Birds and Birthdays

by Christopher Barzak

  “But there isn’t enough light,” she explains. “The Star Catcher keeps taking the moons and stars. I need them. It isn’t just my own state of mind. The problem is out there in the world. How do you say it? Circumstantial?”

  “Yes, yes,” he says. “That’s the word all right. But really, you must stop blaming others. If you are to help yourself, if you are to break this pattern of self-indulgent sadness, this apathy, then you will have to stop blaming others and be able to point your finger back at yourself. For example, have you ever done anything to the Star Catcher that would make him deprive you of stars?”

  “Moons too,” she adds quickly. “We were lovers once. It didn’t work out. But surely that isn’t a reason to strip the sky?”

  “Well now,” says the psychoanalyst, “even the Star Catcher has feelings. I think you should set aside time to think about that. As an exercise in self-abnegation. It can work miracles, really. I’ve seen patients recover in no time flat once they’ve considered themselves as the source of their own problems.”

  The Bird Woman considers this carefully, rubbing the side of her long, beaky nose with her thumb. “I did end things awfully fast,” she admits. “Cut and dried, you know. That’s what mother used to say is best in matters of the heart.”

  “But your mother wasn’t a psychoanalyst,” the psychoanalyst points out, and the Bird Woman can do nothing but nod.

  Before she leaves, the psychoanalyst stops her in the foyer of his office. “Wait,” he says. “You forgot your bag.”

  “I don’t have a bag,” says the Bird Woman.

  “Oh no, it’s just a little something I’m sending you home with. You might need it. In times of distress.”

  “I won’t take pills,” the Bird Woman says. But the psychoanalyst shakes his head.

  “Not necessary at all, in your situation,” he says, and tells her to come back again in a week.

  “Thank you,” says the Bird Woman, noting that he has unconsciously admitted that she has a situation. She nods weakly before opening the door to leave.

  In the cobbled square outside the office building, the Bird Woman pauses before continuing home, wondering what the bag holds. She reaches inside and feels something hairy. She grabs hold of the hair and pulls out the psychoanalyst’s head by his beard. The head hangs upside down from the beard like a pocket watch, dangling and swaying.

  “Hello again,” the psychoanalyst’s head says, looking up (or down, from his own vantage) at the Bird Woman. “Are we home yet?”

  The Bird Woman loves three things best in the world: birds, the stars that give them life (that give her life), and flying. When the Bird Woman learned to fly, her mother worried and worried, she cried in joy and terror to see her daughter soaring higher than even she herself had ever dared to go. On her first flight, the Bird Woman brought back handfuls of clouds for her mother, a shard of sunlight, and two swathes of sky to match her mother’s eyes. She wove the sky into a robe, and years later, she wrapped her mother in that cloth after she died, offering her back to the heavens.

  In the Bird Woman’s memory, her mother is who loved her best. She had warned her not to fly too high. “The sky is not always filled with beauty,” she told the Bird Woman. “Sometimes danger lingers there, my daughter, like storms and lightning.” Always her mother had been saying what seemed to be most obvious, and yet the Bird Woman had flown into her share of storms, had barely dodged several bolts of lightning, no matter that her mother had warned her, and each time her breath would catch in her throat and she would wish, wish, wish that she’d paid her mother more attention.

  She’d found the Star Catcher like that, pedaling through the sky in a mechanical contraption, the wings made of wire and leather, with pulleys attached to its wheels, which pumped the wings to take him higher. She stopped mid-flight and hovered, as if she were a hummingbird, to watch him for a while. She admired a man who wanted to fly. And later, after they had met and the sky and clouds had trembled as they touched, she brought him home to meet her mother. Her mother, though, had cast a crooked finger at him immediately, one long talon landing on his cheek. “You have the stars in your eyes,” she told him. But it wasn’t meant as a compliment. “This one,” she said, turning back to the Bird Woman, “will take what he wants.”

