Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

  Then one night last fall, in the wee hours, I was playing on my laptop, a glass of wine at hand, tired, but not quite ready to sleep, following odd links to other odd links. I typed “Sterling Holloway” into Google’s search bar; it is his voice that is most evocative, that instantly conjures my preschool room, shadowed with loss and regret.

  I went from site to site to site to site and at two in the morning, on YouTube, I may have found it. A cartoon, not a record, but if it was the source, it would permanently overwrite the elusive images that had lived, for fifty years, on the borders of fantasy, dream, and memory, and I would lose—forever—that sense of noirish magic.

  I had to watch it. I had to find out.

  But I had to write this story first.

  Louise Marley

  EGG MAGIC

  Tory lingered in the chicken pen in the September sunshine, watching her flock scratch through the grass, spreading their feathers in the morning breeze. The banty, Pansy, trotted to Tory to have her glossy black and red feathers stroked. She chirkled under Tory’s fingers. “Silly Pansy,” Tory said. “You act more like a puppy than a chicken.”

  Most people, she knew, thought chickens were dumb. The kids at school, except for the 4-H Club, thought her hens were stupid, smelly animals who didn’t care a bit about people. Tory knew better. Pansy loved to be petted, to be scratched right at the back of her short neck. The stately leghorns followed at her heels when she filled the feed dispensers, when she poured out the scratch or corn or scattered the grit. The pair of Black Jersey Giants pecked around her toes as she filled the water dispenser, hoping for the kitchen scraps she brought out in plastic bags. The Barred Rock layers waited for Tory to come through the gate every morning, and then dashed ahead of her into the coop, making a game of pretending to protect their eggs. Her single Araucana, tufted head looking as if someone had stuffed her ears with cotton, preened beside her nest each day, making certain Tory knew who had laid those azure eggs.

  Only Rainbow kept a haughty distance, patrolling the far side of the pen.

  The school bus rumbled around the corner and turned into their lane. The boys, five-year-old twins and twelve-year-old Ethan, boiled out of the house and down the gravel drive to the bus stop. Rosalie, Tory’s stepmother, stood on the porch steps, calling her name.

  “Rainbow!” Tory said. “Come say good-bye. I have to go to school.”

  The hen turned one black eye in Tory’s direction. She gave a single sharp cluck, a sound that would have been a snort in another kind of animal. The banty chirruped. Tory murmured, “Never mind, Pansy. Rainbow’s just cranky. It’s because she’s so much older.”

  Not even Henry, Tory’s father, knew how old Rainbow was. She was older than any of the other chickens. Pansy might live ten years if she were lucky, if she didn’t get sick or get nabbed by the boys’ border collie. But Rainbow, tall, thin, and long necked, had been left behind by Tory’s mother when she left. That had been sixteen years before.

  Rainbow’s plumage changed colors with the seasons, from gold and black, to green and black, to rusty brown and black. She fit no breed or crossbreed Tory could find in any catalog, and she mirrored Tory’s own mysterious heredity—her sharp black eyes, her long neck, her narrow hands and feet. Tory looked nothing like her father, who was big and sandy haired. Tory had a faint memory of her mother, an ephemeral impression of a thin face, long fingers, lank black hair. Henry had spoken to Tory of her mother only once. A gypsy, he said. A traveler. He would not say how they had met, or why she had left.

  “Victoria! Hurry, you’ll miss the bus!” Rosalie waved to her. She was wearing that awful old apron again, pink, with a bedraggled ruffle around the bottom. Her round face was pink, too, and her hair, an indeterminate brown, stuck up in every direction.

  Victoria gathered up her egg basket and her backpack and let herself out of the pen.

  Rosalie called again, “Victoria! Give me your basket and run!”

  Tory didn’t run, but she did hurry across the yard to hand over the egg basket.

  “Don’t forget your 4-H meeting, dear.”

  Tory rolled her eyes as she turned toward the bus. Rosalie tried too hard. If she were only thin and mean, she would be the perfect wicked stepmother from the fairy tales, but Rosalie went overboard in the other direction, watching over everything, interfering in everything. She had bought Tory’s first bra for her before she asked for one. She fussed over Tory’s hair, suggesting awful hairstyles, and she nagged at her to wear colors other than black. She made her clean her fingernails every day when she came in from the chicken coop, and she constantly reminded her of things she already knew, like her 4-H meetings. Tory wished she would just devote herself to the boys and let Tory take care of herself.

