The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

‘Packed the day before and kept out of sight. Crisp knew all he had to do was get you to come with us and leave you in the middle of nowhere like Hansel in the forest, then come back to collect the money, with your last name attached to mine, your ring upon my finger.

  ‘I can see you don’t believe me,’ she said, the brazen tone returning. She was no more frightened of me than she would be a cat who had woven in and out between her legs and bared its teeth at her touch.

  I rose from the bed, opened my jacket and took a step toward her. Her eyes flicked to the door but she had no chance of getting there. I heard the handle turn and I spun on my heel, for a moment convinced that the door had begun to open at her will. But in came an older woman with her hand on the shoulder of a little girl. Her dark curls flounced around her face as she ran towards Merle, her arms outstretched. I was seized with panic that the child was hers and mine, though of course the age was wrong. Could she be Crisp’s? I could see her piteous ploy: she was going to try and milk me dry. She had been Crisp’s attentive apprentice longer than I.

  ‘See why I could not refuse Crisp? I was on my own and anything is better than earning a living on your back just to pay rent.’ She held the child closely, cupping her head to her breast, stroking the dark hair. Just like my mother would have wanted to hold me. I had no choice but to believe her. All I wanted was what was my very own.

  ‘Do you have my box of things at least?’ I asked, stepping towards her and the child. She had shown me her weak spot now. I tangled my fingers through the child’s fine dark hair and Merle lost all hesitation, finding a fleet quickness in her step. With the child in reach, she kneeled and pulled out my box from under the bed, pushing it toward my feet, a barrier between us. She leaned to scoop up the child, but with one tug I tore the comb from her ruined, bleached hair.

  Wasting no time, I was out the door with the box in my hands, barely a moment to glance at the contents. By myself I was only half of what I could be. What I needed was the perfect helpmeet to complete me in my abilities. And I found her, in a house called Leda, my downy girl, my Lily of the Valley.

  With the golden comb in my pocket I itched to crown her, she that was a price above rubies, my Lily among the thorns. On my own I was still only half of what I could be, but with her, who I had set as a seal upon my heart, I could be more than I dreamed. If Lily believed she could talk with the dead, then she would believe in me. She would be my Beginning and I would be her End.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Ari

  The smell of eucalyptus went right up through my sinuses and into my head, overwhelming my senses. The air was thick with it. Once we’d stepped off the train at Katoomba, the Birdman went to collect some of his belongings from a house not far from the station. A smattering of snow floated in the air as I waited. Could my Uncle Israel really be here in these mountains? His suit that he took so much pride in would be no match against this soul-chilling cold. The Birdman was not gone long, and he came back laden with a bulging pack, and a grey mass of fur that he threw in my direction. With a complaining caw, Beauty took wing.

  ‘That should sort you out.’ In my hands was a coat made of kangaroo fur and lined with wool, the collar trimmed with the fiery pelt of a fox. I pulled it on. The sleeves ended above the wrists, but it was warm and cut the cold before it could soak any further into my bones. I was glad of it, remembering with a jagged pain the last time I had felt cold like this, as the Angel of Death came close to my ear, as my mother ran with me through the snow. Again I felt the breeze of its wings against my cheek, the dark exhalations of the frozen earth beneath my feet, and I wanted to run – but to where? Away? Home? Home was a place as distant as the nearest star.

  ‘I’ve seen better fits, but it will do you,’ the Birdman said, tugging at the sleeve to see if it would give another few inches.

  We walked off down the road and I tried to adjust to the heavy old coat that smelled of tobacco and must and pulled tight across my back. We were in the mountains but I couldn’t see much, except for the small town we were walking through. Beauty flew along high up above us, and I wished I could see though her sharp eyes the span of the mountains and valleys, to spot from above a broken old man.

