Bird

by Rita Murphy

  I loved coming up into that glass house at night on a full moon with the stars, when they were visible, just out of reach. Walking out into the sky or off the precipice of a mountain could have provided no better view. The quiet, the darkness, the sweet sulfur of the match being struck, the running of the wax, were close to heaven, as close to heaven as I had ever been.

  From that height, everything seemed possible, and the oppressive and mournful nature of the house fell away from me.

  Whenever Wysteria left the Manor, I’d run directly to the top floor and burst onto the walk to catch a parting glimpse of her long, dark cape bustling down the road with the Hounds in close pursuit. In her younger years, she had often traveled to Boston and New York, but of late she ventured no farther than Georgia Plains or the city of Burlington, thirty miles to the south. Still, her departure guaranteed me hours alone to do as I pleased, to spend my day at the top of the house if I so desired, to look down on the life below me and imagine myself free.

  That October afternoon, Wysteria’s thin figure having just disappeared around the bend, I settled myself on the large trunk that served as a bench in the glass house. I often brought the nets up there with me—the light was better than down by the fire—but that day I had left them in the foyer, still tangled and snarled, wet from the boats. I was in no hurry to make sense of them yet. They could wait.

  The day was clear and cloudless. The sun had risen early, warming the glass on the windows and dancing off the swells on the lake. Though it was warm inside, a chill still hung in the air, and so I opened the trunk on which I was sitting to pull out a wool blanket for my shoulders. I shook it vigorously to knock out the dust, and when I did, a key fell to the floor. It was long and thin with unusual engravings upon it, and from its shape I could tell that it was no ordinary key but a skeleton key, a key that could open more than one door, possibly all. I returned the blanket to the trunk, immediately descended the ladder and diligently began trying the key in every lock in the Manor. By late afternoon, I’d found that it opened all the rooms on the third floor, including my own. After all my years of curiosity, I was greatly disappointed to discover that the rooms were nothing more than dim and barren chambers. There was no hidden fortune, no ancient furniture that seemed worthy of a lock.

  The only room that was not empty was Captain Barrows’s study, a large, handsome chamber with a broad stone hearth and bay windows looking out over the water. A sturdy rolltop desk stood in one corner, and heavy woven rugs covered the floor. With the exception of a thick layer of dust from lack of use, the study was surprisingly comfortable. The other rooms were cold and sparsely furnished in comparison, not places where I wished to spend any time. The captain’s study, on the other hand, was warm and full of his life.

  Wysteria never spoke of her husband, but that winter, as I spent every free moment I could in his study, I came to know Captain Lawrence Barrows, and I began to like this man whom I had never met, and never would. I came to know him only through his model ships, the logs of his days at sea and the many maps that marked his journeys. The captain had sailed around the world twice, had frequented castles and dined with thieves. And he had the great generosity to help one small girl find her way, for it was from the captain’s room, through a hidden passage, that I discovered the entrance to the attic and his bevy of kites.

  4

  Each morning, before the sun rose and while Wysteria still slept, I used the skeleton key to leave my bedchamber and make my way to the attic and then to the widow’s walk to fly the captain’s kites.

  I had come upon the entrance to the attic purely by chance, having accidentally fallen against the far wall of the captain’s study as I tried to free a volume from his bookcase. My weight was enough to move the wall ever so slightly, allowing me to see that it was in fact not a wall at all but a slender panel that when pushed open revealed a steep and narrow staircase. At the top of the stairs was a door that could not be opened by any key, and so I spent several fretful hours picking at it with a hairpin and file. Once inside, I was quickly overtaken by its curious contents: dozens of kites, a few bolts of silk and what appeared to be a paper-making device equipped with screens, frames and buckets for mixing slurry. After more than an hour’s examination, I took several kites from their shadowy lair up onto the walk to examine them in the light, for there was also a stairway that led from the attic, through a hatch that blended perfectly with the floorboards of the glass house.

  As far as Wysteria knew, I entered the walk only by the obvious trapdoor and only in the evenings to light the lantern. I had no business up there at any other time, and she would have been shocked and angered to find me there with the captain’s kites about me, for I suspected she knew nothing of their existence. Yet I could think of no place I would rather be. In the light of day, the walk was most spectacular.

  From the top of the house, I could see all of Fairfax County, and absolutely no one could see me. Only a rare gull flying inland might catch a sideways glimpse as I stepped outside onto the walk and let my hair loose. Long and wild and set free of its braid, it was whipped about me in all directions by the strong breezes. In Wysteria’s presence, I was required to keep it securely fastened and pulled tight to my head, as she did her own. “A woman’s hair is a vanity of the worst kind, Miranda,” she often preached at the dinner table.

  Although no portrait of her hung on any of the Manor’s walls, it was evident that Wysteria valued her looks and harbored her own unique brand of vanity. I often observed her admiring her reflection in the mirror above the stone mantel in the sitting room. That Wysteria had once been attractive was not difficult to imagine. She had distinctly fine features, high cheekbones and translucent porcelain skin. Her figure was still as slender as a young woman’s. It was not surprising that she clung to her looks; after all, they had saved her from a life of poverty. Yet we were never to speak of appearances. If one was good-looking, one did not mention it. Beauty spoke for itself.