  The Bird Woman’s mother died two months later. The Star Catcher brought a star to the funeral and placed it alongside the flowers from the other mourners. The Bird Woman thought this a grand gesture. He had flown higher than she had to bring this gift for her mother’s funeral, even after her mother had judged him so harshly. As he approached her in the long, twisting queue of mourners, she burst into tears, shocked by her own display of emotion. The Star Catcher slid his arms around her, though, held her close to him. “Be still,” he whispered into her ear, like a command but gentle.

  And so she was.

  At home, the Bird Woman’s sparrow is still struggling to lift itself out of the parchment. She holds the psychoanalyst’s head by his beard in one hand and the caged star in the other. She looks at both. Both look back at her. The psychoanalyst says, “This would be a perfect opportunity to practice appreciating the Star Catcher. Put the star he gave you to good use.”

  The Bird Woman sets the psychoanalyst’s head on her kitchen counter, next to the cutting board. She takes her star to the worktable and opens its cage door. The star doesn’t attempt to escape. It sits inside, softly glowing.

  She reaches in and pulls it out, fitting it inside the palm of her hand, like a stone or a kitten. She strokes it, and it vibrates in return, growing warm. She reaches for a teaspoon, spoons up some of its soft blue light, and sprinkles it over the sparrow’s struggling body. The sparrow pulls itself the rest of the way out of the parchment, stretching its wings, clenching and unclenching its tiny claws, blinking. It cocks its head toward the Bird Woman, waiting for her to explain its existence.

  The Bird Woman places the star back in its cage. She’s delighted that it actually worked. Here is a new bird, a new creation, waiting. Waiting for her to add the final touches to its life.

  She takes down a violin from the top shelf of her closet, propping it between her chin and neck. A long plastic tube dangles from the front of the violin. The Bird Woman pinches the end of the tube between her fingers, brings it close to the sparrow’s small head. “Please,” she says, and the sparrow’s beak creaks open.

  The Bird Woman slips the tube into the sparrow’s mouth, like a mother feeding a worm to her hatchling. She lifts bow to strings and begins to play something sweet and lilting, but no music can be heard within the room. The music slides down through the tubing instead. Sometimes green and sometimes golden, it moves through the tubing into the sparrow. The column of the sparrow’s throat moves up and down as the little bird drinks the music up in greedy measures. When the Bird Woman finishes her song, she lays the violin aside, pulls the tube out, and the sparrow begins to sing.

  “Lovely,” says the Bird Woman, nodding her approval.

  “Indeed,” the psychoanalyst’s head says, beaming along with her from the kitchen counter. “See, my dear. You just have to get on with things. Stop blaming others. You couldn’t have done this if the Star Catcher hadn’t given you that star.”

  Reminded, the Bird Woman looks back to the star, but the cage is empty. Only a small pile of ash lies steaming in the place where it had been glowing just moments ago.

  “This star is dead,” says the Bird Woman the next morning, pushing the cage with the remains inside it toward the Star Catcher. “You gave me a dying star.”

  “I did no such thing,” says the Star Catcher. He stands in the frame of his front door, holding his hands up to his chest, embarrassed, worried that one of his other customers might be passing by and hear this accusation. “That star was fine when I gave it to you,” he says, pointing a long finger toward it. “Did you use it to make a new bird?”

  “I used a bit of its light to finish a sparrow,” says the Bird Woman.

>   “Well there you have it,” says the Star Catcher, throwing his hands in the air. “You killed it for the creation of your birds.”

  “They aren’t my birds,” the Bird Woman corrects. “They’re just birds. And no star should die from giving up a teaspoon of light. Believe me, I’m the expert on that. I’m the expert on something.”

  “Sorry,” says the Star Catcher. “But that star would have been fine if you’d left it alone.”

  The Bird Woman clenches her lips and grips both of her hands together, flexing the muscles in her fingers. She wants to lash out at the Star Catcher, but she’ll hold her hands to each other rather than touch him like that. The Star Catcher likes to be treated as a child. Violence toward him will not help matters at all.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, finally. “You’re right. My fault, my fault,” she mutters, and turns to leave, shoulders shrugging. Why did she even try?

  “Wait!” the Star Catcher shouts behind her.

