Eventually I was deemed fit to enter general population, but the girl who’d reminded me of Danielle was gone by then, released or transferred some other place. For a while I shared a cell with a woman whose ex-husband had covered her in gasoline and set her on fire; her skin was a palimpsest of whorls and knots, still smooth in a few places like tree bark that’s been peeled away, exposing the smooth, living wood underneath. Another time I saw an eighteen-year-old girl bite through her own tongue and spit blood at one of the guards who was trying to drag her to solitary. It would have been an ordinary assault charge, but she had Hepatitis, and her sentence was lengthened by another eight months.
Everybody knew there was something off about me, but the mind will do anything to find a rational explanation, even if that means deceiving itself. Sometimes I would notice some of the really far-gone prisoners looking at me, the ones who talked to themselves and took handfuls of coloured pills from the nurses every morning. It’s always the mad people that I think know the truth– maybe the world of magic only shows itself to them, because it knows nobody will believe them anyway. Or maybe when you live in the narrowest margin of society, you live in the margins of everything, reality included.
Years have passed now, but still I can feel people’s stares following me in a way they never used to. It happens when I walk down the Drive in the early morning, on the way to the job Paula got me at the mission. It happens when I weave my way through the crowded tables in the common room, handing out the soup and bread and overcooked pasta, chatting with some of the regulars before I have to run back to the kitchen again. It happens when John and I sit at the patio of the All-Nite for breakfast with Danielle’s mom, drinking the bottomless coffee, still tiptoeing around our shared pain like we might well be doing for the rest of our lives.
Sometimes when I look at her and I see the shadows in her eyes that weren’t there before, I think that she can tell what’s changed about me too. She can hear the words underneath the clatter of wings that fills the air when the three of us are walking together and the sky fills, inexplicably, with crows. They form a chorus line along the rotting eaves of downtown storefronts, and they stare at us with dozens of pairs of beady black eyes. She knows that they’re looking at us, and she looks back.
Even when we’re talking and laughing together, part of me is almost on edge around her. Part of me is always waiting for her to lean close to me and whisper, I know your secret, quiet so that nobody else can hear.
I know that you’re the reason the Drive is a different place now, she’ll tell me, and she’ll look at me with her eyes full of those roiling black shadows.
You’re the reason the cops don’t come there anymore, and neither do the news cameras.
You’re the twisted shadow that some people see perched on the mission’s peaked roof at night, although nobody ever believes them.
You’re the reason it’s not girls who are disappearing anymore.
And then I’ll feel my heart beat out of time with itself as the crows all descend, their scraping laughter echoing through the city, and John will absently lace his fingers through mine and squeeze my hand, like he always does when he’s nervous. And then something will happen, although to this day I’m not sure what I think that something might be.
Maybe it’ll be nothing. Maybe our mouths will fall open, and the three of us will laugh.
the bean-sidhe calls in owl-light
NEILE GRAHAM
The owl’s voice buffets the night with its tumbling roll
and the emptiness between. It beckons on my behalf:
red rover red rover, we call one over. And one comes—
foolish, human, old as winter trees, arms naked as branches,
his thin breath a faltering smoke between us, frost
from the welter of leaves on his gnarled feet.
I turn my palm to the night sky. The owl’s voice halts.
The man’s step pauses, then owl’s wings pass a blessing
over his head. Grace. There is beauty in that.
And in this man’s appearance there also is grace. His thin,
shy skin in ice wind. I hunger for this. Hunger for recognition
in his eyes as I step out from the trees into what brightness
there may be in this night. Does he see me yet? Does he see?
His eyes are full of owl-light, owl-light and eclipse, dart like sparrows,
alight on nothing till they latch on me. Then he names me
with the names of all women he has loved in his long life:
calls me mother, lover, child. Dear winter tree of a man
I am all of her you have ever met. I am Her. For what that’s worth.
Call me Mother Death as your breath ceases to cloud
the few inches now between us. First I dress you in the web
of memory the next step of your journey requires. I discard
ambition, impatience, guilt. Your armour against this year’s end
echoes the blessing of that bird’s wing. It clothes you with fire.
