---

Once Abandoned

By A.P. Hawkins

Sappel whistled as he walked to the construction site, the sound echoing off nearby buildings in a muffled way. It was early spring, and the city was bursting with the vibrant green of new growth. Wild edibles sprouted from rooftops like tufts of hair. Wildflowers and herbs crowded ledges beneath every window. Vines crawled over walls, buds promising fruit come summer.

Out of all the buildings in the city, only the new one was bare. Its fresh grey concrete was harsh, unnatural, sticking out like a sore thumb from the green city and the wild country that surrounded it.

But it wouldn’t be bare for much longer. They’d had a good, hard rain last night, which meant the substrate the builders had left behind would be perfectly conditioned for planting. Sappel kept whistling, repeating his song’s refrain.

The soft sounds of flapping wings filled the air as Sappel’s pigeons responded to his call. Sugar was first, as she always was. She landed delicately on Sappel’s shoulder, ruffling her pure white feathers against his cheek before hopping down to look for bugs in the grass at his feet.

Of all Sappel’s pigeons, Sugar was the only one who preferred to roost on the ledge outside his window. When he inherited the flock from his mother, he’d been disappointed that most of them roosted elsewhere in the city. But the pigeons slept where they felt safest, and the cityfolk made sure they were well cared for. As long as they came when Sappel whistled, he learned not to care overmuch about where they spent their nights. Still, he always gave Sugar extra treats to encourage her to stay.

Cookie and Marshmallow came careening out of the sky next, nearly bowling each other over in their haste to land at Sappel’s feet. They greeted Sugar with polite coos as they joined her in pecking at the grass.

Slowly, flying over singly or in pairs, Sappel’s flock gathered at the base of the new, bare concrete building. For each one, Sappel pulled a little harness out of his pack and strapped it across the bird’s chest. The harnesses bore pouches full of seeds gathered from plants growing on the city’s older buildings.

Most of the birds waited patiently while Sappel attached their seed bags. Only Churro was in a hurry, flapping his wings madly as Sappel handled him. By the time Sappel got Churro strapped in, feathers and seeds were scattered everywhere.

“You’ll get your chance to fly soon enough,” Sappel murmured as he refilled Churro’s seed bag from an extra stash in his pack.

When he was done, there was one harness left. Sappel frowned and surveyed his flock, tallying the birds to see who was missing. Brownie and Blondie were preening their feathers, there was Kulfi, Apple, Cinnamon…

Vanilla Bean was missing. Sappel chuckled and shook his head. Vanilla Bean was a new addition to the flock, recently fledged and still learning to come when Sappel called.

He whistled his song again, louder this time, and all the birds started up a chorus of coos and eager wing claps. He scanned the buildings around him, looking for the missing bird.

There. Vanilla Bean’s distinctive speckled feathers gave him away. He flitted from one building to the next, taking his time to explore the greenery seeded by his friends and ancestors as he came. Sappel smiled. Lollygagging birds had always made his mother angry, but he’d decided a long time ago that it wasn’t worth getting worked up about. The birds would get there eventually. Besides, Vanilla Bean was still learning.

 

The birds were ready, fluttering excitedly around Sappel’s feet. He whistled at them, a different tune this time, and gestured with his hands, signaling to the pigeons where to go.

The birds took off in a flurry of feathers, angling toward the new building en masse. Even Vanilla Bean didn’t hesitate, seeming to want to make up for his earlier blunder. Sappel sprinted toward a nearby building and took the stairs two at a time to get a better vantage point on his birds as they worked.

When he emerged onto the roof, breathing hard and sweating, his flock was circling the new building in rising and falling spirals. They scattered the seeds from their pouches over the roof and ledges, into every sheltered corner. A flock in flight could easily seed an entire building in half an hour, much quicker than a team of people crawling over the concrete with scaffolding and harnesses. Occasionally, birds landed on the ledges, walking over the newly scattered seeds to help push them into the soil. Their pecking beaks disturbed and aerated the substrate more deftly than a person with a hand rake ever could.

