“Watch the ancient talk.” Grandma also stands and brushes her hand across Katie’s shoulder. “Let the bird raise her little ones.”
The tone of her voice is obvious, but Katie pretends not to hear. Outside, the shadows push the final pools of light into oblivion.
“Tomorrow I will scout the terrain.”
Grandma pauses her hand on Katie’s shoulder, squeezing it once before letting her hands fall to her side. “Tomorrow you could call your mother and see about returning to school.”
Oh, that was the ploy, was it? Katie narrows her eyes. “I see. Perhaps it is you I should be wary of.” She hugs her grandmother with a grin. “In league with the foul bird, methinks. Trying to drive me from my humble home?”
Grandma steps back, holding Katie at arm’s length. “It was the gardener’s home before he moved to Florida,” she says raising her eyebrows. “And you are welcome to stay there as long as you need.”
Katie gives a little curtsy. “Thank you.”
“Let us hope your needs change.”
For three weeks, Katie scours the vast yard dressed in a beekeeper’s hood and an old army gas mask she acquired at that fashionable surplus store in town. With a long pair of barbecuing tongs and a box of biodegradable
bags, she haunts the hawthorn, recovering the shredded and decaying bodies of field mice, crickets, small birds, and an occasional snake.
Each night as the stars appear between the scuttling clouds, she burns a block of cedar or mesquite. The fire dances in the brazier, gold and red, a pagan’s delight, while she buries the day’s body count in the vegetable garden.
Even when hunting, she rarely thinks of anything but poetry—T. S. Eliot, of course, is first on her mind, but there is also Byron, or Tennyson in a pinch.
The Deader the Better,
her favorite shirt proclaims on the front.
Read Dead Poets,
reads the back.
The shrike is not idle all this time, by any means. For every partial mouse or decapitated mole she discovers and inters, the butcher bird finds others. The nest remains hidden from Katie, but in the morning as the smell of coffee and bacon fills her home, she hears the song of the little ones, crying for their food.
The irony of her stuffing bacon into her yap as she listens to the hungry cries of the baby birds is not lost on her. The tragedy haunts her in the quiet moments, but after a hearty breakfast and a brief nap, she dons her warrior attire and hunts the elusive carrion fruit.
The weather has begun to turn wet again, as it is wont to do in the fall. Katie keeps the wood stove going much of the evenings to beat back the chill.
The plaintive cries of the young fell silent days before, and the reek of decay fades. Still she prowls the shadowy corners of the garden, searching for her nemesis. It is in this fervor, her holiest of crusades, that the abomination appears to her through the morning mist.
It is the twenty-third of October when it changes. She will recall it for the rest of her days. The morning mist
has burned off, and the weak sun toys with the shadows as she sojourns this day. New territory, she deems. Look where she’s failed to look. That is the way of it. But the prize is not always what one expects.
Tucked in a corner of the garden, behind Grandpa’s prize-winning
R. roxburghii plena,
her vision shatters, her heart is sundered. Amid the longest of the hawthorn’s wicked plumage the shimmer of the gossamer wings catches her eye. She pulls aside the helm and mask and leans forward—
face of bone china
tiny skirt of marigolds
bosom impaled in cold cruel death
—thus ends the lightness of heart.
Her legs give way and she falls to the ground. The rain soaks her as she sits in the mud, studying the lifeless fey. It isn’t until Grandma kneels beside her, draping her in a blanket and pulling her to her feet, that Katie realizes the day has gone and the shadows rule the garden.
“Did you see,” she asks as Grandma pulls her into the little house. “Did you see what our Sweeney Todd has done this day?”
Grandma does not say a word. She strips Katie of her wet and muddy clothes. As each garment is shed, beekeeper helmet, gas mask, sweatshirt and jeans, a bit of the anger and horror slips past the gate. By the time the shower is running and the windows are fogged with steam, Katie stands in the heat of the water, weeping.
She weeps until the water runs cold. The icy fingers drive her to a dry towel and her favorite clothes. When she emerges in her college fleece and an old pair of
sweats, Grandma has the stove pinging and the cocoa steaming in oversized mugs.
Katie curls into a blanket on the divan, her feet tucked beneath her and the steaming mug held tight in her hand.
