Heiresses of Russ 2013

by Tenea D. Johnson

  The other woman sighed and ran a hand over her dreadlocks. Her split lip was swollen. Harvey imagined the way it had felt when her knuckle struck just that spot.

  “I forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to date you,” she said. “I came over to talk it out. I think you should get some help, Harvey. You’re not—well.”

  “I bet you’re already fucking somebody else,” she spat. She could just picture Lucinda and those flirty glances she always seemed to give, handing out her number to another woman. “My last girlfriend thought that was the way to go. You’re just like her.”

  “Harvey, seriously,” Lucinda said.

  She picked up the paperweight from her coffee table and hurled it overhand. Lucinda ducked and the glass shattered against the far wall, but Harvey was already striding toward her before she could straighten. This time, her fist was closed. She landed an awkward blow on the side of Lucinda’s head.

  “Stop!” the blonde shouted, her hands out to ward off another punch.

  Harvey tackled her to the floor and planted a knee on her stomach. Her breath was coming in gasps. Blonde dreads tangled in front of Lucinda’s face, her blue eyes wild and wide. Harvey wrapped her hands around the pale column of her throat, the rush coming again, promising it would all be better if she just took care of the problem.

  A heavy thud and a shrieking that stabbed at her ears like needles startled her so badly that her grip slipped. Lucinda jammed an arm between them to protect her face. Harvey cursed. Outside the porch door, the owl flapped madly about, clawing at the glass. She yowled back at it and flung herself off Lucinda, scrambling to the door. When she got her hands on that fucking bird…

  “Jesus Christ,” Lucinda gasped behind her while fumbling at the front door.

  “No—” Harvey said, but she was already running, the door hanging open in her wake.

  Harvey glared at the owl, torn briefly between who to chase, then turned to pursue Lucinda. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but it had to be something, because she couldn’t let Lucinda get away. Not with this. She bounded out the door. Her feet slipped on the deck, sliding on a patch of iced-over slush, and she grabbed for the railing to right herself.

  “Bitch!” she yelled, taking the steps two at a time.

  Lucinda ran at full speed across the parking lot. Her arms pin-wheeled as she fought to keep her balance on the snow and ice that no one had bothered to salt, but she didn’t fall.

  Harvey might have caught up to her, but after barely a stride, fire ripped through her scalp. She yelped, frozen by the pain, her hands flying up to touch the source. Blood slicked her fingers. She whirled and dove to the ground to avoid the owl’s talons as it swooped at her, beak open, eyes ablaze with gold light. The cold concrete stung her hands and forearms. She scrambled to regain her footing, looking over her shoulder as the owl circled above her. Caught between letting Lucinda get away and the blades of those talons, Harvey retreated. The owl caught her once more on the steps as she fled, its claws sinking into the meat of her shoulder. She flung her arm back, battering at the soft, feathered body. With the contact came a flash of its hunger, alien and huge. The talons tore free with a rip of fabric and flesh. The owl tumbled onto the steps behind her, disoriented.

  “Leah,” she gasped.

  The bird was beginning to right itself from her blow when she slammed the door between it and her. Blood spattered the floor. The pain was overwhelming, but worse was her failure. How had she thought she could handle a new start? She hadn’t taken care of the fallout from her last girlfriend. Outside the glass balcony door, the owl was preening in the tree again, its feathers red with Harvey’s blood. She fled into the bathroom where it couldn’t see her.

  Lucinda had said the woman’s name was Anne, and she ran a bird rehab. She couldn’t be hard to find. Then, it would all be over.

  •

  Wind chimes strung out of bones and thick grey twine clattered together as the wind rose in a sharp gust. The cold stung Harvey’s chapped ears and the back of her neck around the high woolen collar of her coat. She stood at the bottom of a porch between two snow-drifts that had blown up against the concrete steps. The hand-painted sign tacked onto the railing read “Wild Bird Rehabilitation.” She spied the skull of some small animal, a rat or a vole, woven into the weather-bleached bones twisting above her head. The night Lucinda had run away, a storm had blown into the city and dumped slushy, freezing snow everywhere. The roads hadn’t been cleared for two nerve-wracking days, and she’d spent them waiting for the police to come knocking on her door or for the owl to find its way inside, somehow. The snow had started again halfway through her drive, but she didn’t turn back.

