Creakwing's Crossing

Book excerpt: The swallows have always feared Winter. For them it is a time of dying and decay. A time they have always fled from, seeking the warmth and safety of the southlands. But this year is to be different. The swallows' wise and venerable leader, Creakwing, announces that he is now too old and infirm to undertake the epic journey across thousands of miles of land and sea. He intends to remain in the northlands during the cold dark months of Winter and try to survive alone. Knowing that for him this will mean almost certain death, a group of young swallows devise a daring plan to rescue their leader. Many other birds are enlisted to help in the plan. Among them, the thieving jackdaws, a captive yellow bird, a brilliantly ingenious blue tit, a wise old owl who is not as wise as he thinks he is.... and finally, out in the icy wastes of ocean the mysterious storm petrels. There will be triumph and tragedy during the long and dangerous journey, an epic Crossing about which the bardic swallows will tell tales and sing songs for generations to come. 'Creakwing's Crossing' is a stirring tale in a literary tradition stretching from Kenneth Grahame's 'The Wind in The Willows' to 'Watership Down' by Richard Adams in the present day. It is also a tale to remind us that though the boundaries created by Man continue to create tensions and conflict, the natural world observes no frontiers, and the swallows continue to move through the sky as freely as they have always done, in the ancient mystery of migration.