The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  Abracadabra, the parrot said again, the word caught in his throat. I coughed.

  ‘Mizpah,’ I said back to the parrot, half-expecting another voice to reply.

  Mizpah, it croaked.

  ‘Shekinah,’ I said, the meaning still unknown.

  Shekinah, it echoed me.

  The lyrebird floated down to the floor, his feet scratching in the dirt for imaginary grubs.

  Abracadabra, the lyrebird sang, then rolled into the thrill and fall of the currawong’s song, imitating his companions. I didn’t know the lyrebird could speak too.

  I sprinkled some seed on the floor for him to scratch at, then heard Ari’s violin come chortling through his throat. Each otherworldly note sent me stumbling backward until I found myself sitting on Ari’s bed, listening to the thread of notes spilling from his beak as if nothing had changed. For a moment Ari’s shadow fell across me, and I looked up, but it was just the last light navigating the smears of the window. I felt the tears roll out of me then, a useless waste of water that burned as it flowed down my face. I would let the tears fall. For my father, for Ari, for what had been; they were never coming back and neither would I. That was the vow I made myself the day I ran away.

  After my boss tried to force himself upon me I ran and ran, leaving the outskirts of the town, and eventually I found myself upon the mountain where my father and I used to walk. It had grown smaller as I had grown bigger, just a glorified hill. It was up near Merlin’s rocky chair that I looked for the tree where I had carved the word, but each tree trunk was bare and bushfire charred. I ran my hand across the bark, and in the end I found one remaining letter, barely making it out beneath my touch, an A, on a blackened stump. Even that word, that link between my father and me, was gone. I felt my loneliness open up beneath me and I was frightened of falling in headfirst. I dug for the brooch but it was gone.

  The sun was low on the horizon when I made my way back home, walking through the surrounding paddocks rather than the main roads, afraid of passing cars in case in one was my boss. His words still rang in my ears. ‘I will tell how you parted your legs in an instant. I will plaster your name and address on the toilet wall, so every blow-in from out of town will call in at your place thinking it the local knock shop.’ Not only that, he called out with every step I took, ‘I will say you do it every which way and that you do it for free. But most of all you slut, I will tell them that you like it forced upon you, that when you say no you mean yes and then some.’

  As I opened the screen door, my mother was upon me, her switch raining down the blows upon my head, slicing through the air with a thwick-thwick-thwick. After my father died she turned her affliction outward and aimed it squarely at me. I put my arms over my face to protect myself, and turned myself away, but still her blows rained down.

  ‘How dare you wear your father’s clothing,’ she shouted at me. ‘You are a thief, Matilda O’Farrell, and a whore too. The Lord help me!’

  ‘It’s not what you think, Ma,’ I pleaded. My father had asked me before he went to war to look after her, but how could I? Without him she had been consumed by her saints and her prayers and her superstitions. ‘Not what I think?’ she screamed. ‘I heard it from Mike. He came here and told me what he heard at the bar up at the Royal this afternoon. He wasn’t sure whether to tell me or not, his hat in his hands, but he thought I had a right to know. Your father would be so ashamed.’

  I flinched, I had done nothing wrong. How could she speak of my father being ashamed when he was dead? How dare she speak for him? It was because he wasn’t here that she had become a martyr to her prayers and rosaries and saints, the woman schoolchildren laughed at in the street for crossing and recrossing herself fanatically, the one who arrived early for every service, claiming the first pew as her own.

  She raised the switch against me but I caught it in my hand, wrenching it from her grasp, and snapped it, tossing it to the floor. She fell to her knees, weeping, as the cuts on my cheek stung.

  ‘He wouldn’t have gone to war, Ma, if it wasn’t for you. It was because of you he went, to get away from your poison. There are more bleeding hearts in our home than an abattoir.’ I too could strike a blow. At this she collapsed, pressing her scapular to her lips.

  ‘Ma!’ I shouted, but she didn’t hear me. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her prayers growing louder to shut me out. ‘Ma?’

