“But Ghubari!” I couldn’t help my voice from leaping an octave or two. “Look at her! She’s the last MoFo on earth! She’s here with us! We have to stay here and care for—”
“S.T., bless you and your big heart. The owls have imprinted on her, it’s too late for them. She’s too dangerous.”
“She’s not dangerous! She’s a tiny hatchling! She’s a miracle!”
“A miracle? Or a Changed One in a different skin?”
I looked to the raptors for support. Stern faces, each resembling the sphincter of a fretful shar-pei. It communicated an alliance with Ghubari and his big brain.
“Pressa?” I pleaded.
“I know this is hard, but it isn’t safe, S.T. Let’s finish teaching them everything we can, give her every fighting chance. Then we must return to our own nest. Please, S.T.”
Kraai said, “S.T., you must come back with us. I cannot leave the murder and I cannot bear to leave you here. We don’t know what she’ll hatch into. Come home, my friend.”
I looked over at Dee, shivering and helpless. I marveled at her pink fingers, counting them as my heart filled. I was already home.
Ghubari was gentle with his words, but they still felt like they were shot at me from the muzzle of a rifle. “We cannot stay with you here. We have a responsibility to those who have come to depend upon us—those whose species have a chance at a future. You need to separate yourself from this creature, because one day what happened to every one of the humans, what happened to Rohan and Neera1 and Big Jim, will happen to her, and S.T.—it will destroy you. If not your body, then worse—that big heart of yours.”
The last time I saw Ghubari was as he lifted into a silk-scarf sky with Pressa, Kraai, and the magnificent birds of prey.
Big brain and big heart had fought. Heart had won, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t been broken in the battle.
Ghubari and I hopped along a dark dirt path toward a small shed. The door was propped open, so we squeezed through. I was cloaked in dark until I heard the familiar chafe and hiss of a struck match. Suddenly, I was in heaven.
The shed was ornate, untarnished by hoof or claw. A sifting of dust added to its general charm. It had stood the test of terror. There were a few chairs, a tiny little bar, and—slap my bad wing and call me parrot—rows and rows of intact whiskey bottles.
“Okay, I’ve died, and this is the afterlife, right? Macallan, Buffalo Trace, Glenmorangie, Johnnie Walker Blue? In glass bottles? This is it. I’m dead. I know it.”
“This is The Shed. It used to be a whiskey haven for humans. Now it’s where I go to contemplate.” Ghubari’s eyes traced the quaint chandelier, a lamp held by an iron bat and snake sculpture, warm flickers of light that danced along cobweb-free curtains, delicious old books, a sleeping fireplace, and a Persian rug with minimal feces on it.
“How on earth is it…this nice?” I asked.
“I’ve done a lot for our community. I’ve been granted one private space.”
“I’ve always admired your ambition, Ghubari!” I blocked out a thought of our little cabin in Toksook, the good memories we made there, our owls, Oomingmak. I was getting good at blocking the pain.
Let me ask you this: Have you ever been around someone so intelligent you feel you have the IQ of a congealed blob of refried beans? That’s how I felt around Ghubari, Plato of parrots. And here was the perfect opportunity to finally showcase all the (sometimes drunken) learning I’d done at the Nightmute library.
“It reminds me of a quote I once read, ‘Intelligence without ambition is like a turd without wings.’”
“Bird.”
“Where?!”
“‘Bird without wings.’”
Goddammit fucking shit fuck.
Three sharp raps on the door. I dove into the fruit bowl.
“No need to panic,” said Ghubari. “My esteemed colleagues are here.”
Esteemed colleagues—how did he know so many clever things? I tried to commit it to memory for later use. The door creaked open. A head bragging in Caribbean blue and buttercup yellow poked through.
“Raaaaaaaaaaa, hello!” came a bright burst of a voice. Enviably MoFo. The blue-and-gold macaw sauntered in, her lengthy tail dragging in a brush stroke of crayon colors. Her face was white, skinny zebra stripes framing her limpid eyes as if applied with Tiffany S.’s eyeliner. Behind her, a yellow-crested cockatoo strode in and whipped out his wings, waiting for something. I suspected applause. Ghubari gestured first to the macaw and then to the cockatoo, who had fluttered up to the bar top next to me to admire himself in the cloudy mirror.
