Dear Olly Read Free Page A

parent birds swooping overhead. Olly fetched the ladder and held it fast while her mother climbed, very gingerly, one hand on the ladder, one holding the swallow. At the top, she reached out and set him down on the ridge, harried all the while by two very agitated parent birds. The rescued fledgling fluttered his wings, scratched himself and shifted along at once to join his two siblings.
    “A proper little hero,” said Olly’s mother as she stepped down off the ladder. “That’s what he is, a proper little hero.” They stood back to watch and admire.
    “Hero. Hero. We’ll call him Hero,” said Olly. “The perfect name for him.”
    When at last one of the parent birds flew down and fed him, Olly and her mother hugged each other in triumph.And when some minutes later he took off, flew across the drive and landed safely in the cherry tree, they cheered him all the way.
    Hero stayed about for a few weeks. Olly watched him avidly as he learnt the whole repertoire of swallow acrobatics: diving, swooping, skimming, hovering, twisting, turning, gliding, soaring. Through binoculars, Olly could sometimes still spot her scarlet-ringed swallow amongst the dozens of swallows now lining up on the telephone wire. She oftenthought she saw him – a young swallow on his own – out of her classroom window, swooping down to drink from the puddles in the play-ground, or sitting perched on the wall by the school gate. She hoped it might be him, but he was too far away for her to be sure and she knew it probably wasn’t.
    Then one afternoon, on her way home from school, she saw that there were no swallows any more on the telephone wires, none skimming over the cricket pitch, none playing chase amongst the chimney pots. They were gone. Hero had gone. It left Olly feeling very empty and very alone.
    “He’ll come back. Most of them do, you know,” said her mother that night when she came in to say goodnight to Olly.
    “You think so? You really think so?”
    “We’ll look for him next spring, next April. Fingers crossed.”
    “He’ll be going where Matt is, won’t he? To Africa,” said Olly. “Maybe they’ll meet up, you never know.”
    “Do you know what I wish?” her mother said, sitting down beside her. “I wish I was a swallow, just like Hero. I’d fly all over Africa till I found Matt.”
    “And I’d go with you,” said Olly.

Hero’s Story
    H ero joined the others as they flocked to a nearby lake, and for several days he hunted there, skimming over the water after midges and mosquitoes. He was safe here with his family, in amongst the thousands upon thousands of milling swallows and martins; and all the while his strength grew within him. At dusk they gathered to roost in the trees and reed beds around the lake. Every night in the roost the air of expectancy grew. Every night the birds were slower to settle to their silence and their sleep.
    Then one morning, early, the hobby falcon came gliding high over the lake. They heard his killer kew-kew call andscattered in terror. Down came the hobby, swifter than any bird Hero had ever seen. Hero felt the wind of him as he passed by, and swerved aside only just in time. But the hobby was not after him, he was after a young martin, slower and more stuttering in flight than Hero – and for the martin there was no escape.
    The flock flew that same morning, a spontaneous lift off, swirling out over the lake, a whispering cloud, darkening the sky as it went. They wheeled south, south towards the sea, hoping they had seen the last of the hobby falcon. But the hobby was not far behind, for he too was bound for Africa. He would fly all the way with them, picking off the youngest, the slowest, the weakest, whenever he felt like it. He had done it before.
    Out over the coast of France he struck once again. Hero knew, as they all knew, that they must stay together, stay close and never fall behind. They flew high, where they could see the danger, where the flying was easier