The Juniper Tree

by Asotir

  The black bird fluttered about the room where Falco had never gone since he had been a baby in his crib. This was the room Falco had longed for and dreamed about all his life. The black bird flew around and around the room but the windows were all locked. At last it alit on the back of the rocking chair. There it perched and stared at the redheaded woman.

  Rayn swung the broom. She managed to catch the bird just as he rose from the chair and knocked him against the wall.

  The bird fluttered awkwardly. He was hurt now.

  She struck again and knocked him down. He landed in a corner on the floor by the bed. One of his wings was twisted and bent.

  Rayn lifted the broom deliberately.

  The black bird hopped back but he hit the wall and there was no more room behind him.

  She slammed the broom down and just missed him as he scuttled under the bed.

  The redheaded woman raked the hair out of her eyes and got down on her knees. She stooped down with her face close to the floorboards and peered beneath the bed.

  From the dark under the bed the bird could see her eyes burning as she craned her head back and forth.

  She stabbed the broom under the bed and the bird barely hopped out of the way.

  She swept the broom handle back again. The broom head rushed up toward the bird. BANG! it slammed against the back leg of the bed just short of him and he tumbled out at the foot of the bed. She tried to pull out the broom. The bird hopped out onto the rug beside the rocking chair.

  She swung again and hit the bird square across his back and knocked him out through the door into the hall.

  The bird hopped about on the hall floor. She came after him but the broom racked against the sides of the dead woman’s door and held her up and in that moment the black bird flew up the attic stairs.

  She burst from the dead woman’s room and climbed the steps waving the broom ahead of her, fending off any possible attack the bird might make out of the darkness. She slipped and fell but clawed her way to the top step just in time to see the bird hop and drag himself into the dead boy’s room.

  She leapt up and shouldered the narrow door aside. She swept up the broom and caught the bird another hit but the strings to the harpies tangled about the broom. She swept them aside along with the broom and tore down the mobiles, wires and cardboard alike.

  The black bird fluttered toward the wall. The open window beckoned and the freedom of the night. But the horrible burning red eyes were coming, the red hair glowing in the dark. He only reached the window when the broom went swoosh! behind him and hit him hard and knocked him forward even as in the room behind the broom handle went thwack! and thang! against the wall and iron bars of the bed.

  He fluttered down to the porch. His right wing wouldn’t flap. It was broken or almost. He couldn’t fly right or stay aloft, only twirl and float down.

  He heard banging from inside the house upstairs.

  He bent down his head under his wing in the rain slanting in under the porch roof. The rain was lighter now but that wouldn’t help him. He couldn’t fly anymore.

  All of a sudden the White Dog jumped up on the porch. It growled. Foaming slaver dripped from its great jaws. It pounced but the bird clawed at it with his talons and felt the White Dog’s face catch and tear. The White Dog howled and yelped and ran off.

  The black bird hopped down off the porch. In little halting hops it started across the yard.

  The Juniper Tree seemed far away.

  Lights blazed from the windows of the house. The redheaded woman was coming. She was coming. She would be out there soon.

  He hopped in the wet slick grass. His broken wing trailed behind. He was almost at the Juniper Tree when the glass doors slid open and the redheaded woman stalked out on the terrace. He had to stop then and stare back.

  The rain had almost stopped. He could see her very plainly and she could see him too. Her face hardened.

  ‘That tree, that blasted, horrible, Juniper Tree!’

  Her hair blazed as if on fire. She held the broom out away from her in one hand and in the other she held a small green bottle. She drenched the broom head with liquid from the bottle. The broom twigs caught fire and the terrace and porch came alive with the blaze.

  The redheaded woman marched across the yard. She came on dead for the Juniper Tree.

  The black bird hopped into the lower branches. The redheaded woman poked and thrust the burning broom at him. He hopped from branch to branch. All around him the branches lit up with the flames. The redheaded woman danced around the Juniper Tree. She stabbed the broom into the branches until the whole tree blazed up in flames. And then the black bird couldn’t do anything but watch. There wasn’t anyplace left for him to hop and he couldn’t fly away.

  She thrust at him again. He saw her through a shower of sparks and flames. The Juniper Tree was burning in crackles and smoke. Its age-old wood, hard and dry and waxy with resin, burned bright and fearsome hot. It seemed like one big torch now, like a beacon on the headland shining out to sea.