Of course, they would eat some of the seeds they spread. That was unavoidable. Sappel, and the generations of pigeoneers before him, countered this by mixing plenty of extra millet into the seed bags. The pigeons preferred to eat the millet, and so left the more important seeds alone.

Sappel was so absorbed in watching his birds that he didn’t notice the circling hawk until it was almost upon them. It swooped down on silent wings, intent on the gaggle of working birds.

“Hide!” Sappel bellowed, gesturing wildly for his pigeons to flee. His heart hammered in his ears. Belatedly, he remembered to whistle, a single, sharp note.

The birds scattered, flying away from the building in all directions like dandelion seeds. Sappel held his breath as the hawk dove after a yellowish pigeon named Lemon, talons extended. At the last instant, Lemon ducked into a sheltered alcove. The hawk pulled up short, hunt stymied, and flapped to regain its height before wheeling off toward the forest. The pigeons were gone now, all hunkered down in favorite hiding places.

Sappel huffed. That had been too close. His mother’s words rang in his ears. “You pay too much attention to your flock, when your eyes should be on the sky!”

She had been right, of course. It was the pigeoneer’s responsibility to watch out for the flock, to protect them from threats while they worked. Sappel had failed in that regard today. If one of his birds had been taken, he would have no one to blame but himself.

---

When he was sure the hawk was gone, Sappel set to work rounding up his flock. He strolled through town, whistling the same tune he’d used to call them from their nightly roosts. The easiest to find were the ones that had been with Sappel for several years. He knew all their favorite hiding spots, and they trusted him, despite his mistake.

He found Sugar first, hiding in the stairwell of the building he’d climbed to watch the flock work. He smiled when he spotted her white-feathered body perched on the railing. Of course she’d stayed nearby.

“Good girl,” he murmured as he helped her out of her harness. Despite the hawk’s interruption, her seed bag was nearly empty. “Looks like we won’t need to try again, right?”

Sugar nuzzled Sappel’s hand. He produced a grape from his pocket and bit into it, eating the larger share himself before holding out a small piece for Sugar. She gave him a baleful look but took the treat readily enough.

“Go home now,” Sappel said, stroking the bird’s feathers. “There will be more for you when I get back.” Sappel turned toward home and tossed Sugar into the air, whistling a few notes to tell her where he wanted her to go.

The sweetness of the grape still lingered on Sappel’s tongue when he found the next bird, a small, round thing named Mochi. He had wedged himself into a high, narrow corner where two walls met, and was reluctant to come out. The sight of Sappel, still whistling his calling song, didn’t persuade him. But Mochi couldn’t resist a bite of grape any more than Sugar had. He fluttered down when Sappel held it out and barely allowed Sappel to remove his harness before speeding off toward his usual roost.

The more of his birds Sappel found, the more concerned he became. With Sugar as the one exception, they were all so frightened. Not a single one of them came at his whistle, all requiring the temptation of a grape or crushed peanuts to come out of hiding. Worry twisted in his guts, soured the sweetness of the grapes he bit into small pieces for the .

What if Sappel had ruined his flock today, all because he’d let a hawk to get too close? He could almost see his mother’s disapproving stare, could hear her telling him that his pigeons would never fly again, now.

And the worst part was, part of him believed it. It was rare, but it had happened before, after flocks were set upon by hawks or foxes. The birds just… refused to work.

Sappel shoved the thoughts aside, focusing instead on finding his remaining birds. He couldn’t solve problems before they arose. But the worry remained, twisting his stomach and tightening his chest.

Eventually, Sappel found the rest of his flock and sent them back to their usual roosts. All except for one.

---

“Vanilla Bean is missing.” Sappel stared out the window, the purslane fritters he’d made for dinner forgotten. Outside, Sugar was settled in for the night, tucked into a pigeon-sized divot in the foliage on the window-ledge.

