The Scarlet Spirit

When Nolan was little, he loved animals. His room was filled with creatures of all sorts. Elephants spun around his cradle, giraffes danced on his wallpaper. He made it as clear as possible, to everyone he met, that animals were the most important thing in the world to him.

The result was tangible. Every birthday, he would get animal books in the thousands. People would pile stuffed animals into his arms, buy him beautiful still-life paintings of figurines. His mother had an entire shelf in her room, high up where no child could reach, filled with a tiny, crystalline forest. Nolan longed to play with them, wished as hard as he could that one day she would let him, but he knew that the figurines were fragile. His mother showed him on a broken one, a little butterfly that the cat had swished off one afternoon, sent to the floor in one swift motion, how easy it was to end them. She let him throw a shimmery wing into the concrete outside, told him to watch as tiny crystal shards exploded into the air, littering their driveway like rain.

"Do you see how it's shattered?" She asked, motioning for him to step aside. He watched her gently sweep the glass away with a broom.

"Yeah."

"You can't put it back together anymore. It's gone, and there won't ever be another like it. That's why you have to be careful, Nolan, that you don't play with the other ones. See what Harvard did to this one? You can do that to all the others. Even if you don't mean to."

Harvard, the cat, meowed guiltily from the side of the driveway. He'd tried to step on the pieces earlier, risking a cut on his paw before Nolan had scooped him away from danger. He certainly didn't live up to his name.

Nolan grew up, and he continued his love for animals. It grew with him, followed his growth spurts and acne. He wrote his essays about animals whenever he could connect one to the topic. He refused to give an answer when people asked him which one his favorite was, far past the age where spreading your hands wide and declaring "all of them!" was considered appropriate. He didn't seem to care, though.

When Nolan graduated, he moved out of state. It was a hurried affair, a last second admission and a flurry of packing and leaving. His childhood bedroom sat, empty and silent, for months. He moved on with his life. He got a job, did his homework, found friends to surround himself with. The animals, the stuffed ones, and the ones on his wallpaper, the drawings he'd done when he was young and the crystalline figurines in his mother's room, sat silently and waited for him to come home.

And come home he did, nearly a year later, when classes ended and he took a foggy plane ride from one place to another, to stay in his old room for the summer. The bed was made up just the way he'd left it, tigers and cheetahs prancing around the edges of his pillows. He settled onto the bedspread with a sigh, looking around.

A whisper in his ear startled him, and he jumped, looking around frantically for the source of the voice.

"Hey. Behind you!" it said. Nolan twisted around, not knowing what to expect. He knew he was alone in the room, and generally, paintings didn't tend to speak.

The scarlet macaw was a beautiful creature. It had been one of his infatuations for years when he was a kid, something about the bright, almost neon color of its feathers had drawn him in over and over. His room was covered in drawings he had done of the bird over the years, in crayon, in colored pencil, messy sketches taped to his headboard, a little painting he'd made on the wall in acrylics one rainy afternoon.

What was speaking now, or at least, seemed to be, was a poster he'd torn out of a National Geographic in middle school. It displayed a scarlet macaw, poised elegantly on a tree branch. Its feathers fluffed, it turned its head toward the camera, or, in this case, toward Nolan.

"Hello?" He asked, shifting his stance to face the poster. The bird dipped its head in acknowledgement.

"Hello."

"You're a poster." Nolan pointed out.

"Maybe I am. Here, touch my feathers." It was such a simple request, yet so completely out of nowhere that Nolan didn't really stop to think. He just reached out, and touched his fingertips to the bright red feathers on its tail. To his surprise, they were soft. Actual bird-feather-soft, not the glossy smooth posterboard he had expected. The air around him swirled gently, a smell like warm rain and wet mud fluttering past his nose, and then suddenly he was sitting on a branch higher up in the air than he had ever been. The scarlet macaw from the poster was perched beside him, preening its feathers like nothing was different.

Nolan sat there for a minute. Beautiful green palms fanned out all around him, soft yellow sunlight streaming in between the leaves. The air was heavy and humid; it settled over his shoulders like a blanket, warm and inviting. Birdcalls and the buzzing of insects surrounded him. So, he was probably in a rainforest somewhere. He had been sitting in his childhood bedroom, he'd touched a talking poster, and now he was sitting on a branch in the middle of a rainforest.

He looked at the macaw, which tilted its head as though to acknowledge him. It was bigger than him now, just a bit, the same way a horse was big in comparison to a person.

"Any thoughts?" It asked. Nolan opened his mouth to speak, but a loud bang rang out in the distance before he could actually say anything. The bird lowered a vibrant blue wing, beckoning him over.

"We're out of time. Climb up, we have to hide."

Nolan clambered aboard, barely able to manage out a timid "Hide where?" before they were in the air. His fingers grasped at soft plumage, wind battering his face. When it finally stopped, he opened his eyes to find himself on yet another branch, this time

higher off the ground, and closer to the trunk. He wrapped his arms around the wood, grateful for some semblance of support.

"Okay," he gasped out, head still reeling. "Explain."

"Right." The macaw ruffled its feathers and settled into what, Nolan assumed at least, was probably a more comfortable position. Another bang rang out, followed by a shrill, frightened birdcall and a flurry of rustling leaves in the distance.

"What was that?"

"Okay. Let me- sorry, I know this was all a rush. I don't have a lot of time. You can ask me three questions."

Nolan shook his head, still gripping the trunk tightly. "That's a lot to ask of me right now. Uh. Why can you talk? What are you? Where are we? What was that noise?"

The macaw tilted its head, beady black eyes turned upwards toward the sky. "That was four questions. Fine. I'm a wilderness spirit, technically. We're in a tropical rainforest in Peru, which one doesn't really matter. And the sound is... well, that's the sound of poachers killing my friends."

Nolan blanched. Another bang. The macaw stood, extending its wing again. "I just need you to see. Okay? You need to see. I saw you, the potential you have, and you can help us. Come see."

They were off again before he could really process anything. The forest floor sped by below him, clinging vines and giant, sweeping tree trunks spreading out as far as he could see. The macaw narrowly dodged a giant fern, and he gripped its feathers tighter. Most of his time here so far had been spent clinging on to something.

As they seemed to get closer to whatever the macaw wanted to show him, the intermittent bangs got louder. Landing high up in the branches of yet another tree, he found himself looking over a group of masked men. Muskets slung over their shoulders, they prowled through the foliage, seeming to aim at anything that moved. One of them had a giant, lumpy bag slung over his shoulder. Nolan could guess what it was filled with, but really didn't want to think about it.

A scarlet macaw, its brilliant wings standing fatally out among the greens and browns of the rainforest, tried to flit between trees, ducking behind a palm leaf. Nolan squeezed his eyes shut as the poacher aimed. The bird dropped like a stone, letting out a horrific screech, and was unceremoniously shoved into the bag, its wings twisted sharply at an unnatural angle. Beside him, the macaw clicked its beak.

"Please take me home." He whispered. Another bang rang out behind him, another shrill call, another thud as something collided with the dirt. The air swirled, harsher this time, batting him around, until he felt the softness of the bedspread beneath him and realised he was home again. Turning to the poster, not at all sure what to expect, Nolan found nothing but unmoving posterboard. The sun outside was setting, the sky a burst of angry reds and oranges, though it'd been just past lunchtime when he'd first come in here.

He had absolutely no idea what had just happened to him, but it wasn't all too hard to take a guess at what the wilderness spirit (or whatever it was) had been trying to show him. His hands still shaking, he pulled out his phone and started an email to his zoology professor.

Subject line: Poaching of endangered species