Oddity

by Eli Brown

  “What is it?” The tears came again. Clover tried to remember if her father had ever given her another hint, any clue, any —

  A scream echoed through the trees.

  It wasn’t a human voice, exactly. And it wasn’t the lovesick wail of a fox, or the glassy screech of an owl. It shook the air again, urgent and pained. People said a witch used to walk these woods, a shifting shadow, like something seen through a broken window. Widow Henshaw called her the Seamstress and said she spoke with two voices, wore a necklace of teeth she’d stolen from sleeping kids, and smelled like the dead animals she carried in her basket.

  “The witch isn’t real,” Clover told herself. “Just a story to scare children . . .”

  But oddities were real. And that scream was real.

  When she heard it a second time, Clover lifted the bags and headed for a rocky outcropping. Before a flank of boulders, like a theater erected for no one, Clover witnessed a lonely battle.

  A feral dog had caught a rooster and was shaking it savagely between its teeth. The dog was a hunting breed, but it had been a long time since it had seen its owner, and lean ribs showed under its brindle coat. The rooster’s feathers were brilliant and glistened even as the animals struggled. It was the expensive kind of fowl that won prizes in farmers’ almanacs.

  The bird was hopelessly outmatched, and it let out the tortured howls that had brought Clover running. The violence of the dog’s attack broke the rooster’s wing. The bird let out another shriek and twisted frantically.

  Clover looked for a long stick to separate them, but suddenly it was the dog that was yowling. The rooster, having turned over the broken wing, had planted one long spur deep into the meat of the dog’s nose. It clawed at the dog’s eyes with the other foot.

  The dog immediately opened its mouth, releasing the bird, but the rooster held on, dragged along as the dog tried to retreat.

  When they finally parted, the dog ran yelping into the trees. The rooster paced in a wounded circle, its wrenched wing dragging in the dust behind.

  Looking at that broken bird, confused and bleeding, felt like looking into a mirror. Clover was still crying, but she set down her bags and wiped her cheeks with her palms. Pity softened her ragged voice as she said, “Come here, you poor thing.”

  The rooster jumped and turned to fight her, the hackles of its neck and chest bristling. It tried to flap its wings, but the broken one only shuddered on the ground. Then it wobbled and fainted into a heap of black and turquoise feathers.

  Clover sat on a log and held the rooster between her knees, its good wing pinned tightly, keeping the brutal spurs pointed away from her. The head dangled loose over her thigh, but the bird was still breathing.

  The smart thing would have been to put the bird out of its misery and roast it over a fire. Clover didn’t know when she would see another meal. She pulled her knife out of her haversack but couldn’t bring herself to slit the rooster’s throat. There had been too much blood already. It seemed the wing was broken in only one place. If Clover helped, this bird might live.

  It was foolish to doctor a bird. But just moments ago, Clover had felt so lost, so utterly helpless, that she was glad to find something she knew how to do. All of the sticks she could see nearby were either too gnarled or too gummed with sap to be of any use. Clover fished around in the medical bag and found the chestnut tongue depressor. She had whittled it herself. It wasn’t the oddity she was looking for, but it fit the wing well enough.

  “This will hurt,” Clover said, pulling on the joints to set the bone.

  The rooster woke with a wild squawk. It didn’t struggle, though, as she went about applying the splint. Its plumage made a tight wrap difficult until Clover found that if she pushed the secondary feathers down, she could provide more support for the bandage. She could tell by the way its claws clenched that the bird was in considerable pain, but it held bravely still, cocking its head to peer at her with brick-colored eyes.

  “That is competent work,” the Rooster said. “For a field dressing, at least.”

  Clover almost threw the bird to the ground. “Oh dear,” she said. It was only her years of training that kept her still in this moment of shock. “Are you talking?”

  “I am wounded. But I take solace in the fact that I am in the care of a medic. You are a medic, I hope?”

  “I . . . am.”

  “Good, then. Kindly keep to your task.”

  Clover blinked at the Rooster. There was no reason not to finish the splint. Maybe she was losing her mind, but she knew better than to panic during a medical procedure. She could almost hear her father behind her, saying, See to the body in front of you.

