Dear Olly Read Online Free Page A

camel came down to drink beside him. Camel and swallow drank together, oblivious to anything but the sweet cooling relief of the water.
    When Hero had finished his drinking, he bathed himself, dunking himself again and again, and then preening his feathers clean. He had a feast of flies that evening too, before he settled to roost in the trees, amongst his family, the smoke of the Tuareg fires all about them.
    Morning brought the sound of Tuareg children playing around their tents, and Hero fluttered down to watch – he liked to be near children. Camels chewed and groaned and grunted nearby, and Hero fed hungrily on the flies that hovered over them. As the Tuareg knelt to morning prayer, they heard the call of departure sounding through the oasis,then the murmur of thousands of shivering wings as every swallow and every martin and every swift lifted in unison out of the trees and swirled southwards and away out over the desert.
    Another day, another night, and they left the desert behind them. Below them now were the first scrubby trees, here and there a village, and then the wide grassy plains of Africa, waterholes and rivers and great lakes. Here they could feed and drink as they went. Here, everything seemed plentiful. There were great herds of wandering wildebeest drifting over theplain below, loping giraffes as tall as the trees, leaping impala, slumbering lions, elephants browsing, wallowing, trumpeting, and new birds that made new sounds.
    Then, from somewhere below him in amongst the trees, Hero heard the sound of excited voices and a sudden squawking. Several swallows peeled off the flock and drifted down to investigate, and Hero went with them. Here was a solitary baboon squatting on a rock, here a herd of zebras startled into a snorting stampede, and all the while the babble of shouting voices and that strident squawking. Heroflew on so entranced by it all, so intrigued, that he had not even noticed that he was alone. He swooped down through the canopy of the trees, down towards the voices, down towards the squawking.
    The net, a giant parrot trap, was stretched from tree to tree right across the clearing. Hero did not see it until he flew into it. He fought to extricate himself, but his leg and his wing were caught fast. The more he flapped and struggled the more he became entangled. He cried out in his pain and terror. Tswee, Tswee. Tswee, Tswee. Below him and above him, hanging there in the net like Hero, hopelessly enmeshed, were several small grey parrots and one larger, brightly coloured parrot that squawked louder than all the others. The hunters were hauling down the net, plucking out theparrots they wanted to keep and stuffing them into their sacks. Hero was grabbed, tugged and twisted, and at last wrenched free of the net, before being thrown aside like so much rubbish.
    He was quite unable to move. A few metres away from him, and lying in the long grass, was the scarlet ring. It had come off in the struggle. As the bird hunters finished their business, Hero drifted into unconsciousness. When he woke the world was silent and still about him. His leg hurt him terribly, but he could hop on the other one, with the help of his wings. That was when he saw the cobra, poised above him to strike, puffing himself into a fury. Hero flapped away frantically, half hopping, half flying. The cobra’s first strikemissed. By the second, Hero was airborne and well out of danger. He found he could manoeuvre only clumsily, but he managed to fly up through the trees, up towards the open sky. Once there, he cried out for help, cried out for his companions. But he was alone in an empty sky, and completely bewildered. He had no idea where he was, nor where he should go.
    He was driven by one powerful compulsion, simply to keep going for as long as he could. For many days he flew on, deeper and deeper into the heart of Africa, stopping ever more frequently to rest his damaged leg. Landing was difficult for him. He could perch