  My belongings didn’t fill much space in the suitcase I took from my parents’ bedroom. My mother was still prostrate as I slammed the door. She did not even pause in her supplication.

  My tears had dried by the time I reached the bathroom, where the taps had stopped running. Billy must have heard my footsteps and opened the door. Every surface in the bathroom was pearled with the heat, a welcoming steam enveloping me. Beside the bath were a fresh towel and a bottle next to a glass of cloudy liquid that Billy had poured. ‘Something to help you relax,’ he said, handing me the glass. Something, I hoped, to take away the thump of headache that had taken root in my mind and made it hard to think. Billy slipped the bottle into his pocket. I sipped at it as he left me in the misty room, to shed my clothes and scald my skin in the lapping waters of the bath.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Billy

  I could have watched her through the keyhole, but I didn’t need to. I was changing, I could feel it; her growing presence was life’s pure elixir. I could feel all the irreparable things I had done in my life mend. The sour taste I had had in my mouth since Merle was growing sweeter, ripening in my mouth like a summer fruit. I could almost taste the flavour of our future, Lily’s and mine – it was manna, it was the loaves and the fishes, it was water turned to wine – nothing short of miraculous.

  In my box I had found the remainder of a bottle of Tincture of Sleep with only the merest of misgivings, but I only gave her a couple of drops. Just to help her on our way, to release the last strings that bound her to another, to let me be her air, to make space in her for me to fill.

  Those infernal costumes had enraged me, rattling their spineless bodies against Lily’s cupboard, black and white, flapping at my eye like a splash of bird shit on a bride. I did not want them to drag her mind back into the past, to that Jew, he who had tried to debase what was mine.

  I called her name through the bathroom door, but there was no reply. So I called it again and again until I had visions of her face falling below the surface, her nostrils filling with the hot water, her lungs capsizing. My own lungs hurt at the thought, and I hurriedly thrust open the door, my heart a military drum.

  She was asleep, the water cradling her face like a star. Her body was partially submerged except for the starfish of her nipples breaching the water. I walked over, closer until I was standing over her, seeing her breath sending ripples across the mirrored surface of the water. Her hair moved around her face with the currents of her breath; the hair between her pale legs swayed like a sea anemone’s petals. She was the most transparent, most beautiful creation. She was proof that there was a God. She would give herself to me willingly yet. I sat on the edge of the bath, the steam wafting up to my face and drew her carefully up from her sleep.

  ‘Lily, Lily can you hear me?’ She opened her eyes sharply, but they had no focus. My lips moved near her ear and she blinked. She was the bride receiving the words of her bridegroom. The water entered her mouth and she coughed, her eyelashes fluttered. It was done. I was her holy wine. She was my Leda rising from the waves and stepping into my arms. I wrapped the towel around her, droplets from her hair kissing my collar, my lips, my shoes, and led her back to her room, her wet footsteps fading behind her. She had no one to guide her but me.

  She shivered, her teeth clicked together like the beginning of a cicada’s song. I bounded over to the fireplace and stoked the flames, their shadows, an offering, at her feet, that lent an even redder glow to Lily’s bath-rosy skin. I took the towel and rumpled it across her hair, soaking up the excess water. Droplets hit the flames, hissing. Let them hiss! I ran t
he towel across Lily’s skin, running the towel across her flanks, between her delicate toes and fingers, down to the ivory dip in her back and the softest skin below her breasts until she was fresh and dry. Her head drooped, and she moaned as I led her to the bed, curling her legs under the sheets, pulling the blankets up under her chin.

  I kissed her forehead chastely – there would be time enough after my experiment had been proved a success, after Lily had placed her faith solely in me. I felt around under the bed and found the plait and put it in my pocket. Tomorrow I would come for the rest. I lay on the bed next to her, the sheets and blankets all that divided us, and began filling her with all the words she needed to know, all the secrets she would take as proof.

