Oh Pretty Bird

by Seanan McGuire

  “But how do they keep from getting caught? You can’t pull faces like that and expect that nobody’s going to notice. That’s just silly.”

  “You can if you’re also capable of subtly smoothing out the memories of the people around you, keeping them from remembering that you did anything out of the ordinary,” said Jonathan. “More, we’re acting as if this sort of manipulation is a blunt instrument, but I remember when Heloise was changing my mind, Fran, and it was a subtle thing. It was delicate. There isn’t another word for it.” He shook his hand, looking frustrated by the lack of appropriate vocabulary. “She made her changes deliberately and so that they would be internally consistent. The only thing she did wrong was in omitting the mice, and those wouldn’t be something she’d have any experience with.”

  “Well, why not?” asked Fran.

  “Because, Priestess, there are so few of us,” squeaked a voice from inside her hair.

  Fran and Jonathan exchanged a look. The mouse that had accompanied them for their tour around Whiting had been quiet the whole time; so quiet that they had almost forgotten it was there.

  “What do you mean, hon?” asked Fran.

  The mouse emerged onto her shoulder, running pinkish paws once over its whiskers before it said, gravely, “We may be the Last. We do not know. We know only that every colony that has left us, for whatever reason—religious schism or the need to seek new mates, in a new place, as has always been the way—has vanished forever from our Ken, never to return. We have heard of no other colonies, learnt of no other faiths, in more generations than I have years to claim as my own. We are like to be the Last.”

  Fran stared at the mouse. Jonathan looked away. That the Aeslin mice were virtually extinct outside the Healy family attic was a quietly unspoken fact. Everyone in the family knew. Aside from Fran, everyone had known for decades, and the only reason she hadn’t known as long as because there had been a time in her life before she belonged to the family. The Aeslin were dying out. They were an evolutionary dead end, not suited to the harsh realities of the world in which nature had designed them to exist.

  Finally, Fran spoke. “So you think that when Heloise read Johnny’s mind, she didn’t think the talkin’ mice were real?”

  “Even so, Priestess,” said the mouse.

  “Huh. Well, all right. You’d know better than I would.” She turned back to Jonathan. Then she paused and smiled, relief flooding her face. “Look behind you.”

  Jonathan turned to see his parents’ truck pulling into the lot. “Oh, thank heavens,” he said. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

  The lot was still mostly empty, and it took very little time before Alexander and Enid were safely parked and climbing out of the vehicle. Jonathan and Fran rushed over, ready to share their news. They were cut off by Enid, who announced calmly, “We’ve seen her. She’s in the library.”

  The younger Healys stopped. There was a pause before Jonathan asked cautiously, “Heloise Tapper?”

  “Yes,” confirmed Alexander. “Who else would we have seen?”

  “Could’ve been Robert Tapper, since he’s apparently replaced the local school principal,” said Fran. “That’s why everyone in this town is so brain-scrambled. They’ve got two of whatever that woman is to deal with. Maybe more, I don’t know.”

  Alexander looked horrified. Enid frowned at him.

  “All right, Alex, what are you thinking?” she asked. “You’ve got to be thinking something nasty, or you wouldn’t be making that face. What’s the problem?”

  “Two of them. A male and a female. In the same small town, when whatever they are is rare enough that we’ve never encountered one of them before.” Alex’s tone was grim. “What does that sound like to you?”

  Enid raised a hand and covered her mouth. Jonathan closed his eyes, going pale. Fran looked between the members of her family, waiting for one of them to take the next step and explain. None of them did. Finally, frustrated, she placed her thumb and forefinger in her mouth and whistled shrilly. It was an old horse-calling trick that she had learned when she was still with the carnival, and it could carry for miles.

  The others turned and looked at her. Fran dropped her hand and shrugged.

  “Y’all were going into one of those wacky science fugues where you just sort of figure everyone else knows what’n the hell you’re on about,” she said reasonably. “We don’t have time for that sort of thing right now. Why’s this such a big deal?”

  “Because there is a good chance that Heloise Tapper and her…friend…have been rewriting this town for a very simple, very universal reason,” said Alexander. “I think they’re nesting. And that means they’re getting ready to breed.”

  For safety’s sake, they had retreated to a point two miles outside the Whiting city limits—after making another stop at the gas station where Fran had acquired their breakfast, this time to buy a map of the town. Jonathan and Alexander were bent over it, marking all the reasonable routes that Heloise and Robert could be taking between the library and the elementary school. Enid had wandered off into the fields alongside the highway to let off a little pent-up aggression, leaving Fran to watch over the Aeslin mice that had accompanied them on the trip.

  “I just want to be clear about this,” she said firmly, fixing the colony with a steady eye. “When we go back into Whiting, we’re leaving you out here. You got me? You’re going to be nice and safe in your little case, and you can have a nice vacation without worrying the pants offa us in the process.”

  “But Priestess, how can we Observe and Remember if you will not let us accompany you?” asked the novice in charge of the detachment from the colony. “One of us must be with you. You must allow us One.”