“Are you sure?” Sappel’s wife, Teshta, asked. There was concern in her voice. “I know he’s not always the best at coming when you call.”

“I’m sure.” Sappel sighed.

Unfortunately, since Vanilla Bean was a newer addition to the flock, Sappel didn’t yet know much about his preferred hiding spots. So Sappel had spent all day searching, looking everywhere he thought a pigeon might hide. There wasn’t a crack or crevice he hadn’t peeked into, hoping to see speckled feathers inside.

Sappel rubbed a hand over his face. If his mother were still alive, he would be getting an earful right now. But he didn’t need a scolding to know it was his fault. Vanilla Bean was missing, might be hurt, all because Sappel hadn’t been watching the sky when he should have.

“You should eat,” Teshta said, pushing Sappel’s abandoned plate closer to his arm.

“What am I supposed to do, Teshta?” Sappel pushed the purslane fritters around on the plate but didn’t eat them. “Those birds are my responsibility; I can’t just have one go missing! What’s going to happen to poor Bean if I can’t find him? And what if the birds are too frightened to work again? A whole flock, out of commission during planting season? We can’t afford that.”

Teshta crossed her arms and frowned across the table at him. “One mistake is not the end of the world, Sappel,” she said. “Tomorrow you can go out and look again. I’m sure after spending the night in a strange place, Vanilla Bean will be more than happy to come when you call. And your birds trust you. They’ll work again.”

Sappel sighed, picking up one of the fritters. Teshta was right, of course. His catastrophizing was a bad habit, one he’d hoped would get better after his mother died. Instead, it had only gotten worse now that she wasn’t here to overanalyze every little mistake for him.

He held a hand across the table. Teshta took it, smiling. Sappel couldn’t bring himself to smile back, but he did pop the fritter into his mouth, and actually managed to savor the flavor as he chewed.

“Thank you,” he said.

---

The next morning, Sappel went out before the sun rose. Despite Teshta’s advice, he’d barely slept, kept up by worries for Vanilla Bean.

But what little rest he’d managed to get had brought clarity. If his birds were too frightened to work, he would simply re-train them until they regained their confidence. And Vanilla Bean, though young, was smart. He had likely found his way home sometime in the evening.

But Sappel’s burgeoning hope withered when he checked Vanilla Bean’s usual nighttime roost, a sheltered ledge on the third floor of a building around the corner. Old Uncle Kaf was awake, and was startled to see Sappel poking around his ledge before dawn. But when Sappel explained the situation, he nodded in understanding.

“No, Bean didn’t come home last night.” He tugged on his thick, white beard thoughtfully. “I missed the little feller; had a hard time sleeping without his cooing outside my window. When you find him, will you give him this for me?” The old man deposited a handful of shelled peanuts into Sappel’s hand.

The peanuts rattled in Sappel’s pocket as he headed back to the new building somewhat deflated. It was possible Vanilla Bean had been too frightened to go far and had holed up nearby. It was possible that Sappel had simply missed him the day before.

Possible, but not likely.

“Vanilla Bean,” Sappel called. He made his best imitation of a pigeon’s coo, whistled a few notes of his calling song. “Bean!” He poked around the base of the building, then climbed the exterior steps, surveying each ledge for any sign of the missing bird.

He found one on the roof. Sticking out of the layer of loamy soil, near the edge of the roof that faced the forest, was a single, speckled feather. He picked it up, frowning.

The roof was the most exposed section of the building, with no nooks or crannies for a frightened pigeon to duck into. It was also the farthest point from any other buildings or shelter. So, if Vanilla Bean had been on the roof when the hawk came, where might he have flown to hide?

Sappel looked down at the forest. The trees swayed in the gentle breeze, branches creaking and rattling as they moved. None of Sappel’s pigeons had ever flown off into the forest, not even to hide. They preferred the city, with its familiar buildings and open spaces, to the unknown darkness between the trees. But then again, Vanilla Bean was a little… different. Maybe, to him, the trees had looked safe.