  In the pockets of her greatcoat, her fingers clenched spasmodically—one hand around a leather-backed notebook, the other, her car keys. The metal edges dug in hard, chasing away the shudder threatening at the base of her spine. It was the wind that drove her up the steps more than courage. The razor edges of each gust felt paradoxically like boiling water dumped over her cold-scored bare skin. Her hand shook and fought her attempt to make a fist when she drew it out of her pocket to knock on the wooden door. The sound was anemic, fluttery. Waiting on the porch with only the dead-animal wind chimes for company made each moment stretch. Harvey stared down the winding country driveway. Her car was a green speck on the side of the route that had been plowed just enough for her to rumble down it. All the way up to the steps, her footprints punched through the pristine half a foot of snow.

  It was solitary. The expanse of ice-crystallized woods and bare fields spurred an instinct in her to draw her shoulders up around her ears and hide. Anything could see her here, dark coat a smudge against blinding snow, especially if it were flying overhead with a hunting eye turned to the ground. She huddled close to the door to wait.

  The door opened with a crack of breaking ice. She jumped, boots slipping on the slick porch, caught her balance and gasped. The woman in the doorway raised an eyebrow. Her hair was red-gold streaked with grey, bound in a ponytail that left her face stark and plain. She was in her late forties. Harvey cleared her throat.

  “Hello,” she said. It sounded awkward. She clenched her jaw against an oncoming shiver, cold to her bones. “I’m—”

  “Why don’t you come inside,” the woman said, glancing down the drive to her car. “That’s a long walk, and you’re not dressed for it.”

  When the woman stepped to the side, she shook her boots free of snow and walked into the house. The foyer wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but as she unbuttoned her coat and looked around, she saw the promising glow of a fire to the right of the entryway. She snagged her notebook out of the coat pocket before hanging it on one of the empty pegs running along the small hallway.

  “I’m Anne,” the woman said. She offered her hand. Harvey shook it, her stiff fingers clumsy. “What made you think today was a great day to visit the bird rehab?”

  “There’s only an inch or two of snow in the city,” she answered. “It started coming down again while I drove. I didn’t expect it to get so bad, and I was already an hour out, so I kept going.”

  Anne frowned, the smallest wrinkle appearing by her mouth. Harvey read disapproval in it. They stood in the space between the house and the outside, hovering, as if the other woman couldn’t quite decide what to do with her. She looked around. The living room had couches with fuzzy throws spread over them, a low fire and scattered books. To the left was a dining area and heavy oak table scattered with papers.

  “Tea, coffee?” Anne offered, taking one step away and turning on her heel. “You can have a seat on the couch and warm up.”

  “Tea, thank you,” Harvey murmured.

  The couch was deliciously warm and she closed her eyes for a moment, letting the heat soak through her thin sweater and jeans. She really had dressed wrong—city girl at heart, city girl in practice. Her fingers were so pale they seemed to be turning a little blue. She dropped her notebook on her lap and
rubbed them together. The friction stung in the best way. As she sat alone in the living room, she noticed piece by piece that despite its inhabited appearance it was impersonal. The books were all on birds or nature, the throws were clean and artfully placed, not so much for personal use. Of course, it was a sort of business here, not just a woman’s house. The owl on the cover of one of the magazines on the end-table had the same ear-tufts as the one she’d come to think of as the Omen Owl, the Bad Luck Owl. She swallowed. The picture didn’t capture the rest of her bird, though—it didn’t have those piercing, intent eyes. In it, she could see the majesty Lucinda had so insisted on. The thought of the other woman made her flinch.

  “So, what brings you here without a bird?” Anne asked from behind her.