“Shit Turd, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Calliope”—the macaw bowed—“and Tom Hanks.”
Calliope bobbed her bright head, gingerly lifting a foot and its mosaic tiling of scutes.2
“We’ve heard many stories,” she said. “There are even songs about you.”
The cockatoo’s yellow crest fanned up at the mention of songs. “Oh, a song! What joy! What shall I sing for you?”
“Tom Hanks is quite the performer; he specializes in dance,” said Ghubari. Tom Hanks broke into an enthusiastic shimmy on the bar. It was very leg-centric, his slim limbs snapping up and down cancan high as he performed a sort of hectic Irish dance. I didn’t know how to react. Beings who burst into song and dance have always made me anxious. Tiffany S. once dragged Big Jim and me to a theatrical production of Mary Poppins and I hoarked a Doritos Locos Taco all over the man bun in front of me.
Ghubari turned his attention from the jig, pupils pinning as he focused on me. “I thought you were dead, Shit Turd. We stopped hearing from you.”
My heart rate galloped. “I couldn’t risk anyone knowing about her.”
“I want you to tell me how you kept the girl alive. And how on earth you got her here without wings,” he said, calmly.
I gestured to the lines of whiskey behind the tiny wooden bar. He nodded. I wrestled the waxy top from a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Someone had ingeniously left a pile of tiny stones on the bar top. I dropped stone by little stone into the bottle until whiskey splashed down its neck and sides. I dipped my beak into little whiskey puddles, filling my belly with fiery gold.
“Hey!” Tap. Tap. “Is this thing on?!” quipped Tom Hanks in perfect MoFo between wing splays and jumping jacks. And then I told Ghubari, Calliope, and Tom Hanks what I’ve told you—everything. They listened calmly, except Tom Hanks who was busy blowing kisses and moaning “hubba-hubba” at the mirror. And when I was done and the whiskey felt like lava inside me, Ghubari started to talk.
“It is very grave news to hear that Echo is now affected. But I suppose that was to be expected. The Changed Ones are a cancer on the earth, and cancer spreads.”
Calliope screeched and recited from memory: “Raaaaaaaa! ‘The Hallmarks Of Cancer!’ By Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg! One! Cancer cells stimulate their own growth. Two! Resist inhibitory signals that might otherwise stop their growth. Three! Resist their programmed cell death. Four! Multiply indefinitely. Five! Stimulate the growth of blood vessels to supply nutrients to tumors. Six! Invade local tissue and spread to distant sites!”
Ghubari continued. “The Changed Ones have thrived. They have changed in ways we could not have imagined,” said Ghubari.
Calliope flapped her turquoise wings and spoke in an old MoFo voice, so raspy I envisioned a ghost of blue smoke coiling to the ceiling. I saw yellow moons for fingernails and the way that time had drawn a beautiful map onto a MoFo face, etched evidence of a life. “Raaaaaaaa! 1 Corinthians 15:51–52! Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed!”
“What do you mean, ‘changed’?” I asked Ghubari. “Like The Weavers?”
Ghubari continued. “There are many more types. We have been watching a species morph and evolve at an unprecedented pace. They are mi
micking the natural world around them, developing survival adaptations—”
“The Bassian thrush uses farts to hunt prey!” I don’t know why I blurted this out. Nerves and whiskey were in a vein-popping arm-wrestling match over who could embarrass me the most.
Ghubari continued. “They are growing and changing on a global scale. They are conquering territory. They have driven species—predators even—from their hunting grounds. And so, the Sky Sentinels banded together and came here. We are safe for now. We live here in symbiosis, in strange habitat homogeneity. Each creature can stay here during the night hours and when The Changed Ones are active.”
I nodded. “We must be carefully circumcised.”
“Circumscribed,” Ghubari corrected.
A peek under my feathers would reveal I’d turned the ceremonious red of the Japanese flag. “When are they active?”
