How the birds learned language

This story comes from a time long ago. It had been purported that Leif Ericson had traversed the waters west and found America's gleaming shores and the vast solitude and space of a great countryside. Here is the story of those things, the beginnings before far migration of people and expansion, of a flight that had never been written but was legendary in its time. In a life in a land where people gathered and learned to survive the cold. Fur wrappings and cloth were necessity. When people taught their children of heaven. The Norse called it Valhalla.

They learned to track the Grizzly bear, to protect the herd of reindeer, to keep your food safe. So that people could live it took skill you had to learn. They were an unruly bunch at times. Sometimes they had hard squabbles. A hard group who could bang together like mountain rams slamming their horns to knock each other down and to not be knocked down. To hold your ground just to speak. Sometimes to speak was a fight. And you knew you had to. They would say things like I want you to see this. So you would watch. If you had something to say it should have been easy to be heard. But it was more like walking through the snow. You didn't know if you'd slip, you didn't know where you'd slip but you might slip. You might fall down. And you knew you had to get there and had no other way. Sometimes the gathering was friendly. Sometimes you had to get through being together. You put your contribution in to do your part. To hold your own, to stay in the group. But you could easily watch it all disappear. No one knew who God was. But if you didn't win, you didn't win and you knew if you didn't win.

Leif went on an exploration. He talked to a Norse Prince as they quaffed ale and Leif said to himself "She likes me?" because the Norseman said, "She likes you". The Prince said that's my daughter so Leif wanted to talk with her but the Norseman said "You don't understand. She likes you." which actually meant I don't want you around and I don't want you to talk to her because she likes you. She didn't even know his name but she blushed when he spoke and they often looked at each other. He looked to find her. She hides like a bear in its den, or a fox. She slips quickly from sight like a hare. She was a blue-eyed maid. Though she blushed and smiled he was discarded. So, in that, all business was lost, all business of the etiquette of everything. Etiquette had no formal pattern it simply moved and there was pressing matters no other considered. But Leif and her needed to talk, she had made it seem that she did like him so he was looking for clear passage to introduce himself better. She blushed at it. She thought he was in some violation of an etiquette that only a rude boy would impolitely tromp all over.

She was one fair as a dove. That night they left her bedroom chamber unguarded so Leif snuck to her and explain an exploration that he needed to go on. He also said he wanted to talk to her without interruption, in quiet, in solitude, to be unbothered. So she decided to walk a ways with him. He agreed and they slipped away privately where they could be alone. So they walked out in the moonlight but while they were out in the dark quietly moving a distance away, the father and his men chased out to find them realizing she was not in her room anymore. He had everything against him and it was that he didn't know that. It was usually always uphill for any reason why. He wanted to be a king and he wanted to learn the land so he learned the land. It had consistency to it. He understood it. Snow, mud, dirt, soil; that was life. He was a Viking.

They needed the privacy so she and Leif had stayed ahead of them. They had to slip out of sight from her father and twenty horsemen. By then he knew they would have to get far enough away for the rest of the Viking crew to stop looking for them. They didn't know how far they would have to go. They were being pursued. She said, "You're a Norsemen. Are you sure you know where you are going? I'm sure it's that way." He told her he knew the way. She said, "Ok, I will trust you." and she followed with him. But they would for sure to stalk them on the water. So with the deftness of a master corsair that he had learned, of sturdy marauder, they travelled day and night across the ocean to get to Heaven and get to know each other. They bore their way through the harbor. They had to take this special trip to get far enough away. So Leif put her in his ship and together they set off to the North. He had to make his ship dodge and dart through the other ships to escape their pursuit. They dodged all the way through to open water. They darted around Skaw. They rammed through a ship in their way and plunged it into the waters behind them. They talked along the way. She was a Prince's child. The sophisticated and polished and he was the rough hewn bough shod.

He decided to take them to a secret place. A secret for them. He didn't want to turn back so they kept going. They kept talking to each other along the way but not always much talk. They shared quiet together. He explained to her of this special place that he knew about, that he believed in. He knew in his heart about it. "It is where we should be. It is where we need to be." He explained along the way. He had mistakenly invented what they call eloping and they sailed the open water for weeks until they found shoreline rising out of the water in front of them.

When they got there it was quiet enough. It was what anyone had ever spoken of when talking about heaven. Their secret place. Theirs alone. She decided to love him as he agreed to be a little better behaved than he seemed. He being nothing other than a Viking wild. She saw a little better man in him than the others did, finally. He built a tower. She said, "Is this a dream. It seems like a pretty big dream." But they shared this world alone there. He told her, here we can be as loud as we want.