  The boys were already in the bus when Tory climbed up the ribbed rubber steps. The bus lurched forward the moment the doors closed, and she grabbed seat backs as she worked her way to her usual seat. Three seats back from the driver. Not too far forward, which would be weird. Not too far back, where her half brothers could torment her. She sank onto the bench seat, her backpack under her feet, the Catalog of Contemporary Poultry on her lap.

  Newport was a small town, and the bus carried little kids as well as high school students. Ethan and Jack and Peter sat in the back. The older ones sidled between the seats in twos and threes, sitting together, giggling and talking. Tory always sat alone.

  Alison Blakely climbed on the bus, flipping her long blond hair with her fingers as she came up the steps. She looked like the classic fairy-tale princess, but she had a sharp tongue. She grinned pointedly at Tory’s catalog. “Not more chickens?”

  Tory kept her eyes down, but her cheeks warmed. She shook her head.

  Josh Hudson was waiting for Alison. He scooted over to make room for her, and she leaned close to whisper something in his ear. He laughed, and Tory glanced over her shoulder. The prince and princess, fair and beautiful. Tory looked away from them. She was nothing like them, she reminded herself. She was dark and dangerous. Solitary. A mysterious and magical future awaited her when her mother returned. Her mother, the gypsy queen.

  “Hey, Tory,” Josh called.

  Tory pushed ragged black strands away from her forehead. “What? ”

  “One of the eggs you brought us last week was really weird,” Josh said, more loudly than necessary. “It was blue!”

  Alison made a face. “Ooh, blue eggs. Ick! I’m glad we get ours at the store.”

  Tory bridled. “He means the shell, Alison. The shell is blue, not the egg!”

  Alison shivered. “Still!” she cried.

  Tory glowered, and her cheeks burned. “I have an Araucana hen. She’s very rare, and she lays blue eggs. And all my eggs are better than the ones from the store!” She was embarrassed at the tension in her voice, and she wrenched herself back to face forward again.

  Alison wasn’t being fair. Tory’s hens laid eggs in a palette of colors—white, tan, speckled, and blue—but they all had beautiful dark yellow yolks and a full, rich taste. Her flock ran free in their pen, in fresh air and sunshine. They ate a good laying mash and drank water from a scrupulously clean tank.

  Tory knew what eggs from the store looked like, with their pallid yolks and runny whites. She wished she had said that. She should have shivered, like Alison, as if the very thought of eggs from chickens who never saw the sky made her feel sick. But it was too late now.

  She tried to focus on Contemporary Poultry as the bus rattled along.

  She was surprised to see Charlie Williams jump up into the bus. Usually he drove his father’s pickup to school. His long legs took all three steps at once, and he grinned at her as he came down the aisle. Charlie was tall and thin, even thinner than Tory. His knobby wrists stuck out of his shirt sleeves, and his sneakers seemed enormous. “Hi, Tory.”

  She nodded to him awkwardly and murmured, “Hi.”

  He stopped beside her seat. “My mother says she hopes you have lots of eggs this week
. She’s baking for Christmas already.”

  Tory lifted her face to see his eyes. They were a nice clear brown, not the glittery black of her own. And Rainbow’s. “There should be plenty. All my hens are laying well.”

  “That’s great.” Charlie nodded. “I’ll tell her.”

  “How many does she want?”

  “She said she’d call your mom when she knows.”

  Tory stiffened. “Rosalie’s not my mom, Charlie.”

  “Well—yeah.” His thin face reddened. “I know. I just meant . . .” He dropped his eyes. “Sorry.” He shifted his backpack and stumbled a little as he worked his way back to his seat.

  Tory bit her lip as they rolled into town toward the cluster of school buildings. She hadn’t meant to embarrass Charlie. She just didn’t want him to think—or anyone to think—that she was Rosalie’s daughter, plain and ordinary. She was different, a changeling, mysterious. And one day, when her mother came back, they would all see.

