The birds were white as they flew over the marsh, across the reedbeds and the frosted meres, but as they drew level with the hide their shade changed, from white to black. I saw their crimson eyes, sparks in the cloudy dark, as they disappeared into the storm. Richard and I crouched in the hide and waited.

“Jude, can you see her? Can you see?” Richard whispered.

But all I could see was darkness, and the distant storm.

People lived here once. A very long time ago, when this land was called the Summer Country: named not for cowslip meadows or hazy warmth, but because it only appeared in summer, when the waters had retreated towards the Severn Estuary and the marshes were dry enough to be negotiated on foot. During all other times of year, this land—gleaming wet marshes, dense beds of dull golden reeds, and groves of alder and unpollarded willow—was the haunt only of ducks and herons, and the small people who lived along the causeways and in the lake villages.

Richard and my sister Clare and I had followed the Sweet Track the summer before, when the heat hung heavily over the water meadows, with the damselflies zooming through the kingcups that grew along the margins of the dug-out peat beds. The Track, discovered years before by an academic named Sweet, is an old road, one of the oldest in the country. I was researching it, and studying Sweet’s own research, at the Moors Centre, lying right in the middle of Sedgemoor.

Hard to imagine winter, in those dreaming meadows. But I knew that come September the fog would start drifting in from the Bristol Channel, smelling of salt mud and sea, hiding first the whale-humps of islands, then the arch of Brent Knoll, then the flat lands all the way to the Tor with its tower. After that would come flood and then frost, and the long, dim, damp winter.

I’d been there for six months, but Clare was living in Manchester then, working as a fundraiser for some big arts project, and this was her first visit to the area. Her New Age soul was enchanted by it all, by the faux-Arthuriana of Glastonbury and the rather more real claims of Cadbury, by the startling caverns of the Mendips and the flat lands between, where the lake villages had once stood. She and Richard had apparently met through some university bird-watching society—though I’d never known Clare to be interested in birds before. She was more enthusiastic about it in summer, perhaps, out in the wilds with a couple of bottles of beer and a blanket, and that’s how we discovered the hide.

I hadn’t realised it was there, although I’d been to the bird reserve a couple of times before. I must have walked right past it, but it was Clare who spotted it, as we walked along the track with the remains of a picnic in a rucksack.

“Richie! Jude! There’s a causeway, in the reeds. Can we go and look?”

Moments later, she was gone. I remember feeling an odd moment of panic, as though she’d performed some unnatural conjuring trick. Then her voice came from among the russet tassels nodding several inches above our heads. “Look at this! This is so cool!”

The causeway was built of slats placed on piles, close together and easy to walk on, with the addition of a handrail, which the original Lake Village structures would not have had. Quite contemporary and not all that old, judging from the scrubbed pallor of the wood. I’d have told her all this, but I’d grown too used to the rather glazed expression that came over Clare’s face whenever I talked about my work. We’d both had our noses in books as kids, but they hadn’t been the same ones. She liked the myths. She was less interested in fact.

At first, I couldn’t see where the causeway led. A dogleg in the middle took it out of eyesight, deep into the reeds. Clare and Richard vanished around the bend. I stood for a moment, just before the turn. The reeds swallowed sound. Distant traffic and the lowing of cattle were cut off, and the sudden rattle of a coot in the rushes made me jump. When I turned the corner, I saw that the little causeway ended in a long low structure, also raised on pilings, but with a tarpaulin roof and a laminated National Trust information sheet tacked to the wall by the door. There was nothing ancient about this place; it was not even a reconstruction like the round houses at the Bronze Age information centre some miles away. It was a bird-watching hide.

As I came close to the door, I found something on the boards: a small black wing, very soft and dense. I didn’t recognise the bird: this wasn’t the right kind of terrain for blackbirds. Perhaps something—kestrel, maybe—had dropped it. It was clearly a recent kill; there was still a bloody fragment of meat on the bone, an electric red against the dull background of the planks. I picked it up and put it on the flat surface of the railing, not quite knowing why, as if it was a child’s glove for which the owner might shortly return.

Inside, the hide was dark and still, stifling in the afternoon heat and filled with the limey odour of bird droppings. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that the floor was white with them. I looked up, but the rafters were empty. Swifts, perhaps, but I couldn’t see any round hummocks of nests and they’d be in residence at this time of the year.

“Richard?” Clare’s voice cut through the gloom. “Come and see!”

I went around the corner of the central notice board. Clare and Richard were standing shoulder to shoulder and I stifled an old familiar sensation. I allowed myself to wonder what would have happened if Richard had met me first—but I knew from experience that it wouldn’t have made any difference.

When she saw me, Clare raised the hatch that faced out over the other side of the marsh, and fastened it with a wooden peg.

“Look.”

There was a heron among the reeds, a common enough bird in this area but still alien, predatory, as startling as a pterodactyl in its blue and grey plumage. It was stalking through the shallow water at the edge of one of the reedbeds and as we stared, breathless, the long beak stabbed downwards and came up with a fish. Silver caught the light. The heron flipped it up and swallowed, then was gone into the reeds in search of new prey.

We kept looking for a moment, hoping it would come back. Then Clare said, “What are those?”

There were three of them, gliding over the crest of the reedbeds. They had long necks, long beaks, but at first I thought they must be gulls because their wings caught a shaft of sunlight, gleaming white as they turned. Then they veered again and I saw that their wings were shadow-black, a strange trick of the light. Cormorants, perhaps. They were common along the coast and you frequently found them inland, sharing prey with the herons. They were flying west, towards the estuary.

We watched them go and then, as if some decision had been made, we filed out of the hide like obedient schoolchildren, into the hot day, and back along the track. Clare said she wanted to go back into Glastonbury and see some of the shops. She wanted to buy a crystal, or something. I just wanted a cup of tea. We headed back to where Richard had left the battered 2CV.

The car park had been empty when we’d arrived, but now there were a few more vehicles in it. One of them was a van, painted in rough red and green stripes, a homemade hippie job. As we approached the car park, a young man came around the side: typical of travellers in this part of the world, dreadlocks, mud-coloured clothes, a joint held between two fingers. A dog skulked at his heels, a black and tan thing with heavy jowls and a surly look. But the young man was affable enough.