  “Nope,” she said blandly. “Mustn’t. Shan’t, either, so there’s no point in trying for that angle. Robert didn’t spot you because you were in my hair, and he wasn’t looking for mouse-brains, and so you weren’t a target. But once we have them cornered he’ll be going for whatever he can find that might help him. We don’t want you being taken over by a deranged mind-reader whose girlfriend had a known tropism toward violent force.” She paused then, and chuckled. “I just said ‘tropism.’ City boy must be rubbing off on me.”

  “But Priestess, what harm could one of us do to You, in all Your Glory?” asked the mouse. The others squeaked and twitched their ears in agreement, although none of them said anything loudly enough for it to reach Fran’s ears. She wondered, sometimes, whether they sounded like ponderous giants to the mice, which always sounded a little shrill and sped-up to her.

  “Nothing,” she admitted, and leaned closer, trying to look the novice in the eyes. It was difficult: they simply weren’t constructed at the same scale. “But the trouble is, there’s a lot that I could do to you. If one of them took over your thoughts and convinced you that we were the enemy…my hands are bigger than your bodies. I could crush you so easily. Or you could be knocked to the ground, or stepped on, or…it’s just not worth it. Not when we can come back here and tell you what happened. Do you understand? I know this is important to you, I know you want to see what happens, but I’m begging here. Please don’t try to follow us. Please don’t make me be afraid that I’ll be used against you—because if she sees how much you love us, she’ll turn you into weapons just to make us destroy you.”

  “Priestess…” The novice bowed his head, revealing the white fur on the back of his neck. For a moment, there was silence. Finally, he said, “It will be as You have said. But we are truly sorry that we cannot accompany You into danger. We have failed You.”

  “No, you haven’t,” said Fran. “Keeping yourselves safe when you can’t gain anything by going into danger isn’t failing me. It’s protecting me. I’ll be better at doing what has to be done if I know you’re nowhere nearby.”

  The scuff of a foot on the gravel bank behind her alerted her to Jonathan’s approach even before he spoke, saying, “We all will be. We thank you for your willingness to sacrifice for
your faith.”

  “HAIL!” chorused the mice—but there was something sad about the word, stealing its customary wild enthusiasm. Better than anyone, the Aeslin mice understood that sometimes your gods walked away, and never came back to you. Not alive, anyway.

  Jonathan put his hand on Fran’s shoulder, murmuring, “It’s time.”

  She nodded and rose, following him back to the truck. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “If they’re intending to breed, they’ll need a place with space, privacy, and one presumes, decent facilities to support a pregnancy,” said Alexander. He tapped a circle that he had drawn on the map, almost precisely equidistant between the school and the library. “This is the mayor’s house, traditionally. It’s large, airy, and has plenty of room for two people who don’t enjoy each other’s company.”

  Now Fran frowned. “What makes you think they don’t like each other?”

  “I don’t think that whatever effect they’re using to befuddle the townsfolk is geographically limited. We’ve seen enough people, in enough different parts of town, that I’m thinking it’s more likely something akin to hypnotism. The Tappers may need to speak to each person individually, which would limit how quickly their sphere of influence can spread, but they don’t seem to need to keep close in order to keep it going. They can just set up their little suggestions and move on. That means they’re spending their days in different places, different parts of town, because they want to.”

  “Any race that naturally transfers thoughts would either have to be like the Apraxis, and live in unified hives, or be essentially solitary,” said Jonathan, taking up the train of thought. “They’d have no privacy at all, otherwise.”

  “So they’re here because they need to breed, and they’re spending as much time apart as they can while that’s going on because they don’t like each other very much?” Fran shook her head slowly. “Seems like a complicated way to go about making babies. The human way’s a lot more fun. So are they like, I don’t know, cats, then? The mama cat chases off the papa cat as soon as the deal’s been done, but she tolerates her kittens until they’re grown up enough to be competition.”

  “I…don’t know yet,” said Alexander slowly. “It’s not scientific to make guesses.”

  Fran snorted. “Everything we’ve been doin’ since we got here has been about making guesses. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think they’re like cats,” said Alexander. “I think they’re more like cuckoos. Brood parasites. Every other race of intelligent cryptids we know has a documented culture—even if the documenting was done by the Covenant after they had burnt that culture to the ground, at least they acknowledge it was there. These things seem to prey exclusively on what’s been built by other species.”

  “We don’t know they target anything but humans,” said Fran. “I think you’re stretchin’.”

  “Given that the bogeymen knew about the charms to prevent active thought-transference, and knew what she was—and further, given that the Letiche witch who sold me the charms we’re all wearing had spent the time to learn how to cast the charms, I think it’s egotistical to assume that these creatures solely target humanity,” said Alexander.

  “It also explains how they can drop out of sight the way that they do,” said Jonathan. “If they’re rare—and they would have to be; a predator that can take over an entire city without being noticed can’t be common, the world simply doesn’t have the resources to support it—and they move from one culture to another at their whim, then it would be entirely possible for them to leave here and vanish into the company of the gorgons or the ghouls. They could spend a few years there, bending their companions to their will, and then move on to greener pastures.”