  Again the redheaded woman thrust at the bird and the fiery broom bore down on him but he fell past it and raked his talons across her face before he rammed into the ground.

  High above him the redheaded woman stumbled backward. Her arms and the broom flailed. Her high heels caught on the grass and she fell back onto the landing of the wooden stairs. Her hips slammed against the outside rail.

  And the bird shook his head, and the red band around his throat jumped off and a brand new sawblade dropped between the landing and the cliff rocks, cutting as it fell.

  The whole staircase shuddered and creaked. The unfastened bolt at the Red Step pulled up and out and the staircase went groaning outward, sagging, buckling over the waves. Boards cracked and groaned and for a moment it hung there, unsure whether it wanted to come back to the cliff again and bear the boots and shoes pounding up and down it, or whether it would rather just give way sliding and sighing down into the arms of the rocks and the water waiting so patiently and so faithfully for so long.

  Rayn froze. Her eyes were big and dark in the shadow of her hair under the burning broom. She bent a little as though she was about to leap back onto the grass. But the black bird huddled there staring at her and she balked in her movement.

  At that the stairs sagged out farther and the weight turned to hang all upon the four bolts that tied the landing to the stones at the top.

  These bolts were bigger than the others, but they had not been forged to hold such a weight as the whole stairs. The first one just above the first step bent under the strain. It bent and broke and planks twisted and buckled down at the bottom of the steps.

  The next bolt on the landing snapped and then there were two, and only two, the last two.

  The redheaded woman cried out and stared at them.

  The White Dog came back from the kennel at her cry. The White Dog’s face was a bloody mess. One eye was closed over with blood and pus. With the other eye the White Dog watched his mistress on the landing. He danced at the edge of the firelight, whining, caught between longing and fear. The White Dog didn’t even glance at the black bird where he lay helpless in the grass.

  Very slowly and with care the redheaded woman lowered her blazing broom.

  The burning Juniper Tree cast its beacon over the bluff but under the lip of the grass and planks the bolts driven into the stone lay in shadow beyond seeing. The redheaded woman edged the broom closer until its flames reached through the gaps between the planks and glinted off the old bolts. Many times they had been painted over but even so they were rusting through the paint, eaten at by the years of fog and spray, full of salt and acid.

  The black bird could see the third bolt bending. The nut was slowly stripping its threads and slipping off. It squeaked like a little mouse. The redheaded woman dropped the broom over the rail behind her and it twirled down until the sea ate it and snuffed out its fire.

  The last two bolts fell into darkness, unseeable.

>   ‘Puppy, don’t!’ she cried but the White Dog heard the fear in her voice and leapt to her. The added weight wrenched the third bolt free and the fourth bolt, the last bolt, snapped with a BANG! and the stairs leaned far out on their under-trusses like a drunken clown on stilts in the circus leaning far off balance, only the clown always manages to swing back and catch his balance.

  The stairs did not.

  The boards tore loose from the bolts that kept them together and the rotting planks shattered into dust and crashed into a pile, drowning out the last screams from the redheaded woman. Then a great wave smashed over the rocks.

  The foam and froth licked up the cliff face almost to the top. Spray sprinkled over the black bird’s feathers. For a moment the great wave clung to the cliff and wouldn’t go back. For a moment everything held steady, almost at peace.

  But the rage and fury was bursting still inside it and there would be no peace. When the wave swept back out it tore all the bits of boards and planks and railing along with it far away into the sea where the redheaded woman couldn’t hurt anybody else ever again.

  * * *

  ATOP THE BEAK the black bird watched the wave go out. The foam and froth dimmed as they fled, and the ground went black as well. Everything was dimming.

  ‘Juniper Tree, what’s happening?’ he asked.

  He couldn’t feel the wind or the wet on his wings anymore. His talons clawed and gripped but there was nothing for them to clutch.

  ‘Juniper Tree, what’s happening to me?’

  But the old tree didn’t answer him. The fire must have burned the tree to the ground by now. The Juniper Tree wasn’t there anymore. But where was there, and where was he? It didn’t seem like he was anywhere. He couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t smell anything, he couldn’t touch anything, he couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t even hear his own voice though he cried and scrawed. At least he think he cried. He couldn’t feel that he was doing anything at all. He couldn’t feel his wings anymore not even the hurt one. He couldn’t feel his feathers.

