The other animals in my territory keep disappearing; it’s perfect. The yard is safer without the cats, so I’m free to search the bushes for unwanted guests while I consider how to get rid of the screamers infesting my tall, shiny tree. The male screamer hatches more cats for his offspring to play with and birds for his mate to copy their likeness onto the glossy scale she carries everywhere, and he hatches prey for the cats and birds. But these replacements go missing too. So, he sets another metal nest filled with long eggs out in the sun. When the nest beeps, the eggs crack, and I sing at the creatures that come crawling out, slick with slime that stings my tongue if I peck them. I tell the cats and birds to go live somewhere else. By dark, these replacements are full grown: the cats are identical to the original trio who terrorized me; the birds have mated, nested, and laid eggs of their own.

By dawn, the replacements are gone.

Like the stupid bird who built this embarrassing twig mess in the flowering bush directly below my favorite nest in the shiny tree. My nesting location is far superior, tucked high in a crevice for privacy—not so the cheeping from some other bird’s wretched hatchlings can join the noise from the screamers in the trunk and the moaner in the canopy. I need sleep. I’m exhausted from spending all day singing at the screamers to leave, when I’m not searching for a mate without success. Who will lay my eggs? The female who hatched with me from the metal nest didn’t survive; she was never replaced. Maybe the screamers don’t want more birds like me. They complain about my constant singing, yet they won’t go away.

Unlike the ugly bird who nested in this flowering bush. She flew out yesterday, and I haven’t seen her since. I couldn’t find her body. Her pathetic eggs are cold when my beak punches through the shells. Only the screamers can use the hissing rings to leave my territory—one ring in front, the other in back—and they don’t hunt for their meals in the yard.

So, something else must have eaten her.

The moaner? It used to remain inside the shiny tree after dark, moaning from the canopy while I shivered in my crevice close by. Lately though, I’ve been so worn out that I can’t keep watch all night. I fall asleep sometimes.

And sometimes, in the morning, I wake up to a hole in the canopy above my nest, the shiny scale pushed out to form an opening. I’ve never explored inside the tree, though I am curious. The last bird who flew in by mistake—my first and only mate—got trapped, then battered herself against the shiny scales while the screamers chased her. So far, I’ve been the only bird strong and smart and patient enough to coexist with the screamers.

But I want them out of my tree for good.

The adults are fighting again. I finish destroying the eggs in the flowering bush while the screamers repeat their stress calls: bills and debt; work and kids; liar and cheater and Earth. They fight about Earth the most. The high-pitched whining from their two offspring bothers me more than the screaming. I don’t understand how their young ones are supposed to thrive on so little attention, infrequent preening, no sleep. Their crying sends me flitting over to one of my fine decoy nests, stuffed in a crack in the shiny tree overlooking the backyard.

But the whining follows, as the female screamer herds her young ones outside through the shiny tree’s back hole. Her naked wings are heaped with colorful objects, which she dumps into the sandpit near the hissing ring, squawking at her offspring to play. After their mother returns inside, the young ones mimic their parents by squabbling. The taller one pushes the freckled one into the pit, where they roll around snarling and kicking up sand. When their mother fails to return, I sing out a warning to deter their fighting, but they can’t hear me over their pained yelping.

Fine, kill each other: fewer screamers to get rid of.

To escape the ruckus, I fly to the front yard and land in the fluffy tree beside the hissing ring. But another disturbance pursues me: the shiny tree’s front hole bangs open, and the male screamer flees up the path toward the hissing ring, chased outside by his mate’s bared teeth and ferocious squawking. Limp feathers trail from a bulging sack on the male’s back. Split sacks bounce around his abdomen, spilling objects that smash on the path or bounce into the grass on either side, to vanish among the green blades that never grow taller. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the hissing ring and the female slams the tree hole shut behind him.

Then, the male screamer lowers his sacks onto the grass. From the big box attached to the hissing ring, he removes a gray second skin with a metal head. He steps into the second skin, pulling it up over him, before covering his fleshy head with the metal one. His wing tip taps the ring. When the ring hisses, he lifts the sacks to waddle through.

