Grave of Hummingbirds

by Jennifer Skutelsky

  For the first week, he learned nothing from her, just stared, entranced. She insisted on speaking to the class in English; only in their art classes did she speak Pájaron, and even then, as English became more familiar, she encouraged them to use it. “Pájaron is our language,” she said. “No one will ever take that away from us. But English is so confusing, if you learn to speak it properly, you will outsmart everyone who cannot speak Pájaron, and believe me when I tell you most people cannot speak Pájaron.”

  He often found her logic difficult to follow.

  He told her of a book his mother had read to him as far back as he could remember, and Nita brought the English version to class. He listened to her read from The Little Prince and even in the foreign words, he found his mother. The story broke his heart and at the same time made him happy.

  Not long ago, before he’d brought her to this place, he’d made a Gregory mask for her, at least the way he saw the doctor now. He’d captured, in the plaster, the strong side of Gregory and the side that had slackened with grief and loneliness. But she didn’t recognize him as Gregory, and now he removed it, flexing his jaw and lifting a hand to knead his cheeks. Perhaps when she woke, she would prefer him. He was young and strong and not about to let anything happen to her. He was a step ahead of her illness. He intended to catch it, cut it out before it could snatch her away again, and this time, this time, she’d recover.

  He had seen Gregory in the alley after he’d left Rufo, and he had a little time before the whole village mobilized to hunt him down.

  There, in the eerie light of the kerosene lamp, amid the thick smell of diesel from the generator he used to plug in his tattoo power-supply unit, and the reek of putrefaction, he began to read aloud from the book Nita had given him when he turned sixteen. El principito, the same translation his mother had shared with him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Finn ran without thought through confused crowds, past the school, over the now-deserted bridge. The wind stung his face and whipped against his sweater, but he didn’t feel the cold. He slowed and turned on his phone’s flashlight to see if there were any signs of Sophie along the path. She might have come looking for him and fallen, twisted her ankle, or dropped something that would show him the path she’d taken.

  Before long, the mountains and high altitude took their toll. A stitch in Finn’s side almost doubled him over at the same time that his muscles weakened, and he began to stumble. His lungs clamored for air. He stopped and looked back. He’d wandered off the logging road onto the path that he and Alberto had taken earlier that day, and he collapsed against a steeply looming rock.

  A deep-throated growl rumbled nearby, startling him. As the wind swept aside the clouds, the moon shone on a sleek sand-colored animal standing on a ledge close to where he rested. The big cat growled again, then moved off.

  Finn stood, unafraid but now feeling the cold. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms, stamped his feet, and ran in place. Skipped. Then he did a few jumping jacks and tried to blow fog rings with his breath.

  Feeling a little warmer, he jogged back to the path and stood still, hoping something would come to him, some intuitive sense of direction that would miraculously reveal Sophie’s whereabouts. The vastness of the sky made him tiny and turned even the smallest shrub into a threat.

  He didn’t feel the amber eyes on his back. His senses were blunt and incoherent, and by the time he realized he had company, it was too late.

  Down he went like a bowling pin, the wind knocked out of him as something hit him hard from behind.

  Some thought process shot to the rescue, at odds with instinct. His mind told him it would be best to scream and run; it warned, in a single fluid instant, that he could expect to feel large canines sink into the base of his neck, where they would work their way between his vertebrae to snap his spine.

  But instead of running, Finn lay still. The growl was very close to his ear, a rumbling, chesty snore that ended in a snarl and a throaty grunt. He let the cat sniff about his ears and run its nose through his hair. The animal nudged and butted him with its sleek head, sat on him, and lifted a paw to tap his shoulder. Aware of its haunches and the damage they could do, he tried to coax it off him by wriggling onto his side. Momentarily dislodged, the cat complained with a mewling hiss, and he cautiously turned onto his back.

  Smaller than he’d anticipated, the puma had to be young or a female. She sat down beside him and surveyed the landscape, in no hurry to move off. Finn entered the moment with no expectation. The mountains, the sky, the stars, and the stones beneath his head all receded, leaving him alone with the cat. She half closed her eyes and rumbled, as if to say, “What more than this could there be?”