“Nice afternoon,” he said. “Been out to the bird sanctuary?”

“Yes, just for a stroll. We saw a few things.”

“You want to wait for evening. All the starlings come then—like a cloud. Thousands of ’em. This place is known for it.”

“Starlings?” Clare asked. “Maybe we’ll come back. We found the hide.”

“Did you, now?” the young man said. He took a drag on the joint; sultry smoke coiled into the warm air. I thought there was a fractional sharpening of his interest, but perhaps it was only the dope. “See anything?”

“A heron,” I said. He nodded, interest waning, until I added, “And some cormorants.”

“You saw those?” He was staring at Clare, not me, half amused, half something else, an expression I could not identify. But that he was looking at her at all irritated me. “Black or white?”

“Black,” I said, not understanding. “You don’t get white ones, I thought.”

“Sometimes you do.” The young man spoke with assurance and I didn’t know all that much about birds. I wasn’t prepared to argue the toss. “How many?”

“Three. There were three of them.”

“Okay. Well. Let’s hope you don’t see them again.” I was about to ask him what he meant but he turned away, clicking his fingers at the dog, which was wandering. Richard opened the car and we drove into Glastonbury, where Richard and I spent the rest of the afternoon in one of the little cafés around the market cross while Clare shopped. If I thought about the bird sanctuary at all, then or in the days that followed, it was simply as a fading memory of a half-pleasant, half-painful afternoon. I did not think about the cormorants at all.

***

For the next few months, I was busy with research in the Centre and elsewhere. Richard and Clare went back up north and I tried not to wonder when I’d see Richard again. I knew I’d never be able to tell her how I’d started to feel about him, and I didn’t want to. There was something behind the New Age stuff in her, something competitive and deep, something sisterly, and not in a right-on feminist way. Anyway, it was too embarrassing to talk about and God knows it wasn’t as if it hadn’t happened before. Perhaps she knew what was going through my head, all the same. I told myself that she seemed happy with Richard and I should be happy for them, and could not be. There should be a natural end to it, now they had returned to the north.

But when I next saw them, and summer itself was over, I found that things weren’t as I’d thought.

I’d been to a conference at Lancaster, stopping off at Clare’s on the way back. But when I got to her place, she wasn’t there. Instead, I found Richard.

She’d been moody ever since they came back, Richard told me, over a glass of wine in a nearby bar. It was October now. At first he’d put it down to anxiety over the coming months, the time when the success or failure of Clare’s fundraising bid was going to be decided. She was snappy and short-tempered, which was new to Richard if not to me, and he’d deemed it wiser to leave her alone to get on with her work. At first, he thought this approach was a success: she was heading off to the office every morning, but three weeks or so later he had run into a colleague of Clare’s, who asked how she was, given that she was on sick leave.

“I didn’t want to ask her about it,” Richard told me. He took a sip of his drink. “But it freaked me out. I thought—I thought she’d found someone else, but, you know, sick leave, it’s not just sneaking off for an hour or two.”

“Is there someone else?” I felt a cold growing elation at what he was about to say and I hated myself.

“No. I don’t know. She said there wasn’t, but I—I didn’t believe her. I told her I did, then when she went out the next morning, I followed her. She went straight to the canal and sat on the bank. For the rest of the day, as far as I could see. I went to a pub for lunch, even, and when I came back, she was still there.”

“Maybe she reckoned you’d follow her, and she thought she might as well lead you on.”

“Maybe.” He looked dubious. “I suppose I wouldn’t have blamed her.”

“Funny place to sit, the Ship Canal. It’s not exactly Hawaii.”

Richard looked suddenly defeated. I nearly reached out to him but stopped myself in time. “It’s a shithole, Jude. They keep saying they cleaned it up for that sports bid, but it’s still a murky, dirty drain. What appeal could it possibly have?”

Unless you were thinking of chucking yourself into it, I thought, but did not say, and I hated myself a little more. There was something gruesome about the idea of my sister sitting by the side of that grim channel of water, staring into grey scummy nothing, contemplating what?

“Did you follow her again?” I asked.

“A couple of times. She went back to the canal once, and then the next time she just wandered around. This was a few days ago.”

“Do you think she’s having some kind of breakdown?”

“I don’t know. She’s been worried about her work, thinks they screwed up on the funding bid, didn’t have enough of the required elements. I tried talking about it last night and she said she thought she needed a break. I was wondering if she could come down to you for a few days. I know it’s not exactly the weather for it, but it’s not the weather for perching on the side of the bloody Ship Canal, either.”

All I could see in his face was concern. I had the sense of a trap, closing. I bit back what I had so nearly told him and felt something brush my clenched hands under the table, something soft, like feathers.

“Of course she can come,” I said.

***

Having her in the house was odd and awkward, even more so because Clare exhibited none of the signs of anxiety or depression that I’d been expecting. That made me think that the main problem lay with Richard and that, of course, gave me hope. But I told myself that I was being stupid. Clare and I went out to dinner at the local pub on the night she arrived, and when we got back to the house I bolted up to bed before we really had a chance to talk, not that we were likely to. She’d never been in the habit of opening up, after all.

I went to sleep quickly, but in the middle of the night, something woke me up. I sat up in bed, clutching at the covers. There was no one in the room, but it smelled dank, like marsh water. Worrying about damp-proofing and winter, I went back to sleep.

In the morning, Clare was gone. I sat at the kitchen table, worrying and wondering if she’d gone off like some marsh spirit, wandering the Levels in the morning mist. Twenty minutes after I’d drunk my second cup of tea, she was back, looking rosy-cheeked and cheerful, and announced that she’d been for a walk down the lane and had met a nice horse in a field. The canal-haunting woman whom Richard had described seemed to have flown like the mist itself, upwards into the sunlit air.

I had to go to the Centre that morning, so Clare said she’d come with me. I spent the next couple of hours going through records, while Clare—I learned at lunch—had passed the morning in looking through the information section, learning about the Lake Villagers.

“I’m surprised how much is known about them,” she said, over soup and bread in the Centre’s café.

