The Quail and the Fire

Also known as Vattaka Jataka

• 3 minute read
• Ages 6-10
• Jataka Tales

A quail chick lay in a nest on the forest floor.

He was too young to fly. His wings had not grown and his legs would not carry him, and he could do nothing at all except lie in the nest and wait for his parents to bring food.

The fire

A fire started at the edge of the forest.

It came in fast, driven by wind, taking the dry undergrowth in a line that moved faster than an animal could run. Deer went past the nest. Birds went up out of the trees in every direction. The whole forest emptied.

The quail's parents came back to the nest, and they could see the fire coming, and they could see that their chick could not move.

They stayed as long as they could bear to.

Then they went, because staying would only mean three dead instead of one, and the chick was alone.

What he had

He lay in the nest and watched the line of flame coming towards him across the forest floor.

He could not fly. He could not walk. He could not hide and he could not be carried and there was nobody left to carry him.

So he thought about what he actually had.

He had the fact that he had never harmed anything. He had the fact that his parents had cared for him as well as anyone could. He had his own voice.

And he used it.

"There are wings in this world that cannot fly," he said aloud, into the smoke. "There are feet that cannot walk. My father is gone and my mother is gone and I have nothing at all. Fire, by the truth of what I am saying: go back."

The line

The fire came to within sixteen lengths of the nest.

And it stopped.

It did not go round him and it did not burn low. Along the whole width of the forest, at that exact line, it went out as though it had been cut, and the smoke went up and thinned, and the wind carried it away.

The parents came back to a scorched forest with one green circle in the middle of it, and their chick lying in the nest in the ashes, entirely unburnt.