  And the Bird Woman turns back, startled, to find him holding his front door open wide. “I think I can help you,” he says, moving aside, waving her toward the dark foyer behind him. “Please. Come inside.”

  The Star Catcher owns a lighthouse on the edge of the island. Made from chalky white stones, it nearly touches the sky. It continually sends signals out to nearby boats to warn them away from rocks and dangerous waters. All of the boatmen appreciate the Star Catcher’s tower. They call him brother, Guardian of the Light. The Bird Woman has passed by ships in the boatyards, docking or unloading goods from other lands, has heard these men praising the Star Catcher’s brilliance. Unable to remain quiet, each time she has called out, “Fools! You thank the one who possesses your constellations!” They forget the troubles they and their fathers have had navigating without them. How in the last ten years, as the Star Catcher has taken down the stars, more boats manned by their brothers and sisters have wrecked upon the shores of foreign lands, never again to be seen or heard from. He has not only taken the light from the skies, thinks the Bird Woman, but the light from their minds. As she passes the wharf, she opens her beak and caws a short, shocking curse. Some men look up from their nets, but she carries on, not looking at the Star Catcher, who has led her here from his apartment building, until they reach the lighthouse, that gleaming tower at the end of the last curl in her island.

  The Bird Woman has forgotten how much space the Star Catcher’s lighthouse contains. She herself makes do with that little cottage on the north side of the island, consisting of only two rooms. The Star Catcher’s lighthouse, though, goes up and up, catwalks climbing level after level. He ascends a spiral staircase that begins in the center of the first floor, his boots thumping every step of the way, and the Bird Woman follows behind his dark flowing robes.

  As they climb to the top, the light inside the building grows stronger, and the Bird Woman’s breath grows shorter with each step that she takes. Her cheeks flush, warm and ruddy under her feathers. Finally she asks, “Where are you taking me, Ivan? I haven’t got time for your games.”

  “Just a little further,” says the Star Catcher, looking over his shoulder and smiling. His smile is innocent and earnest, which makes the Bird Woman smile back. She always liked it when the Star Catcher was happy or excited about something. He was always very sincere at those times.

  They reach the top floor of the lighthouse and stand before a door where light for the signal originates — the lantern room. The door to this room is closed, but light seeps from the edges of the doorframe, outlining it in the dark stairwell. The Star Catcher flings the door open and steps aside, so the Bird Woman can enter before him. And as she does, the Bird Woman throws her hand to her mouth, gasping.

  Inside, stacked up in large mounds, are heaps of moons and stars, no lighthouse lantern at all. The stars and moons lay together like pieces of gold in a cave full of stolen treasure. Or, the Bird Woman thinks, like bodies. Dead bodies. Together the stars and moons sigh and shuffle a little to one side or the other, bumping into each other weakly. But even if they could move, where would they go? She almost retches.

  “Ivan,” she whispers. “What have you done?”

  The Star Catcher looks back and forth between the mound of stars and the Bird Woman, grinning. “They’re for you, my dear,” he says. “All of them. Everything.”

  Down, down, down. Then down even farther. The Bird Woman hops and flutters down the spiral stairwell, still aghast at the thought of the stars locked inside the Star Catcher’s tower. Already she knows she will not be able to live with the memory of what she’s seen, of what he’s done, the memory of what he’s taken from the world, from its people. Imagine their upturned faces, staring into emptiness, the sky reflecting nothing of their lives below, providing no guidance, no hint of life outside their own world. It is my fault, thinks the Bird Woman. Even if they’ve forgotten.

  The Star Catcher follows with his robes flapping behind him. “Jessica! Jess! Wait! You don’t understand!”

  “I understand perfectly,” the Bird Woman squawks over her shoulder. She grabs hold of the brass knob on the front door and pushes it open. Warm sunlight pours in. On the street a wagon pulled by two oxen creaks by. Two children, a boy and a girl of ten or eleven, sit on the back of the wagon, waving and laughing, legs dangling. The Bird Woman waves back, breathing deeply, sighing. She turns around then to face the Star Catcher once more. “Never speak to me again,” she says.

  “But —” the Star Catcher reaches out to touch her.