  ‘Not long now, my boy, no use going into the belly of the beast without a blessing.’ The supply of cans in the Birdman’s pack knocked together and as we walked down the slope of the street I recited a prayer through my head, only barely noticing the people staring at the strange trio we made – Birdman, Beauty and I, with my weird coat flapping about my legs. I will lift up mine eyes into the mountains: from whence shall my help come? My help comes from HaShem who made Heaven and earth …

  A mountain mist began to roll down, obscuring the street. It felt like we were scaling a cloud. Beauty flew in and out of view, and the houses that flanked us fell away until there seemed to be only the sage-coloured bush on either side. Still the Birdman kept up his whistling. Occasionally a parakeet, a red blur, would scream past in reply. He would stop and listen and then take up his tune again. A light whisper of rain began to fall, beading my coat. We walked onward, the sun pushing the clouds away, shooting rainbows through the slow-dispersing mist.

  The view became clear. I didn’t know the human eye could see so far: the mountains seemed like the rim of the world. Everywhere I looked they were insurmountable, a never-ending banner of trees, rock face and eucalypt-blue air. In the middle of this ocean of forest were three sandstone pillars bursting out of the valley, towering out of nowhere, making me realise how high up we were. The Birdman was singing something under his muffled breath, his beard tucked into his chest, fog escaping his lips. Vertigo made my legs sway. When he stopped, I asked him what this place was, this strange cradle that seemed to hold all the world.

  ‘This, my son, is the womb of this country. Those three sandstone outcrops were once three sisters. Their father turned them into stone when a bunyip sought to eat them. Enraged, the bunyip chased him until he was cornered, so he took his wand and turned himself into a lyrebird, but in his efforts to escape, he lost his wand. To this day he wanders the valley floor looking for the wand he lost, his daughters waiting for the spell to be broken.’

  ‘Do you believe that story? Is the bunyip real?’ I asked.

  Beauty flew off the ledge and it felt like part of me flew with her, the green falling away below us, as I peered over the edge.

  ‘Well, son, I don’t know. There is a bit of truth in every story, isn’t there?’ He laughed then, the sound echoing over the valley and sending a nearby pair of galahs off into the air complaining. ‘But you are too scrawny and old for a bunyip, they like ’em young and juicy.’ He chuckled all the way to the start of the track down to the valley.

  ‘Where’s Beauty?’ I asked. She was nowhere to be seen; my one link to reality, to Lily, to the life lived on the other side of these mountains.

  ‘Short cut. Don’t worry, she’ll be all right, she will have a full belly and be there the quicker for it.’

  We zigzagged down into the valley. The earth was damp, and every now and again a step turned to a slide. It seemed endless, as if the valley floor would never rise up to meet us. Fern fronds brushed at my hair like fingers, and the familiar sound of the lyrebird filled me with the shame of all I had turned my back upon, on Lily and the birds cooped in the shed, poor creatures. If Beauty should have her freedom, so should all the rest. Would Lily think of this too, while I was gone, or would she wait? She was a constant presence in my mind. She had been almost silent when I left; I didn’t blame her. I wondered if she had opened my gift. I was no wordsmith, but I hoped my inscription in the Houdini book would help her understand how I felt. It was my promise that I would return. She was my light.

  I was unsure of the passing of time, only that the sun was no longer visible, the light diffuse, each shadow now falling heavier than the last. The further we went, the smaller I felt. When we reached the valley floor I was relieved at the first stripes of sunlight we had seen for miles.
The Birdman would stop sometimes and I would pause too and look into the trees for the secret signs that I hoped he saw, but then he would just shrug his pack straight on his back and walk on without a word. If my uncle was here, we would need more than a miracle to find him.

  Just before the light gave way completely, the Birdman struck a fire from some damp wood, a ribbon of smoke wending its way skyward. I don’t know how the spark caught, but the Birdman had more knowledge about the ways of this wild world than I. When Beauty came fluttering in over our heads, a dark-winged familiar, I felt a little bit of calm descend. Perhaps this wilderness would not claim me, would return me and my uncle to the safety of home yet. By HaShem I hoped she waited there for me.