I take your hand. Your knobby twigs of fingers coldly clutch me now.
And I scrub you, cleanse from your skin the stench of Styx
and Acheron, rinse you first with tears of Cocytus then the balm
of Lethe. Then I relax my hold. Show your new flesh how
to carry the newborn breath and weight of you. How to rise again
to walk once more through dark forest, bravely armed and leaving me.
He walks, his back pine-straight, stride certain, tall but dwindling
into winter night. A rush of wind startles the trees around me
as he disappears. Gone and going. Going and gone. Oldest and new.
What is he born into now? Who, the owl calls. Who indeed?
fur and feathers
LISA L. HANNETT
“Where’s Reynard got himself to, Rori? I ain’t seen him for days.”
There’s a waver in Ida-Belle’s voice as her question travels up the henhouse stairs, a straining to be casual. Her feet scuffle in the dust, sandals shifting back and forth with toes pointed in. Clouds of dirt lift, cling to her ankles, then settle like sighs on the ground.
“Answer to that will cost you.” Aurora’s response comes from within the whitewashed structure; it sails out the multi-paned windows on a wave of chicken giggles and clucks. A minute later the woman appears, apron-covered legs framed in the lower half of the screen door, head and torso indistinct in the shadows cast by the coop’s overhanging eaves. One stride short of emerging, she looks down the five wooden steps to where Ida-Belle waits.
“I got coin,” the girl says, fumbling for the cotton purse she wears slung over her shoulder. She’s just gone twenty-one but long hours in the woolshed have wizened an extra decade into her face. Her hands—one now lifted to shade her eyes from the glare reflecting off the tin roof, the other pressed flat against her belly—are pink and soft. Years of gathering, combing, and carding lanolin-rich fleece has left even the creases around her knuckles smooth.
“Bet you do.” Arms wrapped around a pail of feed, Aurora uses a hip to push open the door. Springs squeal as the hinges stretch wide to let her out; they recoil with a clatter of wood against wood.
“Call me batty,” she continues, clomping down the steps, “but I reckon you ain’t drove halfway across Napanee to talk about Rey.”
“No,” says Ida-Belle, eyes cast down. “I reckon not.”
Aurora shifts her grip on the pail, cradles its weight in her left arm. “Well, out with it then.”
“Jimmy’ll kill me if he finds out I came.” The girl’s voice trails off as she looks up, takes in the henhouse. The place is bigger than her cottage and twice as old. Foundations raised four feet off the ground, the weatherboard building tilts to the right. Its porch sprouts support pillars like dozens of running legs caught beneath its bulk in mid-stride. A brace of hares, necks slit and draining red, dangles over the railing just high enough to be out
of predators’ reach. Garlands of bones and feathers, poppy heads and rosehips hang in rollercoaster loops from the eaves. To the left, a ramp sticks like a laddered tongue out a rooster-sized hole in the wall. Though a scrub brush and pail wait below the rainwater tank’s faucet, every horizontal surface remains speckled with bird shit.
“Ain’t no one forcing you to stay, girl. Get on with it, or get moving. My lasses have had themselves an upset this week; they sure as hell need my help if you don’t want it.”
“It’s just—” Ida-Belle pauses, begins again. “I can’t give you much in the way of payment, but I was hoping?” Her eyebrows and shoulders lift as she speaks, then slump as she sees the older woman’s stern expression. “I was hoping.”
Aurora sighs and puts down the pail. Straightening up, she wipes her hands on the back of her pants, then adjusts the fox’s tail tucked under the ribbon of her hat band. With a flick of the wrist, she sets its length drooping over the brim, its fur a striking contrast to the faded grey of her braids.
“Me and hope ain’t exactly seeing eye to eye these days.” She directs Ida-Belle to the Shaker-style rocking chair at the foot of the stairs. The girl perches on the edge of the seat, clutching her purse in her lap, close-lipped while Aurora continues. “That vixen blinds fools with promises then snatches them away just for kicks. Makes a person think she’s doing the right thing for her relationship when, in fact, she ain’t.”