“Well, peat preserves things. If the structure’s there, then you can build up guesstimates from that. I’ll have to show you some of the computer reconstructions: I’ve got some on CD back at home.”

“It’s fascinating,” Clare said. “Like a world built on water.”

I stiffened, anticipating canal revelations, but all she said was, “It must have been bloody cold in the winter.”

It wasn’t exactly warm that afternoon. We went into Glastonbury for a cup of tea and there was a distinct sense of the year beginning to wind down, a faded quality to the light, a bite on the wind’s breath.

“I keep thinking of that afternoon we spent down here,” Clare said in the café. She was looking down at the table, playing with her teaspoon. “Do you remember? Everything golden and grey, and the birds in the reeds.”

“That was the day we saw the cormorants.”

“I’ve dreamed of them, you know.” She spoke with a sudden rush, as if confessing something forbidden. “They keep changing. Sometimes they’re black and sometimes they’re white.”

“Things stick in your mind,” I said. “When I was a kid, we went to Tenby for a holiday—there’s a fortress on a rock, just beyond the bay, and I still dream about that sometimes.”

She nodded, but she looked slightly disappointed, as though she had been expecting me to say something else and I’d let her down. We did not discuss when she might be going back.

Next day, I went to the museum, but Clare did not come with me: she said she wanted to sleep in. Still nervy about signs of depression, I didn’t attempt to dissuade her. When I got back to the house about mid-afternoon and found a note saying that she’d gone out for a walk, I wasn’t worried.

But she didn’t come back.

It was dark by six and I was starting to get seriously freaked out. I tried her mobile and got her answering service, left messages. I got the car out and drove into Glastonbury, wondering whether she’d gone into town. But I did not see her along the road, and she wasn’t in any of the pubs. I drove back, hoping to find her at home, but the house was as dark and silent as I’d left it.

I didn’t want to ring Richard, but if it turned out that something had happened to Clare, I wouldn’t have been able to face myself. His landline rang and rang; I tried his own mobile and that, too, was switched off. I left more messages, tried to decide whether it was too early to call the police and then decided that I’d rather look like an idiot than risk Clare’s life. It was cold outside, with the stars hanging heavy and burning over the low black land.

The police took me seriously, though with a certain weariness, but said there was little they could do. If Clare continued to be missing, then they’d initiate a search, but until then, all they could do was keep an eye out and wait. The implication was that I should do the same.

When the doorbell rang, all my foolishness came crashing in on me. She had got lost and forgotten her key, that was all. I threw the front door open.

“Clare, I’m so—” But it wasn’t Clare. It was Richard.

He didn’t seem to know anything about my phone messages. He said that he was there because he had had a dream. He was dishevelled, a bit stare-eyed, and he smelled dank, the sort of smell you might acquire on too close an acquaintance with the greasy waters of the Ship Canal. Both this, and the account of his dream, were completely out of character: the only thing that made me listen to him at all, rather than insisting on rest and a bath, was the fact that he knew Clare was missing.

My mind, wandering in areas that I did not understand, started to invoke further paranoia. This was all some weird game, either involving me or, worse still, directed at me. They had set it up between them, it was all planned. But then Richard started to tell me about the dream itself.

“She was walking in a dark place. She was lost, and there was a storm, but no rain. I knew that it was cold, and then I saw that she was out on the mere. You know, where we went for a walk? Where we saw the hide? And the hide was in the dream, too—I knew that if she could get to it, she’d be okay, we could pull her back. But then I saw the birds.”

“The birds?” But I already knew which ones he meant.

“The cormorants, or whatever they were. Long necks, sharp beaks. They were white when I first saw them and as they flew towards her, they changed to black. Then it started to snow and the snow was black, too, like little beads of jet, and it covered her, she stood still like a statue and when I touched her, I realised she had turned to peat and she crumbled into the water.”

There was a long silence after he recounted his dream, but it was just a nightmare, nothing more. Wasn’t it? Richard was staring ahead into the heart of the fire as if trying to conjure its warmth back into his bones. He said, “She’s out there, Jude, and we have to find her. We have to bring her back.”

His eyes were burning and he looked thinner since I had last seen him, as if he’d aged in the past few days. I did not know what to make of his dream, but it was easier to leap up and go out, knowing that I’d already contacted the police and could do no more if we stayed home. Knowing that action was always easier than just sitting, with the unspoken accusation ringing in my head: it was under my care that Clare had become lost.

“Let’s go, then,” I said.

***

October had borrowed a night; when we stepped outside it felt more like the middle of January, a raw moonless landscape with the mist breathing off the ditches. A bone-coldness, seeping in even through my Barbour jacket and fisherman’s sweater. I thought of Clare staring into a canal for hours at a time, and I grew colder still.

We took the car out to the bird sanctuary, driving slowly with the window down so that Richard would spot her on the road, if she should come that way. But we passed no one on the road and once we had turned into the track that led to the bird sanctuary car park, the night closed in, a clammy dark with the stars swallowed by cloud and the reedbeds swimming out of the mist.

Richard was out of the car even before I’d switched the engine off, walking quickly towards the hide. I had to run to catch up with him and he did not turn to see whether I was with him or not. He was looking straight ahead, like someone possessed.

We reached the hide. As we did so, a breeze sprang up, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to the mist. I thrust my hands further into my pockets and found something brittle and sticky in there. I pulled out the black bird’s wing that I’d found on the way to the hide, the last time we’d come. I remembered leaving it on the rail. There was no smell, but the bloody flesh had not clotted, it was still moist, and cold as ice. I was so revolted that I nearly dropped it, but then I heard Richard’s voice, calling my name, and I stuffed the thing back into my pocket and ran along the walkway.

He was standing in the entrance to the hide, clutching both sides of the doorframe. His face was suffused with a kind of strange joy. He said, “Jude! It’s okay. She’s here.”

“What? Is she all right?” I had visions of Clare collapsed, huddled against the wall in a disorientated daze, but when I pushed past him into the hide, limp with sudden relief, no one was there.

“Richard, where is she?”

“She’s there,” he said. He gave me an odd look, as if I was behaving like an idiot. He pointed to the shuttered window of the hide. The shutters were raised, angling out onto the reedbeds. It was pitch black in here, apart from the tiny light of my torch: I couldn’t believe that he’d managed to see anything.