Time was lost behind a curtain. She as he said was that her father guards her a little too closely, that she doesn't speak up enough, that she let's things to run on a little too long which is why he had to sneak to her in the night and then to pull her so far away. She hadn't realized they were going so far away. He hadn't either. He told her about parts of affairs or matters if you will that she doesn't know about. She needed to make a statement to put those things aside so that the unruly distraction would be over. It was the only way. Or things would get worse, you don't understand, it's not a game, you might think it's funny but things will get real bad. She understood this. He got her to understand it. It turned out to be one of the greatest adventures of young love. It turned into their honeymoon. The night was as sweet as sugar, so sweet it was like honey. And the moon, the solitude and the beauty of the night. In a land that was entirely their own, just the two of them. Where they could run and jump and explore everything unbothered. Only themselves to rely on. In a vast expanse of lush green and all the other parts of this land and world that they were able to explore as their own together she had children with him. It was the happiest adventure and time in their life even though they enjoyed more life and much more of the world.

Two terms in human language were born into amazing existence from their story. They leifed, To leave. They left. She asked, "What are these?" pointing to the trees when they got their. He said "These are Leif's." She said "What is your name?" He answered "My name is Leif." She said, "I don't think you know language very well. It doesn't seem like you can even talk. You are a wild viking right. You're just a wild viking aren't you?" His name was spelled Leif. They spell leaf and leave now. So many of them are called leaves.

"They would still be mad you know? When we get back." she said. "What will we do?"

"I understand people pretty well. They will say that is what we did. That we leift. They will call it this but it is the only choice we were given. It was the only choice we were left with. I know you didn't think we would go so far but we had too. We had to go all the way to Heaven. You have heard them describe Heaven before, haven't you? This is it. This is Heaven." There is a bird here now that calls 'This is it. This is where it happened.' He told her they will say it. They will say this is it. This is where it happened. They will tell our story.

"To leave, she leaves, we leave." She played around with it while he worked. She said, "Is this it? Is this really ours?"

He said, "Do you see anyone here?"

She said, "Then I will take your name and use it. I make it your name. Look I'm Leifing." as she ran a short distance away. "See, that is leaving,"

He said "That is very funny.

She said, "I like your name now. That is a Leif. That is a Leaf. Those are leaves. We had to leave."

Several years and she became a mother. They spent several years there and gave this land to her, it was theirs, all alone, the vast terrain stretching in front of them. She asked him what he could give her, so he gave her these shores. And they started a family. He gave her a child. They spent many years here in Heaven. Her love made it Heaven.

It taught her father a lesson when he lost her, for a time, when she ran away. Now trees have a leaf and many leaves. This is where she named them, this is where she said his name many times so no one would forget. That is what she gave to him and their child. The story was epic though no saga taught or told of it. So I wrote it down. His story was so epic, pardon me a moment, his story was a saga, so they termed going away leifing, leaving; to leif, to leave. Named after the way he found to solve the problem he was faced with by her father and his group of people. The challenge he had in loving her the way he could and wanted to make her understand she could love him. He may have joined them but he definitely started his own team as well. She had said you would have to deal with my father, he won't let me even if I want to. Her father had said she doesn't want you. So he brought her to heaven and they wed. It gave her a magical time exactly as she said they will speak it without even knowing and it's all ours since you gave this to me. They say it every time and we will know it. They say it now until it's common and they will never take that away from us.

You can hear his story in America even though I am not sure anyone tells it though they speak it. They use it. They use pieces of this heaven. They use pieces of his heaven. They called it Heaven. The birds of the East learned their song from him, learned it form them. They had no sound to go by before. Before they heard people speak here. Before they listened and learned their song. You can listen to the lyrical flute call of the robin but there is a bird in the woods that sounds like sorrow. It sounds like sobbing when you hear it. One bird says 'this is it, this is where it happened.' Another says 'it's a dream, it's a dream, it's a really big dream.' These are pieces of their conversation on these shores. A first in the east of the western world and the birds heard their voices and carried the message as their song. How the birds learned to speak.

They said the northern skies in December gleam like his eyes. Like his eyes. Their cavernous gleam haunts the sky, rides the wind, the pale flashes of air. They said he has no skald or saga but his is the truest. It has sorrow, it's in the eyes of the wolf. Nature learned it, nature carries it to us, nature carries their message, the calm silence of winter. Like all vikings he learned the hawks and gerfalcons. He learned the were wolves bark. He learned the foamy sea, the cold foamy sea. As a marauder, it sometimes took jostling things around for the marauder fought for his place in the world and when like taking food from the plate of a dog you placed the dare he had his journey set and so it would be making a mighty big risk and the challenge was suppose to happen less oft. When you play with the viking like a game you might not be ready for what is started. But it is your own choice. When those challenges were issued you were simply suppose to find the way.