  Then she got up and walked a little way, stopped, and waited. Puzzled that she should choose the path that led down to Gregory’s house, Finn gave up on logic and went after her. She kept up a steady trot and, when he lagged behind, did a small about-circle on the path to give him a chance to catch up.

  Finn grew warmer with her there as his pulse synchronized with hers, circulating air and heat to his muscles and lungs and heart. He had no trouble seeing ahead. Occasionally he used the flashlight on his phone but tried not to, anxious to conserve the battery. Now and again, he called out Sophie’s name, his voice echoing.

  Within half a mile of Gregory’s house, the puma left the overgrown trail, and Finn followed her down a steep-walled creek. The wind dropped. The sky was clear, and he could see the lake beyond the treetops, starlight captured and reflected on the glistening water. The cat made no sound as she slipped through the undergrowth, but Finn did, snapping twigs, clacking pebbles, and stumbling as he kept up with her.

  She led him through a sloping wooded ravine to a series of shallow rock steps, their surface smooth and silvery gray. He could hear the distant roar of a waterfall. As they cleared the woods, the lake opened up beneath them like a deep breath of air after an underwater swim. Gregory’s house lay just below them. In the white light of the moon, Finn saw that the path they were now on would take him back to the logging road. Across the lake, water cascaded down the side of the cliff, weightless as the spilling hair of an old woman, thick at the top and thinning to mist at its ends.

  The adrenaline in Finn’s body subsided, and he felt tired enough to sleep where he stood. But he knew that the cold would sneak back if he gave in to fatigue, and confident that he could find his way out, he continued after the puma. She stopped to watch him while he found his bearings, then hurried on.

  Finn began to get anxious when she veered off the path, moved through a dense curtain of foliage, and slowed, looking for something. She paced back and forth in front of a forked tree, its twisted trunk compressed by a thick wedge of overhanging rock. Part of the tree had broken away and surged into a second, thinner branch that, like a seeking finger, reached into a dark recess in the mountainside.

  Here the puma sat down and waited for him to step close. And it was here that she seemed to say good-bye, grunting once, twice, and butting his hip gently with her head. Then she turned away and bounded off, leaving him alone and bereft beside the gnarled joints of the misshapen tree.

  She took with her his ability to see, and within seconds, the cold stole over his limbs again. Finn switched on his flashlight and maneuvered himself into the recess, little more than a vertical slit that appeared to be the narrow mouth of a cave. A cloying, sweet, sickly smell mingled with the acrid stink of waste.

  Why had she led him here? The entrance was too small to admit him, even if he turned sideways. Finn quickly changed his mind and tried to retreat. But he was caught fast between the upward slope and the bark of the twisted tree, and no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t work himself free. He used both arms to push against the branch, hoping he’d find some give, but the tree itself had long ago been trapped by the rock in much the same way he was now wedged in, and it had no yield to offer.

  Long, torturous minutes passed, tunnels of time that threatene
d to crush him as panic set in. His ribs expanded. The more he fought for breath, the more tenacious the wood and rock became, until Finn sensed that they were sentient, even malicious. His struggles intensified in spurts, but he might as well have been caught in the constricting coils of an anaconda.

  Grunting, groaning, and panting, Finn weakened. He faced a dark so suffocating, a black so deep and remorseless, that he stopped peering ahead and turned his face away.

  Finn could feel the vibrations of distant horse hooves, slowing from a canter to a walk up the steep paths. He could hear the horses’ puffs and snorts, the rustling of undergrowth, the cracking of brushwood, the grind of loose stones and gravel, and the calls of faraway men.

  “I’m here,” he cried, the sound a whisper as the world spun about him. His body took control of his mind again and, in the middle of a frantic thought, simply shut him down. He slumped forward, unconscious.