  ‘Believe, Lily, believe,’ I whispered, stroking the smooth skin of her brow. She would talk to the dead if I told her she could, just as I talked to her soul, until she came to understand who loved her most in all the world, until she woke to the truth that she was born for me.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ari

  A low drizzle fell slantwise over our faces, clinging light as dew to our hair. The Birdman whistled, imitating whatever song was called to him from the trees above. A pair of rosellas screeched their news about us, shooting through the metallic sky. We walked through the undergrowth, the ferns growing thicker as we moved through the valley. Beauty held a twig in her beak as she flew, dropping and swooping to catch it with a satisfying clack of her beak. I could see no reason why she did it, except for the pure love of it, her own midair magic show.

  Occasionally the Birdman stopped and would listen to the hush, which after a moment would teem with sounds that our footsteps had disguised. He read the signs where I could see none. Sometimes there seemed to be a path, and sometimes the bush was thick with bottlebrushes and banksias which the Birdman would point out to me and name, as if he found my education in such matters lacking. Which it was. Was this a new Eden? Could this be my uncle’s Promised Land? A strange, verdant place shaped by the Master Craftsman’s hand.

  The leaves here never dropped, no matter what the season. The leaves from my old home I remembered were so different – adrift with blossoms in the spring, bowed with snow in the winter, turning gold to red to brown in between, until they fell.

  With a whistle, Beauty soared down to my outstretched hand, the raven’s strong dark claws wrapping around my fingers, talon over ink, puckering but not piercing my skin.

  And then I remembered an autumn night long ago, when the leaves had been dark shapes hovering around the window frame, their shadows casting arcane markings on the floor.

  Inside my mother’s room, which I seldom entered, a lamp burned low on a table, but in its glow I could see that the room was in disarray. She must have run out of paper, otherwise why else would she practise her letters upon the wall?

  ‘I won’t get in trouble, my love, and I haven’t lost my reason,’ she said as she helped me clamber up onto her bed. My eyes trailed over the markings, failing to comprehend them. ‘It is these words that keep the food on our table, it is my trade.’

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I didn’t dare ask and risk ejection from my mother’s room. The small table beside her bed held a tower of books that trembled as I touched them.

  ‘Where did all those books come from?’ I asked, my eyes flitting over the spines.

  ‘They were your grandfather’s, and then they were your Uncle Israel’s, but he didn’t take them when he went away, neither did he want much to do with them when he was here. He didn’t think them fit for the likes of him.’ Her small dressing table was the only clear space, and I could see she used it as a desk. Upon it was a bottle of ink, a metal stylus, a fine blade, brass nibs scattered across the surface, a pen, a yad pointer and rolls of parchment.

  ‘Ari,’ my mother said, her hand touching my cheek. ‘Ari, my beautiful boy. I am going to tell you a secret.’

  I sat very still, waiting for the secret to fill me.

  She reached around her neck for a silver pod, unscrewed one end and drew out a rolled parchment. ‘Ari, this is an amulet. It is time for you to have one of your own.’

  I felt the excitement course through me. I couldn’t sit still. She unfurled it in her palm, and I saw the letters unfold, losing a letter with each line.

  A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B - R - A

  A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B - R

  A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B

  A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A

  A - B - R - A - C - A - D

  A - B - R - A - C - A

  A - B - R - A - C

  A - B - R - A

  A - B - R

  A - B

  A

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked. I knew my letters, but not this word.

  ‘It is a magic word,’ she whispered, taking me by the hand and leading me to her dressing table, seating me on the stool and placing a towel on my lap. ‘HaShem’s magic,’ she said laying my hands across a cloth. ‘It can extend His protection over you.’

  HaShem shall keep thee from all evil;

  He shall keep thy soul.