“Oh.” Ida-Belle slouches under the weight of her disappointment. When she goes to stand, Aurora places a grimy hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.
“Quit your fluttering, Ida. If I had a mind to be rid of you, you’d already be gone.” From the way her client’s hands keep straying to her midriff, Aurora can see what it is the girl wants, why she’s here—but the words have to be said if the magic’s to work. “Get your thoughts in order, once and for all, then talk loud enough for my lasses to hear you. Nice and clear, mind; none of this faffing about hope.”
Ida-Belle takes a deep breath, exhales as she settles back into the chair. “Me and Jimmy’s been married nigh on six months now.”
Aurora keeps quiet as she waits for the girl to go on. The silence lengthens, broken only by the chickens’ chattering and cooing, and the steady creak of cicadas conversing in the cornfields. Aurora searches through her apron pockets for a pipe and some leaf. Finding both, she presses a thumb’s worth of tobacco into the bowl, clenches the stem between her teeth as she rummages around for a match.
“My friend Loretta said you helped her out once—” Ida-Belle’s face reddens. “She said you could see the future.” Aurora lifts an eyebrow, puffs her pipe to life, neither confirming nor denying the girl’s implicit question.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Ida-Belle says, “but ever since she came here Loretta ain’t had to face a single one of her mother-in-law’s visits. Even the ones what weren’t planned ahead! And when I asked how she got so lucky, always being out when Gerdie comes ’round to piss her off or tell her how to run her own household, Loretta showed me the little calendar you gave her—the one what’s got a bunch of dates and times written on it, starting from the day she came here and running well into the next five years.”
For the first time, Ida-Belle looks Aurora straight in the eye. “She wouldn’t tell me how you done it, Rori. Only that you done it.”
Aurora doesn’t smile, even though she’s glad to hear her previous clients continue to remain discreet in advertising her wares. Wouldn’t do no-one good to have the whole town flocking to her for answers whenever they got too lazy to do things the hard way. Ain’t time for that, far as she’s concerned.
Head wreathed in blue smoke, she leans against the elevated porch and gives Ida-Belle no more encouragement than a simple, “Uh-huh. And?”
Visibly steeling herself, the girl says, “I need to get knocked up, quick.”
Aurora nods, head bobbing to a familiar tune.
“Six months we’ve been married, Rori. Six months and so much fucking my nethers is rubbed raw—and still. Nothing.” She leans her head back, watches a sparrow flit from the henhouse roof to the chimney of Aurora’s cabin on the opposite side of the yard. Her lower lids well with tears. “Jimmy’s been eyeing that skank from the Buy ’n’ Save all winter. I reckon if I don’t give him some reason to stick around, he’ll be gone before shearing time.”
Aurora takes the pipe from her mouth, flips it and taps it on the edge of the porch. Soft clumps of ash drop to the ground as she asks, “So which do you want to know? If you’ll be pumping out wee ones soon, or if you’re going to lose Jimmy? We can only cover one thing at a time.”
Tears spill onto Ida-Belle’s pale cheeks. “Babies,” she whispers, while twisting the ring with its tiny zirconium stone, spinning it around and around her wedding finger. Aurora looks down at her own left hand; still surprised, even after a week, to see the bright white space where her own band of gold used to be. She clears her throat.
“You do realize there’s only so much we can do?”
Ida-Belle smiles through her tears, thoughts of Loretta’s success making her deaf to the older woman’s caveats. “Anything’s better than nothing.”
“Fine.” Aurora pockets her pipe and heads for the stairs. “Stay here. A few minutes and we’ll have you an answer.”
Aurora’s chickens would never be satisfied with a standard coop.
Stacks of cramped aluminium boxes, barely large enough to accommodate a hatchling much less a brooding hen, definitely wouldn’t suit them; nor would short plywood walls, so low they’d force their keeper to slouch while visiting her charges; nor wire mesh ceilings or floor-level apertures of the sort typically knocked together to aerate, and confine, egg-laying chooks.
