Blue Tara; Or, How Is a Hyacinth Macaw Parrot Like a Tibetan Goddess?

Part One Blue Tara Trilogy

Book One Princess Tara Chronicles

By Michael Ostrogorsky

Copyright 2019 Michael Ostrogorsky

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

If you enjoyed this book, be sure to read the rest of the Blue Tara Trilogy. Part Two of the Blue Tara Trilogy, Book Two of the Princess Tara Chronicles: The Princess Witch; Or, It Isn’t As Easy To Go Crazy As You Might Think, available from Smashwords.

Part Three of the Blue Tara Trilogy, Book Three of the Princess Tara Chronicles: Parrots and Witches; Or, Love. Desire. Ambition. Faith. Without Them, Life Is So Simple, Believe Me, also available from Smashwords.

You can never keep a good witch down. Stay tuned for future episodes of the continuing saga of the Princess Tara Chronicles. More witches. More monsters. More daemons. More pterodactyls. More parrots. And more coffee. We promise to make it worth your while. Follow Princess Tara and her friends and villains in the Kālarātri, or Black Night Trilogy. Part One of the Kālarātri Trilogy, Book Four of the Princess Tara Chronicles, She Was Not Quite What You Would Call Refined, available from Smashwords.

Part Two of the Kālarātri Trilogy, Book Five of the Princess Tara Chronicles, She Was Not Quite What You Would Call Unrefined, also available from Smashwords.

How do you defeat a goddess who controls death and time? Can you? Find the answer in the third and last installment of the Kālarātri, or Black Night Trilogy, Book Six of the Princess Tara Chronicles, She Was the Kind of Person That Keeps a Parrot, coming 2020.

Dedicated to the Hyacinth Macaw Parrot Princess Tara, my favorite witch. And yes, she really is a witch. I should know.

Special mention to the Blue and Gold Macaw Parrot Aboo, Princess Tara’s sidekick. Princess Tara is a hard act to follow, but rest assured, Aboo will get his special place in the spotlight.

A special thank you to my editor, Helen O. Jones, for catching my mistakes.

Introduction

I originally got a parrot because an old black guy with a parrot store convinced me that would help me pick up chicks. And I don't mean the poultry kind. Picked out a parrot at this old black guy's bird store here in Seattle that was big, blue, and loud. And a princess. The loudness I didn't learn about until too late. But that was the least of my problems. First of all, turns out I did not actually pick out the parrot. The parrot picked me. Not only was the parrot big, blue, and loud. And a princess. The parrot was a witch. Not a figurative or allegorical witch. A literal witch. A witch of the spell casting kind. The abracadabra kind. A witch with a coffee addiction, and a penchant for pizza and beer. Once I entered the bird store the parrot cast a spell. The kind of spell that caused me to clean out my bank account for a big, loud, blue-feathered witch. The kind of witch who did not abide with girlfriends. The kind of witch who did not abide with not getting her way. The kind of witch who turned out to be my guardian angel and the proverbial albatross around my neck at the same time. A witch named Princess Tara.

Chapter One

Part One

Driving makes me hungry. Driving up Aurora Avenue in North Seattle I craved a cookie. Any kind. I just wanted a cookie. I wasn't particular about my cookie obsession. I pulled into the PCC parking lot. PCC. Puget Consumers Cooperative. One of the many lefty cooperatives that sprang up around Seattle back in the fifties and sixties of the last century. Like geoducks after a hard rain.

Maybe not like geoducks. Geoducks aren't flora. Or fungi. Geoducks are giant mollusks. The macaws of the mollusk world. I like to throw geoducks out in conversation because what separates true Seattleites from the countless immigrants flooding the city to work at Amazon or Starsucks or Microsoft is knowing how to say geoduck correctly. But back to cookies.

I just wanted a simple cookie. Oatmeal raisin. Chocolate chip. Gingersnap. Didn't matter. I have a weakness for cookies. I admit that. Snickerdoodle is one of my favorites. And PCC makes one of the best snickerdoodles in Seattle. I parked and walked up to the door thinking cookies. What would it be? Snickerdoodle? Or chocolate chip? Or maybe I’d splurge on a chocolate biscotti?

Guy standing at the door stopped me. He was hard to miss. Besides the fact he stood in the doorway with his arm outstretched and the palm of his hand stuck into my chest blocking my entrance. A stunningly brilliant blue and yellow parrot perched on his shoulder, a piercing black eye pinned on my face. Properly called a Blue and Gold macaw (Ara ararauna) I later learned. One of the largest and most brightly colored of the macaws. Hard to miss. Especially when there's one right in front of you perched on a guy's shoulder blocking the entrance to the store that sells the cookies you're currently craving.