  Try as I might, I could not see Wysteria as truly beautiful, for she possessed a cold, hardened quality. I certainly could not see her hair set free and roaming down her shoulders.

  I loved the way my own hair fell into the breeze, though, and I would stand, a little too long perhaps, imagining what it would be like to let not only my hair but my whole self be taken again by the wind. Not since the day I was blown to Bourne Manor had I felt the awesome and frightening sensation of that powerful current sweeping beneath my feet, the strange invisible hands pushing me forward faster than I could go myself. I remembered distinctly that familiar prodding at my back, the brush of air at my side and the sudden feeling of being cut loose from the earth and carried along like a leaf. There was nothing I could do, no stopping it.

  “Not so high,” I’d called out that last time. “Not so high!” But the wind had done as it pleased, tossing and lifting my light frame into the currents.

  Though I cannot remember anyone ever seeing me taken up, there was always the lingering feeling upon landing or finally getting caught by a branch that perhaps someone had seen and, finding no rational explanation for what they’d witnessed, would judge me strange and maybe even wicked in some way. I knew that my being taken by the wind was something that must never be mentioned, something that must always be held close.

  Perhaps one day the wind would come for me again, but until then I felt its power in the captain’s kites, which over time I smuggled up to the glass house on my evening’s watch and kept hidden inside the large trunk. My favorite was the Red Dragon. I’d named it for its fierce face and vibrant color. There were many kites with bold faces and long, swift tails, but the Red Dragon was different from the others. It was the most delicate of all, with silk so finely layered it resembled the wings of a dragonfly. It was, too, the most spirited, wild and impetuous like a young bird, ardently pulling against its line and diving dangerously close to the Manor.

  I could not take the chance that Wysteria might ever see a kite flying from t
he top of the house, so I always flew the Red Dragon on the lake side, far from her window and far from the branches of the great elm tree. I was more likely to be swept away at that high spot with a kite in my hand than down at the shoreline, and, not wanting to end up pasted to the outside of Wysteria’s bedroom window, I took the precaution of securing myself to the wrought-iron railing with a long anchor line I’d rescued the summer before from the tide. It smelled of milfoil and fish gone rancid, and I hated to wrap it around myself, for I knew the rank odor would seep into the fibers of my wool bodice, requiring me to wash and dry it so as not to arouse Wysteria’s suspicion. The line remained a necessity, however, as I had stayed as small and thin as on the day that I’d arrived, though I was no longer as frail as in those early years.

  I was never sure exactly how the captain’s kites were meant to be flown. The silk kites were simple enough, but the paper kites were unlike anything I had ever seen, as if a part of each was missing or was meant to be connected to something greater than itself. How to explain the extra cords and clasps that hung from their frames? How to decipher the meaning of the little flaps wrapped tightly to the midpole of each?

  I could not cast the kites into the air with a running start, as one would on the beach, but instead had to fly them from a standing position on the walk. I devised a system of slowly letting out the line while holding a kite as far as I could from myself, setting it free only when I sensed enough of a breeze picking it from the underside and puffing it gently away from me. Of course, there were days, particularly in the fall and spring, when the weather was too wild to fly any of the kites, even the more robust paper ones, and I kept them inside. I felt a strong obligation to the captain’s creations and didn’t wish any to come to harm.

  I became an expert in charting the weather, searching offshore for signs of low-lying clouds or fog and spotting thunderheads. I could feel the wind calling to me on certain days in those wild clouds, and I knew that given a chance it would come for me, ripping at the layers of the heavy woolen dresses and overcoats that Wysteria had so carefully stitched, and steal me away, leaving me high in a tree, or on the top of one of the mountains across the lake. I was not yet ready for such a journey. For that kind of journey I needed time. I needed Farley.

  5

  In the seventh year that I lived with Wysteria Barrows, my isolation came to an end. For that spring, as the forsythia bloomed on the cliffs and the sea grass took root, I met the boy named Farley.

  There are certain people who glide so swiftly and immediately into your life that their entrance is almost invisible. I cannot say whether it was morning or afternoon when I first spotted Farley, with his distinctive red wool cap, wandering the shoreline, only that it was spring, as that is the season I most associate with him. Spring and the smell of lilacs.

  That year, spring followed a long, hard winter, and the nets Wysteria brought home for me were in desperate shape, having been torn on the ice and snagged by driftwood. It was rare that I had a day to leave them or to be away from Wysteria, as she had a tendency to hover when there was little money and much work to be done, which was the case that year. As well, the bitter winter had left her with a lingering cough, rendering her thin and weak and more in need of me than usual. I had taken over the upkeep of the accounts while she recovered, and was painfully aware of the little we had left.

  “One hundred nets this week, Miranda, and not one less. The cupboards are in a pitiful state.” My fingers ached at the prospect.