Aurora’s lasses wouldn’t have a bar of that. They perch on overstuffed cushions; each nestled securely on mahogany bookshelves stretching well over forty feet to the rafters of the house’s double-peaked roof. They are hand-fed three times daily, given heaters when the seasons turn cold, and special treats on their birthdays. Unlike ordinary hens, Aurora’s tiny oracles smile, snack and lay their fortunes in comfort.
When she enters the henhouse, the gabble of voices crescendos in fear; the racket ebbs once the chickens recognize Aurora’s shape silhouetted against the screen. Hanging on the wall next to the door, an enormous blackboard gives the names and shelf numbers for every bird in the coop: fourteen hundred and seventy-six clairvoyant biddies—one for all but two of Napanee’s townsfolk. Enough warm light streams in to illuminate the handwritten list, but it isn’t bright enough to hurt the lasses’ sensitive eyes.
Scanning the columns of names, Aurora mutters, “Ida-Belle Caplin . . . Ida-Belle . . .” and wishes, not for the first time, that she’d had the presence of mind to house the girls in alphabetical order. Sixteen rows down, she sees what’s left of her own entry. Aurora Jenkins, Q42. She glosses over it when she notices Ida-Belle’s berth is P43.
Damn you, Rey, she thinks. She’s steered clear of Minnie’s roost all week; now there’s nothing she can do but try not to stare at it while she negotiates with Ida-Belle’s hen. Double-checking the supply of Tic Tacs she keeps in her top apron pocket, and hooking a pouchful of dry-roasted seed to her belt, Aurora weaves her way between bookshelves to reach the far side of the room.
The oracles generally pay her comings and goings little mind, unless she’s got riddles for them to solve. But this week they’re bursting with questions, most concerning Reynard. Every third step or so she’s forced to stop, kiss their baby-smooth cheeks, stroke the bridges of their button noses, and reassure them that he won’t be back any time soon. Although her caresses calm them, her words sound hollow. She knows it’ll only be a matter of minutes before they forget and get anxious again.
Their far-seeing skills are flawless—except when the future involves that trickster she’s called husband for twenty-five years.
“Excuse me, Miss Rori?” A tiny voice chirps at her as she passes aisle G. Sh
e stops and looks up to the top shelf, into the pale green eyes of an ancient Plymouth Rock lass. The oracle’s plumage is patterned like black and white tweed, each feather neatly groomed despite the bird’s age; her face a perfect replica of old widow McGeary’s, the crone who’d just celebrated her eighty-fifth winter.
“What can I do for you, Valma?” The hen tut-tuts at being addressed so informally—she prefers to be called Madam. She wrinkles her coffee-coloured face into a grimace; her wide lips shrivel into a frown. A red pillbox hat slips down her forehead until her arched eyebrows are hidden beneath its decorative veil. She leans over to scold Aurora.
“Rape!” The word shrills out of the hen’s throat, then is clipped short in a panicked bu-gock. “Those gold demons you let loose in this place keep making advances, trying to have their filthy way with me while I’m asleep. I feel them pecking at me—peck, peck, pecking all night! I just know they’re aching to get beneath my frillies.”
“Oh, Valma,” Aurora says, her tone exhausted. “I thought we dealt with this already. The roosters can’t reach you all the way up there, hun. That’s why we moved you, remember?”
“I ain’t so sure about that, Miss Rori. I see them eyeing me all day, just waiting for me to nod off. No matter how high I fly above their heads to show they can’t have me, they keeping coming back. The perverts.”
Aurora sighs. None of her sibyls can fly—in that way they’re no different from bird-faced chooks. And the roosters are just that: roosters. It’s their nature to be curious; they don’t know any better. A pair of twin Brahma hens to Valma’s right, one girl and one boy, start giggling at the oracle’s rant. Their near-identical faces, accentuated by tufts of herringbone feathers, are both at least half a century away from her kind of senility. To the aged hen’s left, a New Hampshire brown studiously avoids Aurora’s gaze. She gently shifts her bulk to hide a long, sharp piece of straw sitting next to her pillow.
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