  The Birdman opened a couple of cans of beans and sat them amidst the flames. I felt so pitifully unprepared. When I reached into my own bag, I had nothing to offer, but I felt something unfamiliar and jagged in my hand and pulled it out. The black leather box of the tefillin was cracked open like an egg. The Birdman poked a stick at the flames and they licked up in the night air. Tilting the leather box close to the flames, I was sure I could see something glinting inside, other than the parchment it should have contained, but it could have just been the firelight dancing off the lacquer. It must have crushed when I had slid in the mud on the descent. It was useless now the seal had been broken. I ran my fingers over the edges of the box; one part seemed tackier than the rest, as if it had been stopped up with glue. Something moved from one side to the other like a die in a cup. So I gently squeezed at the seam and shook the contents into my lap. The curled parchment came first, followed by the flash of a key. How had it got in there? Had my aunt tampered with the tefillin? She knew as well as I did that interfering with its seal made it invalid.

  The Birdman whistled at the key in my hands but said nothing. He plucked out a couple of forks from his bag and vigorously shined them with the inside of his jumper.

  I unfurled the parchment, hearing the words ring out in my uncle’s quiet but rich voice. ‘And Moses spoke to the People: Remember this day, in which you come out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand, the Lord brought out this place …’ I held it up to the light to read it, but behind the commandment, on the reverse, other letters sprung to life where none were meant to be. I turned it over.

  By the angel of the hour and the star, in the name of the Lord, the great, mighty, and awesome G_d, HaShem is His name, and in Thy name, G_d of mercy, save me by this writing and by this amulet, written in the name of Israel. Help him, deliver him, save him, rescue him from evil men and evil speech, whether he be Jew or Gentile. Shake off the dust – arise! Wake up! Wake up! For your light has come, rise up and shine; Your G_d will rejoice over you like a groom’s rejoicing over his bride! May the Shekinah rest upon you. Amen and Amen.

  Was it a message? Who had written these words? They were in a different hand. I ran my hand over the parchment. The words swirled in me and around me like a pair of arms, holding me close. They pressed on my face, warm as breath. The smell of the beans made my stomach roll with hunger, but these words were like manna in the wilderness. I put the case back in my bag and tucked the key and the parchment in the pocket of my shirt, safe beneath the patchwork fur coat. The Birdman gingerly plucked a can from the fire and handed it to me with a fork standing upright in it. The heat entered my body, bean by bean, and the hot can itself was better than a pair of gloves. When we had devoured every bean, the Birdman pulled a rope from his bag and drew some of the nearest shrubs together, bending them forward, stripping the lower foliage and attaching them to a branch that had fallen from a gum. From his bag he pulled a waxed canvas that would shield our backs from the bush as we faced toward the fire.

  ‘It will keep the mist off us and the dew. They make a person feel the cold twice, then it sinks to the bones and chills the blood and there is no getting rid of it.’

  I had never slept so close to the earth before, but at least we would be warm. Just outside the ring of firelight, I could make out the green-black sheen of Beauty’s feathers as she too preened for sleep, her beak disappearing beneath her wing.

  The Birdman’s choking snores soon filled the night air, undisturbed by the possum’s grunting among the treetops. I pulled out the parchment again and looked at it by the dying light of the flames. I prayed that the words on the amulet would throw the protection of HaShem over my uncle, wherever he was in this wilderness filled with a host of sounds foreign to our ears.

  Sleep came and took me and in my dreams I could see my mother up ahead, turning back to me, the wind blowing her hair over her face. Stumbling to keep up with her, my small feet were caught in every rabbit hole, tripping on pebbles, leaves blowing in my face. But I never fell too far behind, and she was always there, just up ahead. Even if I couldn’t see her face, I could hear her laughter. As I followed, the snow turned to shoots of green, until the ground was a living carpet, the seasons spinning beneath my feet, until my feet were the size of a man’s. But by then I could no longer see her. She had gone. All I could hear was the rustle of her skirts in the treetops, the sound of her laughter from the throat of a rook. When I stopped running I saw the tefillin in my hands, the leather cords trailing around my wrists, but I was not alone. I put the tefillin behind my back for before me stood a man demanding whatever it was that I held. With each step he took closer, I felt fear trickle like rain down my spine, until I could bear it no more. I held out the tefillin, but it was a black box no longer, they were two doves in my hands whose wings fluttered in the cage of my fingers.