  It was when Tory was eleven that her life changed. Until then, Tory and her father had lived alone in the rambling country house with its wide yard and wraparound porch. Tory had invented an entire history for herself, turning the big old house into a castle, with a king and a princess, and a gypsy queen mysteriously gone missing.

  Rainbow, the old chicken, was all that was left of the vanished queen. Tory treasured the solitary hen despite her arrogant ways. She spun stories in her head in which her mother returned for Rainbow, and for her daughter. She imagined a gypsy caravan trundling into town, the way they sometimes did during the county fair. She pictured her mother stepping down from an elegantly painted wagon to restore the kingdom, king and queen together, happy daughter basking in their affection. But something completely different happened when she was eleven.

  Henry married Rosalie. And Rainbow laid her first egg.

  On the day Henry brought Rosalie and seven-year-old Ethan home, Tory fled to the chicken coop to crumple onto the floor and sob out her resentment and dismay.

  Rainbow sat on her perch, watching Tory cry. When her tears subsided, Tory sat crosslegged on the floor, rubbing her swollen eyes with her sleeve. The old hen hopped down from her perch and came to stand next to her, one yellow three-toed foot poised above the floor. She bent her long neck and pecked at Tory’s arm.

  “Ow! Rainbow!” Tory exclaimed.

  For answer, the chicken pecked her again, and then hopped up with a little flutter of feathers to stand beside her nest. Tory stared at her. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Rainbow tilted her head, her scarlet comb drooping to one side, her black eye unblinking. Tory sighed, pushed back her hair, and got up to see what Rainbow wanted.

  In the nest was a single narrow egg.

  Tory stammered in surprise, “Rainbow! You—did you do this?” She stretched out her hand to the nest, wary of Rainbow’s hard beak, but the hen moved back, out of the way. Tory picked up the egg and cradled it in her palm.

  It weighed nothing, as if it were filled with air, like a balloon. It was the color of a cloud at sunset, pink and lavender and gray, and oddly elongated. It almost didn’t look like an egg. Both ends had the same pointed shape, and the middle was slender. And it was so light! Tory stared at it in her hand, wondering.

  “Victoria? Victoria, dear, may I come in?”

  All of Tory’s resentment came rushing back to her at the sound of this intruder’s voice. For a long moment, she didn’t answer.

  The door opened, and her new stepmother, Rosalie, put her head in. “Victoria?”

  Tory turned, holding the egg close to her chest.

  She couldn’t see why Henry had married this woman. She couldn’t understand why he had to marry at all, why things had to change, but why this Rosalie? She wasn’t even pretty. She was plump, and she had scraggly brown hair and round brown eyes. And that awful boy!

  “Victoria? Did your chicken lay an egg?” Rosalie’s eyes widened at the sight of Rainbow’s pink-and-gray egg in Tory’s fingers.

  Ethan was there, too, loudly demanding to know what was in the little barn. Rainbow, with an angry squawk, dashed out past Rosalie, between Ethan’s legs, and off to the farthest corner of the pen. Tory also stalked out of the coop and back to the house, the egg between her palms. Her father was waiting in the kitchen doorway.

  “Honey? Rosalie was worried about you, and . . . what do you have there?”

  And suddenly, the first egg Rainbow had ever laid was everyone’s business. Henry took it from Tory’s hand, exclaiming over its lightness. Everyone gathered around the table to look. It was Ethan who began demanding that they crack it and see what was inside.

  “No,” Tory said, giving him a withering look. “It’s mine, and I’m not going to break it. I’m going to keep it just like this.”

  “Come on, honey,” her father said. “Don’t you want to know why it’s so light?”

  Rosalie said, in her soft voice, “No, no, Henry. Victoria’s right. It’s hers, and if she wants to keep it intact, we should respect her wishes.”

  This was too much, the intruder speaking on her behalf. Henry was her own father, after all. He was the king, and she was the princess. These other people had no role here.

  Tory spoke to Henry as if no one else were present. “Okay, Dad. Get a bowl, will you?”

  Henry and Rosalie exchanged a look but neither spoke. Henry brought a glass bowl, and Ethan climbed up on a chair, without even asking permission. Tory pulled the glass bowl to her, as far from Ethan’s hot curiosity as she could. She held the colorful egg in her right hand and struck it on the bowl’s edge.

