I’m six. I find myself waking in a panic, not knowing that this would haunt my daydreams and nightmares until the last time I turned my brain off. If uncle Charlie ever knew about these dreams he’d be at my bedside in a second telling me, “It’s okay, George. It’s just a dream. You’re safe. I’m here.” And he’d sit with me long past the moments I fell back asleep to be sure I’m resting peacefully like he had to all the others. These weren’t nightmares or night terrors; these were different. These weren’t something I’d ever tell Charlie about.

My story begins in a park unlike those you’ll find in your backyard. There stood a particular species of oak tree that was the last of its kind. The branches stretched for what seemed like miles. It was said that each branch reached to the corners of imagination, took a left turn past the center of logic and circled back again. It was here that a mother stork and her muster of fifty some babies called home.

One afternoon, a small boy and his friends stood at the base of the oak’s trunk and began to taunt the birds perched above.

“You’d make a delicious meal! We’ll hang you, shoot you, stab you, roast and eat the lot of you come winter!” the boys said.
A gentleman in his early forties wearing a black bowler hat watched from a park bench at a distance. He called out to the boys, “Don’t you ever feel bad for the birds?” asked the gentleman, “They have feelings and families just like you do.”
“Will we be hanged and eaten mother?” asked the baby storks.
“No, no.” the mother stork said comforting her babies, “You’ll learn to fly and we will escape this world where everything living green turns cold and white. The clouds freeze and break into millions of white pieces and fall down to the earth and cling to the trees.”
“Will that boy also freeze and break into millions of pieces, Mama?”
“No but he will be very cold and miserable. We’ll fly to a warmer world and leave them behind struggling to stay warm as they bind themselves in large sacks that they’ve sewn to fit over their bodies and arms.”
The boys continued to harass the storks not understanding what the storks were saying, “Look at that one, he’s getting big! When he gets big enough I can see him making for a glorious feast. My dad is going to get me a shotgun this winter and we’ll shoot hundreds of them and bring them back for dinner.”
“Will you get one for me?” Asked another boy.
“You bet I will!” came the reply.
Rolling his eyes, the gentleman stood up slowly from his bench and approached the boys. “Don’t you boys have anything better to do?”, he asked with urgency.
“I want to peck out their eyes for being so mean.”, squawked one of babies storks.
“No, my babies,” comforted mother, “leave them alone. Violence is not the answer. Fly with me and when you’re strong enough we’ll fly far away from here.”

Winter came quickly that year, and the snow clung to the trees like caterpillars while the family of storks lifted themselves to the skies.

“Mama, it’s amazing!” said one of the babies as she found herself gliding over the town below.
“It’s beautiful”, said another as the mother led the way over a meadow far from human eyes to a pool of water that was too large to be considered a pond yet too small to be named a lake. Mother Stork lead her phalanx to the water’s edge where they discover the remains of a young boy drifting face down towards shoreline.
“Mama?” nervously questioned one of the baby storks. But before the Mother Stork could respond a straggly dark haired dog leaped over their heads and landed in the water with the boy. From a distance it would have looked as if the straggly beast had been a large rock dropped into a bucket of water as the storks flew in opposite directions, as if they were ripples of water, only to slowly gather again on the shoreline.
“What happened to him?” asked a baby stork.
The material of the boys shirt barely held together as the stranger dragged the boy to land by his shirt collar. “He dreamed himself to death. There was nothing I could do. His name was Harold. My name is Charon.” Replied the straggly dog.
“What will happen to him now?”
“Eventually he’ll become part of everything else. The earth, these trees, the sand, all of this was made from deadly dreamers like Harold. But he’s missing his token of passage so for now his body will stay in this inbetween for 100 years”
“I wish those boys who tormented us would end up here.” Quipped a baby stork.
The furry tips of the dog’s ears lifted as he turned toward the mother stork to ask, “What could someone have possibly done to deserve such a sentence of death?”
She explained about the mean boys in the town above. “But it’s not our place or in our nature to decide how or when death occurs, babies. We have a much more peaceful purpose.” Explained mother stork. “I have the perfect plan if you darlings would like your revenge? With Charon’s, and Harold’s permission of course, we will take Harold and deliver him to those naughty boy who spent all his time tormenting us and he’ll have to cry and cry.”
“What about the nice man who came to our defense?” reminded one of the babies.

When spring finally came, the snow fell from the trees above like teardrops and mother stork wrapped the boy remains in his shirt. She took it in her beak, lifted her wings and the babies followed in a breathtaking sea of blue and green feathers; you would have thought the water itself had taken flight.

They flew over the pool water that was too large to be called a pond yet too small to be considered a lake, past the tree in the park where they spent their days learning to fly and over the rooftops of the town below until they came upon the young boys home delivering the body to the naughty-boy’s bedside. The sound of fifty storks taking flight woke the boy who upon seeing the body began to cry. Harold’s remains seemed to smile.

They flew back over the rooftops, past the tree in the park where they spent their days learning to fly, and past the pool of water that was too large to be called a pond yet too small to be considered a lake to a city where the humans stacked their dwellings toward the sky in buildings that seemed to grow from the ground like glass and cinder block beanstalks.
“Quickly children!” Warned the mother stork as she landed on an iron balcony’s edge high above the earth below.

An argument was boiling as four of the babies stealthily entered the dwelling, flying carefully over the glass covered floor and landing at the crib side of a small child. The child, stayed calm as the birds wrapped him in his own bed sheets and lifted him into the air taking to the skies as the parents of the child argued mindlessly oblivious with each cigarette between their fingers dropping to floor with ambers scattering like ants across glass, and alcohol danced on their lips. Who knows how long they took to realize he was gone. Some say they were relieved when they finally had and quietly went on with their lives. That’s not a version of the story that I’ve ever told.

They carried the child far away from those glass and cinder block beanstalks, far away from the pool of water that was too large to be called a pond yet too small to be considered a lake, and onto the doorstop of the nice man that had come to their defense long before they learned to fly on their own. ….and that’s how I came to be here, with my uncle Charlie.