When the empire was young the towers of the palace filled with white birds that flocked and sang to the people below. One year passed, and two, and three, and five and eight and thirteen, and the birds stayed.
As these years passed the people below talked about the birds and their singing. They talked about why they were there, they talked about the songs they sang. At some point, nobody knows when, the people below decided that the birds were there because the empire was strong. When the empire fell was when the birds would leave, and not a moment sooner. At the time it was a happy thought, a reassuring thought: the birds had been there since the people below could remember, since their parents could remember, since their grandparents. The birds would always be there, and so would the empire.
The people below were safe, and the birds sang to them.
In the years that passed the empire went to war, as empires are wont to do. Its kings donned violet capes and weighty helmets, riding horses into battle after battle. Some battles were won, some battles were lost. The empire won the war. And the war after that. And the war after that.
In the towers of the palace, the white birds flocked and sang, and the empire was safe.
Among the people below no one really knew what had happened. They were, for the most part, happy. Their kings fought wars, took wives, had children. The empire was enormous, stretching thousands of miles in every direction… so huge that it had to be sectioned off and given to local governments to rule over. There was no date recorded in a history book. There was no definitive moment. No great defeat. No mass invasion. One day the birds were just gone.
The people below had never known a time without birds overhead. They blinked in the sun like new fawns, searching for the raucous feathered ceiling under which generations had lived out their lives. For weeks the center of the empire fell into unease, which spread gradually to outlying regions.
Until one day the birds were back. But they didn’t flock, and didn’t sing. They fumbled through the air silently, as if searching for something, and they disappeared one by one until by nightfall none were left. The next day the same thing happened, the birds confused, silent, searching, disappearing by nightfall.
Inside the palace, a young boy rose every morning under cover of darkness, under cover of secrecy. He took up his net and he took up his sack, and went out into the world. When the white birds abandoned the towers of the palace, the empire would fall. His job was to keep the towers filled with birds, and every day they disappeared by nightfall.
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In England there’s a legend that the British empire won’t fall until there are no ravens remaining in the Tower of London. Ravens remain, but their wings are clipped.