  Holding the splint in place while binding it took a long time; Clover was learning the angles of bird anatomy as she went. She made a final loop of gauze and began to tie the bandage.

  “A good medic is invaluable. I thank you for your service,” the Rooster said. It spoke rapidly. This was something Clover had seen in other wounded patients. “Are you part of the State Watch? We are in dire need of trained field nurses, and I’ll personally arrange to have you promoted —”

  “You’re stunned,” Clover said quietly. The Rooster’s tail feathers, long and curled like the strips of wood from a carpenter’s lathe, were getting tangled in the gauze. “Sit still and let me finish.”

  “Stunned? It would take more than a hooligan ambush to stun a decorated officer of the Federal Army! “Perturbed” is the word. “Inconvenienced,” perhaps, but hardly “stunned”! I don’t want to intimidate you, but you’re speaking to none other than Colonel —”

  “Colonel Hannibal Furlong,” Clover interrupted. “Of course you are.”

  The Journal of Anomalous Objects listed Hannibal Furlong as a rare “living oddity,” but the idea of a talking rooster commanding an army was too peculiar even for Clover. She’d always suspected his entry was a fabrication, or at least an exaggeration. The “Cockerel Colonel” was one of the tall tales passed around by old veterans. He was a legendary hero of the Louisiana War, famous for defending Fort Kimball through a four-day siege by the French. Then, during the notorious “Furlong Retreat,” he had ordered his men to sit backward on their horses so they could fire on their pursuers.

  “If you know who I am, then there’s no excuse for a saucy tongue,” Hannibal said. “Don’t tie it too tightly.”

  “Just calm down,” Clover said, more to herself than to Hannibal. It was like meeting the sandman or Jack Frost. But this rooster was no folktale; his mustard-colored feet clenched as Clover tightened the bandage. Clover felt the world spinning under her and tried to take deep breaths. “I’m almost done.”

  “Who tells their commanding officer to ‘calm down’? A tongue-wag is bad for morale —”

  “Colonel?”

  “What is it?”

  “I apologize for my insubordination.” Clover saluted, hoping to calm the Rooster.

  “Finally you show some sense,” Hannibal said. “Apology accepted.”

  “Will you stop flapping and let me finish the splint?”

  Hannibal lay still, studying her as she completed her work. Clover folded the splinted wing gently back against his body, made one last adjustment to the wrapping, and set the bird on his feet.

  He pecked and prodded at the bandage, shrugging a few times before saying, “Well done! Despite the fact that you saluted with the wrong hand, you’re a fine medic. Now tell me, before we get any further, have you seen anything suspicious in these woods?”

  “Suspicious?”

  “Louisianan hideouts? Evidence of passing Frenchmen? Spies?”

  “But the war is over,” Clover said, remembering her father’s lessons. “We signed a treaty. Napoléon Bonaparte kept his territory and we kept ours.”

  “And what did we profit?” Hannibal wagged one pinion feather like a schoolteacher. “Just what did that flimsy paper treaty afford us?”

  “Peace!” Clover answered, remembering her father’s l
ectures. “We have eleven states and peace with the French and with the Indians too. That’s a good deal. That’s plenty.”

  “You are too young to know what we lost,” Hannibal said. “What a great nation we nearly were.” Then he chuckled kindly. “But I should know better than to argue history with a child. I was there. You were not.” Hannibal gave his feathers a good shake and scanned the timberline with suspicion. “What is your name, medic?”

  “Clover Elkin.”

  “Elkin, is it?” Hannibal’s stare was unnerving. Suddenly he hopped up and crowed, making Clover flinch.

  “Clover Elkin, fortune has thrown us together. Victory is on our side! We’ll rest here for a spell before proceeding together,” Hannibal announced.

  Was the Rooster overly glad to meet her or was Clover losing her wits? She began to giggle, unable to contain the dizzy bubbles that welled up inside her.

  “Do you have a joke?” Hannibal asked. “I have never objected to a tasteful joke.”