Then I looked through the shutter, and saw for myself.

There were more than three birds. This time, there was a flock, perhaps twenty or more, flying from east to west. I saw a smear of pale light in the east, like the grey minutes before dawn, and on the western horizon, just above the reeds, a thin red line in the sky with the storm clouds rising above it. The birds were straggling, and the ones in the east were white, but as they passed the hide, I saw the darkness melt over them, changing them to black.

Richard whispered, “Jude, can you see her? Can you see?”

The reedbeds were the same, but nothing else. There was a kind of house opposite the hide, a hut on stilts. It stood in a patch of reeds, but I saw, as you see in dreams, that they were black, with crimson tips that looked like ragged bulbs of flesh. Clare stood on the balustrade that surrounded it. I leaned out, shouting.

“Clare! Clare, can you hear me?”

A shutter rattled, from across the water. A black oblong opened at Clare’s shoulder, and something looked out of it. I saw myself looking at my own face, but it was changed: I looked older, lined, bitter. Across the water I saw myself raise something and wave it in mockery: something black and dripping, like the blood-drenched wing of a bird. Then the face changed and was no longer mine, was no longer anything human.

There was a splash. I looked down, and Richard was in the water, ploughing through the reeds towards the opposite hut.

“Richard! Don’t go, come back!” I might as well have been whispering. As the last of the birds reached the hide and changed, I saw Clare bend over the rail and reach down a hand to pull Richard up. The bird in the sky changed to black. I saw its reflection, shining white in the water below, the light breaking the water up into a thousand dazzling splinters and the hide, the fleshy reeds, the gleam on both sides of the sky, everything was gone. I was alone, and it was night, and it was cold.

***

I would like to say that after I made my way home in a daze, I woke up the next day to find it had all been a dream. But Richard’s rucksack was there to remind me, and Clare’s belongings, and a message from the police to ask me to let them know if she appeared. She did not. There was a hunt, and they dragged the waters of the bird sanctuary. I went with them, although the place terrified me. They found nothing. They asked me a lot of questions, but I did not get the sense that I was under suspicion. The case made the papers, and after a while, the authorities and the media lost interest.

I had dreams, too. They were always the same: two dark birds, flying west. I thought a lot about the bird sanctuary, about the kind of place it might be. I thought of the people of the Summer Country, living in the liminal lands between sea and pasture, summer and winter, life and death. The area around Glastonbury was known to be the land of the dead, the Celtic lord of the dead dwelling beneath the Tor. I did not know if this was what I had seen, some kind of ancient conjured hell, filled with spirits that I, with my imperfect human sight, could only see as birds. But I gradually came to think that it was simpler than that: that just as we had gone to the hide to spy upon the life of birds, so something somewhere else had also set up a hide, to watch us, and when the time was right, to take.

The post The Hide appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

I followed my boyfriend to the city because I was in love with him.  He had come to fetch me from across the country, like a knight riding in for his damsel.  He had dark and curly hair.  My family is fair, and there was something about his darkness, something sharp and sexy and wild, that told me I had to be with him.  Silently, I pledged that I would make this happen.  I would say yes to him.  I know how to say yes, just as I know how much people like to be pleased.  I have seen it my entire life, to the extent that I have become an expert in the art of pleasing and wanting to please.  Such an expert that long ago I managed to combine its two components, the art of pleasing others and the art of pleasing oneself, so that the two became one to me.  How odd to discover, many years later, that the two were not one.  That the two, in fact, were in conflict.  Or could be in conflict.  That in a world where there seemed no limit to pleasing and being pleased, in a world of plenty there still could be scarcity.  But I get ahead of myself.

I pledged that I would be with my knight.  I would ride side by side with him atop my horse, or if necessary, I would sit on his steed, hands clasped around his waist behind him.  Both positions suited me, and I sensed that both would suit him, and I also sensed that if I asked, he would agree to ride, hands clasped, behind me.  This (and so much else) intrigued me about him.  His looks, his cocksure attitude, his high and sometimes stormy spirit.  He was bold and armored, but unlike other knights, or potential knights, I had known, he was not afraid to shed his armor.  In fact, he loved to shed it — shed everything — and come to me.  He feasted on me, and I feasted on him.  In the early days before Melissa, we were gluttons for each other.  We ate greedily and often.  And we talked.  Oh, how we talked.  Such rhapsodies!  Such songs!  And we read together.  And took walks.  And when we were apart, we ached to be together, and we wrote each other of the minutiae of our aches and longings each and every day.

The dawn of love:  is there any day that dawns brighter?  Any sun more radiant, blinding and fine?  All men have their faults, Lord knows, and I marvel sometimes how it is that we go on loving them, and my knight had his.  He was brash, and a verbal bully; his sword was edged with sarcasm, and he liked to sneer.  He was smart, but I was smarter.  His intelligence was different from mine, native and quick and therefore interesting to me.  I liked to observe it, but I never mistook it for high intelligence.  Certain simple thoughts and ideas, such as how to change the world, were beyond him.  Fortunately, I had blinders on when we met, and his faults were hazy and even invisible to me.  The sun, as it were, was in my eyes.

Why fortunately?  Because had I seen clearly, I might never had said yes to him.  I might never have fallen in love.

I set three conditions on following him, simple ones that he could not help but agree to.  First, he must not take me to a certain city on the coast, a sprawling, factionated city of intellectual hysteria and petty sectarian politics, a city of political strife, where I could not possibly live.  Second, he must not take me to a certain city north of the first, equally unlivable.  Third and last was a third city; he must not take me there.  Those were my conditions:  three cities out of a thousand, out of ten thousand.  When he chose the third city, my three conditions shrunk in a puff of smoke to two.

It was not a bad city.  It had its beauty and its charm.  Its politics were as crass and doctrinaire as I feared, which in retrospect might have been the best thing that could have happened to me, because I turned my back on the political life sooner rather than later, before my hopes and dreams for a better world were completely gone.  I took a job caring for children (in whom hope always abides), then gave that up when I had a child of my own.  When Melissa turned five, I started working again, this time for a children’s museum.  The work suited me in every way, and before long I became program director.  I spearheaded a slate of new programs, but the one closest to my heart was the one for injured wild animals.  Being a city museum, most of these animals were birds.