  “It’s a cunning method of hunting, and it means we need to be extremely careful,” said Alexander. He glanced toward the side of the road. Enid was trudging through the field, a brace of rabbits slung over one shoulder. He couldn’t quite stop himself from smiling, very briefly, before he turned back to the others and continued grimly, “They’ve taken over this city. We’ve only seen it in the passive sense, with the people who don’t know what’s going on around them, but there may be an active side to their occupation, as well.”

  “You mean like where Johnny was ready to put a bullet between my eyes for threatening his ‘wife,’” said Fran darkly.

  Alexander nodded. “Yes, exactly that. We can’t dismiss the idea that the people of Whiting might respond if the Tappers call for them—and we won’t necessarily hear the call, if they send it with their minds.”

  “There’s another problem,” said Fran grimly. “You said they might be doin’ this—working together, taking over a whole city, the entire shebang—because they’re getting ready to breed. Now, I don’t have any objections to killin’ that bitch so dead that she never existed in the first place, and I don’t have any major ones to shootin’ her husband or whatever he is, since it’s clear he’s the kind of boy critter that thinks girl critters like her are just plain dandy. That puts him in the ‘kill it now’ category as far as I’m concerned. But…” She stopped there, anger and indecision warring for control of her face.

  “But you don’t know if you can kill a baby,” said Enid, walking up to join the group. Fran nodded. Enid smiled, sadly. “What a moral quandary to walk back in on. Maybe I should have stayed out in the field for a few minutes more, and let you come to a conclusion without me.”

  “What if they’re not here to breed? What if they’re here because they’ve already bred?” Fran sounded anguished. “They’ve done bad things, and they’re predators, we’re sure of that. I want to see that woman bleed for what she did to Daniel. I want to rip her apart with my bare hands. But I don’t think I have it in me to kill a baby. Babies aren’t good or bad or anything, no matter what their parents were. They’re just potential. How can it be right to kill something that’s just potential?”

  “I think you’re borrowing trouble, Fran,” said Alexander gently. “We don’t know that they’ve bred, and if they have…well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For right now, we just need to figure out what our approach is going to be. We can’t afford to go in guns blazing. If the townspeople see us, they may stop us, and we can’t just shoot innocent bystanders for the crime of having their minds controlled.”

  “Not unless they present an immediate danger,” corrected Enid gently. “I won’t kill innocents unless I have to, but I also won’t let them hurt my family. I’m sorry. Maybe that means I’m not as good a person as I’ve always wanted to be. If it means you all stay alive, I think I can live with that.”

  “I think we all can,” said Jonathan grimly. “All right: we’ve identified the mayor’s house as their most likely nesting point. Mother, you’ll scout the perimeter while Father approaches from the rear. Fran and I will take the front door. If they’re there, we’ll know immediately, and be able to distract them while you and Father come in the back door. If there’s not a back door, find a window. I’m confident that you’ll be able to find an alternate access point for the house.”

  “What if we have the wrong house?” asked Enid.

  “Then we step back, and we try again. They can’t detect us while we’re wearing these charms; if we claim to have gone to the wrong address, even if they’re suspicious, they can’t prove anything. We’ll be able to regroup.” Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t expect that to work more than twice, but twice is better than not at all. We can do this. We can overpower them, question them, and know, finally, for certain, that she won’t be hurting us again.”

  Enid looked at her son and didn’t say anything. In that moment, she was seeing Jonathan as he would have been if they had stayed with the Covenant: calm, collected, and entirely willing to kill two non-humans for the crime of their nature. At the same time, she knew that he had been pushed past all reasonable bounds. Had Heloise Tapper walked away after Colorado—had she allowed Daniel to live—they wouldn’t be in
Whiting now. They would have been perfectly content to live and let live, respecting the balance of nature.

  Heloise had been the one to make things personal. Whatever happened next was on her.

  “Are we all in agreement?” asked Jonathan.

  “Just let me give these rabbits to the mice,” said Enid.

  “Take your time,” said Alexander. “We have a few hours before sunset. We move at dark.”

  The four Healys scattered, although none of them went very far. There was a great deal to do before the sun went down. It’s always more work than anyone expects, planning a murder.

  The mayor’s house was dark, with only a single light in what Jonathan assumed was the living room window. There should have been more. A house this size, there should have been a small staff, if nothing else: a cook in the kitchen preparing the next day’s bread, a housekeeper turning down the linens upstairs. But there was just the one light, and that more than anything made him certain they were in the right place.

  Fran kept her hand resting lightly on his arm as they strolled down the sidewalk for the third time, letting him guide her while she watched the surrounding houses. In contrast to the mayor’s house, they had too many lights on, and she had seen more than a few faces through the gauzy curtains, twisted and distorted by the fabric until they became the shades of beasts. More lights went on with every circuit of the block.

  “They may not be able to ‘see’ us mentally, but they’ve sure got this town on high alert,” she murmured, moving her lips as little as possible. “Can’t say that one of these folks won’t run to warn the masters if we don’t act soon. You seen enough? Because I think it’s time for us to move.”