  The narrow oval split lengthwise, as neatly as if it had been perforated. Tory held one half in each hand, gazing in wonder.

  Rosalie said, “There’s nothing in it!”

  Tory said slowly, “Dad—there’s a—there’s something painted on the inside.”

  Ethan crowed, “Let me see! Let me see!” Tory snatched the shells away from his grasping hands and held them up where her father could see them.

  The two halves of the eggshell made an image, cloudy and vague, as if painted out of fog, but unmistakable. It was a woman, with narrow dark eyes and long hair and one long-fingered, slender hand held to her throat. The image made Tory feel disoriented, as if she were upside down. On the inside of Rainbow’s barren egg was the faintly remembered image from her babyhood.

  It was her mother.

  “Magda,” Henry muttered, and then shut his mouth hard.

  “Who? What did you say, Dad?” But he shook his head. Again, Tory saw her father and Rosalie, the interloper, look at each other.

  Fresh tears welled in Tory’s eyes as she fit the eggshell back together and held the whole egg protectively to her chest. “Dad?” she whispered. “Is her name Magda?”

  Henry pressed his lips together.

  Ethan demanded, “What? What?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Rosalie said. “An empty eggshell.”

  Henry muttered, “Old hen never did lay any eggs.”

  They had all seemed to lose interest then, except Tory. Amid the fuss of suitcases and boxes and things, Tory carried Rainbow’s strange gift up the stairs to her room. Ethan stared hungrily after her, but she ignored him. She stood beside her window, pondering the image in the egg. Her mother had a name now. It was Magda, a perfect name for the magical queen of her dreams. She would come soon, in her painted wagon, and carry Tory away. She would take her to a real castle, and Henry, too, and the king and princess and the gypsy queen would live happily ever after.

  Rainbow met Tory at the gate when she got back from school, stretching her neck and scolding. Her feathers shone their autumn gold and black, her ruffled comb gleaming scarlet.

  Tory dropped her backpack outside the gate and slipped inside. She knelt to offer Rainbow a morsel of oatmeal cookie saved from her lunch. The hen pecked at it until it was gone and then cocked her head at Tory as if demanding to know what happened to the rest of it.

&
nbsp; The other hens came running, and Tory scattered a handful of corn for them. They pecked at it happily, chortling among themselves. Tory ducked into the coop to check the nests.

  She savored the sweet smell of fresh wood shavings. Some chickens smelled awful, but hers, with their spotless coop and generous pen, smelled of clean feathers and good food and healthy bodies. Most of the hens laid their eggs in the hours of darkness, but there were always a few in the afternoons. Tory’s egg business was thriving. Every weekend she sold several dozen eggs, brought back egg cartons to reuse, and collected discarded newspapers for the laying nests.

  There were four eggs today, two large white ones and two tiny speckled ones, Pansy’s efforts. Tory cupped them against her middle, enjoying their smooth warmth against her palm.

  “Good girls,” she said as she made her way back through her little flock. “Especially you, Pansy! You try harder, don’t you?” Pansy waddled at her heels, clucking mournfully when Tory went through the gate. “Don’t cry,” Tory told her. “I’ll be back soon.”

  She went up through the screened porch and into the kitchen. The boys were seated around the table, arguing and poking at each other. Tory passed them on her way to put the eggs into the refrigerator, where a shelf was set aside for the purpose. Rosalie, immersed in setting out milk and sandwiches, greeted her, but Tory could hardly hear her over the boys’ racket. She murmured some response and dashed up the stairs toward her own room.

  She glanced back from the landing, noticing the flush on Rosalie’s cheeks, her hair curling in sweat-tendrils around her face. She looked tired. The kitchen counter was lined with jars of freshly made preserves, blackberry and raspberry and currant. The hot-water bath still steamed on the stove. Tory paused, supposing she should offer to help her stepmother.

  Just then Peter upset his milk into Jack’s lap, and Jack jumped up, knocking his chair to the floor. Ethan squalled some insult, and Rosalie exclaimed in exasperation. Tory groaned and escaped into her bedroom.