Red Sky
Written: January 13, 2002
Red Sky is another of the Beast Within stories, as I tend to think of them. Though not explicitly called The Beast, He is there. And he isn't one of the cardinals.
I love cardinals. I have a few bird feeders out back and of all the birds that come to eat and partake of my goodness, sparrows, blue birds, grackles, starlings, nut hatches, flickers - all pale to the cardinal. Even the female, in her chic brown-grey coat and vibrant orange and black mask and yellow beak is stylin'. The cardinal is timid, preferring to come to eat only at the break of dawn and at the last bit of light before dusk closes in. He will sit and watch the feeder from the safety of a nearby tree branch for long minutes before chancing a quick flight to the feeder, peck peck some seed and then away again. If other birds approach, say a mourning dove or a blue bird (the bullies of the schoolyard), the cardinal is off in a flash, with or without some seed. One of the best summers of recent years found me watching a whole family of cardinals, both young males and young females, fill the apple trees around the feeder with brilliant splashes of red.
The girl in Red Sky is a cardinal, the reddest of the red birds. Only this cardinal doesn't flit away at the first sign of danger, for reasons you will understand as you read. That old sailor's litany of "Red Sky at night, sailor's delight ... " fills her head as she meets her blue bird. The Beast.
Toran