On the other side, he’s a bulky smudge on the strange shell confining me to the yard—I’ve knocked myself unconscious on this barrier, trying to fly into the lush forest beyond. I swoop down to perch on one of the white spikes surrounding my territory like fangs to peck at the male screamer’s shadow as he shrinks into the distance. Good riddance. Wherever my beak strikes, tiny lightning chains leap outward across the shell, but I can’t pierce through. So, I give up and return to my favorite nest in the crevice to enjoy the rare silence.

The sun sets.

My tree goes dark.

The moaning from the canopy starts.

I shift in my nest and ruffle my feathers, determined to rest.

Then, a soft hissing comes from the backyard. Irritated, I poke my head from the crevice just as the male screamer passes through the ring with a sack on his back. Beneath the moonlight, he lowers the sack to the grass. But he doesn’t store his metal head and second skin in the box by the ring after removing them; he hides them in the bushes. Returning the sack to his back, he creeps past the garden and the sandpit, toward my shiny tree.

A harsh bap-bap-bap alarm from below prompts me to fly to the sapling by the sandpit for a better view. The male screamer stands before the shiny tree’s back hole under a flashing red light, wing tip pressed to the trunk. The hole won’t open for him; the bap-bap-bap makes him cringe away from the blocked entrance. When he pries at the glossy scales to either side, the second one lifts with a rattle, creating a hole in the trunk like the one in the canopy. I cock my head in confusion. The screamers never crawl inside the tree like this: belly stuck on the hole’s rim, stumpy legs kicking; huffing and puffing, undignified. But the male manages to wriggle through. The scale closes behind him.

I fly back to my shiny tree, switching to new perches as I listen from outside, following his upward progress through the trunk. Somehow, his bumping and thumping fails to wake the other screamers. My heart beats faster.

He’s climbing much higher than he normally does.

The moaning in the canopy goes quiet.

From deep within the tree, a creak breaks the silence. Footsteps thud through the canopy, quick, approaching my crevice. The hole in the canopy opens as I duck inside to guard my nest. When I peer out, the male screamer is leaning through the hole, panting and fanning his dripping face with pale wing tips. He reeks like onions—he’s revolting. I clamp my beak shut against the song rising in my breast, to avoid calling attention to my nest; he removes them from the shiny tree whenever he finds them.

I loathe him. I must remove him from the tree, once and for all.

He leaves the hole open, and his footsteps fade toward the opposite end of the canopy. Then, a faint light shines from within, accompanied by muffled grunts and rustling. What’s he doing? I fly up to perch on the hole’s rim. Disgusted, I watch him squirm into a puffy cocoon on the floor. He’s claimed the one corner of the canopy not cluttered with stacked boxes.

I’m so tempted to enter. Nesting inside the tree would surely display my ownership to these thick-skulled screamers. Is that why the male spun his cocoon up here? To establish territory higher in the canopy, where his former mate won’t find and remove him? Maybe I underestimated his intelligence. He reaches for the light; the canopy goes dark.

His heavy breathing slows.

He snores.

Then, the moaning starts.

His snoring ends with a gasp. He sputters like he inhaled a moth. The light in the corner comes back on. The trembling beam swings past me to shine on the boxes in the corners.

Slowly, the light follows the moaning upward.

A glorious nest coats the canopy overhead. The elaborate whorls constructed from branches and hair and string are pockmarked with large holes—tunnels—and decorated with colorful objects like the ones the young screamers play with. As the light jitters over the woven humps and curves, the upper canopy appears to shake.

No, it is shaking.

Something falls from the nest. It strikes the floor, bouncing toward me—cat! I almost take flight. But no, when the light finds the cat, it’s too small and round to be real; nesting material pokes from between the ears in wispy tufts. The light darts back to the upper canopy.

New sounds have joined the moaning: dry splintering; chewing.

A large bulge protrudes where the nest is thickest. Now, the male screamer moans too because the bulge is moving, twisting through the nest toward the dark tunnel exits. Decorations shiver and fall to the floor. Tensed, I prepare to retreat outside.

But this nest is perfect, and I want to see the builder. With a nest so formidable, I wouldn’t need to craft another to establish ownership over the tree. I wouldn’t even need to sing anymore to scare the screamers away: look how terrified the male is, whimpering like his offspring. Ready to bolt.

I must have this nest.

