(A sample chapter from novella, The Juniper Tree.)
© 2007 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
12
I guess deep down I always knew what it would come to.
WHEN SHE HEARD that song again Rayn felt as though something beat against her head and her knees buckled and gave out from under her. She fell on the floor shrieking and screaming and swearing.
After awhile she managed to get back control over her arms and legs. She reached up to the counter and hauled herself up, leaning against it, her hair in her eyes, her mouth gaping.
She looked out the window streaked with rain. The yard light shone on the wet grass and the Juniper Tree and the black bird perched in it.
The black bird lifted his head and glared back at her.
Across the distance, Rayn and the black bird took the measure of each other.
‘That bird! That cursed bird again—!’
She clung to the counter. Her head hurt. Her hair was burning. She remembered, after awhile, to breathe. She sucked down air and it hurt. She shuddered, looking at the black bird. And it lifted its sharp beak and sang the song again, again, again.
The Rain stole my Mother
She cut off my head
Rayn slouched around the counter island. All the way the evil black eyes of the bird followed her. She pushed herself apart from the counter and leaned against the cabinets. She reached over and made sure each window was fastened as tight as it could be.
She leaned against the wall and managed one step at a time to drag herself out around the great-room. She locked each window. She locked the glass doors. She even pulled the damper in the fireplace down almost all the way so some smoke spilled out into the room.
The Bear took my Father
He ate me with bread
She turned the switch and killed lights. Now the great-room was dark save for the flickering from the fire and the yard light shining through the windows. She leaned back and regained her breath. Then she went into the hall. She leaned against tables and walls and doors. She locked down every window and turned off every light. At the front door she found Tang-Tang scratching and whimpering and the sight filled her with rage.
‘Stupid useless beast! Go outside and do some good! Kill that bird!’
She opened the door and quickly shoved Tang-Tang out. She slammed the door and locked it and bolted it.
The Goose, little Sister
Dropped my bones near the sea
She crept upstairs. Greta’s room was shut and she switched off the light and closed the door to it. The dead woman’s room was dark and close and Rayn pulled the door to until it stuck.
A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree
In her own room the windows were slightly open and she slammed them shut and locked them. That shut away the last sounds from outside and she couldn’t hear the black bird singing anymore.
She felt better then. Almost at peace.
She fell into her chair before the dressing table and took a good look at herself. Heavens she was a fright with her hair all which way, flour on her apron and dress along with smears of butter and fat and seasoning. She brushed out her hair and redid her face. She put on a golden bracelet and changed her rings. She took off the engagement and wedding rings Money Bags had put on her with a smug little smile as though he were turning the key on handcuffs, chaining her to him. Well she thought there was no reason to keep her chains anymore and if he asked about them, in the couple of days before she left him for good, she could say she took them off in cooking.
Now she felt much better when all that was done. She stood up quite steady and walked across her room. She switched off the lights and closed the door and went downstairs again.
In the kitchen only the oven light was on and the yard light shining in the windows but her eyes by now were grown used to darkness and she could see quite well. She squinted and looked out to the bird in the Juniper Tree.
‘Come to me now, black bird,’ she said, ‘if you can. Every door is bolted and every window locked, and fire goes up the chimney. There’s nowhere you can come in by. I am safe here and you can sit out in the rain and die. So sit out in your tree, little bird, and sing your damned head off! It won’t bother me, not one little bit.’
She laughed. She felt good again. She was in command again.
The potatoes and beet casserole were done, and she took them out of the oven and set them cooling beside the pies and onions and salad and all the other dishes she had made ready that day. She went over her lists in her mind and was satisfied that all was ready and done but for the turkey itself. And that she finished stuffing and tied up and covered in a great big roasting dish, and put into the oven. She set the temperature and the oven timer. Early in the morning the turkey would be hot and brown and ready for carving, and then they would take their Thanksgiving Feast.
‘I’m only sorry you didn’t go into the oven alongside Tom Turkey, birdie,’ she said and shook her basting spoon at the window.