  Harvey turned on the couch, one arm slung over the back, and saw her approaching with two steaming mugs of tea. She sat a careful distance away from Harvey and put their mugs on the coffee table. Her posture was a slouch, legs slightly apart, flannel shirt bunched up around her elbows and hanging low on her thighs. She was a broad person, taking up space with personality and body alike. Harvey reached out for the mug to warm her hands further and fumbled for her planned introduction, her ticket to speak, though now it seemed flimsy.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said. “I’ve heard about you from friends and I thought it would make a good piece for the human interest section.”

  “And you drove out from the city then hiked through a football field of snow, for that?”

  Harvey glanced sidelong at her. “You’re one of the only wild bird rehabs in the area.”

  “You don’t seem like a birding type,” Anne said.

  “I’m not,” she admitted. “But I needed the story.”

  “Why’d you come out here?” she repeated.

  “I told you,” she said.

  “You lied,” she countered.

  The silence was as frosty as the weather outside. A gust rattled the windows. Harvey sipped the hot tea. Its bitter, astringent taste made her mouth pucker. No sugar, no honey, just sharp herbal flavor.

  “Who told you to come?” Anne asked.

  She wondered if she was imagining the softening in tone.

  “A friend,” she said finally.

  “A friend who told you to go to the back-country wise woman,” she murmured. “Not a friend who told you to write a story about the fucking bird rehab.”

  The profanity drew a surprised twitch from her. She put the tea down. Her hands were too warm now; they still shook, but she had no excuse.

  “Okay,” she said. “All right, yes.”

  “What was the friend’s name?”

  “Lucy,” she said. “Lucinda. She said you do—traditional things.”

  “Probably one of the ten or twenty fresh young things I see every year that want a spirit journey or a self-help guru,” Anne said. She leaned toward Harvey on the couch, spreading an arm across the back. Her forearms were thick with muscle. “I walk them out to the woods and give them some things to think about. They coo over the birds, think they see an omen, and I get a hundred bucks to run my rehab.”

  “So I’m an idiot,” Harvey said.

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t help.”

  Harvey weighed her with a stare, the strong hands and easy posture, wearing her body like a comfortable glove. She had a good jaw. She found not a trace of mockery in the woman’s face, though she’d expected it.

  “I have a problem with an owl,” she said.

  “I don’t do extermination,” Anne replied.

  “Not that kind of problem. Not that kind of owl,” she corrected with a choking laugh. She knew she sounded like a lunatic, out of control of herself with fear and suspicion. “It won’t leave me alone.”

  “An owl,” the older woman annunciated carefully. “Won’t leave you alone?”

  “I’m sure it’s here somewhere,” she said. “It’s been following me for a month. Same bird, day and night, when I’m at work or home or the grocery—”

  Her own escalating voice stopped her, halfway to a shriek, and she gripped the knobs of her knees hard enough to bruise. Her breath was suddenly stuttering and heavy. She swallowed, reached for her tea and took one more bitter sip.

  “What do you think it is?” Anne asked.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “You don’t believe in any of what I’m about to say, I’m assuming,” the older woman said.

  “I want it gone, and I’m out of explanations,” she replied.

  Anne stood and walked to the windows. The wind rocketed against the glass, trails of white drifting down from the sky. The clouds were black and blue. Harvey’s car would be buried again, soon, judging by the weight of the falling flakes and their speed. She fought the urge to flee; she needed to know what was happening. It was unnatural. It made no sense. If she wanted it fixed, she had to stand her ground, and she held onto that thought.

  “It’s starting to really come down,” Anne said. “You’ll be stuck here.”

  “I can go now,” she said quietly.

  “I have a guest room by the aviary,” the other woman said.

  “Aviary?”

  “Not all of the birds I take in can be released again. I keep the ones that survive,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

  Harvey wanted to protest—she’d had enough of birds for an entire damned lifetime—but there was a coolness in the older woman’s eyes. If she were too irritated, she could throw her out into the approaching blizzard, Bad Luck Owl still trailing her with its accusing yellow stare. Harvey stood, knees creaking, and followed Anne down the hall of the sprawling ranch-style house. She glimpsed a kitchen as they passed it and then she heard the first soft rustles of sound.