I’ll have to defeat the talented builder to take the nest as my prize. Determination swells in my feathered chest. The male screamer lacks my bravery, releasing a garbled bark as the bulge reaches a tunnel exit above his corner. He sheds his cocoon, and in his hurry to scuttle across the floor, trips on the folds. At the canopy’s center, he claws at the floor.

The wood folds down into darkness.

But he doesn’t leave. He pauses, like he just remembered his former mate doesn’t want him in the tree. If she wakes, she’ll chase him out again. If she discovers how he got in, he might never find another entrance.

Oh.

I should wake her!

The song bursts from my beak, sharp and intimidating, cutting through the canopy. The male screamer winces as if stung. His eyes bulge, like he’s more scared of the female screamer below than the moaner above.

Good. Screw him for hatching so many cats in my yard.

His light lands on me briefly, then strays while he uses both wing tips to pull on the floor. He thinks closing the hole will stifle my solo? Fool! I sing louder:

Leave! Out! Go!

While he’s distracted, the moaner slithers from a tunnel like a serpent. Scales glimmer in the dark; the body just keeps coming, a silky ribbon unraveling, much longer and bigger than I anticipated from the size of the nest. My breath catches.

The moaner is female.

She yawns—not like a serpent, really, because a serpent’s jaws are below the eyes on the head, and she’s all eyes and jaws, everywhere. Wings unfurl from her back, shimmering like moonlight on water. Her silver-white feathers make me burn with desire. Are we compatible? Please, I need her to be my mate. I would do anything for her. If she has a mate already, I’ll defeat him, then stab her eggs so we can start over. She could defend my tree with more than just song. No screamers would dare live here.

They would run.

The male screamer stiffens when my singing cuts off. His light swings up to search the nest.

To locate the moaner hanging upside-down. Her grinning faces.

The hooked beak crowning her head with a mouthful of fangs slides away into shadow, as the male screamer drops the light. The clatter sends him bolting toward the hole where I’m perched, like he means to escape by flying. Silver wings snap the air behind him. In the upturned beam from the fallen light, the moaner tucks her wings against her sides, then shudders. A naked multitude of thin, long-toed feet uncurl beneath her, as if she’s sheltering a rat horde under her feathered belly; some toes bear gold rings with glittering stones.

The female screamer used to wear rings like those on her wing tips. That’s why she chased her former mate from the tree earlier because she believed he’d stolen the rings for his whore in Dome City. Their young ones have been blaming each other for the lost play objects decorating the nest.

Has the moaner been pilfering the tree while the screamers are out? Without the moaning, she’s perfectly silent. Maybe she sneaks down while they’re asleep at night to collect her treasures.

And to hunt. The animals missing from the yard are here too, in pieces, woven into her nest.

The moaner glides across the upper canopy with liquid agility. As she closes in on the fleeing male, she yips and howls like a pack of coyotes. Wild-eyed, the male screamer races toward me.

But I don’t fly off. Here is my chance to display my bravery, my worthiness to my beautiful potential mate. I spring into the air, flapping my wings in the male screamer’s face while singing louder than ever. Startled, he takes a step back. His bare wings slash at me. I dive at his head.

I peck the shit out of him—he actually soils himself in fear, trapped between me and the moaner. He’s so foul.

The moaner strikes him from the side. He screams as her barbed fangs sink into his plump midsection. Coils whip around in him in the moonlight slanting through the hole behind me. Lean muscles flex.

Then, all her jaws are striking him at once.

He screams and screams among the bristling teeth until he can’t scream anymore. His thrashing turns feeble. He gurgles.

Thumping from below, heavy and frantic: footsteps. Someone scurries through the trunk, pausing when a young one wails. Back to your room, the female screamer hisses.

The thumping continues upward.

The footsteps stop under the now-shut hole in the canopy floor.

Then, the female screamer calls out, Who’s there?

Pete? Her voice gains an edge. That better not be you.

The male screamer collapses inward with the moaner writhing around him. Her heavy coils smack the floor, stirring up a dust cloud as they drum the wood. Below, the female screamer utters a cry of alarm.

The moaning in the canopy resumes, deep and moist. A feeding frenzy ensues.

I’m calling the police. The edge is gone from the female screamer’s tone. Her footsteps retreat faster than they approached, stuttering down into the trunk.