But the black bird was gone.
The Juniper Tree stood empty.
For a long time Rayn stood against the window staring out. The darkness and the rain and wind made things hard to make out clearly. And the branches deep in the tree were so dark, wasn’t that a gleam on feathers there? No. No, she was sure now. The black bird wasn’t there anymore. It had gone someplace else. Where, though?
And she had the sudden, horrible thought: Yes, I locked all the doors, I locked all the windows down here and upstairs but what about the attic?
Then the breath caught in her throat and everything went very still and she could hear the clock ticking in the great-room and every drop of water that fell upon the roof and windows. And it seemed to her that she could hear, faint and far away coming from up there, a little sound. Thump, thump, it went. Thump, thump.
A sight struck her. She beheld it as though it stood just before her in a bright, harsh light: The window to the brat’s room hanging open to the rain.
How many times had she told the brat to keep his window shut? But he never listened, he never obeyed. She hadn’t bothered to go up there today since the brat was gone, gone forever, gone for good, and she never needed to worry about him again.
She crept back up the stairs. She stood in the hall with all the closed doors looking back at her, blocking her escape. She opened the door to her room, that one at least. Never had she so longed to crawl back into her room, curl up naked under her silk sheets, and sleep, sleep and dream about her Mommie.
But the narrow twisting attic stairs pulled at her and she couldn’t look away from them for long. The darkness seemed to gather and grow up those steps. In the hall a little light from the yard stole in through her back window, and a sliver of light shone under Greta’s door from her nightlight. But up those attic steps was utter blackness, invisible and unknown.
She went to the bottom of those steps. She couldn’t help it. The song went ringing in her head and gave her no peace. She wasn’t sure if the bird was singing it somewhere or whether it went on only in her brain where it ached and burned so.
She lingered at the foot of the steps looking up.
She kicked off her slippers and stood in her bare stockings. Her legs were trembling and weak. She clung to the bannister.
Tenderly, one step at a time, she crawled on hands and knees up the attic stair.
She was as quiet as she could be. Her skin was on fire as though fire-ants were biting and stinging her all over. Her arms were shaking and drops of sweat rolled down her brow and nose and dripped across her eyes.
She poked her head above the topmost step. She peered about at the black cavern of the attic with the rafters bowing overhead like the inner ribs of some great whale. At the far end of the attic a small window in the back gable let in glimmerings of light from the yard below. Outside the wind blew up and the frame of the house creaked.
It seemed quiet otherwise. Had she only imagined it? No – there it was again! Thump, thump. Louder now. Where? There. It came from the brat’s room just as she had feared.
Rayn crawled closer to the door to the tiny room. The door was closed. No, the wind blew up and the door moved. It pulled in as though by an unseen hand, then it came back out again and tapped against the jamb. Thump, it sounded against the jamb, and again. Thump.
She reached forth and touched the door with her fingertips, just her nails really, manicured and polished and painted fire-red at such expense at the best salon in the city. She inched the door open, baring the tiny room.
There was the iron bed and the dirty washstand and the walls pasted over with pictures of birds, and the cardboard bits he had cut in the shape of birds and pasted models’ faces over their heads like sirens or harpies swinging from bent hangers over the bed. Beyond the bed the narrow window opened in the narrow wall no wider than her arm. The window hung wide open.
She crawled into the room. The floor was filthy with dust and mud dropped off his dirty little sneakers. It stank of little boy. His sneakers, his dirty underwear and underpants lay before her and she couldn’t help but touch them and crawl through them. Rayn had always hated the smell of boys. Girls always smelled good but boys smelled rotten and sour because they never bathed and were always rooting in filth.
She reached the wall. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the bed, the dead brat’s disgusting bed. She worked herself up the wall until she could stretch up her arms and clutch the rain-slick sill. She pulled herself up and clung there looking out.