  “I have just met one of the only living oddities, the famous Hannibal Furlong!” Clover said. “It’s not funny. I’m sorry . . . I’ve had a shock.” The giggles turned to tears. Clover wiped her eyes with a gritty sleeve. She felt as though she were still tumbling down the river, carried blindly on a swift and unkind course.

  She recalled the heaps of fish that had lined the shore of the lake and gasped at a sudden understanding: the fish had been driven out of the water by the frigid power of the Ice Hook.

  “What have I done?” Guilt frosted her skin. “I wanted to see New Manchester, wanted to carry an oddity, wanted to be like her. He warned me,” Clover said. “How many times did he warn me they would bring trouble?”

  “What are you talking about?” Hannibal asked.

  “Trouble came. I killed the lake. I killed Father —”

  “Just what is this about?”

  “I have to put it right. Somehow I have to . . .”

  Clover reached into the bag, desperate to find her father’s oddity. Hannibal watched her with a judge’s silence as she pulled a tourniquet out of its leather pouch, the brass screw green with age. Clover quieted her breath to focus on the task, trying to put her feelings aside. She tightened the tourniquet above her elbow until her pulse disappeared. Then released the buckle and shook her hand as the blood returned. The tourniquet worked just as it always had. It kept people from bleeding to death during amputations . . . but it was not odd.

  There were glass vials of peppercorn-size pills in the bag: quinine, mandrake, poppy, ginseng, and digitalis. Clover removed the corks and crushed one of each kind between her nails, giving them a sniff. The odors were sharp and familiar. Nothing remarkable.

  Hannibal’s attention had turned to the wood lice in the mossy crags, but as he pecked, he cast concerned glances at Clover. She peered through the little tin funnel, blew air through the catheter tubes. With every item she dismissed she got closer to her father’s secret.

  Three surgical needles, she knew them well. She’d been suturing since she was eleven. If there was anything odd about them, she would have noticed.

  The Ice Hook had been overflowing with power; she’d felt it immediately. Whatever oddity her father had carried was holding its power close, hiding until it was needed.

  Clover realized that she was afraid of finding it. For Constantine to harbor an oddity, it had to be desperately important. Suddenly “necessary” sounded like a threat.

  Hannibal preened his injured wing. “The bandage will keep,” he announced. “I need no more of your doctoring now, so if this frenzy is —”

  “It’s not for you,” Clover said. The fading light came through the trees at a lonesome angle. “Oh dear.” Clover set the bag down. “We’re going spend the night out here.”

  “We all miss the comforts of home,” Hannibal said kindly. “But don’t fear, I’ve already spotted a good site to pitch camp. Now, if you’ve completed . . . whatever that was, fall in behind me.”

  She could imagine how a voice like his could command troops, and she had no better plan. Clover didn’t want to be alone, so she gathered her bags and followed the bird to a shallow overhang in the side of the mountain.

  From this height they could see the last embers of the sunset fading behind the dog-toothed peaks. In the valley below, the fog was thick as quilt batting. All her life, Clover had walked through that mist, but now she was perched high enough to see its unfurled beauty, a silver scarf muffling the indigo shadows.

  “We cannot make a fire, of course,” Hannibal said.

  “Someone might see us,” Clover said, thinking of the bandits.

  “Now you’re thinking like a proper soldier. These rocks have been warming in the sun. If we stay close to them, we won’t freeze.”

  “It’s just as well,” Clover said, setting herself down in the hollow. “I’m skittish around fires anyway.”

  “Are you?”

  “Worse than skittish. I’d rather see a pack of wolves than a fire burning free.”

  “Is that so?” Hannibal was surprised. “I mean to say, what a thing to fear when there are vermin and voyageurs lurking about. Never you mind, though. We’ve got good vantage here, and I’ll keep the first watch.”

  “Well, I didn’t choose to fear it.” Clover turned her back on Hannibal and opened her haversack.

  Hannibal cleared his throat and said, “I myself am not overly fond of snakes.”

  “No one is fond of snakes,” Clover said. She found Widow Henshaw’s raisin buns flattened into a wet mush. She scooped the mess out with her tin cup and looked at it in the gloom.