On this day I knew nothing about parrots. I'm an historian. Got a Ph.D. in history. And another Ph.D. in archaeology. So I know Ph.D.s. I've gone through life collecting academic degrees like some people collect cars. I've got a bunch of them. Bachelor’s. Master’s. You name it. Certificates I can't even remember now. Pretty useless. I never enjoyed a particularly stellar academic career. I wrote a lot. Mostly reports people never read. Published some. Traveled for research and field work. I had my ups and downs. Mostly just downs, now that I think about it. I could never achieve tenure, so I bounced around living out of a suitcase as an adjunct professor. Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, California. Finally Seattle. But it kept me from making pizzas or washing dishes for a living. Not that I didn't make pizzas or wash dishes while I was collecting my degrees. But don't get me started.

I can regale you with countless stories about Seattle history until your eyes glaze over. But parrots? On this day, the day I had my heart set on a cookie, I didn't know a damn thing about parrots. Sure, I knew people with parrots. Knew one guy who even went everywhere with his service parrot, one of those big white cockatoos, perched on his shoulder. To the gas station, grocery store, everywhere. He even brought his parrot over to my house once. But he's strange. I generally thought people walking around with parrots were strange. I’d occasionally see people strolling through the Ballard Farmers Market in my Seattle neighborhood with their parrots on their shoulders. I thought they were strange. My mom even had parakeets when I was growing up. My little child mind thought they were strange. Remember them fluttering around the house and landing on my head. Mostly I remember them pooping in my hair. Then mom would make me wash my hair out after she corralled the parakeets back in their cage. My early association with birds was not uniformly positive.

Back to the guy with the parrot perched on his shoulder, standing between me and a cookie. Had never seen this guy before. Had never seen such a gorgeous creature before. Not the guy. The parrot. Stunning. Stopped me in my tracks. And what's really strange. This guy. This guy with a large colorful parrot perched on his shoulder. Someone I've never seen before. He physically gets between me and my cookie. I ran into him because I was so focused on my cookie. This guy put his hand out to stop me and said, There's a blue parrot at Charlie's Bird Store you need to see.

Part Two

Charlie's Bird Store occupied a small part of the catacombs in the lower levels of Seattle's Pike Place Market above the downtown waterfront. Several levels below the standard tourist haunts. The arcade with the Seattle T-shirt hawkers. The flying fish. The flower mongers. The Russian bakery. Did I mention cookies? The geoducks. The brass pig. Down the block from the first Starbucks ever. And it goes without saying, every time I visit the market I duck into the Three Sisters Bakery to snag a chocolate pretzel.

I patiently circled the market until a parking spot opened I could fit my truck into. Chocolate pretzel in hand, I patted the brass pig on his snout for good luck as I headed for the top of the Pike Place Hill Climb. The flying fish and geoducks, the brass pig and chocolate pretzels are a good two hundred feet above Seattle's sea wall. And only about two hundred feet away. Straight up. And straight down. But the thing about parrots is, just follow the squawking. I could hear the parrots well before I found Charlie’s shop about half way down the hill climb off Western Avenue.

Charlie's Bird Store is gone. Part of Seattle history now. A legend and foundation story for many Seattle bird people. Charlie is an eccentric elderly black guy who pretty much keeps to himself these days. Tall. Wiry. Old school military. Fancied himself to be a bird whisperer. A born salesman. Today, if not parrots he'd probably be running a pot shop. Back then he sold parrots. Charlie retired after all these events were said and done. Told me he had gone one parrot too many. One particular parrot too many. The closing of Charlie’s Bird Store was big on the local news, Charlie being the celebrity he was. Turned out to be quite the show when hundreds of birds needed to be moved out of the market to new digs.

∆∆∆

Come In read the sign on the door to the shop. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The din of hundreds of birds, parrots, parakeets, and God knows what else rolled over me like the tide at Golden Gardens beach. I thought I heard someone say Hello.

I paused in the doorway in an attempt to acclimate to the noise level. My eyes pressed shut involuntarily as if my eyelids could mitigate the noise assaulting my eardrums. Hundreds of birds. Small birds. Big birds. Loud birds. Parakeets, lovebirds, cockatiels, conures. I thought maybe retreat might be my best option. Hello, I distinctly heard a voice say.

I forced my eyes open. The incessant chatter of the small birds muffled the source of the greeting. Low ceiling, brown concrete block walls, one bank of dingy floor to ceiling warehouse windows facing the water. In another room toward the back I could see larger birds. African Greys. Cockatoos. And the macaws. But no sign of Charlie. Hello, the voice repeated from the rear of the shop.

Beyond the door to the