The back yard glowed dull green under the lights. The lights shone across the faces of the trees in the woods on both sides but beyond the Juniper Tree where the land gave way to the sea there was only blackness and rain. The rain blew in her face and stole her nerves away. Quick now she thought and reached up to shut the window and the black bird filled the window from out of nowhere it rushed in. It scrawed at her and its claws raked her face and its great wings beat against her head and she fell back and hit her head bump on the floor and passed out.
She came around some time later.
In the night and rain there was no way for her to tell how much time had passed. Maybe it had been an hour or maybe only moments.
For a while she was unsure where she was. She lay there against a hard floor and let her eyes wander about. She saw the bird pictures and harpies and she remembered. She started to rise and stopped.
The black bird perched on the iron foot of the bed. It was preening itself but when she stirred it stopped and glared at her.
She let her eyes linger on the long cruel talons curled about the iron bar.
She crawled slowly out of the room. The bird watched but did not move. She kicked against the door and wished she could pull it to but that proved beyond her courage. She slid backwards down the steps, bump bump bumping down. Dust and dirt covered her dress her arms and feet and legs. She had never been so filthy in her life. When this was all over, she promised herself she would draw one of her fire-baths with the water just as hot as she could get it. She would lie in the tub and burn and burn.
And all the time the Voices in her head were croaking Kill it Kill it Kill it Kill…
Somehow she made it into her room.
She shut the door behind her. The bird hadn’t followed and she felt almost safe again. She got up and with shaking hands dusted herself off but it only smeared the dust and dirt around.
She rifled through her things in her Mommie’s Trunk, still spattered with brown bloodstains. Where was it, she wondered, where did it go? Did he take it, the little dirty sneak? No. There. There it was. She reached deep into her Mommie’s Trunk and her fingers grasped it with a loving secret caress. The green bottle lay inside her palm. She fetched it up and kissed it.
Upstairs in the attic room the black bird stopped preening at the sound of the Trunk slamming shut. The bird lit down and pecked at the crumbs on the floor then hopped awkwardly to the door and out to the head of the steps, flapping and leaping to the bannister. He flew down into the lower hall and Rayn appeared with a broom in her hand. She swung the broom and the bird ducked under it but the force of the breeze pushed him down on the floor. He leaped up and Rayn swung the broom again in a big round wheeling blow and the broom slammed into Ariela’s shut door and knocked it open. But the broom in passing batted against the black bird’s wings and he fell down the stairs flapping and tumbling to the ground floor.
Down came Rayn rushing with the broom. The black bird hopped aside into the great-room just ahead of the broom-head that smashed a painting off the hallway wall. The bird flew about the great-room but the ceiling was too low for flight and too low to escape the broom in the redheaded woman’s hands. The broom leapt about the room. It knocked down lamps and ash trays and books and magazines, little glass curios and paper weights and framed pictures from the walls.
Rayn was screaming and charging. The bird couldn’t get away but so far he had dodged or slipped by the blows and was not badly hurt. Outside the White Dog howled and barked and followed them from window to window as the black bird fled from the broom. And the White Dog’s eyes burned like red fire, and the redheaded woman’s eyes shone red like the dog’s, like little torches in the dark.
The black bird made it back into the hall. He flew upstairs and Rayn leapt up after him. She chased him into the hall and into the dead woman’s room. There she paused in the doorway and flung her hair back from her eyes.
The black bird fluttered about the room where Falco had never gone since he had been a baby in his crib. This was the room Falco had longed for and dreamed about all his life. The black bird flew around and around the room but the windows were all locked. At last it alit on the back of the rocking chair. There it perched and stared at the redheaded woman.
Rayn swung the broom. She managed to catch the bird just as he rose from the chair and knocked him against the wall.
The bird fluttered awkwardly. He was hurt now.
She struck again and knocked him down. He landed in a corner on the floor by the bed. One of his wings was twisted and bent.
Rayn lifted the broom deliberately.
The black bird hopped back but he hit the wall and there was no more room behind him.
She slammed the broom down and just missed him as he scuttled under the bed.
The redheaded woman raked the hair out of her eyes and got down on her knees. She stooped down with her face close to the floorboards and peered beneath the bed.