Grandma sits in the rocker across from her, near the stove. “Do you recall your summer here?” she asked. “When you were seven?”
Memories of long drowsy days in the sun puts a smile back on her face—playing with her dolls as the walls of thorns protected her from the rush of the world. “Yes. Those were wonderful days.”
“Do you remember how your doll disappeared one afternoon? How you cried in Grandpa’s lap because your best friend in the whole wide world had been stolen by some villain?”
This puzzles Katie. She does not recall any trauma here in the garden. Nothing horrible has ever happened in her memory. “Are you sure it was I?” she asks finally.
Are you sure it was I.
Are you sure it was me.
Grandma sighs. “Yes, dear heart. It was you. The pixies were thick that summer, having been driven from the forests near Redmond in all the construction. Raphael, the gardener, found your doll in the hawthorn among the shrike’s recent meals. The cloth was torn and much of the yarn hair was missing, but the way it had been impaled on the thorns scared Raphael. He left soon after, swearing that the fey had cursed you.
“This house has sat empty all this time.”
“Sixteen years,” Katie breathes. “And all this time, have you seen the pixies?”
“Not a one,” Eloise says. “Your grandfather found several impaled on the thorns, like your doll, like the
voles and the sparrows. The butcher bird, your Sweeney Todd, will take what it needs. That year, your grandfather had wanted to protect you from the horror and did as you have done, clearing the dead, hiding the food. The shrike resorted to what it could. Once the first pixie had been taken, things began to go wrong.”
Katie sits up, “Wrong?”
“Tiny things at first. The milk went bad within a day, cakes fell, the odd missing sock.” She touches the side of her face, her eyes lost in history. “Your mother knew immediately what had happened. The mark on your face,” she trails off.
Katie touched her own face, finger tracing the mark she carries. Wine stain, she had always been told. But what if?
“Fairy marked,” Grandma says. “You were too old to steal, as pixies are fond of doing, and trading one of their own for you was not feasible. Instead they took a bit of you, a small touch on the cheek to remind us of the part we played in the butcher bird’s depredations.”
“And why did you allow me to repeat his mistake?” Katie asks. “Why did you not warn me of the appetite and the need to feed? Why did you allow me the crazed notion that I could fight this bird and risk the wrath of the fae?”
“This is not poetry, girl. This is real life. Your By rons and Keatses will never be enough for you. You are cursed and blessed in ways we cannot imagine.”
Katie sips her chocolate and falls deep in thought. In her mind’s eye, she sees the fairy kiss that graces her cheek, a burned red cluster of wing beats and angry, wailing fists.
“I found the pixie that day,” she says, finally. “I pulled it from the thorns and hugged it to my face, thinking it
a toy. I remember the soft mewling as it died against my cheek, its blood stinging my flesh.”
Grandma stops rocking and stares at her. She holds her hand over her mouth and moans. “It is the bird’s nature to find its food, no matter the source,” she whispered. “She must feed her young.”
“But we interfered,” Katie says, feeling overly hot. She flings the blanket aside and stands in her fluffy pink bunny slippers. “I’m not crazy. I remember the pixies and the way the trees glowed with their magic on Samhain. I remember you leaving gingersnaps and root beer on the wrought-iron table in the back, so the pixies would leave you alone.”
“And then the shrike began nesting nearby. At first we loved the pageantry, the way it courted with such amazing dances and songs. Then when the voles were under control, we celebrated. It wasn’t until that October, with the pixies in the trees and the autumn sun blazing overhead, that we realized the price one must pay for certain favors. The roses have never bloomed more full. The shrike was a harbinger of prosperity and balance.”
“But the fae pay the price with their blood.”
“It is but an animal,” Grandma says. “A simple bird like many others.”
“No,” Katie says, setting her mug on the table and moving to stare out into the rain. “It has become tainted, as have I.”
She catches her reflection in the mirror, the scar on her face that drove her inward, to poetry and her inner world. “It has eaten of the flesh, fed its young on the magic. It has become voracious. Seeking that which it has only tasted for one season.”
“But surely it is not the same bird.”
