THE EAGLE

By John James Carty

It is night. But it is not dark. The moon is shining. Pablo sees the moon. He looks around him. `Where am I?’ he thinks.

He is in a desert. It is very cold and there are no people around. Pablo is eight years old. He is not usually afraid of things. But in a desert at night he wishes he had a friend with him. His uncle Rodrigo is his best friend but he is not here.

Pablo is wearing a blue shirt and red pants. He notices that his clothes are dirty. He hears a voice shouting: ´Pablo, Pablo, where are you?´

It is the voice of his friend Natalie. Pablo looks over a small hill and sees Natalie, who is not far away. She is shouting and laughing.

Pablo calls to her,

‘I am here, up here! Can you see me?’

Natalie is twelve years old. She is much taller than Pablo. And she is very clever. Pablo walks down the hill and takes her hand.

‘Thank goodness we’re not lost in this desert!’ she says.

‘But we are lost’, says Pablo ‘We are alone in a strange place at night! There might be monsters here!’ Natalie hugs him,

‘There are no monsters here. Anyway, there are no such things as monsters!’ Pablo feels very happy to hear this. Another voice, a very deep and slow voice, comes from behind a hill,

‘I’m afraid that you are not quite correct there. If you mean creatures that are very, very big, I think I am a monster.’ Natalie, in a very quiet voice says,

‘Who is there? Who are you? We are not afraid of you!

Pablo is holding Natalie’s hand; he is afraid to see the owner of the deep voice. They hear strange noises from behind the hill. At last they see an eagle – a very big eagle – walking toward them. Natalie says,

‘Good evening Mr. Eagle’. The eagle looks at Pablo and says,

‘Who is the little boy in the dirty clothes?’

‘My name is Pablo.’

‘Hey! My name is Pablo too!’ says the eagle. He is very excited, ‘Welcome to my world – so empty, so hostile and so dangerous for you!’ As he says this the eagle is picking sand out of his feathers,

‘It’s not dangerous for me, of course, because I live here. In a sense I am the monster king of all of this.’

The eagle smiles at them, very satisfied. Before he says anything else, Natalie quickly says,

‘But you are an eagle, not a monster. Why do you think you are a monster?’

The eagle lifts his large head. They can see his bright eyes and shiny beak.

‘Well,’ the eagle replies, ‘all monsters are big and I am the biggest eagle I have ever seen’.

‘Yes, but,’ says Natalie, ‘but – but – monsters are not just big: they are also horrible and wicked. Are you wicked?

‘No, I am not wicked; I’m very nice and kind.’

‘So you cannot be a monster, can you? Ha ha!’ The eagle, still cleaning his feathers, was happy to hear this.

‘But what about elephants and whales? They’re bigger than me. They’re gigantic. I bet they’re nasty and wicked, eh?’ Natalie, smiles and, says,

‘They’re not monsters. They are animals, but very big ones. They act as they do because they are animals, not monsters.’ Pablo listens to all this but he is also thinking,

‘Sir’, he says, ‘if you are so kind – and I believe that you are – can you help us to get home? The eagle’s head turns towards Pablo,

‘And where, if I might ask, is home?’

‘It’s not a house exactly,’ Pablo replies, ‘we are all children and we live together in a very big building.’

‘It sounds as if there are hundreds of you.’

‘Yes,’ says Pablo, ‘about five hundred.’

The eagle looks at Pablo closely,

‘Do you have any clean children there or are they all dirty like you?’

[his feathers are very clean by now]. Pablo is a bit annoyed at this question,

‘We are all very clean – except for me, tonight. Usually I have nice clean clothes.’

The eagle sniffed noisily, ‘and where do all you children live? No, let me guess – Medellin!

The eagle closes one eye and looks very wise.

‘How do you know that? Pablo asked.

‘I know everything,’ said the eagle casually. Pablo turned to Natalie,

‘He can’t know everything, can he?’ He whispered.

‘The eagle flies very high and sees many things that we can’t see.

Of course he doesn’t know everything, but his knowledge is different

from ours and we must respect it.’

The eagle was still laughing quietly, shaking his head,

‘Medellin – obvious, isn’t it?’

Pablo and Natalie cannot see what is ‘obvious’ about it. The eagle is

now very serious,

‘We can go now. You must sit under my wings, one on each side. You can sleep if you want to and you won’t fall off.’

‘But we must get home before the sun comes up; we have lots of chores to do!’ says Natalie. The eagle spreads his wings,

’Well, jump on, I'm ready!’

In two short hours they were saying goodbye to the eagle and soon they are asleep in their beds.

At dawn they start their chores. Some of the boys see Pablo’s muddy clothes but they don’t ask about them. And no one asks him why there is a large eagle feather in his hair.