From the dark under the bed the bird could see her eyes burning as she craned her head back and forth.
She stabbed the broom under the bed and the bird barely hopped out of the way.
She swept the broom handle back again. The broom head rushed up toward the bird. BANG! it slammed against the back leg of the bed just short of him and he tumbled out at the foot of the bed. She tried to pull out the broom. The bird hopped out onto the rug beside the rocking chair.
She swung again and hit the bird square across his back and knocked him out through the door into the hall.
The bird hopped about on the hall floor. She came after him but the broom racked against the sides of the dead woman’s door and held her up and in that moment the black bird flew up the attic stairs.
She burst from the dead woman’s room and climbed the steps waving the broom ahead of her, fending off any possible attack the bird might make out of the darkness. She slipped and fell but clawed her way to the top step just in time to see the bird hop and drag himself into the dead boy’s room.
She leapt up and shouldered the narrow door aside. She swept up the broom and caught the bird another hit but the strings to the harpies tangled about the broom. She swept them aside along with the broom and tore down the mobiles, wires and cardboard alike.
The black bird fluttered toward the wall. The open window beckoned and the freedom of the night. But the horrible burning red eyes were coming, the red hair glowing in the dark. He only reached the window when the broom went swoosh! behind him and hit him hard and knocked him forward even as in the room behind the broom handle went thwack! and thang! against the wall and iron bars of the bed.
He fluttered down to the porch. His right wing wouldn’t flap. It was broken or almost. He couldn’t fly right or stay aloft, only twirl and float down.
He heard banging from inside the house upstairs.
He bent down his head under his wing in the rain slanting in under the porch roof. The rain was lighter now but that wouldn’t help him. He couldn’t fly anymore.
All of a sudden the White Dog jumped up on the porch. It growled. Foaming slaver dripped from its great jaws. It pounced but the bird clawed at it with his talons and felt the White Dog’s face catch and tear. The White Dog howled and yelped and ran off.
The black bird hopped down off the porch. In little halting hops it started across the yard.
The Juniper Tree seemed far away.
Lights blazed from the windows of the house. The redheaded woman was coming. She was coming. She would be out there soon.
He hopped in the wet slick grass. His broken wing trailed behind. He was almost at the Juniper Tree when the glass doors slid open and the redheaded woman stalked out on the terrace. He had to stop then and stare back.
The rain had almost stopped. He could see her very plainly and she could see him too. Her face hardened.
‘That tree, that blasted, horrible, Juniper Tree!’
Her hair blazed as if on fire. She held the broom out away from her in one hand and in the other she held a small green bottle. She drenched the broom head with liquid from the bottle. The broom twigs caught fire and the terrace and porch came alive with the blaze.
The redheaded woman marched across the yard. She came on dead for the Juniper Tree.
The black bird hopped into the lower branches. The redheaded woman poked and thrust the burning broom at him. He hopped from branch to branch. All around him the branches lit up with the flames. The redheaded woman danced around the Juniper Tree. She stabbed the broom into the branches until the whole tree blazed up in flames. And then the black bird couldn’t do anything but watch. There wasn’t anyplace left for him to hop and he couldn’t fly away.
She thrust at him again. He saw her through a shower of sparks and flames. The Juniper Tree was burning in crackles and smoke. Its age-old wood, hard and dry and waxy with resin, burned bright and fearsome hot. It seemed like one big torch now, like a beacon on the headland shining out to sea.
Again the redheaded woman thrust at the bird and the fiery broom bore down on him but he fell past it and raked his talons across her face before he rammed into the ground.
High above him the redheaded woman stumbled backward. Her arms and the broom flailed. Her high heels caught on the grass and she fell back onto the landing of the wooden stairs. Her hips slammed against the outside rail.
And the bird shook his head, and the red band around his throat jumped off and a brand new sawblade dropped between the landing and the cliff rocks, cutting as it fell.