While the moaner’s jaws are occupied, I land beside her to present myself. Her eyelids crack open in rows along her slender neck, scrutinizing me. Pupils crowd her silver irises like clustered frog eggs; they track my nervous hopping. But she doesn’t lunge. Her nostrils flare, tugging at my feathers. Then, her pupils dilate, and her irises shift from silver to amber. She regards me with warmth. Extending one wing, she plucks a tiny, immaculate feather with her hooked beak.

She pokes the feather into my fluffed chest.

As the feather sticks in my flesh, her moaning gains clarity: she admires my courage during the hunt; my help is appreciated; I will make a worthy ally in her fight against the screamers; if I survive mating, our offspring will be brave and fast and strong. Pride surges through me. I’ve been chosen! I sing to celebrate our union, and she adopts my birdsong with ease. When I moan like her, the feather in my chest glows. After being alone for so long, it feels good to sing and be understood.

I take flight, performing my best mating song while I dazzle her with my aerial prowess. Every swoop and roll seems to increase my wingspan. The daring loops and dives enlarge my body until I’m more like a hawk than a wren. Feathers like moonlight dapple my chest. My wings flash silver.

I’m the size of an eagle now, a bird of prey.

As the moaner finishes her meal, I fly up to explore my new nest.

---

No eggs here to stab. Good.

I’ll fill her nest so much better than the last male.

We mate at the heart of the nest until the thumping returns below, heavier—doubled. As I poke my head from a tunnel to survey the canopy, the hole in the floor reappears; the trunk beneath is as bright as day. I was expecting a gory mess near the hole from the moaner’s feeding, the way the cats leave their victims in the yard, torn and splayed. But the floor is clean. Aside from the dropped light and the crumpled cocoon, no sign of the male screamer remains: no bloodstained wood; no gleaming stripped bones; none of the limp feathers he changes daily; and the gold ring from his wing tip is also missing. He isn’t decorating the nest with the rest of the animals. Did she devour every part of him?

A call buzzes up through the hole in the floor: Police!

Great. Another male screamer. I fly over to a corner stacked with boxes, then squeeze into a gap to hide and wait. I’m ready to create a distraction, if necessary, to draw this new invader away from my nest.

A metal head with widely spaced lights for eyes and a glossy scale covering a hairy face pokes up through the hole in the floor. Police climbs into the canopy, wearing a blue second skin composed of thick plates like a turtle shell. His lights shine around but not up. He bends to retrieve the dropped light; it goes dark.

I know you’re here, he buzzes. Come out.

The female screamer chitters through the hole, shrill and angry. When Police calls out again, the roughness has smoothed from his buzzing, as if he understands how hard it is, being rejected by a female. Doctor Guthrey? His metal boots thud forward. Police buzzes, You aren’t in trouble, sir, but your wife’s upset. Says she heard something big up here.

I suppress my warrior’s song as light flashes over the gap where I’m tucked. The moaner’s feather stuck in my chest glows while my mate conveys that I should remain silent and very still. In my mind, I see a stick tipped with crackling purple lightning, thrust into the convulsing body of a smaller moaner—her former mate. Then, a screamer in blue beheads him.

The moaner’s rage tastes bitter on my tongue.

She’s on her way.

There’s no need to make this difficult, Police adds, swiveling toward the far end of the canopy. His lights freeze on the torn cocoon lying between the hole and the corner where the male screamer—Guthrey—was sleeping. Just come on out.

Another thudding step.

Then: Come out. Now!

The nest rustles; a large bulge forms. But Police is distracted by the cocoon on the floor. He doesn’t notice the nest shuddering above as my mate winds toward an exit.

The moaner emerges, deathly quiet with wings folded. She crosses the upper canopy on a river of bejeweled pink feet, flowing into my corner. When I move deeper into the boxes to join her, there’s a space hollowed out behind the stacks, large enough to accommodate the moaner, as well as . . .

Oh.

Here lies Doctor Guthrey, a puddle of skin and ripped feathers. My mate slides into him like a serpent shedding in reverse. With Guthrey stretched thin around her, she straightens.

I squeeze back through the boxes to check on Police. He’s digging through Guthrey’s sack, abandoned near the shed cocoon.

Doctor, Police buzzes, I found your stuff. I know you’re here.

The moaner knocks over a stack of boxes with Earth written on the sides.