  Dread crept up her spine like a spider with blade-tipped legs. A strange woman’s house, a blizzard, a room full of birds, her owl out there somewhere hunting her—unease was a gentle word for what she was starting to feel. Anne opened one door and Harvey was surprised to see a screen door on the inside of the house, leading to a huge room that must have once been divided by a wall. It had small trees, perches, nesting materials, toys, everything she’d ever seen in a bird cage but quadrupled.

  Inside there were owls hidden in trees, a leg pulled up here and there in their rest. Their sleepy stares made her skin itch. Anne slipped in, closing the screen door firmly between them, and the nearest bird, a crow, let out a welcoming caw.

  Harvey shook her head. Crows, owls, a pigeon in the corner—these were not animals who coexisted. They couldn’t. She knew that. So how were they, here? Anne murmured to the crow, her red-and-grey hair glinting under the domed safe-lights. Her voice sounded like nothing Harvey had ever heard before.

  The woman looked up and caught her staring. The return glance was more of a glare. After a moment, Anne slipped back into the hall and closed the door. The bedroom on the other side of the hall was empty and pristine except for a daybed and a desk. She gestured to it.

  “That’ll be yours. Don’t touch the door to the aviary. They aren’t fond of strangers,” she said.

  “All right,” Harvey agreed.

  “I want to talk to you about your owl,” she said.

  The tone was less than welcoming. Harvey wondered why anyone would ever come to this woman for advice. She was too sharp, too rude, too unreadable. Maybe her usual “students” liked the mysterious and aloof bullshit, but Harvey was losing her sanity by inches, and she needed real concrete help. The seething frustration that sprung up in her chest soothed her with its familiar tension.

  “I can go,” she said. “I’ll find someone else.”

  “That owl isn’t a bird,” Anne said. She gestured for Harvey to sit on the couch again. She did, mollified. “Real birds can’t do what you’re saying it’s done. They don’t care. They want to eat, mate, and have comfortable places to rest. They don’t follow people. Not even pet birds do that.”

  “So am I hallucinating?” she asked.

  “Has anyone e
lse seen it?” Anne countered.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then no,” she answered with an edge. “Who did you piss off recently? Who passed on still angry at you?”

  The question stopped her breath in her throat like a stone. She coughed, again and again, then cleared her throat with a rasping noise.

  “You’re saying it’s a ghost?”

  “You don’t believe in the spirit, do you,” Anne said.

  “No,” she answered. “Electrical impulses, yes. Souls, no.”

  “Then explain your owl,” she said.

  Harvey wound her fingers together and squeezed until her knuckles turned white and sparked pain up her arms. She knew the brown of its feathers, the dappled golden brown of honey, of a girl’s hair wrapped in her fists and streaked with bright, wet color.

  “What does it want?” she asked.

  “To hazard a guess—you,” Anne said.

  Harvey jerked, looking up. Anne was already turning away to clear the mugs from the table. She bit back the urge to say no shit and took a calming breath. The blizzard outside was howling now, sheets of snow pounding down onto the ground. It wasn’t letting up, and she was trapped.

  “I knew that,” she said. “What can I do to make it go away?”

  “Remember what you did to make it angry, and make up for that.”

  She snapped her mouth shut and ground her teeth. “I can’t talk to a bird.”

  “Have you tried?” she asked.

  The conversation ended there because the older woman left the room, wandering down the hall. Harvey heard a door open and close. She wondered if Anne had gone to her aviary to be with her impossible menagerie. She clenched and unclenched her fists.

  •

  The house creaked with the pressure of the storm. Harvey sat on the couch until the fire went out, fiddling with her cell phone and drawing in her notebook, nonsense swirls. Anne Caulfield was a liar and a terrible hostess. She hadn’t come back to talk, hadn’t offered any food or even shown her where the bathroom was, though she’d found it on her own. She heard a door slam once, maybe to the yard and woods out back.