Hummingbird, part three

My tears dried, salty riverbeds traced on my cheeks. I listened for the fall of footsteps, but only the calls of a thousand birds reached my ears. I stood and moved toward the sound. I stepped softly, hoping no one could hear me over the cacophony of the birds. At the end of the hall, I tried a massive door. It was locked. I knelt and whispered to the lock, and it slid out of place. I opened the door, pulling with both arms against its weight.

Inside, the moonlight poured though the leaded glass windows like melted silver. It illuminated hundreds of birdcages. The birds fell silent as I entered the room. As one, they turned on their perches and watched me with inscrutable black eyes.

My predecessors.

Baba had told me I was to become a hummingbird if the prince didn’t take me. Looking around, I saw everything but hummingbirds. Great horned owls with twitching feathery tufts, speckled brown sparrows, proud blue jays, slender white cranes, tiny goldfinches with little black hats, all of them stood perfectly still and watched me.

Perhaps I could free these women from their enchantments. I opened my arms wide and spoke some sacred words. Nothing happened. All the birds gave a great squawk of disappointment.

For the next hour, I opened every cage and freed the birds. They walked or flew in a cloud around my head, making no noise. When the last birdcage was open, I pushed the door wide and went into the hallway. A blackbird flew ahead and paused, hovering in midair, looking at me. I followed.

Through the castle I followed the blackbird, down and out, treading on bunched carpet and cold tile. When we reached the main door, I pushed it. No one had locked this door, and it swung wide. The blackbird flew outside to freedom… and transformed. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair, tangled and disheveled. She looked at her long white hands and smiled.

“Come!” she cried, and her voice was the raucous call of a blackbird.

The cloud of birds flew through the doorway, each transforming in the moonlight to the woman she had once been.

When every last bird was through the door, I followed. We left the door standing wide and started to run together, running for freedom.

It was time to go see Baba.

Hummingbird, part two

The prince shoved me into the carriage and followed me inside. Baba trailed behind him, calling for payment. He slammed the door in her face and called for the driver to whip up the horses. The carriage lurched into motion, and I clung to my seat to avoid being rocked onto the prince. With Baba gone, I relaxed a little. I didn’t know what the prince was capable of, not yet, but I knew only Baba could turn people into birds.

We both remained silent for the carriage ride up to the castle. When we halted, the prince grabbed my arm again and yanked me outside. I ran to keep up with my dragged arm, stumbling twice. The prince led me through the castle gate, flanked by liveried servants, and into the building. The high ceiling dwarfed me, and I felt myself shrinking at the shoulders.

He led me down hallways, up spiral staircases, through grand rooms, and up more stairs. Left, right, left, right, right, up, over, left, through... I became completely lost. As my breath began to come more raggedly, he finally halted before a large wooden door and opened it. “Your quarters, wife,” he said.

An icy chill ran down my spine at the word, but I gave a half-bow and entered the room he indicated. As I was staring at the furnishings and trying to take in my new surroundings, the door shut behind me. I heard the sliver of a steel lock slide into place outside the door.

I waited for hours. I paced the room, treading on the thin rug and cold tile floor without noticing their grandeur. Someone sent up food when the light in the window grew orange. I gobbled down the warm stew hungrily and waited for full dark to descend outside the window that overlooked the steep forest below.

When darkness fell, no one came to light my fire. I took that as a sign that no one would be wandering the corridors. I knelt by the door and pressed my lips to the keyhole. I had learned a few tricks from being Baba’s slave. I whispered the sacred words, and I heard the lock slide away. I turned the handle. The door opened without resistance. I crept into the hallway and shut the door behind me, panting softly. I had to escape.

I went down the hallway and took my first left turn, then the last hall on the right, then through a dark dining room, and down some stairs. I walked to the third door on the right and opened it. A cupboard. I felt my panic rising. I was lost and I couldn’t get out even if I didn’t get caught.

I wandered the halls for hours, growing increasingly frustrated as I tried and failed to get out of the castle. On my eighteenth failure, I sank to my knees and wept softly.