  “I have . . . Let’s call it bread pudding,” Clover said. “Would you like some?”

  He hopped onto her knee to peer into the tin cup. “Hunger trumps formality, I suppose.”

  They took turns picking the mush from the cup, Clover scooping with her finger, Hannibal dipping his whole head in and emerging with smeared cheeks. When the food was gone, darkness came quickly, like a blanket thrown over the earth.

  Hannibal hunkered into a pile of leaves and asked, “Clover Elkin, what exactly is your mission?”

  “All I know is that I’m supposed to find Aaron Agate in New Manchester.”

  “Well, there you go,” Hannibal said, cleaning his beak on a stone as if sharpening a knife. “I myself am headed to New Manchester to deliver my report to Senator Auburn. You’ll be safe with me.”

  Hannibal spoke so confidently that Clover wanted to believe him. But he reminded her of the old fishermen of Salamander Lake who traded war stories while they mended nets. Those stories changed a little with every telling, threaded through and knotted with feats of bravery and other fantasies. Even though Hannibal was a legendary hero of the Louisiana War, it was hard to take him too seriously. Anyway, he’d already tucked his head under his good wing and was fast asleep.

  “I thought you were taking the first watch.” Clover sighed. She lay down, clutching her father’s bag to her chest, feeling the items shifting as she breathed.

  Darkness soaked into the world like ink on silk. Coyotes cackled in the valley below. Bats stirred the air. Clover sat up at every rustle, peering into the depths. The unblinking moon stared with her, its cataract light casting uncertain shadows.

  When she could hardly keep her eyes open, she saw her father looking down at her, his ghostly features cleaved with worry.

  “How will you ever forgive me?” Clover begged. She saw now the bullet hole perfectly centered in his chest — a bloodless cavity, small enough for a caterpillar to have chewed, but it still looked as if it could swallow Clover whole. “You warned me they were trouble. I was too stubborn to listen. I know I brought this on us somehow.”

  “Trouble breeds trouble,” he said, placing his hand over the wound as if to hide a stain.

  “The trouble isn’t over, is it? Please tell me how to set things right.”

  “Sweet child, I taught you to find the source of the bleeding and to mend it. I taught you
to proceed with focus until the task was complete. A doctor must be composed even in the bloody tumult.”

  “I will find a way to avenge you.”

  “Vengeance is a coward’s game,” he said, sitting next to his daughter. His body was only moonlit mist, but his voice had warmth and weight. “I didn’t raise a wolf,” he said. “I raised a physician.”

  “But how do I —?”

  “I told you. Protect the oddity. Take it to the Society.”

  “I will. Father, I am trying. But which one is the oddity? I can’t tell.”

  “It is necessary,” Constantine answered. “It holds hope.”

  Hannibal crowed at the rising sun as if it were the enemy he was looking for. Clover was awake already. She had arranged her father’s tools on a flat rock. “Bleeding cups, sulfur molasses . . .” she muttered. “Tincture of belladonna . . .”

  These tools were supposed to be her life’s work, the mending of bodies, one stitch at a time, and yet now they were the letters of an unknown language.

  “What have I missed?” she wondered aloud. “Hannibal, do you see an oddity here?”

  Hannibal scanned the assorted tools with an eager eye. “Is it something that can be used in the war effort?” He pecked at a bottle of bitter walnut syrup.

  “Don’t touch that,” Clover said, shooing him away. “He said it held hope,” Clover reasoned. “What better hope is there than health? A cure of some kind.” But Clover couldn’t remember her father using anything special to treat the sick. Grateful patients sometimes praised his “miracles,” but he never hid his methods, and Clover had been taught that medicine was built of hard work and hard study. “And it is necessary.”

  Clover held the tincture of walnut to the light, peering through its dark ink. She shook the empty bag, and a single dime fell out, the only evidence that her father had ever been paid with actual money.

  “Nothing here was listed in the journal. But Widow Henshaw had only three issues, and those were printed before I was born. There could be discoveries, entire collections I don’t know about.”