  All he could do was sing his Mother’s Song one last time. Even though nobody could hear it, not even himself:

  The Rain stole my Mother

  She cut off my head,

  The Bear took my Father

  He ate me with bread,

  The Goose, little Sister

  Dropped my bones near the Sea,

  A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

  And that was the end of him.

  13

  Sometimes I wonder what kind of thing I am.

  NOW SOMETHING new came about. Something new was happening to the black bird, which had been Falco before his stepmother murdered him.

  He could hear a rough sound from far away. It was almost lost in the emptiness. And he listened for that sound with everything he could. The sound got closer, clearer. It seemed like he knew that sound. Then he did.

  It was the sound of tires crunching over the gravel driveway.

  He heard the sound of the motor of the car, too. The tires stopped crunching and the motor switched off. Two car doors opened and shut and there were footsteps in the gravel. One step was heavy and hasty and the other was light and slow.

  The steps sounded on the front porch. He heard the front door open and close. Voices came from inside the house but they were too far for him to make out what they said.

  Then he heard the glass doors slide open. The two pairs of steps crossed the terrace and walked onto the grass.

  The little steps dragged the big steps along. Then the big steps stumbled and stopped.

  ‘Look, Papa,’ said a little girl’s voice.

  And a man’s deep voice answered, ‘No…’

  He knew the voices somehow. He knew those two.

  He opened his eyes and looked at them. But they were strangers. He didn’t know them after all.

  He turned his head and looked up at the sky. The sky was so big and terrible and far away. But it threatened to fall down on him, on the house and on the Beak. His head rolled farther back. And then he saw something dark in between him and the sky, something comforting and strong.

  It was the Juniper Tree. He looked at it.

  It was as big and broad as ever. Not a branch was burned, not even singed. But he couldn’t feel it any more, the thing that lived inside the Juniper Tree, the thing that spoke to him and watched over him since forever. It was only a tree, an old dry tree on a cliff looking out over the water.

  He looked back to the house and saw Dad and Greta standing there.

  They looked on him with empty faces. It was clear that they didn’t know what to say. He didn’t either.

  It was Bjorn and Greta and Falco. Yes it was Falco all right and he wasn’t any ghost.

  ‘Falco,’ Bjorn whispered. He stared at his son standing under the Juniper Tree. ‘But you’re dead. Aren’t you?’

  Falco pointed down to the water beyond the cliff.

  ‘No. She is.’

  Far out to sea, something was washing in the waves. It looked like a woman in a sea-green dress, face down in the foam. Her arm twisted out and a trail of blood trickled in her wake. The carcass of a white dog washed alongside her.

  His father watched with horror in his eyes.

  ‘Rayn… You killed her.’

  ‘Poor Mama!’ Greta said.

  He shook his head. ‘She only got what she deserved.’

  ‘Falco,’ Greta sighed.

  He lifted his foot and took a step forward. The grass under his foot felt cool and springy and weird. No. It was the foot that felt weird. It was flat and squishy and soft, not like talons at all.

  He held up his right hand and gave Dad the note and the bonds from Mr Hodgekiss. His dad stared at them.

  He held up his left hand and gave Greta the bracelet from Mary-Louise. Greta smiled at it.

  Inside the house the oven bell went off. Thanksgiving Feast was ready.

  ‘Ah, what is that smell,’ asked Dad.

  Greta sniffed. ‘Yummy.’

  ‘I feel better than I have in years,’ said Dad. ‘Come inside, Falco. Come and sit in the chair for the Thanksgiving King. It’s what your Mother would have wanted.’ His eyes were bright with tears.

  ‘It’s your chair,’ said Greta. She was beaming. Her smile reminded him of Giorgio.

  He took them by the hands. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  They went in and ate.

  Afterword

  So I got my family back, and we all lived happily together. Greta grew up beautiful and gentle and kind. I made sure she married a good man. My Dad worked in the mill until the day he died and I buried him under the Juniper Tree by my Mother, his real wife. After that I got rid of the mill and closed the house. I live in Tall Pines with the birds now, far away from men.

  I think about Rayn sometimes. I’ll never forget that day. Sometimes at night I have dreams and I’m a bird again and I can fly. But when I wake up I know it isn’t true.

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