We had a hawk that was missing an eye and a raven with a broken wing.  We had a duck with a mangled foot and an owl that had lost its feathers.  We rescued them and we cared for them.  It was the beginning of my interest and love for birds.

It was not, however, the beginning of my acquaintance with them.  My husband was a professional biologist, an amateur illustrator and an avid birder, and early in our marriage I accompanied him on his walks.  It was always nice to be out, though I would have liked it more if from time to time he had turned his eye from his birds to me.  He, I am certain, would have liked it more to be with other birders.  He never said as much, but you could tell.  It was a difference of orientation, you might say.  His outward gaze, I sometimes thought of it, stacked against my gaze at him.  With time this difference grew.  Our walks became less frequent.  We seemed to be drifting apart.  Then I got the job at the museum, and life changed overnight.  Suddenly, I had a reason to watch birds, too.

Now I could be out with him and do what he was doing.  I wanted this very much.  We shared an interest, or at least we had.  For reasons I never understood, his interest in birds began to dwindle soon after I got my job.  The day I bought my first pair of binoculars, I discovered that he had put his away.  His passion had shifted from birds to mushrooms.  They were now his darlings.  He showed me a drawing of one, Amanita Phylloides, known as the Death Cap.  He had a good hand.  It was, no doubt, the perfect likeness.  Wonderful, I said.

I was left to learn about birds on my own, and I discovered that, for all its concrete and steel, our city was a rich habitat for them.  There were parks and lakes and backyards, as well as the harbor and beyond it, the ocean.  In our own little garden we had hummingbirds, chickadees, catbirds, finches and thrushes.  I began to keep a diary of the birds I saw, when and where and how many.  I bought a book, Bird Walks in New England.  I joined the Audubon Society and went on outings with them.  When the local chapter needed help, I volunteered.  Before long I became secretary of the chapter, then its president.

It was a whole new world for me.  When I think of myself back then, I think of a hatchling.  At forty I was more than twice as old as my teenage daughter, but emotionally I felt half woman, half child.  My marriage was not going well.  There was pressure, it seemed, from every direction.  I pushed back with pressure of my own, trying to preserve and nurture what we had.  But what we had was changing, my husband and I.  We did what we could to adapt.

The city was also changing, growing denser and more congested.  There was less open space and more concrete.  More and taller buildings.  The birds were under pressure too, but somehow they seemed quicker to adapt than we did.  Falcons took to highrises as though they were trees, feasted on pigeons, and flourished.  Crows and ravens changed their diet from carrion to household garbage.  Mourning doves began to nest in the eaves of houses, and their population soared.

At home our population declined, as our daughter left for college.  I had four years of an empty nest, and then for a while she moved back.

There are some pleasures for a woman that only other women seem able to supply.  One of these is a certain kind of conversation:  chatty, nuanced, sharply observed.  Sympathetic without being overly sympathetic.  Rational.  Exhaustive.  Every woman knows this, and at some point in her life seems determined to forget it.  I was at that point in mine, trying to get my husband to talk to me, banging my head in vain against the wall of his retreat.  (Aspirin, I’m sorry to report, does nothing for the headache.)  It was a decidedly masculine wall, stony, ancient and obtuse.

With my daughter’s return, I stopped banging in favor of singing.  She and I talked endlessly, long and richly satisfying melodies of conversation.  And I re-discovered a buried truth:  one person is a force, but two are a stronger force.  And two together are exponentially stronger than two apart.  Melissa took me under her wing just as I had done for her as a child.  She showed me things that I had never seen, or had forgotten.  The shell, for example, that I had created for myself.  A shell as pretty as a robin’s egg, as thick as an ostrich’s, pleasing to the eye and useful at times but confining as any shell is.  With her encouragement I began to peck at this shell.  Peck peck peck, until it cracked, and soft, feathery, innocent me emerged.  Fresh as a newborn chick.  Ready for a new day.  A new dawn.

Imagine my surprise when my knight didn’t like what he saw.  Imagine the pain in my heart.  Poor me.  Poor him, for not liking.

But there I was, a hatchling.  I couldn’t very well climb back into my shell.  Nor could I fail to see the disapproval in his eyes, nor keep his dark-haired beauty and shining armor from becoming tarnished in my eyes.

I never fell out of love with him.  He was my true love, and true love never dies.  I didn’t want another knight in his place.  An eagle mates for life, and I believe that I was born an eagle.  But I was taught and raised to be a rail.  A yellow rail, a shy, retiring and secretive bird of reeds and deep grasses.  When I came out of my shell, I was re-born an eagle, and an eagle is faithful to her companion.  An eagle loves her mate, but she lives to spread her wings and fly.  I hatched, I looked around, I filled my lungs with air, then I fledged.

For a year we lived in separate houses.  It was painful but necessary.  Leaving my husband was like losing a limb, and I would wake at night, reaching for something that wasn’t there, grasping at a phantom.  I took a leave of absence from work and used the time to think.  I saw friends, took walks, grew feathers.  My husband used his time to further his career.  He wrote papers, gave speeches and sponsored wildlife legislation.  He no longer had time for walks of any kind, and the only birds he saw were from an office or an airplane window.  I, on the other hand, saw birds galore.  On outings with the Audubon Society, on jaunts up and down the coast, on cruises to the North Atlantic.  I saw the black-browed albatross, the northern fulmar and the parasitic jaeger, and it was I who first observed the walking bird.

I was alone when I saw it.  It was early morning.  Ironically, not somewhere faraway or exotic, but at Swan’s Neck Park, a little spit of land that juts into the Atlantic not three miles from my house, named for its long and curving shape.  For years it had been a dumping ground for anything and everything, but recently it had been cleaned up and restored.  Restored to what?  A stinky, soggy marsh of slimy rocks, tidal mudflats and reeds, bullrushes and grasses.  Not a human shangri-la by any means.  No paradise for man.  But the birds adored it.

