot of information, enough to give the slavebirds a new idea for escaping.

“How to start, my dear friends?” Tilosses began excitedly. “Escaping now could be a reality! According to what I’ve learned from Turnip-no, Turnatt-the cook, Bone-squawk, plus some other empty-headed soldiers from the army, I think that today, yes, today, we’ll have the perfect chance to escape. We can no longer wait for the native woodbirds to come and help us; time is running out. So think about it: One third of the army is gone, Slime-beak with them. What could be better?” The slavebirds murmured among themselves, some agreeing, others doubting. “To add to that, Turnatt caught a bit of a cold and Bug-eye hurt his right claw. Swordbird made it happen all by coincidence today!”

One of the slavebirds patiently waited for the whisperings to die down. He asked the question that was on everybird’s mind: “Tilosses, what is your plan?”

The old sparrow guffawed, his belly shaking a bit and his eyes glittering. “It’s probably the best a bird could think up, of course.” His face became stern. “Listen closely. Around midnight the guards at our compound will switch shifts. Glipper is the closest to the door, so when the new guard comes, kill him!” The sparrow handed the flycatcher some small pointed darts that were made of sticks they had secretly collected and sharpened on stones. “Next, we’ll saw off our chains with this knife I stole from the kitchen. Once we’re loose, we’ll tipclaw around the compound and crawl behind those piles of rocks and dirt. There’s a bendy old willow at the end of the rocks. We’ll flutter up to the roof of the hut where Bone-squawk stores food. It’s a safe place, since the hut’s overshadowed by a couple of trees. After that, Miltin, Glipper, and the two vireo brothers will tackle the gate guards so they can’t prevent our escape. The rest of my plan you probably can guess: Once the gate is open, we’ll slide down the roof and leave Fortress Glooming.”