  Finn’s temperature dropped and he stopped shivering. His fingers stiffened and turned blue. In his sleep he became Count Albrecht, crouched at Giselle’s grave with an offering of lilies. The music was faint at first, moving toward him through a burrow, the notes of clarinet, piano, and violin distant and keening, but they grew in volume until a full symphony orchestra swelled around him. While amnesia began to cloud his mind, muscle memories kicked in, and he danced in his dreams as though his life depended on it.

  He became aware of an audience, indistinct shapes that slipped out of the cave opening to watch him. A woman with long, dark hair, wearing a bloody slip, and the old woman he’d hallucinated at the village. They moved toward him, but this time he felt no fear.

  The tension left, and when he woke, he lay splayed out on a protruding mound of earth at the threshold of the opening.

  Finn stood on thawing, wobbly legs. Now when he shone his phone flashlight, he saw that, cell by cell, the tree trunk had petrified over time into solid rock, its wooden structure replaced and replicated by minerals whose trace elements left lingering trails of yellow, orange, red, and sea green. The stone slab from which it surged housed the remnants of long-dead creatures, fossils trapped in waves of strata and the tears of amber tree sap: the unblinking eyes on the wings of owl butterflies, the stained-glass patterns of clearwing butterflies, a pink toe tarantula, harlequin beetles and yellow caterpillars, apple snails and rhino beetles. They had all been trapped in the midst of their work, clearing and cleaning the forest bed, pollinating flowers, and turning the soil.

  Finn took hold of the rock tree’s gnarled stone knuckle and, expecting to struggle with it, pulled hard. The heavy slab to which it was attached easily swung open, the door rotating around a thick bronze column inserted at its base into a long-toothed gear. Grass, rubble, and foliage concealed the craftsmanship from the outside, but here it was plain to see, and Finn took a moment to absorb the rush of awe and concentrated energy that dispelled the last of his sluggishness.

  The cold ceased to matter. All that mattered was Sophie, and he knew, as he stepped forward, that he had found her.

  He was also aware, as the stench of rot and carnage struck him like a blow, that he’d stumbled into a hellhole.

  Finn moved across an uneven threshold into a narrow hallway that widened gradually into a staircase, skirted on one side by a smooth ramp. To his right, a series of tall stone pillars buttressed the entrance, and he stayed close to the columns, ready to grab on if he slipped. Choking on the smell, he advanced cautiously, holding his breath and eventually covering his nostrils to avoid inhaling through his nose. He seemed to be moving through an hourglass, the passageway narrowing to a tunnel and swelling outward again into a circular chamber. He kicked something, setting up a clattering as it rolled away, and turned his ankle as the ground developed ridges and teeth. With each footstep he felt something give way, the balls and heels of his sneakers jarring or sliding on loose debris. He was too mesmerized by the sight ahead to look down.

  The chamber formed a mile-high cylindrical shaft that opened to the sky, a colossal chimney with a pyramid of sticks and stones stacked at the base. A beam of moonlight shone on the macabre display, and Finn stumbled backward, tripping on the scatterings under his feet.

  They were not sticks and stones at all, but heads, arms, legs, and the delicate twigs of fingers and feet. A leafy vine draped the bodies as though a creeper had grown there. Clusters of dying yellow roses gathered in what was left of someone’s hair. They were the same flowers that grew along the walls of the doctor’s house.

  Finn drew shallow breaths. He’d stumbled into a slaughterhouse. Terrified for Sophie, he swallowed a scream as he lost his balance. He sat where he had fallen and saw, all around him, skeletal remains. They were not neatly arranged, as bodies would be in a tomb. Some were wedged against the wall, half-seated. Some lay prone—others face up.

  Scrambling onto his knees, then feet, Finn moved into another tunnel, leaving behind what natural light had filtered into the shaft.

  The second chamber was long and thin and divided into smaller grottos.

  His heart hammered. He resisted the urge to run forward, keeping instead to the shadows and moving slowly, listening after each step, probing the dark for any signs of movement.