The sun had just risen, and it was in my eyes as I walked the scrubby path to the end of the park, where I paused, as I do, to watch the waves and the water.  There was a light breeze, and after a while I turned and headed back.  With the sun behind me everything was as clear as if it had been rinsed that very morning.  I saw a spotted sandpiper, a ruddy turnstone and a flock of dunlins scampering along the rocks.  When I reached the marsh, there was a willet, two short-billed dowitchers and a killdeer.  Some chipping sparrows with their rusty caps scrabbled in the dirt.  Beyond them on the path was a crow, and beyond the crow was a bird I’d never seen.  I’m no world expert when it comes to birds, far from it, but I’m no rank amateur either.  Many of the species I know like the back of my hand, and my friends in the Audubon Society say I’ve got the eyes of a hawk.  And I’m telling you, this bird was different.  This bird, I swear, was not a bird at all.

And yet it clearly was, or part of it was.  It had a beak and feathers and wings.  It had a bird’s head and a bird’s body.  It looked like a rock dove, your run-of-the-mill pigeon, all except its legs.  They were unlike any bird legs I’d ever seen.  Way too long for a bird that size, long and weirdly jointed.  The knees, which in a bird are usually tucked into the body and out of sight, were where my knees are, halfway down the leg and plainly visible.  So that the legs bent forward, not back, which is the opposite of how birds’ legs do.  Below the knees were ankles and then feet, which were also strange.  They were broad, high-arched and fleshy, with shiny purple skin, tufts of bristly hair (and what bird has hair?), and four fat, splayed-out toes.  Not talons, not claws, not webs, not lobes, but toes, two in front and two in back, like exclamation marks.  This was something else I’d never seen.

The bird stood there in the dust with one knee cocked, then it shifted its weight and cocked the other.  It lifted a foot and took a few short steps, very casual, as if it had nothing better to do and nowhere better to be in the world.  And who knows, maybe it didn’t.  Maybe its purpose, if it had one, was merely to attract attention.  To be noticed, to be seen.  If  this were true, it was probably a male.

I wondered where this bird had come from.  How had it come to be?  Was it the product of some bizarre experiment?  A mutation born of pollution and filth?  An adaptation?  An evolutionary leap?  A joke?

I wanted a closer look, but when I moved, it got scared.  In this it was no different from other birds.  It ducked its head and went into a crouch, back toes up, front toes flexed, like a sprinter at the blocks.  All at once it shot off down the path, legs churning.  Ostriches run, and emus run, and penguins try to run, but no bird runs like that one did.  I wouldn’t even call it a run.  It was more an ultra-fast, Charlie Chaplinesque walk.  After ten yards or so it stopped, then turned and eyed me.  When I reached for my binoculars, it went into its crouch again, only this time it sprang into the air, spread its wings and took off.  Its flight was labored at first, as though it were a bigger and heavier bird.  Its unbirdlike feet dragged it down, until it caught some air, and then it sailed away, its long legs trailing behind it like ribbons.

In birding there’s no such thing as a secret.  An unusual sighting is not something you keep to yourself.  You text a friend.  You make a post.  You call the birding hotline.  I did all these things, and by day’s end the word was out.

People flocked to see the walking bird.  Birders first and foremost, but close on their heels biologists, and close on theirs, reporters and curiosity-seekers, some of whom naturally brought ice chests, barbecues, folding chairs and radios.  I was interviewed no less than seven times.  The story not only made the front page of the newspaper, it was picked up online in countless blogs and tweets.  The walking bird was sighted once atop a piling at the end of a broken-down pier just north of Swan’s Neck, and one other time, when a man claimed that he saw it with a fish under its wing, striding across the water.  Both sightings were unconfirmed, but both made it into the news, the second one accompanied by an artist’s rendering of the bird that resembled a commuter with a briefcase tucked under his arm, hurrying for his train.  It was not the only drawing of the bird.  There were serious attempts as well as caricatures, and what all had in common was that none captured what I had seen.  Most weren’t even close.  A week passed, and there were no more sightings.  Two weeks, and the furor and excitement died down.

People started calling it a false alarm and deserted the park in the inverse order of how they had overrun it, the casually curious followed by the professionally curious followed by the fanatics.  The nail in the coffin was an article in the local paper, the final one as it turned out, citing me by name and suggesting the whole thing was either a joke, a hoax or a mistake.  It quoted an ornithologist saying I needed glasses.  The quote, needless to say, was echoed a hundred-fold on-line.

And maybe I did need glasses, but that didn’t change what I saw.  I was furious at the implication I couldn’t be trusted.  I’d worked hard to be honest, both with myself and with others.  I didn’t make things up.  At one time yes, but those days were gone.

I waited for the crowds to leave before returning to the park.  I was on my guard, and I did get some looks from hangers-on, who apparently recognized my face, and I did my best to ignore them.  In addition to my binoculars and spotting scope, I brought a camera this time.  An eagle is nothing without her eyes, and I trusted mine.  I had seen the bird, and I would see it again, and this time I’d prove it.

But I didn’t see it, not at Swan’s Neck or any of the other dozens of places I visited.  That day or any other day, or any time of day:  not at daybreak, not at noon, not at nightfall.  My Audubon friends were understanding.  No one believed me, but everyone was very nice.  They didn’t laugh at me.  If they whispered behind my back, they did it discreetly.  I got scolded by one of them for making birders look ridiculous, which for some, I know, is tautological.  Mostly, I had to sit through story after story of mistaken sightings.  The eye sees what the mind wants to see and all that.

It was during that time I discovered another thing about being an eagle.  She doesn’t like being doubted or dismissed.  She’s a proud bird, and unlike the little rail, who takes pride in her ability to hide, an eagle’s pride resides in being peerless and admired.  She flies high not simply to hunt but so that people can see how fine she is.  How fleet of wing, keen of sight and clear of mind.

I continued as president of the Audubon chapter, despite sentiment that I should step down.  When the time came for re-election, I ran again, against the advice of my friends.  I was defeated and offered a lesser position, which I declined.  I took a final trip with the group to the Arctic, where we saw the snowy owl and the rock ptarmigan, and once home, I participated in the Fall migratory count.  With winter there was less birding activity, and when Spring arrived, and the first thrush appeared out my window, announcing itself in sweet song, I found that I had lost my interest in birds.