The whole staircase shuddered and creaked. The unfastened bolt at the Red Step pulled up and out and the staircase went groaning outward, sagging, buckling over the waves. Boards cracked and groaned and for a moment it hung there, unsure whether it wanted to come back to the cliff again and bear the boots and shoes pounding up and down it, or whether it would rather just give way sliding and sighing down into the arms of the rocks and the water waiting so patiently and so faithfully for so long.
Rayn froze. Her eyes were big and dark in the shadow of her hair under the burning broom. She bent a little as though she was about to leap back onto the grass. But the black bird huddled there staring at her and she balked in her movement.
At that the stairs sagged out farther and the weight turned to hang all upon the four bolts that tied the landing to the stones at the top.
These bolts were bigger than the others, but they had not been forged to hold such a weight as the whole stairs. The first one just above the first step bent under the strain. It bent and broke and planks twisted and buckled down at the bottom of the steps.
The next bolt on the landing snapped and then there were two, and only two, the last two.
The redheaded woman cried out and stared at them.
The White Dog came back from the kennel at her cry. The White Dog’s face was a bloody mess. One eye was closed over with blood and pus. With the other eye the White Dog watched his mistress on the landing. He danced at the edge of the firelight, whining, caught between longing and fear. The White Dog didn’t even glance at the black bird where he lay helpless in the grass.
Very slowly and with care the redheaded woman lowered her blazing broom.
The burning Juniper Tree cast its beacon over the bluff but under the lip of the grass and planks the bolts driven into the stone lay in shadow beyond seeing. The redheaded woman edged the broom closer until its flames reached through the gaps between the planks and glinted off the old bolts. Many times they had been painted over but even so they were rusting through the paint, eaten at by the years of fog and spray, full of salt and acid.
The black bird could see the third bolt bending. The nut was slowly stripping its threads and slipping off. It squeaked like a little mouse. The redheaded woman dropped the broom over the rail behind her and it twirled down until the sea ate it and snuffed out its fire.
The last two bolts fell into darkness, unseeable.
‘Puppy, don’t!’ she cried but the White Dog heard the fear in her voice and leapt to her. The added weight wrenched the third bolt free and the fourth bolt, the last bolt, snapped with a BANG! and the stairs leaned far out on their under-trusses like a drunken clown on stilts in the circus leaning far off balance, only the clown always manages to swing back and catch his balance.
The stairs did not.
The boards tore loose from the bolts that kept them together and the rotting planks shattered into dust and crashed into a pile, drowning out the last screams from the redheaded woman. Then a great wave smashed over the rocks.
The foam and froth licked up the cliff face almost to the top. Spray sprinkled over the black bird’s feathers. For a moment the great wave clung to the cliff and wouldn’t go back. For a moment everything held steady, almost at peace.
But the rage and fury was bursting still inside it and there would be no peace. When the wave swept back out it tore all the bits of boards and planks and railing along with it far away into the sea where the redheaded woman couldn’t hurt anybody else ever again.
ATOP THE BEAK the black bird watched the wave go out. The foam and froth dimmed as they fled, and the ground went black as well. Everything was dimming.
‘Juniper Tree, what’s happening?’ he asked.
He couldn’t feel the wind or the wet on his wings anymore. His talons clawed and gripped but there was nothing for them to clutch.
‘Juniper Tree, what’s happening to me?’
But the old tree didn’t answer him. The fire must have burned the tree to the ground by now. The Juniper Tree wasn’t there anymore. But where was there, and where was he? It didn’t seem like he was anywhere. He couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t smell anything, he couldn’t touch anything, he couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t even hear his own voice though he cried and scrawed. At least he think he cried. He couldn’t feel that he was doing anything at all. He couldn’t feel his wings anymore not even the hurt one. He couldn’t feel his feathers.
All he could do was sing his Mother’s Song one last time. Even though nobody could hear it, not even himself:
The Rain stole my Mother
She cut off my head,
The Bear took my Father
He ate me with bread,
The Goose, little Sister
Dropped my bones near the Sea,
A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.
And that was the end of him.