  I woke thinking I held them, but it was just the air trailing through my fingers, the parchment from the tefillin gone, lost in the night. The Birdman was already stoking the embers of the fire, the billycan in his hand, swinging it around and around in a strange ritual. I wanted to read the parchment again and scoured the nearby bushes, but it was nowhere. It had blown away, fluttered into the fire, or been scavenged by an animal. It had vanished. But it didn’t matter, I still had the key, it must unlock something. And now I had read the parchment, the words were part of me, they had seeped into me like ink.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Lily

  I was tired. I felt like a heavy sponge that had taken in all it could. Billy and I got back to the house, the long dark shadows of the afternoon already reaching through the shimmering windows. Billy supported my elbow and steered me up to my room like an attentive chaperone. He pushed open the door and sat me on my bed, then fell to his knees as if he was my own private apostle. He eased the shoes from my aching feet, his cold fingers pressing into the tired soles. He held each of my feet in turn, inspecting them with an antique dealer’s air, his fingertips tracing the dips and variation between the skin, muscle and bone. With each caress I felt a little bit of tension disappear, until my feet no longer seemed my own.

  Billy came to sit next to me, the mattress sagging, pushing us together as if in conspiracy. His thigh rolled closer to mine. In front of us, on the wardrobe, hung the magic act costumes, two ghosts, one black, the other white, the hems billowing with life, dancing in the draught from under the balcony door.

  ‘Lily, I think the dead will talk through you. I feel it. I could teach you, if you were willing.’

  ‘What makes you think I have a gift like that?’ I asked.

  Billy looked at me then as if he could see all those spirits behind my eyes, clamouring to speak. I desperately wanted to blink, but I could not, I could not look away from Billy.

  ‘Because it is written all over you.’ I felt overcome with the urge to scratch, as if somehow I had been imprinted with messages written in spidery ink, like having run into cobwebs that I could not pluck away. ‘Just think of it, Lily, you could help others find the peace they have been craving. You could speak to those you have loved and lost. Not only be heard but be given a reply. Imagine.’

  My breath was ragged. I could not stop imagining. I thought of the telegram, my mother’s crippling loss, and tha
t word I had carved into the trunk of a tree. Mizpah. Was it a bridge not just over distance, but from this world to the next? Mizpah, the Lord watch between him and me when we are absent from each other. Could I dare hope to make contact, have word from him, be reunited with my father in spirit?

  Billy bounded up and tugged the clothes from their hangers, which clattered at the affront. He bundled my dress and Ari’s suit together as if he was about to throw them out of the window, but I was up on my feet in an instant, gathering them from his arms. These were our costumes, given over in good keeping to us by Miss du Maurier; what right had he? But as my fingers brushed Billy’s, a crack of pain ran between my eyes and snaked its way into my head, illuminating Billy’s face for a moment, like a photographer’s bright flash.

  ‘You are worn out. Let me run you a bath to ease your mind and body and then we can begin.’

  The thought of melting into the water, dissolving the panic, sloughing off my old skin in preparation for the new, was the only thing in the world I wanted. How did Billy know my wishes even before I did? The silky satin of Miss du Maurier’s old wedding dress caressed my cheek, soft like a feather.

  ‘Perhaps I will just put these in the shed first,’ I said, my hand at the doorknob before Billy could say anything. He took a step toward me and watched me go down the stairs, then I heard his feet above and the rattle of the taps as the hot water struggled to come through.

  The shed was cold, but it made me blink and draw breath. I had grown too hot, without even noticing, Billy’s ideas filling my blood like mercury rising.

  Abracadabra, screeched the parrot at the shock of the light. The shed had never seemed so bare. The cot bed was neatly made and I laid the costumes on it, our clothes entwined together in a way that made my heart lurch in my chest.

  The currawong and lyrebird watched me dully as I filled their bowls with seed and water, not even curious about the half-opened door. They needed some more greenery, an apple or a lettuce, and I felt guilty for my recent neglect. I couldn’t keep them caged for much longer in this old shed, they needed air and light. I coaxed the parrot onto my finger and he gingerly stepped up my arm. I loved brushing down those feathers; the beauty of them still awed me. He deserved better, he deserved his freedom. Next to Ari’s bed were the old plane tree seedpods. I cracked one between my teeth, but the bounty was small; what there was I fed him from my lip.