  Beauty hopped from my hand to my shoulder before flying back up to her vantage point amidst the treetops. Eucalyptus twigs crunched underfoot. Up ahead something fluttered in the undergrowth. I was barely aware of the landscape we were walking through, but the Birdman led me up an incline and I followed, my hand tingling as it had when my mother had run her cold fingertips over mine that day she had marked me. Her gentle face had smiled reassuringly in the circle of lamplight, a circle I had thought could never break.

  ‘Your father of blessed memory had an amulet that I made for him, but he thought it foolishness.’ She opened a bottle of ink and gave me a spoonful of strange-tasting honey that made my tongue numb, the dullness spreading down my limbs.

  ‘Is that before he went away?’ I asked, my tongue fat in my mouth.

  ‘Yes, my boychick, before he died.’

  ‘If he had taken it with him, would he have lived?’

  My mother took the stylus and tested its point on an odd scrap of parchment, the line sharp and colourless. She looked at me but didn’t answer my question.

  ‘This amulet I am going to give you is one that you can never lose or forget. It will be with you always, whatever may come.’ She held the stylus over the middle finger of my left hand.

  ‘Like the hamsa hand that Bubbe wears under her blouse?’

  ‘Yes, but better – your hand will be the hamsa, you won’t even have to take it off for a bath.’ She kissed me softly along the flesh of my hand and asked me to be brave as she made the first piercing marks upon my finger, my teeth clamping down. The pain roared in my ears and then was a quiet rumble after she spooned me some more strange honey. She filled them with stinging ink, her voice soothing and low like a lullaby. Slowly a word emerged, between the blood and the incision.

  I had not known then that it was forbidden, that the word would set me apart, as I had been both bewildered and blessed by my mother’s pen.

  The Birdman up ahead whistled and turned to me, his eyes aglint with what he saw. When I caught up, I too could see what it was. A circle of ground had been cleared and patted down, round and shiny, carpeted with a litter of leaves. At its centre were two curved walls of twigs, leaning together but not quite meeting. Scattered around the central structure was a surprising cache of objects, familiar, but strange in this setting. And there in the middle was a fragment of blue-and white-fringed cloth, otherworldly, a scrap torn from my uncle’s prayer shawl.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Lily

  My mind swam around itself like a fish in a bowl. Everything was blurred. I remembered getting into the bath, those first few moments when I felt the hot water burn away the tension in my skin. But how I had arrived in my bed I did not know. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was not; all I could remember was a warm breath on my face and odd words coming through the silence. I could not get my bearings. Had I
always had the gift Billy claimed for me, but just not been still enough to hear it? Believe, believe, believe. Answer pray tell now believe, believe, believe. Where had I heard these words before? My mind spun around their ring and echo but could not settle. It sounded like a nursery rhyme. Was that my father’s voice?

  Points of light flickered around the room when I managed to pry open my eyelids, but my lids were made of a heavier stuff and fell against my will. I slid back into darkness. And then I was suddenly like the air, the rooftops running fast beneath me, until I was over vast stretches of water, between the patches of green. I was the dove that left the ark, flying higher and higher into the heart of a mountain, where the mist rolled off the mountains.

  I reached out my arms and let the mist run over me, tickling my skin and drenching my face, surprisingly warm. I let it run down my cheeks unchecked like tears. I felt a rustle in my palm and saw a little blackbird making a nest in the cup of my outstretched hand, fluffing her feathers as she took shelter.

  When I woke, Billy was asleep in the chair beside my bed, his chin lolling onto his chest, candlelight flickering across his blond hair. Why hadn’t he slept in his own bed, it was only next door? His face was soft and boyish when he was asleep, yet he had mauve shadows beneath his eyes.

  I eased myself upright, but realised with a shock that I was bare beneath my sheets. How had I made it from the bath to here if not with Billy’s assistance? He slept on as I pulled the sheet around me and slipped from the bed. The door of the opened wardrobe shielded me as I pulled on yesterday’s clothes, now hanging up neatly. Quickly I dressed. Perhaps hearing the latch as I closed the wardrobe door, Billy opened his eyes. As if on cue, so that I doubted he had been asleep at all.