They didn’t look safe to Sappel. Not for a pigeon. It would be so easy for a little bird to become lost in the trees. Hawks and owls alike made their homes there, not to mention the foxes and other land-dwelling predators who could also pick off an unwary pigeon. If Vanilla Bean had flown in there, the poor thing probably hadn’t made it through the night.

Sappel knew what his mother would do if she were here. Because that little voice in the back of his head, the one that told him Vanilla Bean was dead, that he was a failure, and he would always be a failure? That voice was hers. And Sappel knew, if it had been her bird that went missing, she wouldn’t go into the forest after it. She would give up, she would assume it was dead. Because that was Sappel’s first impulse.

He clutched Vanilla Bean’s feather tighter. He couldn’t give up, not now. For all the predators that made their homes in the forest, there were even more places for a wary pigeon to hide. Vanilla Bean could still be alive. And he couldn’t just abandon one of his birds, not without knowing there was nothing else he could have done.

Shoving Vanilla Bean’s feather into his pocket next to the peanuts from Uncle Kaf, Sappel climbed back down the stairs and walked into the forest without a backward glance.

---

It was dark beneath the trees, the spring canopy thick with new growth. This part of the forest had once been part of the city, when the city was larger and much less green. Sappel followed an old road deeper into the trees. The concrete was buckled and cracked, and missing completely in places, which made for treacherous footing. But Sappel kept his eyes on the branches as he walked, looking for signs of Vanilla Bean.

“Bean!” he called, then whistled a few notes.

Cardinals and wrens chattered as they flitted from branch to branch, keeping a wary distance. Jays screamed out warnings as he approached. But Sappel heard no pigeon coos, saw no flashes of speckled feathers among the leaves.

Discouraged, Sappel turned to head back out of the forest and look for Vanilla Bean elsewhere. As he scanned the underbrush one last time, though, he spotted a distinctive, speckled feather caught in a bramble that grew over a mound of broken boulders.

Sappel’s heart thumped hard as he reached into the bramble to extract the feather. There were more scattered among the rocks. He held his breath, looking for blood, but there was none. Just a small, dark hole in the rock, half-hidden by bramble, that would make a perfect hiding spot for a desperate pigeon.

“Bean?” Sappel called. He whistled, leaning toward the hole as much as the bramble would allow.

Nothing moved.

Grunting, Sappel cleared the bramble away from the hole, heedless of the way it poked and scraped against his skin.

The hole was larger than it had seemed, just large enough for Sappel to crawl inside. He wrinkled his nose against the breath of fetid air that wafted out from it, then fished in his pocket for the small algalight he’d brought and shone the light into the hole.

A small tunnel, barely large enough for Sappel to crawl through on his stomach, bored through the rock for several feet before opening up into what appeared to be a much larger space.

More of Vanilla Bean’s dropped feathers were inside the tunnel.

Sappel pursed his lips. “Bean, what have you gotten yourself into now?” he murmured.

This had to be one of the old entrances to the underground tunnels. They hadn’t been used since long before his grandparents’ grandparents were born, since before the pigeoneers turned the city green with their seed-carrying birds. Back then, the tunnels had housed massive networks of underground railways. But that was all gone, now.

Pigeons had notoriously bad eyesight in the dark. If Vanilla Bean had flown into this tunnel to hide and ended up in a much larger, darker space, as it appeared he had, he would have a hard time finding his way back out again.

Sappel couldn’t leave him alone in the dark.

“It’s alright, Bean, I’m coming,” Sappel said. Holding the algalight in his mouth, he pulled himself into the hole, sliding as it angled downward before depositing him on a damp, crumbling stair.

Sappel clambered to his feet, taking care not to slip on the wet stone. Very little light came in from the hole he’d come through. He scanned the area with his algalight. It was way too small to light such a big space, and it wouldn’t last long without a nutrient recharge. He hoped it would be enough.