  The winter supply of wheat and oats Wysteria and I had stored away in October was almost gone. There was no sugar or butter, and the salt cod we often took as payment for our work was running low. We resisted combing the beach to uncover mussels so early in the season, but we often resorted to pulling long, slimy ropes of kelp from the bay and boiling them into a soup. It was full of sand and tasted of rotten fish, but it filled our stomachs while we waited.

  “Why must it always come down to the wire?” Wysteria complained one morning as we ate the last bit of bread in the pantry the day before Captain Stewart made payment.

  It did seem that no matter how much work we took in, the month of April was always lean. “Time to clean out the blood,” Wysteria generally offered in response to our yearly dilemma and the grim condition of the pantry. “Fast hard and true before the bounty of summer takes hold.” But her tone was not as staunch that year. A sound bowl of meat broth would have done us both good.

  Through the blizzards and frozen nights of late February and early March, we’d had enough to eat, and the furnace had blown out its share of warmth. We’d closed off most of the Manor and kept company in the great room on the first floor in front of the massive stone fireplace. We’d even slept there on occasion, bundled in quilts and woolen blankets, our hats pulled down over our ears. On milder days, when I wasn’t keeping track of the Hounds, I spent my time in the captain’s study repairing the kites, replacing ragged tails with new ones and gingerly pasting the fine paper panels around their slender frames where they had broken free.

  With the good weather now upon us, I longed to escape from Wysteria’s presence and the damp and gloom of the Manor. If I had waited for her to leave the fireside, I might well have waited into the summer, so I took the chance of stealing away to the walk one afternoon while she napped.

  The breeze that day was warm and mild, and I did not bother to tie myself to the railing but instead slipped on my heavy boots and launched the Red Dragon.

  The wind took it easily up and out past the elm to the dunes at the far end of the beach. It was a glorious sight. Its rich color was set off by the deep blue of the sky. It had better balance now with the new tail I had made for it, an array of thin silk ribbons that raced playfully behind, giving the Dragon a whimsical appearance.

  When it had reached a height of more than twenty feet, I tied it off on the railing and bent down to adjust the laces of my boots. They were long laces, forever breaking free of the stays that held them in place, and had to be retied countless times in the course of a day. The shoemaker’s design lacked one important feature: a button to string the laces around at the top. I had tried sewing buttons on myself, but none of the needles in Wysteria’s mending basket were stout enough to pierce leather. Through the years, I had found that wrapping the laces firmly about my ankle several times and knotting them twice could keep them in place.

  I carefully tucked the remaining cordage inside the top of each boot to keep it from straying and stood up slowly, instinctively reaching for the tether of the Dragon, but it was not there. It had loosened itself and wandered to the far side of the rail. I made a futile lunge for the end of the line, sure that I could retrieve it and pull it back in, but it eluded my grasp and drifted away. I was stunned. I had never lost hold of a kite. I was always steadfast in my duty of keeping them within range and could not believe my eyes as the tether disappeared over the railing’s edge. All I could do was watch as the Dragon rose, then dipped dramatically to the east, its exotic tail fluttering behind.

  Unaccustomed to its freedom, it wandered, at first high above the bay and then scouring along the sand. If I had not been so afraid of losing it forever, I would have appreciated the beauty of its dance. Nothing holding it back, it soared in a way not possible when attached to a harness, rising and dipping and finally disappearing around the cliff’s edge. I did not see it reappear and so determined that it must have caught itself on a rock or crashed in the sand just beyond the cliffs. It would have been a walk of no more than ten minutes to find and retrieve the Dragon from its snare, but I could not simply stroll out the front door and rescue it as an ordinary person might. Wysteria was at home and would know if I left. She would hear the click of the latch on the front door, a sound I had not made since the day of the storm almost one year before.

  I had on that particular morning left the Manor to walk unaccompanied to the shore to collect seaweed. I’d laced on my boots and taken one of the heavy mesh sacks that hung by the d
oor. The Hounds had stayed behind, occupied with a ball of rough twine they had uncovered in the brush. I’d become bold, wandering farther and farther from the Manor, safe in the knowledge that the steel plates in my boots would keep me anchored to the earth. Wysteria had allowed this outing, as I was more help to her if I could fetch and carry, though she would never send me all the way into town on my own.

  Whether it was the result of the storm beginning to blow in off the lake or of my desire to walk close to the cliff’s edge that afternoon, I cannot say, but on my return, my sack heavy with wet kelp, I was thrust suddenly and violently off the cliff and onto the beach below. As though a giant’s hand had smacked me to the earth, I was pinned with my face pressed hard into the sand. No sooner had I recovered than I was lifted and hurled into a hawthorn bush, where Wysteria later found me.

  After that day, and several tedious and futile attempts to create heavier and safer boots, I was forbidden ever to leave the Manor without Wysteria by my side.

  “You are, as I have always surmised, overly susceptible to the wind, Miranda, and I cannot afford to have you flying off from me or injuring yourself beyond repair. From now on, it is the safety of the fireside for you.”

  In the months that followed, I often asked to go outside on my own, if only for brief excursions, but my requests were adamantly denied. Wysteria had not forgotten my narrow escape, nor would she ever forget, and she reminded me resolutely that I could not control myself when it came to the weather and therefore must be protected for my own good.