So even when looking for a bride or wife or date the marauder might have joined the corsair's crew for work but love was a personal journey. He would join a corsair's crew anyway to learn the sea and gather fish to eat and he also swept across the sea to find a woman. As a stranger you have even more challenges to overcome. Strange man in a strange land. "That's his wife, that's his daughter, that's his girlfriend, guess again, you're wrong guess again, guess again, guess again, guess again, hahaha." are sounds you might hear. The laughing dog, the laughing howl, that laughing ghost that sounds off in the night marks with truth and a mocking laugh. If you don't understand what it's saying you don't know anything. That crazed laughter is no joke. It might just be the berserker howl on the wind even if you doubt it. Here the crow flies with unmistakable truth. You can deny it, you can lie about it but it's true. Two times once the crow signaled. Who do they want to kill and the crow flew over the victim. The other crow sat in the treetop waiting. It waited for hours that morning and then fifteen minutes more and when the other person showed up it said who wants to kill him and the crow flew over the other person contemplating that wrong. That is what nature can tell you if you learn to read those sounds.

A prince's child and a viking wild can be a heartbeat like the sound of the hooves of thunder. But in her glances and blushing demeanor she held her courtesy open. She said you can talk to me, then, I can't believe he tried to talk to me. You spoke directly to me. And at the first sight of weakness, at the first sound of weakness, at the first sense weakness, the hounds nipped and bayed his heels. They snapped in his face, slobber flying in air but there was no weakness there. They unleashed every whipping thing they could think of. They had all the strangest reasons in attempt to sound right, logic you just know isn't logic and you wonder why they don't. A viking knows the coldest winds, the stillest silence, the different snows. But the manners of approaching the fairer sex he is uncouth at. He was not versed in the custom. He was never taught. He was simply released. Thrown out in the snow and told to make it. Told you have to learn. Sometimes there wasn't even anything to learn other than today is whatever the wind carries us through. Total twists as savage as the icy black waters and the wind driven snow slapping you in the face, stinging your cheeks red and soaking you. Sometimes, today is all questions. Constant challenge of no you aren't a person, no you aren't a man, no you aren't a viking, no you aren't a ... She says yeah you can and then later oh I guess you couldn't. Hahaha she never says 'I was wrong.' She does not include herself with the word wrong. Hey, sometimes even in your own village you are agreed with but find when you rely on those words you can't, then what, you are nothing but a viking wild. You didn't follow the rules, oh you can't do that, you know you can't do that. As a viking you are misunderstood.

They wanted to stay forever but they knew they couldn't because they needed to see other people. Because they missed their families. They spent years there. She was ready to speak about it. She knew what statement she would have to make to her father to get him to understand. To be sure they had cooled down she knew what she would say if she needed to talk with them. They went back across the ocean after several years just to see other people again. They had a special time together and with their child. She wasn't afraid that they would harm them anymore. She was a mother now. When we rejoined the group things were better. Things were easier. Things were calmer.

When they got back her father said I am sorry. I see now I can't control you like that. He consented and blessed their union.

She died many years later when death closed her mild blue eyes. When she lived no longer he decided to leave the world too because he didn't want to be without her. So he loaded the boat to sail the ocean with her again. Leif took them all the way to America. He talked with her along the way. When we got to shore he buried her under their tower. The second time after she had left the world he wanted to look for her again so he went to see if she was just waiting in Heaven. So he searched for her. He searched for a pretty long time. He looked where they were. He looked around for her. He looked where they had been. He could not find her. He wanted her back. He listened for her on the wind. He wanted the wind to carry her back to him. He said, "This is not Heaven." He put on his armor, his war gear. He chased the air around for awhile. He ran around searching. He followed in the silence looking around through the wilderness. He couldn't leave. He could not leave without her. He put on his warrior armor and he sobbed and sobbed but could not move. He said, "Is this was my punishment for stealing heaven?" He was a viking. So he burst his scars at the seams. He cried because he couldn't find her and threw himself on his own spear. The cavernous gleam of December skies are our eyes. I was a viking wild.

She had wondered why they were such a long way out there and they had explored the wide open land. Word spread round of their adventure. That's how the birds learned language.