This was painful (though not, I must say, as painful as losing a husband.  Not as sharply painful, at any rate.  It was a duller pain, a self-inflicted pain, which in its way is worse, doing something to yourself you don’t mean to but can’t stop.)  I wanted to enjoy birds.  I certainly knew they could be enjoyed, but sadly, no longer by the likes of me.  I still took walks.  And I had started to work again at the museum.  Our injured animal exhibit was as popular as ever, though less popular with me.  Wounded creatures, you could say, were of less interest.  I was more interested in our new dinosaur exhibit with its lessons about survival, extinction and the ability to adapt.

Outside of work I spent most of my time alone.  My daughter had followed in my footsteps by leaving her family of birth to be with her boyfriend, who lived in Tallahassee.  I visited her come autumn, and some months later she reciprocated by visiting me.  I was sad, as always, when her visit came to an end.  I was lonely.  In truth, I ached for companionship.  As the weeks and months wore on, it became harder and harder to keep self-pity at bay.

There was one antidote I had for these low, depressive feelings, and that was walks.  Moving my arms and legs helped stir my blood and raise, if only a little, my spirits.  I hadn’t been in Swan’s Neck Park in over a year, not since the debacle, and one day, for no good reason I took myself there.  It was deserted, save for one other person way off near the point.  His tripod and spotting scope marked him unmistakably a birder.

As I started walking out, he folded his tripod, slung it over his shoulder and started walking in.  When he was about twenty yards away from me, he stopped.  Our eyes met, and I felt the shock of recognition.  I could see his chest rise and fall, just as he, I am sure, could see mine.  Other than that, each of us was as still as a bird.  Then he came closer.

He wore his hair longer than he had, and he had grown a short beard, which highlighted his lips and softened his face.  He seemed happy, and he said hello, and for a minute we made awkward conversation.  Then we fell silent and looked away from each other, at a loss for words.  Then he raised his eyes and said it was good to see me.  He was wondering when he would.

I didn’t know quite how to take this, and he explained that he’d been coming to Swan’s Neck every day, sometimes early, sometimes late, for close to a year.  I replied, slightly baffled, that I hadn’t.  Yes, he said, he knew.  And I said, yes, I guess you do.  I guess it’s obvious.

He asked if he could show me something, and without waiting, he unzipped his knapsack.  Inside was a fancy birding camera with a telephoto lens, which is how we birders document our sightings.  Anything less is mere heresay.  The days of Audubon, who shot his birds in order to draw them, are long past.

It was strange to see the camera in his pack, not because he didn’t demand proof of things – he was a scientist, after all – but because he’d given up birding years before.  Under the camera was a notebook, which was what he was after.  He pulled it out and flipped through the pages until he found the one he wanted.  Then he handed the book to me, and the breath caught in my throat.

It was a colored drawing of the walking bird, exactly as I remembered it, pigeon body, long strange legs, as if he’d seen it with his own eyes, or with mine.  My heart skipped a beat.  I heard hoof beats.  I swear to God, hoof beats.  As though the knight’s steed was on its way.

“You’ve seen it,” I cried.

He shook his head.

“You have.  That’s how it looks.  Exactly.”

“It’s how you described it in the paper.”

I had described it, but not like that.  Not in such detail.  Everything perfect, from the coloring, to the proportions, to the way it held its body, to its feet and legs.  The bird seemed ready to walk right off the page.

***

He asked if he had it right.

Dumb-founded, I nodded.

“You’re sure?”

“It looks alive,” I said.

He had a theory about the legs, which had to do with adaptation to the paving of the planet.  Humans aren’t the only ones, he said, who can and must adapt.

He was speaking for the wild things he loved but also, I sensed, for himself.  He slipped the notebook from my hands, gave the drawing one last appraising look, then closed it and returned it to his pack.  It was then I realized another thing that was strange about the camera:  my husband had never owned a camera in his life.  He was not a picture-taker.  For as long as I had known him, he had never shot a single frame.  Yet here he was, drawn by word alone – my word — ready to capture my bird with the camera’s lens.

I was moved, almost to tears.  He shouldered his knapsack, then paused, as though waiting for me to say something.  Thank you, I think, would have sufficed.  But before I could utter a word, there was a stirring in the grass, and a meadowlark appeared.  It’s a common bird, with a black and yellow chest, but something about it seemed special.  My knight, I think, agreed.  He and I, we were in agreement on this:  that at that hour, in that light, on that morning, this common bird was the most beautiful thing in the world.

The post Bird Walks in New England appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Weird Bird Fortnight is our second special this year after weird seas/voyages week. Originally, we had intended to do a week of birds as well but we ended up with a total of six stories–five of which are new to WFR and most of which have not been published online. This week, we’ll be wrapping up with three more stories. They include:

• “Bird Walks in New England” by Michael Blumlein
• “The Hide” by Liz Williams
• “The Din of Celestial Birds” by Brian Evenson

Birds have occupied a rather interesting role in weird fiction which in part mirrors their place in real life. They tend to be nonthreatening, although sometimes this is only by appearance; so they aren’t the monsters like we find in certain strange stories. Despite this, they tend to be strange and perhaps even a bit unsettling: they are descended from dinosaurs, have a odd presentation compared to other animals, and are one of the few creatures that can fly. Thus, it’s not surprising to find them frequently in dark fiction starting as far back as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

We’re very excited to bring you these stories. Each is unique and original. We hope you join us as we continue our journey into strange ornithology and as we explore the uncanny feathered fliers of the Weird!

The post Our Journey Through Strange Ornithology Continues appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

My old friend, Dr. *** from Chateauroux, had recommended that I visit the manor of Guernipin in Brenne, between Mezières and Rosnay, if the master of the house was kind enough to invite me, his mood being such that he was seldom inclined to grant the requests of the strangers who solicited him.