Police whirls toward us. His lights dart over the spilled boxes, then he spotlights Doctor Guthrey, swaying among the stacks like a tree about to topple.

Okay, Police buzzes. Good. Thank you, sir. He waves the moaner toward the hole in the floor. Let’s go downstairs, sort this whole thing out.

Even with the wrinkled feathers and disheveled skin, the Guthrey camouflage is convincing.

Oh.

Uh-oh.

Except from the side. Guthrey’s mouth fits wrong: the lips are too loose; the moaner’s sharp beak tip protrudes between the drooping flaps like a hooked tongue. As the moaner shuffles past, I get a better view through the torn, limp feathers, at the skin separating along Guthrey’s abdomen. Feathers poke through the rips in silver tufts.

Halfway to where Police stands waiting, the moaner quits moving like a screamer and drops onto Guthrey’s belly. She slithers forward, dragging boneless limbs through the dust. Inside his metal head, Police’s face turns whiter than a cloud. Finally, he’s afraid.

Stop, he barks, yanking a stick from his abdomen. Purple lightning crackles from the tip as he brandishes the stick at the skin racing toward him. He moves toward the hole in the floor. He almost makes it.

But his metal foot skids over the rim, slips.

He teeters in the yellow light from the trunk below.

There is no fall, no landing.

Because the moaner reaches him first. Her beak cracks Guthrey’s face in two like an egg, clamping shut on Police’s metal head; his lights crunch and go dark. He screams while she drags him away from his escape hole.

More cries echo through the trunk below: the female screamer, urging her offspring to run.

The moaner sheds the Guthrey skin like a brown banana peel. As I fly out to join her, she coils around Police, relishing his fright. The wet pops and snaps are satisfying. He doesn’t come apart easily. But she twists and pulls at the metal exoskeleton until the tender meat within is exposed. Then, her beak dips into the separated joints. She distributes the glistening gobbets between her many mouths. When her moaning resumes, it’s no longer mournful but throaty and thick with bloodlust. Victorious.

The hole in the floor is still open, bright and unguarded. Now is my chance to contribute by swooping down into the trunk to scare the female screamer and her offspring from my tree. They must fear me; I’m huge!

I cut around corners as I descend, fast, hoping to startle them like I did Doctor Guthrey. My song is deafening. Details blur past me. They have so many things!

But the trunk is empty of screamers.

The front hole is wide open. Up the path, the female screamer rushes toward the hissing ring with a young one under each wing, staring back over her shoulder at the canopy. She does not look away as she dumps her offspring onto the grass by the ring. Her eyes stay locked on my shiny tree while she removes their second skins from the box, stuffing her young ones into theirs before sliding hers on. All the while, she screeches about Earth and going home and fuck this planet and fuck your father, and his idiot experiments.

Then, after she taps the ring, she just moans like she’s wounded. Like she might not ever recover. I hope she will. I never meant to injure her, only relocate her to another tree. She’s stronger and smarter than Doctor Guthrey and Police; she deserves a better mate, with better offspring that aren’t so weak and whiny. I hope she survives this.

Somewhere else, though. Away from here.

With their eyes shining bright from their metal heads, the screamers leave my yard through the hissing ring.

They do not return.

---

Just after dawn, a great rumbling beast rolls to a stop outside the hissing ring in the front yard. I fly down to the fluffy tree to sing at the screamer-shaped yellow smudges emerging from the beast. But they ignore my warning song, withdrawing a long worm from the beast, which they attach to the ring. When the ring hisses open, a strong wind blows through from the worm. The wind calms me.

Dizzy, I sway on my branch.

Fighting the urge to sleep, I fly up to our nest in the canopy to wake the moaner. My mate has been reserving her energy for the eggs swelling her long body, but I sing to rouse her. She opens an eye, sniffs the air.

Then, every eye opens.

We leave the nest to look out from the canopy at the rumbling beast and the yellow screamers. Fury turns the moaner’s eyes to flint, hard and cold. Her long-toed feet close around me.

Wait! This isn’t my fault!

But she doesn’t eat me. She stuffs me under her wing into a skin pouch between two mouths. The tissue is so thin, I can still see out.