  He approached the final grotto from the side. Bird shapes had been created from welded metal pieces, and through them he saw a lamp in the center of the small cavern. Just beyond it, on a mattress, a figure huddled close to the sloping wall. In the far corner, Finn could make out another indistinct form, covered by a brown or dark-red patterned blanket.

  The walls were ridged and rippled, and stalactites dripped from the ceiling. Directly below them were broader mounds, and in two places, thin columns had formed where stalagmites had grown upward to join the stone icicles.

  Finn searched for a way in. “Mom,” he whispered, but the figure did not stir. Around him a mist formed, thin at first but growing more substantial as he took hold of the bars and shook them. He was afraid to look behind him, but his peripheral vision showed him the spectral silhouettes languidly forming about him.

  “Mom!”

  Sophie remained inert, lying on her side.

  Finn groped the bars, ignoring his ghostly audience.

  At their base, the bars were attached to railings. Up above, the steel came to an abrupt end, jutting spikes into the air. The horizontal metal plates crisscrossing vertical struts—a latticework he’d seen transformed into the wings and bodies of birds at a distance—appeared up close as a haphazard patchwork of metal tic-tac-toe.

  There had to be a gate, a lock. He could possibly squeeze over the top, but then he wouldn’t be able to get his mother out. Feeling the bars with his fingertips and tracing the edges of the metal plates, he continued to search for a way in, murmuring, “Mom, Mom, Mom,” hoping to wake her. At last, he found a keyhole.

  Cold air crawled across his skin, as though a door had opened. Finn whirled to face whatever stood behind him.

  There was nobody there, but off to the side stood a crude wooden stool. On it, neatly folded, were Sophie’s clothes. A key rested on top of her white shirt.

  Finn thrust it into the lock with shaking fingers, took a deep breath, and stilled his shuddering hands. The key turned, and he wrenched the steel macaw sideways, hearing a click as the wheels engaged on the rail. With a clank and rumble, the gate moved, and he hurled himself through the opening, felt the squelch of something soft and fleshy under his sneakers but paid no attention, dropped to his knees beside the still form of his mother, and rolled Sophie onto her back.

  She was limp and unresponsive. Finn didn’t know what to do. The gown she wore was torn and spotted with blood, and she was naked underneath. He fumbled with the edges of the cloth to cover her. A gauze bandage encircled her upper right arm, and he moved his fingers to her wrist to feel for a pulse. He couldn’t find one and grew rough in his efforts to wake her, to bring her back to him.

  Finn smoothed Sophie’s hair away from her face, moved his hand down her cheek
and across her jaw, then remembered where to look for a deeper rhythm, below the bone. There, curving along her neck and clavicle, were leaves—leaves, for God’s sake—and, fingers trembling against his mother’s hot skin, he at last found a faint, thready beat.

  Sophie was alive. She was alive, but there was something terribly wrong for her to be this senseless. He found a swelling on one side of her forehead, a livid bump the size of a quarter. Her hair had been cut, not short, but someone had taken a pair of scissors to it.

  Finn got back onto his knees and tried to lift her. She was too heavy; he’d never get her up this way. He stood and managed to hook one arm beneath her thighs, supporting her back with the other. He drew on the hours of training that had prepared him to lift ballerinas, and although Sophie was deadweight, he was still able to hoist her up onto his chest. With her knees folded over his forearm and her head rolled against his shoulder, he turned to carry her out.

  A creature stood in the gateway, a phantom from a wide-awake nightmare, a twisted white-faced demon whose bottomless gaze burned into Finn like a blowtorch.

  Finn’s grip on his mother weakened.

  “Put her down. This has nothing to do with you.”

  Finn recognized Alberto’s voice in spite of the mask, and that’s all it was, a mask. He lowered his mother gently back onto the mattress.

  “You shouldn’t be here. She’s mine. You must let her go. Say good-bye, and go.”

  Finn was slow to answer. Alberto’s madness spread like a toxin through the cave. Even the walls bore the pits and clumps of anguish and grief; the ground and ceiling, the tumors of rage and pain. The air itself was scarred and damaged.