Urban Renewal
Flash fiction, 800 words. It's been a while, but spring has my imagination blooming with the daffodils! Other, longer projects continue apace.
No one knew who put them there. They arrived like thieves in the night (or the reverse); like a mad Robin Hood, stealing from order to give to chaos. At best, they were a sign of degradation; at worst, some harbinger of insidious calamity.
This much Sir Miders Mott declared to Mott’s Mill Town Council and the magistrate, who happened, by pure coincidence and not at all by virtue of her imperious dowager status, to be his own mother.
“They’re wooden birds,” moaned Councilwoman Lettie, head of the Benevolent Society of Carpenters. Her position and natural occupational bias did little for her argument, in the good squire’s opinion.
“I kind of like them,” chirped a councilor in the back whom Sir Miders did not deign to recognize. “People put statuary of all kinds of things – birds, people, squirrels – all over town. What’s wrong with a few flamingos canalside?”
“They’re pink,” snorted another.
While this was an opinion on Sir Miders’ side, it wasn’t quite the full-chested support for which he’d been hoping.
“They’re very well done,” volunteered someone else. “I admit they confuse the children a bit, but one must take into account their delight, as well.”
“They are all my Winston and Lily like to talk about lately,” said Councilman Sven, a local pillar of the Disunified Bakers Free Association. “Where will they appear next? They like to guess. Honestly, it’s nice to hear them interested in something.”
But Sir Maders was not to be deterred.
“They obstruct our waterways, inveigle our children from timely arrival at their studies, and seduce maidens, like unto Leida and the Swan!”
“Only one girl tried to ride one, and I rather think it was for laughs, not lust.”
Lettie was not taking this seriously. Well, thought Sir Miders, surely there was only one kind of person in town capable of carving a wooden flamingos! Who within her benevolent – make that malevolent! – society was she protecting?
“To be honest, we haven’t had much trouble with them,” said Councilman Tocht, head of the Boaters, Dockmen and Trenchmens Guild. “They’re a little annoying to steer around, but if we hit one, I don’t actually think it would damage the boat. Or the bird – those things look sturdy!”
He gave an impressed glance in Lettie’s direction, giving support to Sir Miders’ suspicions.
The elderly magistrate at this time exercised her judgment to sigh.
“Shall we simply move them to a spot under the bridge where they won’t be in the way, and then may we carry on to talk about my tenants? They’re saying the barley corn is rotting but I’m not sure I believe a word of it, not with taxes due in a month.”
“Moth … Magistrate, we must determine who has been vandalizing our town with these symbols of madness!” Sir Miders felt scandalized by his own kin’s disinterest.
“Once again, perfectly typical avian specimens from far-away Flor-ee-da,” grouched Lettie.
“Very exotic, maybe that’s why the girls like ‘em,” giggled someone. Sir Miders supposed they’d better hope he never figured out who’d said that.
The magistrate hemmed loudly.
“Dear, it really doesn’t matter. I agree that there’s a reason we do not permit statuary and other ornamentation in busy waterways, but I think it is your imagination, rather than those of our local maidens, that’s running away with you here.”
“You are all asleep if you don’t see signs of foul magicks,” Sir Miders roared. “They’re too life-like! This is a ruse. Why, anyone with the least tutelage will recall their Homer, and the pernicious wooden beast by which the Greeks …”
“Are you expecting gnomes to invade, son? An army of ants, perhaps? Now, about my tenants …”
The goodly magistrate of definitely non-nepotistic means of vocation was rudely interrupted by one of the aforementioned inveigled children bursting into the warm, wood-paneled councilroom.
“They’re flying away!”
“Children are not admitted into this chamber!” snapped Dowager Dame Mills, Magistrate.
The boy, son of one of her tenants, ignored her. “The flamingos! They’re flying away!”
“What!”
Councilwoman Lettie was the first to jump up and run out the door, followed soon by the others, in order of fitness and dependence of various canes, staves, and the need for the last bit of tea in one’s cup before any action.
The scene before them had indeed inveigled the whole town. Children, maidens, matrons, workmen, idlers, toughs, and invalids had all turned out upon the various town bridges, craning their necks to watch as the flamingos, shaking off their torpor, set alight by the dozens into the late afternoon sunshine.
“Hit me with a mallet and call me a peg,” Lettie gaped. “It was a joke. We were only having some fun.”
“Lordssake, they were made of wood.”
***
Dowager Dame Mills, Magistrate, wiggled her fingers surreptitiously one more time, and the last bird took flight. If her tenants were right about the barley corn, the town was in for a rough year. At least they’d have something to talk about. If only she were like her own mother, who could turn sleeping seeds, no matter how old or moldy, into living plants.
Well, bringing wood to life might not be quite as useful, but there were uses.
***
Sir Miders Mott certainly got his magicks, though that they were foul, pernicious, ominous, or otherwise was not the broad local opinion.
Thank you! I, too, love a good Pratchett.
This was fun! A great little light piece. Has me thinking along Pratchett lines. And I do love Pratchett.