  “No, Ivan,” the Bird Woman says.

  “I did it for you,” he says. “The stars are yours if you want them.”

  The Bird Woman cocks her head to one side, studying the Star Catcher’s face in deep curiosity: the wide-set eyes, unbearably blue and seemingly innocent; the wide forehead, wrinkled in earnest confusion; the cherub lips; the hands, too soft for the sort of work he does. The Bird Woman sees what he says is the truth. How can he speak truth though, she wonders, and still pry the stars from their homes? The Bird Woman suddenly wishes the psychoanalyst’s head were there with her. He would have answers. Possibly not correct answers, but answers nonetheless.

  “For me?” she says, repeating his words, and the Star Catcher nods. “If they’re for me, Ivan,” she says, “then I suggest you replace them. Put them back where they belong.”

  “No,” the Star Catcher says. He shakes his head and shrugs. “They’re for you, Jess. But here. You can have the stars here, if you like.”

  The Bird Woman looks past the Star Catcher’s face, over his shoulder, at the lighthouse towering behind him, beaming, light stockpiled at the top level. For a moment, she considers what her fate will be if she comes to this place. She will have to have things brought here from her own cottage. She will not be able to do this without help. Finally, she turns back to the Star Catcher. “Here then,” she says, brushing past him, head held high as she returns to the lighthouse.

  Doves, bluejays, cardinals, canaries, jackdaws, falcons — soon the lighthouse is filled with the flapping of wings, the flash of feathers, the screech and holler of birds. Two owls call back and forth to each other, measuring the night together. The Bird Woman sits cross-legged on the cold flagstones at the top of the lighthouse, sketching, shading, painting, filling the mouths of her creations with notes from her violin.

  The Star Catcher brings her tea, plates of toast spread with cream and honey. “Busy, busy,” he says, stroking her cheek with the tips of his fingers. Then he disappears for an hour, only to return with his hands empty, smiling, waiting, peering over the Bird Woman’s shoulder. “What’s this one to be?” he asks.

  “An ostrich,” the Bird Woman tells him. “Please. I need space. I can’t work with you looking over my shoulder.”

  “Sorry,” the Star Catcher says, stepping backwards until he reaches the door. “I’ll just be downstairs, then, if you need me.”

  “I don’t need you,” the Bird Woman mutters, after he’s closed the door.

&nbs
p; The Bird Woman stares at her canvas until tears begin to fill her eyes. “Stop that,” she whispers. “Stop it. There are better things in this world that deserve your tears.”

  “What a situation you’ve gotten yourself into,” the psychoanalyst says. His head sits propped up on a nearby bookshelf, his beard trailing over the shelving, almost touching the floor. “I’m beside myself,” he tells the Bird Woman. “Really, I can’t believe how you put up with his constant attentions. It’s disgraceful. You’d think he were some sort of sentinel.”

  “I tried to tell you,” says the Bird Woman.

  “But —” says the psychoanalyst.

  “But you wouldn’t listen,” the Bird Woman tells him.

  “Yes, well,” says the psychoanalyst. “But really, my dear. I’ve never encountered anyone like him. Whatever attracted you in the first place?”

  The Bird Woman considers this question for a moment, one finger placed carefully to her lips, eyes rolled up slightly, as if the answer to that question remains somewhere outside, far up in the sky above. A moment later she begins to stroke brown into the ostrich before her. “I think it was his passion,” she says finally.

  “His passion?” the psychoanalyst asks.

  “His passion for me,” says the Bird Woman.

  “That’s not passion, my dear,” says the psychoanalyst. “That’s obsession. They can seem like the same thing.”

  Footsteps sound on the catwalk outside. “Wonderful,” says the psychoanalyst. “He’s back.”

  The door opens on its oily hinges, and the Star Catcher pokes his head inside. “Still working?” he asks, tentative, cautious. The Bird Woman doesn’t look at him. She only nods and continues painting.

  “Could I bother you for a bite of dinner?” the psychoanalyst asks from his place on the shelves. He raises his eyebrows plaintively.

  The Star Catcher nods. “Of course,” he says. “But really — where do you put it?”