“It varies. They seem to go through periods of dormancy. Conserving energy, like a state of torpor. And then they are everywhere, gaining more ground, destroying creature, land, and soil—”
“Is that what happened to the trees?”
A hard sigh. “The Masticators. In areas they have ravaged and hunted, they have eaten the trees from the inside out. The trees are hollow. That is why Aura is no longer effective everywhere. They have shut our great connectors down. S.T., we’re watching an evanescence of nature. Most biological warfare happens at a scale that we cannot perceive. Not this. The Changed Ones are taking advantage, annihilating what was a growing abundance of species—a testament, really, to the creativity of evolution. Does it choose to take a thousand years or a day? The evolutionary theater of the living world is fascinating. They are stealing from us, transforming through rapid speciation, genetic mimicry, phenotypic plasticity, who can say? I fear this play will end a tragedy.”
He squawked loudly and then mimicked Rohan’s voice, flawlessly: “‘Adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, creates new challenges, or opens new environmental niches.’ Humans are more dangerous in death than they were in life. As their territories grow, the silence of Aura is spreading. We are facing a Darwinian War.”
“My god. Are you sure about all of this?”
“No, not really. I’m a parrot.”
“Then…why is it safe here?”
“Because The Changed Ones have not yet taken this area. Because we have a herd of elephants, a thousand birds, and a great many species that defend this area. But as more of them become active, as they gain strength in their transitions and adaptations, we will have no choice but to run. And hope there is some habitat left for us.”
Tom Hanks, sensing the discomfort in the room, launched into another lively round of Riverdance while singing Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” I raised my voice to be heard over his theatrics.
“Ghubari, I saw some terrible things. I saw a great mass of MoFo”—I swallowed discomfort with a slurp of Glenlivet—“MoFo eyes. Like a collection.”
Calliope ruffled her feathers and spoke. “The Changed Ones come in different forms. Some mimic birds. Others mimic spiders or larger predators. They are all degraded humans, a virus-ravaged body’s violent struggle to survive. Raaaaaaaaaaa! Calliope! We’ve got to go outside! We’ve got to find help! I believe the ones that are out there were all once healthy humans, the ones that didn’t rot and perish. A species cannot survive if they cannot reproduce, and what you saw was an attempt at that. Parthenogenesis—that’s the word for reproduction without a—”
“Mate or a turkey baster, yes; I got it, thank you. Virgin birth. Solo sexy time.”
Ghubari looked disapproving. “That was one of a great many failed attempts. They cannot reproduce.”
I hopped in excitement. “This is great news! So, the fuckers will die out at some point!” The whiskey was talking. I felt a hot poker prod of embarrassment. Keep it together, S.T. Be super smart and stuff. “Ghubari, I can’t tell you how good the relief feels. To be here, to have somewhere to hide her. Ever since we were in Echo and that crab thing tried to kill her—”
“I don’t think it was trying to kill her.”
“Uh, no offense, Ghubari, but you weren’t there with its weird-ass eyeballs on stilts and the way it went bat-turd bananas when it saw her.”
“I told you they are trying to reproduce. They have been hunting for a female.”
The room spun and I’m pretty sure it was only partly the Macallan.
Tom Hanks picked up on the tension and started head banging while mimicking his bubblegum-voiced MoFo, who I quickly ascertained must have been in the performing arts. “Why yes, I’d love another glass of wine,” he said, followed by, “Do these leggings give me camel toe?”
Ghubari continued, louder. “It’s only a matter of time before they find her. We must prepare her for an attack on them. I’m certain that the answer is war, and she’s the only one of us that can operate human weaponry. Dee is the only one capable of the reciprocal, necessary violence.”
Calliope channeled her old MoFo again, and suddenly we were sucked back through the waves of time, plopped into the middle of a nightmare. “Raaaaaaaaa! The gun cabinet, where are the keys, they’re at the window, GET BACK, GET BACK, my god…Calliope, what have you done with my keys?”
That even shut Tom Hanks up.