---

It was so quiet in the tunnel, compared to the forest above. It was warm, too, the air stagnant and leaving an oily feeling in Sappel’s nose. A slight breeze whispered past his cheek, bringing with it a faint echo of dripping water.

A flurry of fluttering wings and agitated pigeon trills burst out of a dark alcove to Sappel’s left, dropping feathers as it went.

“Bean, is that you?”

But the dropped feathers didn’t belong to Vanilla Bean. These were a solid, grab grey, a color that he couldn’t recall seeing among any of the city’s trained flocks.

Sappel frowned. Wild pigeons had been abundant in the city before they were re-domesticated for use in agriculture. As far as he knew, all the feral creatures had been rounded up and cared for, and had become the ancestors of the pigeons Sappel trained now. Was it possible some had evaded the re-domestication efforts?

“Vanilla Bean!” Sappel called, shining his algalight around.

There. Perched on an old, rusty pipe hanging from the ceiling were several pigeon-shapes. Nestled in the midst of them, feathers ruffled, was Vanilla Bean.

The poor thing looked terrified. He was dirty, covered in mud and cobwebs. His harness, which Sappel had carefully strapped in place the day before, dangled from one shoulder, seed bag torn open. When the beam of Sappel’s algalight fell on him, he huddled closer to his newfound companions, shivering.

“Oh, Vanilla Bean,” Sappel whispered, digging in his pocket for Uncle Kaf’s peanuts. “It’s all right, you’re all right.” He guessed that Vanilla Bean, frightened, had flown blindly to escape the hawk. The hawk, giving up on the rest of the flock, had followed, chasing Vanilla Bean into the hole in the rock. Vanilla Bean had escaped the hawk only to be unable to find his way home.

It broke Sappel’s heart to see one of his birds in such a state. But he couldn’t help but smile, just a little. At least Vanilla Bean hadn’t been alone. “Who are your friends, hm?”

Vanilla Bean perked up a little when the handful of peanuts clattered to the floor. But his companions were faster. They fluttered down together, pecking and scratching at the treat, leaving nothing but crumbs for poor, frightened Vanilla Bean.

Sappel was impressed. They were bold, for wild things that had never seen a human face. But as he watched them eat, he soon realized the reason for their bravery.

As bad as Vanilla Bean looked, these poor birds looked many times worse. They were thin, haggard-looking things, their feathers stringy and dirty. How long had they been trapped here, in the dark? How many generations? Food and water couldn’t be easy to find in the tunnels since humans had abandoned them.

So no, they weren’t bold, for wild things. They were desperate. Starving. Abandoned just as surely as the tunnels they lived in.

After several minutes of coaxing, Sappel managed to convince Vanilla Bean to take the last of the peanut crumbs from his hand. The frightened bird brightened, then, and seemed to recognize Sappel at last, cuddling up to his hand and cooing happily.

The other pigeons, realizing no more peanuts would be forthcoming, had retreated to their perch on the rusty pipe and now regarded Sappel carefully.

Ignoring them, he removed Vanilla Bean’s harness. Fortunately, the only damage was to the harness itself and could be easily fixed. Vanilla Bean, though shaken by his ordeal, was unharmed.

“You did good, Bean, getting away from that hawk,” Sappel said, stroking Vanilla Bean’s feathers. “But don’t come down here to hide again.” He untangled sticky cobwebs from around Vanilla Bean’s wings and feet. “Why don’t we go home, hm? Uncle Kaf misses you.”

Vanilla Bean cooed and fluttered up to his shoulder.

But when Sappel began walking back toward the hole in the rock, Vanilla Bean flew from his shoulder and landed back among the wild pigeons, ruffling his feathers to a chorus of happy coos as he settled among them.

Sappel laughed. “You like your new friends?” As he watched Vanilla Bean attempt to preen a particularly sticky clod of mud from one of the wild pigeon’s shoulders, he knew what he had to do.