It was then I heard it. The call of a thousand birds.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Hummingbird, part one

I stared at the white expanse outside my window. The glass was smudged, fogged... but it didn’t matter because there was nothing to see out there but snow. This was the first carriage I had ever been in that had a glass window. I wasn’t thrilled about it; it let in the cold. Suddenly the horses stopped; I threw out my arms to prevent myself from toppling to the floor.

“It’s time,” said Baba.

She reached out; I flinched away from her. She slapped my arm with one hooked hand; the sting was sharp and immediate. She pinched my cheeks. “Nice and rosy,” she said. Her voice turned dark. “You know what will happen if the prince doesn’t fancy you.”

“Yes, madam,” I said meekly. I felt my options slipping out from beneath me; soon I would be as a castaway, clutching an ice floe and treading frigid water. Baba had sworn to turn me into a hummingbird if the prince didn’t select me. I believed her.

I pulled up my hood to cover my red hair and opened the carriage door. The driver was standing outside; he held out his arm to help me down. I caught his eye and begged him silently, with my gaze, to help me. If he understood, he ignored me.

I straightened my dress and looked up. My breath caught. The castle was perched on the mountain straight ahead. It looked straight out of a fairy tale. But it looked desolate, unreachable, cold and drafty. I shivered.

A man hurried up to me. He stood only as high as my waist and had bluish skin, as if he were made of ice. He pressed a cup into my hands. I sipped tentatively and sighed. Hot glühwein. It warmed my spirits.

The little blue man suddenly prostrated himself on the snowy road as a very tall man with black hair approached. He wore a golden ring on every finger; this must be the prince. I curtseyed.

The man spoke in a cold voice. “What is this you have brought me, Baba?”

“Your future wife, your highness,” Baba said. “She is timid and pretty and knows how to cook.”

“What need have I for a cook? I have three already.”

“She comes from good stock,” Baba said, ignoring the prince. “But her family are all deceased, so none will pester you.”

The prince considered me for the first time. I withered under his gaze. I stared at the ground as Baba continued to wheedle, but her voice fell on my ears as random noise. I was so afraid, my hand shook out some of the glühwein from my cup. It fell on the snow like a splash of red, red blood.

Abruptly the prince grabbed my arm. Roughly. I gasped and dropped the cup. The prince paid no mind and steered me into a gilt carriage that was waiting nearby. I should have been listening more carefully. What had he decided? Was I to be transformed, turned into another bird for his collection? Or was I to be enslaved as his wife?

And which was worse?

TO BE CONTINUED...

The nickel

Sometimes I think back over my many short years and they flash before me like a butterfly, vivid yet fleeting. But they always slide away like a dewdrop in the morning heat. The doctors tell me I’ll live among my memories soon enough, that I will no longer have a present except in my past. Sometimes I don’t believe them. How can such a strong man ever become so hopelessly lost in his own brain? But other times, I think of the liquid nature of my memories, how they slip away like molten glass, and I sink into pure terror.

I don’t want to live in a jungle of confusion. I don’t want to hurt my sons, not remembering their names. I don’t want to forget my grandchildren’s cherubic faces. I am afraid. And yet the one thing I want most to remember is slipping away fastest, because I have never told anyone. Will you remember it for me, when I have fallen into nonbeing?

When I was a pilot in the war, Jeremy and I were inseparable. He had blazing red hair and freckles and was not a day older than eighteen. We passed a nickel back and forth between us, each day. It was a token of being alive. Sometimes the only time we saw each other was in the mess hall, when we would pass the nickel for another day. He’d smile as the nickel changed hands. “Can’t believe you made it outta that one,” he’d say, and thump my shoulder three times.

Jeremy shaved my eyebrows one night as I slept. We had been off duty and celebrating our last day of freedom before returning to the war. I had gotten a little drunk, homesick for the pretty young bride I barely knew back home, so I never woke as Jeremy shaved both my eyebrows clean off my forehead.

Well, there was nothing to do but retaliate when I found my brows hairless and strange in the morning. I found Jeremy’s helmet and filled it with shaving cream. He was suiting up as he passed me the nickel. “You carry it today, naked-eyes,” he said.

I pocketed the nickel and watched with a smirk as he climbed up into his helicopter. He didn’t put on his helmet until he was in the air. Over the microphone, I heard him mutter, “You son of a—”

The helicopter exploded. Shot down by the enemy. The grin faded from my lips as I clutched the nickel in my pocket. I didn’t even duck from the debris flying everywhere. I just held on to that nickel as tightly as I could. I just knew Jeremy could come back if I held on to that nickel.

