Rose-tinted mist clung like wet wool to the wooded banks. Fian thought it made the trees look kindly, and she savoured the sensation as she walked the hard and frost-glittered path. For too long the forest had been all jagged branches, jumping shadows and distant howls.

 

Behind her the boys were gathering, stamping their feet against the frost, sharpening staves and pulling straw masks over their eyes. She could hear strains of laughter, the tuning of drums. The Hunt would soon begin, and the wren would be caught before the sun was high.

 

Why they had to hunt such a small, drab creature, Fian didn’t know. It was something to do with the sun, her father said. The wren had to die so the Springtime would come. What Fian did know was that she was small and quick. As quiet as a mouse when she wanted to be, and ten times as clever. She would catch the wren.

 

She would tie it to a staff with ivy and ribbons, and parade it down the street before those boastful, braying boys, who had pushed her in the mud when she’d asked to join their hunt. Then they’d see.

 

Fuelled by fury she ran like a hare, past the gnarled black hawthorn, into the tangled thickets. And in the hush of the brambles, she heard a call: high and trilling, as sweet as sunlight itself.

 

When she found the tiny thing, it was hunkered low amongst the briars: brown as the earth beneath it, puffed up against the cold. She stood still against the hedge line, waiting for it to dart from its thorny haven like an arrow loosed from a bow, for the fabled chase to begin.

 

Instead the bird watched her with one dark, glittering eye.

 

“You are fast,” it sang, its voice like wind in dry grass. “But I was faster once. That is how I became king.”

 

The wren was a tiny thing, small enough for Fian to crush in the palm of her hand, but it spoke with the weight of years.

 

“Do you know the tale, fledgling?” it asked.

 

Fian could only shake her head.

 

“The birds sought a king,” the wren rattled, “and the crown would be given to whoever flew the highest. The eagle took to the sky in a mighty rush, soaring higher than mountains, higher than clouds. And yet I, stowed away on the eagle’s back, was the one who flew highest of all.”

Fian grinned at the thought. To a little girl who had woken before dawn and slipped out of her bedroom window to get a head start on the Hunt, the story felt familiar.

​

“But the crown came at a cost,” the wren continued. “The eagle was enraged. He chased me into the undergrowth, but I was small enough to hide. And I’ve been hiding ever since. From the eagle. From the owls. And now from you.”

​

A shadow slid over the low morning sun, and Fian could have sworn it was the shadow of mighty wings. She shivered.

​

“They won’t find you here,” she said. “You’re small, and clever, like me.”

​

“Oho,” the wren said, fluffing its feathers incredulously, “and what does a hunter know of hiding?”

​

“I know enough,” Fian said, thinking of the boys in their straw masks. Of the stones they had thrown when she’d asked to join them. Their clumsy footsteps and jeering voices, hot on her heels as she ran. “I’ve been hunted too.”

​

She sat cross-legged beside the thicket and told the king of birds her secrets: how she tucked herself into the folds of the landscape, silent as a stolen breath, so that none would think to look for her.

And the wren showed her secrets in return: how thorns and tangles could become a haven if you knew your way around them; how homes could be made from forgotten things - dry leaves and horsehair and tattered fleece, to soften the briar’s barbs.

​

As they spoke the drums grew louder. The revelling cries drew closer. And then a shrill, piercing scream. The eagle.

​

Fian tensed, ready to fight for the strange little bird. But when she looked around, the wren was gone: the lines of its shape broken by brambles, its movement masked by the shifting of leaves. She called to it, but heard no answering trill.

​

She walked back to the village slowly, thoughtfully, watching the noon sun turn sycamores green-gold. The wren had escaped, yet the sun was still shining. The drums still sounded, and the boys still danced in their garlands and masks.

​

For a moment, she felt a flash of regret. After all, she had found the wren by rights. She could easily have reached out and snatched it between her hands. But then she heard a high trilling from the trees, and smiled.

​

“Hail the king of the birds,” she cried.

​

To her surprise, the words were taken up by the crowd, echoed by masked youths, drinking farmers and dancing wives, underscored by relentless drums.

​

And just like that, something shifted. The story itself had changed. The masked revellers were no longer dancing for cycles of sacrifice, but for survival itself: the sun slipping unseen into the shadows, only to rise again, higher than any eagle.