Calliope’s MoFo came to life, materializing in our minds through the muscles of her banana-yellow throat. “Calliope, go girl, go on, through the window—get help, I can’t hold them off…go to Daniel, girl. Tell him to barricade the windows, Calliope, they’re banging on the windows! Oh no! Windows, Calliope! Tell Daniel barricade windows!” I saw a desperate old man, cut off from the world when technology went down. Who was Daniel? A son? A brother? Calliope’s MoFo had no way to call for help other than his beloved parrot. Calliope started preening, a self-soothing act.
My breath became ragged. “They will not come near Dee. They will not know what she is and that she’s here. She will not fight anyone’s stupid war or go near any weapon on this big beautiful blue. Do you understand me? She is the last MoFo on earth. She is my nestling. She will hide out here and I will teach her things and help her become a grownup MoFo.”
“Bravo! Bravo! Encore!” cheered Tom Hanks, perfectly mimicking the sound of applause.
Ghubari laughed. “My dear friend, all these years and you’ve never given up your hankering for the old days, the times of Rohan and Big Jim. She is not of that world or that time. She, too, is changed.”
“No!” I’d spent a decade wishing to hear Ghubari talk, and now I didn’t want him to speak anymore.
“Take her unusually long toes, or the shape of her. Though young, I can see how strong she is. Her legs—”
“No!” I told him.
“She has a tree climber’s hands and a body that survived a virus none of her species could.”
“Enough!”
“She has the eyes of a night hunter. She sees better than we can in the dark, can’t she? How is her sense of smell?”
“STOP, GHUBARI!”
“What deal has she struck with the mosquitoes that they haven’t eaten her alive? She sings the bombination of bees and knows how to read the language of the natural world like no other human has ever done. I sense she knows it better than you or I.”
“She is MoFo—she is better than the natural world!”
“She is of the natural world, S.T. Humans were never exempt or separate from nature. She is a survivor, seventy percent water, just like the planet she hails from. She is not from the old world. She is a wonderfully wild thing and she belongs in nature. You cannot trap her this way. If you drive a pin into the back of a butterfly, it will never get to taste a life.”
“She’s not a stupid butterfly—”
“That’s a metaphor—”
“Yes, I know what a fucking metaphor is! I’m not trap
ping her! I want her to live a safe life; I want her to be what she’s supposed to be—what’s wrong with that? Everything on this planet might want to gawk and poke at her like an endangered zoo animal or destroy her for being born, but I won’t let that happen!” My gular fluttered so hard I was almost panting.
“The hiiiiills are aliiiiiiiiiiive!” Tom Hanks sensed he was losing his audience. He added a peppy, “I can cry on cue!”
“My dear, heart-strong S.T., the only one who is treating her like a caged animal is you! Humans kept themselves from the outside world by encasing themselves in terrariums. An inch of glass to keep nature at bay. You are doing the same to the last human by cutting her off from a world she belongs to. She is not in your possession any more than she is in the possession of The Changed Ones. And you couldn’t control her if you tried—she’s female.”
I thought of Tiffany S. from Tinder’s Beelzebubian wrath when I cached her fake nails. I thought of the bikini barista’s power over Big Jim and how the female wolf spider, black widow, scorpion, and praying mantis murder their male counterparts. I remembered how the female mosquito, never the male, was the one who sucked Big Jim’s plasma, and how after copulation, a male drone bee’s genitals are ripped off and he dies for his queen.
He had a point.
“You can’t hide Dee away from a life. They will come for her. You can’t stop them. But you can prepare her to fight. Maybe the last human can be the one to end this.” He hopped to the tiny table where I was perched, candlelight illuminating his scarlet tail feather. He took a short sip of spilled whiskey. “Her being here, you being here, is giving us great hope. The creatures here are invigorated. They’ll come to love her. They will help protect her as best they can.”
I felt crushed. Broken. Stupid. Drunk. I thought about the words of a walrus: She has a part to play in all of this. It is known. I thought about the female MoFo I had known best, Tiffany S. from Tinder, and how the last time I saw her she was lying unconscious in a white hospital bed, machines chirping like sparrows, tubes snaking up her nose. She’d been attacked on the street for having the audacity to walk alone. Because she was a woman. Because she was prey. And even in a changed world, it was the same for Dee. She was being hunted.
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