I still have the nickel, after all these years. The memory slips away from me like dew on a crisp golden apple on a warm autumn morning, and in some ways, I am happy to see it go. One day, it will just be a nickel. I hope someone holds on to it for me.

In the rosebush

Lynxie didn’t bother building webs. Spiders who built webs relied on stupid creatures to blunder into them. No, it was far better to be clever and trick one’s prey into coming near enough to pounce.

It was high noon, and she was admiring the way her perfectly green skin matched the color of the leaves on the rosebush when she saw it. A fat black fly was preening its wings on a nearby rosebud. All eight of her legs tensed with anticipation. She hadn’t eaten in a few days and was starting to feel weak. She needed this meal.

“Hello, fly,” she called.

The fly froze, one leg hovering over its translucent wing. Its many eyes looked frantically for the source of the call, but she was too well camouflaged for it to make her out.

“You’re looking very black and shiny today,” she said serenely.
The fly lowered its leg slowly and fluttered its wings.

“You must be king of all the flies,” she crooned, “with your shimmering eyes and vibrant wings.”

The fly puffed out its abdomen proudly.

“But why,” she asked, a note of eloquent sorrow in her voice, “why do you sit on that browning rosebud? That cherry perch detracts from your beauty. Nay, green would suit you far better.”

The fly glanced down and considered the petal beneath its sticky feet. It inched toward a leaf, toward Lynxie. She sunk onto her legs, ready. “The king of the flies deserves a better throne,” she said softly. “A nice verdant leaf is what you need.”

The fly lit into the air and hovered for a moment, deciding. She followed it with her shrewd eyes; she held absolutely still on the leaf. The fly circled, and then landed on a particularly luxuriant leaf.

She pounced.

Pot of gold for two

“The sprite came through here,” Kardent said. He pointed at the snow. “See? He tried to disguise his tracks as hare footprints.”

“I don’t know,” Galla said dubiously. “Looks like bunny tracks to me. If that.”

Kardent rolled his eyes. “That’s the point, innit?” He set off after the tracks, and Galla had no choice but to follow, lifting her skirts to keep the snow off them. Kardent kept stopping and sniffing the air, as if he could smell a creature that stood no higher than his knees. Once he even stripped some bark off a birch and licked it. She was pretty sure that was for show. Aye, he had no idea what he was doing and was lucky it had snowed so at least he had tracks to follow.

Suddenly, he stopped and pointed to a scrubby jumble of branches and leaves and said, “He’s in there.”

Startled, Galla peered at the burrow. “You sure?”

“Sure as a tax man,” he said firmly.

She frowned. “How do we get him out?”

Kardent didn’t reply. He pulled his tinderbox out of his tunic and struck his flint behind the burrow. It was damp, so it kept going out, but he was persistent, and eventually it was aflame.

They waited.

And then the sprite leapt out of the burning burrow and into Kardent’s waiting arms. He struggled, kicking and biting and flailing like an angry cat. He had flaming red hair and a scrunched-up nose. “What’re ye doing tae me home, ye filthy buggers?” he screeched.

“We’ve caught you,” Galla said serenely. “Fair as pie. We want the gold.”

The sprite stared up at her, his big green eyes comically round. “There’s nae gold here, ye dunderhead,” he squeaked. “Ye don’t see any rainbow, now, do ye?”

Galla looked around. “No, but we want the gold anyhow.”

The sprite laughed. “You burned my house, ye blaggards! There’ll be no gold for you, not now, not ever!”

The air shimmered around the sprite, and, though Kardent visibly tightened his grip on the creature, the sprite transformed into a hare and wriggled out of his captor’s arms. He bounded away, white tail twitching indignantly.

“Ugh,” Galla said. “Now we have to start all over again.”

Alone

I sit on the bench and, shivering, wrap my shawl tightly around my shoulders. It is a fall morning, cold and crisp like a chilled apple, and every breath plunges into my lungs like icy water into a swimmer’s mouth. But the colors are lovely; the tree line across the barren field is beginning to show splashes of crimson and gold amid the dark greens and browns. The sky is a solid azure, the color a sky should be, the color it rarely is.

