Stale Mate

A Story by Andrew Wiles

A double sided story.

Stale Mate

Now, used to, when I walked through the park, it was pretty plain, with the birds chirping again and again. But then I noticed that they talked! At a slow pace, but legible through and through. It was so easy to hear them that I wrote down a bird story for you. Now, Pigeon asked Owl, “Am I clever?”, and Owl was very much disturbed of the thought.

He said to Pigeon, “I am feeling quite sick”, although he really was quite cross. So he picked up a stick and he hit Pigeon. He kept hitting and hitting. You couldn’t imagine the pain in his wing as he flinged that terrible stick. Quite hot with anger, along Pigeon trotted, thinking terrible nasty thoughts. He tried to figure a way to be clever, and then he had a quite clever idea. “I’ll go to the wizards, and they’ll make me clever!” So they trotted along the path to the wizards, Owl coming only because he knew the way, and also because he had a small wish to be granted secretly. They got to the Wizards’ cottage, and surprisingly, Owl, who was known to be careful, broke a magic beaker, leaking out the magic content. Pigeon, who was known to be dumb and stupid, had just thought of another clever idea in his little bird brain. He thought, “I want to be clever, which pigeons are not, and which humans are quite so, so I need to become a true man.” He asked the wizard to give him the name “Truman”, and then he asked them to make him a human.

The Wizards were puzzled, for flying was a quality that only birds possess, and that if a bird became a man, he could not fly no more. So they said to Pigeon, “Are you disgusted with flying?” and he said no. And because they had no more questions, they immediately transformed him into a man! All the birds of the park were so astounded at Pigeon’s true manliness that they thought of themselves “boo mans”. They were also quite puzzled of how he became a human. Then, one day, a bird had a theory in his little bird brain of how Truman had become human. He thought, “The Wizards helped Pigeon become a true man, so we shall go to the Wizards!” They went to the wizards, because of his theory, but because of the Pigeon, the Wizards were weary.

The birds, they all begged, and blabbed about men. They annoyed the Wizards so much that the Wizards used almost all of their strength to turn the birds into men. Only one bird of the park named Owl hadn’t had his wish yet. After the birds were men and had gone away from the wizards, Owl had one small wish to be granted. He wished that all other birds who weren’t men could not speak the tongue of the people, so that he wouldn’t have to hear Pigeon and his man friends brag. As his last wish was granted, all the Wizards’ magic was used up, and they faded away. Now, all the bird " men can’t turn back into birds, and can’t talk to their bird family. Owl’s last words before he died were, “Stale Mate.”