Until she pulls on Doctor Guthery again. While I’m grateful that I can’t smell him from inside the skin pouch, I can’t see through him either. So, I’m forced to listen to figure out where we’re going.

The moaner’s nails scratch over wood, carrying us downward. Grass whisks underfoot. Then, tapping.

A sustained hiss.

The ring?

The hissing grows louder as the moaner moves forward. When the hissing finally stops, she continues on, faster. Then, lower and slower, she stalks forward like a cat until the rumbling from the metal beast rattles my bones. Through a rip in Doctor Guthrey’s abdomen, I glimpse a flash of yellow.

Then, screaming.

My mate peels away Doctor Guthrey, walking over the two, maybe three screamers lying in pieces on the crimson-stained sands, to tear open the belly of the metal beast with her beak. The rumbling cuts off. As the glowing blood pours from the beast, she drinks; the feather in my chest glows brighter, and my wings itch, and my bones ache. I’m growing—we’re growing—together.

I barely feel it, staring up at the sky in awe.

The real sky is pink and tremendous, stretching toward the horizon, endless. It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever witnessed. I long to soar through the wispy golden clouds.

But where is the lush forest I saw from the yard?

A desert surrounds us.

My tree is a dull silhouette trapped under a drab, beige shell. More half shells form ugly lumps close by, covering other trees like mine; they extend farther than I can see, in every direction. My mate sneaks between them until the shells give way to shifting sand dunes.

Then, she speeds across the desert, wending like a serpent, coils whipping us forward. She crests a dune, and a sliver of green appears on the horizon. Before the sliver lies a blackened wasteland, scorched by fire.

Behind us, a multitude of half shells dot the desert, surrounding a single, massive shell, like spiderlings scattered from a wolf spider’s abdomen, after I peck her.

Oh.

That gives me an idea.

But for now, we’re leaving the shells behind. My mate carries us through the burned lands. We pass charred stumps jutting between mountains of ash, and metal beasts guarding felled trees stacked into piles, and broken structures that look screamer-built. As her moaning becomes sorrowful again, the tingle from our connection makes me squirm: these objects were traps, set to capture others like her.

She is the last of her kind.

Through her memories, I see the forest that once stood here, teeming with life, before the metal birds landed and hatched the screamers. The moaner was much smaller back then, unpracticed at fighting lightning sticks, traps, and explosions, afraid of fire. The screamers invaded and burned her territory. When she retaliated, they killed her mate and destroyed her nest. Starving without prey to hunt, she fed on the meat they left for her.

She had never tasted poison.

She almost died.

But then, she drank the blood leaking from a metal beast and found the strength to crawl. Unwilling to lead the screamers to destroy other forests, she escaped to the one place they would never expect her to hide: their precious half shells.

On a moonless night, she slithered through a hissing ring behind Doctor Guthrey.

She’s been surviving, heartbroken, in the canopy of my tree ever since. Biding her time while regaining her strength, feeding on the animals hatched by Guthrey. Trying to find a way to get rid of the screamers forever.

Like me.

And I just might have the answer. I show her my memory of the unwanted nest in my flowering bush, the eggs I destroyed. The tingling spreads into a wonderful full-body sensation, like having every feather preened at once: she’s excited; she understands my plan. She approves! I’m so proud.

She has some wild ideas of her own.

---

We are one now, the moaner and I, two minds sharing a magnificent body as we plunge into the gnarled trees of a new forest, beyond the ashes of her former home. I sing from under her wing to comfort her, and her moaning ceases. We build a new nest—and oh, what a truly glorious vision! Screamers in tattered second skins, snatched while exploring the new forest, or from their burn piles beyond the trees, hold our masterpiece together; they are just full of nesting materials, strings for weaving and bones for structure.

The screamers stop exploring the new forest.

We attack their metal beasts and birds, drinking the blood, and we grow. The screamers learn to flee for their shells whenever they hear our song. But they still won’t leave.

So, we wait for our eggs to hatch. We feed our young the blood from metal until their wingspan rivals the screamers’ shells. Then, we teach our offspring to fly. Their serpent bodies carve long slices of starlight from the night sky as they circle over the desert. We show them how to hunt the metal beasts.

And when their beaks grow long enough, strong and thick and so very sharp . . .

We teach them to peck holes in shells.

We teach the screamers to nest somewhere else.