The Birds Read Online Free Page A

seemed to follow on naturally after “finished for tonight.” I’ve been to all sorts of meetings, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of how things are done there.
    Finished for tonight. For now the bird had found his sweetheart.
    When he looked up, there were beams of light where the woodcock had flown. Straight over his house.
    To be quite honest he wasn’t absolutely sure about this – but he felt like something had happened up there, that a change had taken place. And tomorrow it will happen again, as wonderful as it was tonight. And Hege’s going to see it, even if I have to tie her up out here.
    Things are going to be different from now on, he thought before falling asleep, curled up on his bench like a child.
    For me?
    The thought sent a flood of warmth through him.

7
    THE WOODCOCK FOLLOWED Mattis into his sleep, and whomever he had to thank for it, a wonderful dream followed.
    First of all a good omen, before anything actually appeared:
    “We’re coming, we’re coming,” somebody said. “You’re there, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, of course,” he was able to reply.
    “It’s taken a long time, Mattis,” said a friendly voice, “but that’s all over now.”
    And it did indeed come. A bright beam above the house and on both sides, high and low, and a sound that was only just audible – as sounds like that ought to be. Immediately the house changed and became completely new.
    “But it isn’t the house that’s the most important thing,” he said.
    No, and it wasn’t the other things either, it was himself. The beams had gone right through him and made him quite different. When he bent his right arm to test his new muscles, there was such a bulge that the whole of the upper part of his sleeve burst open. He looked at the smooth, beautifully shaped muscle and laughed.
    “That’s better,” he said.
    “That’s really something to squeeze with,” he said with a sharp glance around him.
    “Where are you?” he shouted.
    They laughed, hidden in the grove.
    “We are where we usually are.”
    His house was really new and he went over to look at his reflection in the windowpanes. He’d never seen such a tough fellow as the one who faced him in the dark glass. He could see himself from every angle, and it all looked equally good.
    He shouted proudly: “Can you see anything?”
    “Yes you bet we can,” came the reply from the grove. “We can’t see anything else.”
    “Wait a bit,” he said, but a whole chorus replied: “Wait? Now?”
    “What are you going to do, Mattis?”
    “Get ready, Mattis.”
    “Yes, you bet I will,” he said, using their own expression.
    He shook his head and no sooner had he done so than it was full of all the right words to say to girls – and to other people, too, for that matter. Not just helpless flickers as before. He laughed and played about with this new gift, trying out one or two of the bold words.
    “Hey! You in the grove,” he said. “Are you ready?”
    “We’re ready,” they said. “Who do you want to come?”
    “Will you come? You, the one I’m thinking of,” he said, letting his shirt tighten round his arm.
    It was a tense moment, but the reply came at once: “That’s what I’d like to do.”
    The other voices seemed to have sunk into the ground.
    There she was, standing in front of her grove, no longer hidden. He had seen her in his imagination thousand times, but still she was different. All the same he recognized her somehow and he wasn’t a bit frightened. She came right up to him, surrounded by a gentle fragrance.
    He mustn’t touch her yet.
    “Do something,” he said.
    She understood at once.
    “Yes,” she said, “look.”
    She waved her arm, and all around the air was filled with the song of birds.
    “Yes, and you were born in the flight of the woodcock,” Mattis began, “and you’ve long been in my thoughts. If there’s something you want to say, you must say it now.”
    “Say?” she said.
    “Yes.”
    “No, there’s