Bevy of Birds

Challenge: Write a 10 sentence fairy tale in 10 minutes, that incorporates a symbol from Hansel & Gretel. I did this as part of a writing workshop.

My Fairy Tale:  Bevy of Birds

In a shadowed forest, an orphaned child follows bread crumbs of forgotten dreams to a house built of memories. Inside an old woman stirs a pot, whispering secrets. The child is faced with a choice…

He has to decide, if he will help the people of the land remember their dreams. 

He leans in to try and hear the woman’s whispers and she says, “black bird, black bird”. Some of the liquid in the pot bubbles over and the boy looks in the puddle to see the reflection of a girl, who longed to ride the wings of a black bird.

The boy sneaks around the pot and listens again. The old woman murmurs, “white bird, white bird” and again the pot boils, spilling the vision of a man with a white bird trapped in a cage.

As the boy listens once more, he knows this time he needs the cauldron to erupt like a volcano, so that everyone in the land will see what happened to their own dreams.

As he strains to hear the words, a group of birds burst from the pot, soaring, filling with all the colors of the sky.