Katie turns to her grandmother. “I believe it is. I believe
it hunts the hawthorn and roses in search of more than mere sustenance.”
She sits back down on the couch, pulling the blanket over her legs. “We must find its nest. We must make certain that it cannot thrive.”
“And the pixies?”
“This land has been in our family for generations,” Katie says. “It is blessed and cursed, as I am. I believe we owe it to the fae to remove this scourge.”
“But, it is just doing what comes natural.”
“Natural?” she asks. “I don’t think natural is in the equation any longer.”
The lights dim, and the fire’s glow is the only light in the room. Katie sits alone in the garden house, whimpering as the rain pelts the windows.
The rocking chair sits empty, a vague whiff of vanilla and lemon reach her, driving the memory of softer times.
She stands at last, walks to the window, and stares up at the empty house. The butcher bird haunts her dreams, haunts her garden.
But tomorrow, she will find its nest. She will end the madness that has afflicted her all these years. Her cell phone lies on the table, its battery long dead. It never got a signal here at the estate, as it is.
Her college days are long past her, her family gone to the great beyond, and yet the memories haunt her. Fae touched, her grandmother had told her. And still she finds the eviscerated remains of pixies and fairies. The butcher bird eludes her hunt, but its children starve.
SUPER SQUIRREL TO THE RESCUE
By P.R. Frost
P.R. Frost resides on beautiful Mt. Hood in Oregon. She hikes the Columbia River Gorge for inspiration. She is an omnivorous reader, having taught herself to read before entering kindergarten. Her sister claims this was so she wouldn’t have to wait to learn how to write so she could begin penning her stories. At science fiction/fantasy conventions she can be found hanging out with filkers and costumers. P.R.’s musical tastes are as omnivorous as her reading, ranging from classical to Celtic to New Age to jazz and, of course, filk.
A
crack of thunder and a flurry of wind broke my concentration. I looked out at the bright blue sky. A cold east wind blew I down the mountain pass clearing away any trace of a storm.
Another burst of noise.
“What the . . . ?” I extricated myself from my lap desk filled with my computer, a stack of note cards, and a sleeping cat.
The psycho Siamese hissed at me as she jumped to the floor, a ball of indignant cream and pewter fur. Wait a minute, psycho and Siamese is redundant.
How do you spell “catittude”? S-I-A-M-E-S-E.
A closer look out the window showed the source of the out-of-season thunder. “The murder of crows is back, Dyflyn,” I sighed to the cat.
She hopped up onto the windowsill. Instantly the fur along her spine stiffened, her ears came up to a point, and she crouched down, shoulders twitching. Or was that itching? A strange clicking sound came from her throat.
“No, you can’t go hunting those crows, Dyflyn,” I admonished my companion. Her name meant “imp” in Welsh, and it suited her.
She clawed the glass and hissed again.
“Two hundred fifty crows fighting over one ear of corn at Elliot’s feeder next door are too many.” The sea of writhing black feathers covered my yard, the next-door neighbor’s yard, the street, and the sidewalk across the street. It looked like something out of a Hitchcock movie.
At that point, Elliot, mid-seventies, fit, trim, and bald as an egg, emerged from his kitchen door into his driveway carrying a baseball bat. “Shoo!” he shouted, waving his weapon. “That’s not your corn.”
The crows looked at him for about two seconds with amused expressions, then returned to squabbling over the ear of corn stuck on a spike in the middle of Elliot’s impressive array of feeding stations.
Their beady black gaze lighted on me through the window. Intelligence. Cunning. Evil.
I shivered and stepped back.
Elliot retreated and reemerged with a pair of frying
pans. He banged them together and shouted some more.
The crows just laughed at him and moved on to the gazebo the size of my bathroom filled with sunflower seeds.
I gave up. Deftly I moved my workstation to the den at the back of the house. Dyflyn would follow me when she got tired of posturing at the crows. The crows didn’t care. They just wanted more food.
Or to take over the world.
Before I settled in the recliner, I checked my own modest bird feeders on the back deck. The hanging one still held about half a load of sunflower seeds. Two chickadees and a yellow finch perched on it as it spun. Below it, up against the railing, the screened tray of seeds had been licked clean. “Greedy jays,” I half laughed.