I am waiting… for nothing. I sit here with no purpose. I don’t watch people as they jog by with huffing breath, and I don’t expect anyone to join me on my hard bench. I don’t enjoy the weather or the scenery. I merely sit. I am here to be alone, and that is all.

It has been a long time since I found company. I have been lonely, surrounded by friends and family, screaming silently in an earless crowd. But now, as a flock of geese rushes above my head, honking and beating the air with powerful wings, I find my company. Alone. I take a deep, cold breath and slowly close my eyes.

The anthropologist and the mummy

The hieroglyphs on the walls of my tomb speak of how my spirit will accomplish eternal life, and all the tasks I need to perform before I can live forever. The writing praises the gods, describes my mighty battles, shows me with my wife and son, and outlines the curse against all who dare disturb my tomb. The curse is powerful and protects me against grave-robbers.

I thought the hieroglyphs took care of everything. They give my soul nourishment and instruction, they glorify my name and the name of the gods, and they protect my body and my possessions. I thought that was enough, but it wasn’t. Nothing could have prepared me for you.

When you entered my tomb, you were carrying a dazzling light. My spirit watched you and wondered how the light made no smoke. This was a strange, cold fire that formed your torch. You wore a headdress with a wide brim to protect your fair skin. You had beautiful, kohl-rimmed eyes and painted lips. Your skin was exposed to a point of scandal, but your comrades did not look askance at you. Your knees were showing, and your skin glistened with sweat in the heat. You exclaimed in your high voice over the beauty of my possessions, and it was then that I fell in love with you.

I felt the curse begin to take hold of your neck, and I hastily loosened its grasp. You went straight to my sarcophagus, ignoring that of my wife and son, and you laid your soft fingers gently on the gilded wood. A tingle shot through me at your touch. I loved you completely, already. I would let you do anything—take my possessions, remove my body to your world, anything—for your love.

The hieroglyphs on my walls do not protect my soul from love.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

It was brutally cold. I was wearing two pairs of pants, two sweaters, a coat, gloves, and two hats, and I was still shaking violently. The snow muffled everything. The mass graves were hidden from sight under a serene blanket of snow, which lay over everything like a crisp linen sheet, freshly ironed and bleached. There was no sun, but the day was bright from all the whiteness.

I was so cold, it was hard to listen to the tour guide. He said, “Ja?” a lot and told stories about the people who were imprisoned and died here. Horrific stories, like the man who was beaten bloody and then forced to strip and clean up his own blood with the rags of his clothing. I tried to imagine being imprisoned here and wearing nothing but a thin pajama-like outfit. I couldn’t. I shook in the cold and tried to tough it out, as if by standing for a couple hours in the cold I could somehow stand with the thousands of people who suffered here, an act of solidarity. If I couldn’t do it, in all the warm clothing I had, how could they stand in two-month-long death lines?

We reached Station Zed. It was only foundations now, but the building was easy enough to imagine. We saw the room where people were sent to be shot. We saw the gas chamber. We saw the incinerators. And then I closed my eyes and saw her.

Her face was gaunt, her hair thin and wispy. Dirty gray rags hung from her skeletal frame. She reached out to me, a gesture of supplication. Tears welled in her gray eyes. She gestured at me to come and join her. Gestured desperately. I opened my eyes and gasped, struggling for breath as if I had almost drowned.

I wanted to get away from this evil place, as fast as my feet would carry me.

Heidelberg Castle

The fog was dense; we couldn’t see more than a few hundred meters in any direction. It had a silencing effect on the normal noise of the city; car horns and voices seemed muffled and far away in the fog.

We lazily sauntered alongside the river, watching a dog chase geese or pointing at the regal buildings that overlooked the shore. Great chunks of ice floated in the rushing waters, washed away to unknown distances, soon out of sight. Each step revealed more of the city across the river. A steeple materialized, then a statue, then a towering city gate.

We were walking across the Old Bridge when we realized something dark hovered in the fog above the city. We could barely make out its edges, jagged but clearly manmade with straight lines and arches. We realized we were looking at the castle. It floated serenely in the fog, tempting us to walk back in time through the mist.