His mother would tell him that his responsibility was to his flock, only his flock, and these wild pigeons weren’t a part of it. She would tell him that they could be carrying diseases, that they could take care of themselves, that he should just take Vanilla Bean and go home.

But Sappel couldn’t do that. He didn’t see that it mattered whether these pigeons were part of his flock or not. They needed his help. And he would help them.

“I’ll be right back, Bean.”

Leaving the algalight so Vanilla Bean and the other pigeons would have a little more light to see by, Sappel pulled himself up through the hole, then sprinted away toward the city.

---

Less than an hour later, Sappel returned with an algalamp big enough to light the tunnel, blankets, and a lot of extra hands.

Teshta was with him, as were Uncle Kaf and his daughter, Omali, along with her husband and their daughter. Dalle had brought her eight sons, their young faces serious about the importance of what they had come to do. Even Shima had agreed to help, bringing more peanuts and water for the hungry birds.

Together they shifted boulders, widening the hole into the tunnel so they could go in and out easily. Once inside, Dalle’s boys wondered loudly at the tunnel’s size. Sappel and the others shushed them.

“You’ll scare the pigeons,” their mother explained.

Sappel led the catching effort. Some, the birds desperate enough to approach Shima’s offerings of treats, they were able to catch by hand. Others were too wary to come close. Dalle’s boys threw blankets over these birds enthusiastically, immobilizing them long enough to be scooped up in gentle hands.

One by one, the wild pigeons were transferred to a holding pen outside, stocked with food and water, where they could be assessed for diseases or injuries and acclimate to human presences before being re-released.

Through it all, Vanilla Bean perched on Sappel’s shoulder, cooing encouragement to his newfound friends.

They found forty-two pigeons in all. Sappel was sure there were more; he could hear their wings fluttering in the further recesses of the tunnels, but by then it was late in the evening, and everyone was tired. Dalle’s boys had already made plans to come back the next day, with all their friends from school to help them.

“They’ll never be able to integrate into the trained flocks, you know,” Teshta said. “Not fully.” She and Sappel were standing by the holding pen after everyone else had gone home, watching the wild pigeons as they huddled on shadowy perches in little feathery clumps. Vanilla Bean, despite Uncle Kaf’s cajoling, had remained with them.

“I know,” Sappel said. Maybe not these, but their hatchlings and their hatchlings’ hatchlings, over time, would. “But at least they’ll know we didn’t abandon them.”

Teshta smiled. As she and Sappel started for home, he wondered what to give Sugar for her morning treat.

---

Host Commentary

By Valerie Valdes

Once again, that was Once Abandoned, by A.P. Hawkins.

The author had this to say about her story:
I’d been thinking about pigeons a lot when I wrote this story, and how essentially all the pigeons living in cities today are feral versions of domesticated pigeons that we just abandoned to fend for themselves when we didn’t need them anymore. It made me kind of sad to think about, so to cheer myself up I tried to imagine a future where we had a need for pigeons again, and what their role in that future might be. This story took shape around that.

I think a lot about the poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” by Frank O’Hara, in which a poet decides to write a poem about oranges, and ends up writing twelve poems where orange is never mentioned. Sometimes a story about finding a lost pigeon can be just that, but also so much more. What I love about this one is how it manages to evoke a world that feels post-apocalyptic but positive, where the focus is on revitalization rather than decay, family rather than fighting. Our character, like the missing pigeon, is pursued by feelings with talons sharp as a hawk’s–the desire to meet a mother’s expectations even though she’s gone, fear that he’ll never be able to do so, that he’ll fail the creatures who depend on him. So many things are lost and found here, seemingly abandoned only to be ultimately returned to the flock, not least of which is our hope that even those who are huddled in the darkness can be brought back into the light to fly free. And those are sentiments and goals I think we can all take into a new year: help, hope, care and be kind, so when fear and danger come for us, we don’t have to face it alone.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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And our closing quotation this week is from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who said: “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘it will be happier.’”