SHARDS OF HEAVEN

The bird struck the small window like a stray arrow and fell into the stone cell like a star extinguished from the sky. Dazed, it rose on its two thin legs, as fragile as stalks broken by the wind, and looked around in fear, its eyes like beads spilled across the darkened floor. In the corner of the chamber it saw a living shadow, gathered into itself by suffering. With the tremor of instinct, it read his thoughts: there was no danger here, no harm foreseen. It paused, then, and sharpened its senses like a tautened string.

“Bird, small wonder, falling into stones, rising again…” thought Akili in his darkened corner, gazing at the little creature as at a sign sent from some forgotten world. His thoughts gathered like ancient runes, frightened, like fallen stars buried deep in memory. A distant song drifted in from outside — a neum, murmured and remurmured, perhaps by some old philosopher drawing wisdom from an octoechos heavy with melismas. And, as if by enchantment, all those words, all those cadences once hummed by his nurse surged back upon him: dusty notes, damp pages, liturgical registers, forgotten chants, cold shadows of centuries. He turned again toward the small prisoner. What could she be thinking of, if not of death? Never before had she seen, so close, a mountain of an enemy a hundred times larger and stronger than her fragile body. And yet, in the pearl-like eyes of the bird there was only waiting — as in a clock stopped still. She knew that if she could only hold on, she would gather the strength to rise again toward the cold, merciless bars of the stone window — the threshold between captivity and sky. “How life is…” thought Akili, with sorrow. “I, young and shut away here, the damp walls sunk into my bones — and she, small and fragile, yet free…” He turned his gaze once more toward the little being, who was watching him with unease. The sight amused him. He thought she too deserved a crumb of his bitter bread. Slowly, with the furtive gesture of a thief, he slipped his right hand into his worn pocket, his trembling fingers searching for those tiny treasures that might become gold to the small beak. His fingers touched the crumbs as though they were hidden gemstones in a mine. In that instant, the bits of bread were no longer food, but coins of salvation, shards of sun scattered in the darkness of the cell. He stretched out his palm, and the bird, hesitant, regarded him with suspicion. Her small eyes glimmered like two black mirrors, in which Akili glimpsed his own fear, his own yearning for escape. The bird drew nearer with tiny steps, like a child learning to walk, and pecked at a crumb. That fragile, dry sound of the beak striking bread seemed to Akili louder than the toll of a great bell. In every peck he heard the beat of wings, in every crumb a thread of road leading back to the sky.

“You are small, yet you carry the whole sky within you,” Akili thought, astonished. “I am large and young, and yet imprisoned.” He felt a bridge weaving itself between him and the bird — an unseen thread of breath, a filament of light. The bird tilted her head, as if she understood. Then suddenly she lifted her wings, two sails torn by the wind, and rose a few inches — only enough to show that her strength was not gone. She struck against the heavy air of the cell, but did not fall. In that flutter, Akili heard the echo of heartbeats from his youth, of forgotten songs, of prayers unspoken. From somewhere beyond, the vague chant of the free world reached him once more — a murmur like running water. For a moment, the walls softened, the chains lost their weight, and the window seemed no longer stone but a gate to the open sky. Akili smiled bitterly, but in his eyes a spark was lit. He told himself that the bird was not merely a lost guest, but a messenger, a living letter carried by the wind, a reminder that beyond the stone there is always sky.