Malden stood for a while and listened carefully to the air that crackled around him. What had he been told? Listen to the trees. That is what they had said. Well he was listening and they were saying much to him at all. They just shushed at him and bowed their branches the other way. In fact, he was sure that they were trying to ignore him.

He sat down and thought about it for a while. His baby sister could do and his two hopeless brothers could too. He squinted at the large silver birch in frustration. He would have to admit it. There was something wrong with him. He was just plain odd. He didn't fit in and he never would. He couldn't talk to animals. He couldn't hear the trees and he certainly couldn't make fire out of thin air, no matter how many times he was told that air was what created fire. He would have to go and talk to Gabriel. There was nothing left for it.

Getting back to his feet he made his long and sad way across the field to the old barn that lived on the edge of the estate. He hated it, he loathed it, he resented it. It was falling to pieces and stayed together in a way that he felt he never would be able to do. It was a resilient shack that bucked against logic and nature. It stood strong in the face of adversity and filled up like a bucket in the face of a storm. Fortunately, it had so many holes that it quickly emptied when the rain had passed.

He hadn't wanted to get to this point. It meant he was desperate and at the end of his list of useful ideas. Besides, Gabriel scared him in the way that old people over sixty do and when he looked into your eyes, he looked into your soul. He was tall, brash, honest and ever so slightly blurry around the edges. He always looked like he was about to disappear but you knew that in reality he was actually trying to enter this world.

He stood by the barn and peered through one eye at Malden. His cigar dangled from his lip and he was forced to squint through the smoke. Old in a way that was beyond any earthly knowledge, Gabriel knew everything. But he was still scary. He dressed in black because it enforced the myths that surrounded him and relished the fact that he could tell people what he thought of them and spit, should he choose to. He was wizened, old and cantankerous. He was secretly, very very happy. He loved it all. He loved life so much that he simply couldn't figure out why people thought that he was so miserable.

Malden slowed under his gaze. It was the bird that he disliked so much. Not Gabriel, but the bloody bird. It was psychotic and there was no other word for it. It was selfish and unpredictable. Fierce and uncontrollable, it changed like the wind. One minute it was loving and approachable and the next minute it would be trying to take you to pieces with its beak. It should have been black really, both on the inside and the out, but it wasn't. It was cute and colourful and looked like the mountains on a warm and peaceful evening. The whole village was scared of it.

He wasn't going to be afraid this time. Not of Gabriel and not of the bird. He straightened to his full height, gritted this teeth girded his loin and other such things and walked on up to Gabriel, with one eye cocked on the sky of course.

"Thought you'd come sooner." The old man sighed, "The sun's high and I was about to nap. Can't stand this weather, it's too nice." Maybe, it occurred to him, this is why everyone thinks I am depressed.

"Aye, but some of us have to live with the sun. It's life in't it? I've come for advice. Would you help me? I don't know what else to do really."

"I thought," Gabriel purred, "as much. I guess things can't be rushed lad. I know what you want so save your words. Other people talking bore me. Sometimes lad, some people get the short end of the proverbial stick. Sometimes, no matter what someone does nothing good ever happens. Someone has to be at the bottom after all. And that is your fate I am afraid,

"Legend says that people like you used to go to a place over the hills. You'd think that people would come up with something more original but there you go. These people can't hear anything at all. They can't even hear each other anymore. Go there Malden," Gabriel was getting excited now. His eyes were on fire so Malden took a step back just to be sure, "go there a bring back. . ." Gabriel paused for effect, "the Hammer."

Malden stared at him for a moment.

Then a moment longer.

"Your really are mad," he said as he walked away.