I thus discovered Guernipin and Geoffrey de la Tibaldière, an unrepentant zoologist and, quite fortunately, for a man with his passion, a bachelor sacrificing his comfort to accommodate an exceptional collection of animals, stuffed or preserved in jars. The man lived in a small room furnished with a simple cot, each of the other twenty comfortable rooms packed with a dusty and docile wildlife. He introduced me with enthusiasm to his domestic zoo, confessing that he had come down with that persistent and invasive collector’s fever in his childhood. He had foolishly caught the infection by the age of eight when he playfully trapped all the insects wandering about the property of Guernipin, and encased them in empty matchboxes, carefully labelled – admirable tiny coffins, once brand-new but now withered by time like the skin of their owner, who appeared to be the trusting type, to the point that he let me handle his treasures.

Guided by the most perfect of experts, as Mr. Tibaldière was a brisk old man of eighty-five and a collector’s piece in his own right, I was invited to peruse a shambles of feathers, bristles, and scales.

That first afternoon, we explored only the rooms of the ground floor, and when dusk drew the curtain on those local or exotic marvels, I was left with a craving to see more pieces. But having acquired a taste for this hunt so devoid of danger and exertion, I did not know how to hint at my desire to see the rest. He whetted my appetite by suggesting that I should sleep in the tall four-poster in the country-style bedroom he had set up in the garret of Guernipin. We would dine informally in the kitchen and continue to explore his scholarly memories, while eating an omelette with chanterelles and a truffled confit of duck. Sylvain, the servant, would see to replenishing our glasses with a Reuilly wine that was lordly in its small ways. Indeed, Mr. Tibaldière being talkative, my attention would satisfy his imperious desire to describe his treasures.

The bouquet of the Reuilly enhanced the aroma of truffles and chanterelles, and quickened the already nimble speech of my host. At midnight, which was lazily spelt out by an ancient, potbellied grandfather clock, he was still speaking, his back to the fire, assisted by Sylvain, a fifty-year-old man tanned up to his hairline. Sylvain looked like a Moorish crone, a common feature in this part of Berry, so close to Poitou, where the Saracen occupation had left traces in the peasants’ blood.

Mr. Tibaldière recounted his remote and adventurous hunts, when cross hairs on his rifle did not quiver in front of his eye; he lovingly dwelled on the local tradition, his youthful hours spent in patient exploration of burrows, nests and lairs, and he glorified the vibrant life of this country suspended between water and earth, an unparalleled paradise to sedentary and migratory fauna. At one o’clock in the morning, my head swam with new knowledge in ornithology: mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), gadwall (Chaublasmus stepera), shelduck – I will spare you the Latin – pochard, heron, coot, wheatear, water rail (Rallus aquaticus – but, I have not forgotten), all minutely described: appearance, calls, habits and more.

Sylvain slouched over an oak bench near the fireplace and, as patient as a dog that calculates in advance all the bones coming its way, yawned, loyalty incarnate. As for me, despite the strain of that long day, I dared not interrupt a host so prodigal with hospitality and words, nevertheless hoping that he, too, would soon grow sleepy. But Tibaldière rambled on about the mythical wildlife that the fiendishly superstitious peasants imagined prowling Brenne’s night. He told me about the Ghoulbird.

My curiosity rekindled, I straightened my back. A Ghoulbird! Even though I was tired, the promise of a brief legend-hunting enchanted me. Hearing that name, Sylvain had slid further on the bench, drawing near the fire as if he wished to move away from us, studying the crackling embers with the intensity of a man who sees flames for the first time.

‘You should know,’ said Mr. Tibaldière, ‘that there was a time when this family of birds had spread to the point that every marsh across France and beyond had its own mind-calling spirit, a sly winged creature that lured the naive to utter horror.’

I nodded while he moved onto a brilliant enumeration: Dreadfowl of Normandy, Owlfear of Ardennes, Shrikedeath of Brittany or the Tufted Screamers of Limousin, protean creatures spawned by the popular imagination in days of yore, brewed by the peasants’ gullible minds during troubled nights. Locally, they had a Ghoulbird, the only one still living in the country, and probably the last remaining anywhere.

Then my host raised his voice and, taking aim with an imaginary rifle, threatened, ‘I’ve never seen it. Otherwise –!’ And that sceptical man shot me a mischievous wink before turning to his servant and saying in a compassionate tone, ‘Is it so, Sylvain?’ But, failing for once in his perfect obedience, the man did not answer.

Finally, I was released. My host rose and entrusted me to his servant, giving him orders to make sure all my needs would be satisfied, and then he dismissed us with an abrupt about-face of enviable agility. Sylvain took a jug of water, a lamp and, walking ahead of me, led me slowly, never turning around, across long corridors and steep stairways up to the attic, my room.

I was not disappointed as I had feared. Quite the contrary. The place, though stifling because of the heat absorbed through the roof, was clean and pleasant. Vast, too, with beautiful glazed beams that sparkled as we passed. The curtained bed, made of walnut, smelled of wax, and the slightly rough bedclothes released a scent of lavender as I pulled them back. As for the four bouquets of cotton-cloth flowers tied to the posts, I feared there might be spiders hiding in there, but I reassured myself by thinking that they would certainly be pinned, labelled by species, and therefore harmless prisoners. Sensing my fears, Sylvain promptly unfolded the cloths and shook them to show me no spiders dwelled between printed petals. And he deigned to smile for the first time. Mr. Tibaldière’s authority must have been a heavy constraint to him, and he clearly wanted to chat.

He introduced me to the various features of the place, with great courtesy, and directed me to the dressing table and the small round-shaped dormer window, which he immediately opened to let in fresh air. In this regard, as I pointed out to him that this narrow opening might be insufficient, he beckoned me to a door, which he unlocked and pushed open. We climbed a narrow stone stairway and came out on the terrace of a crenellated tower that I hadn’t noticed upon arriving at Guernipin. The view, stretching in all directions, was outstanding. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, marshes, ponds and lakes glistened in the full moonlight and appeared to join and mingle into infinite lacings of water on dark earth. Encased in a vegetation thickened by shadows but made in fact of meagre shrubbery, the aquatic countryside shone like a jewel discarded for some minor flaw and relegated to this forgotten corner of opulent Berry.

I felt that Sylvain took great pride in my surprise. Showing the extent to which his offering moved me, I asked for details. The man knew his region by heart. I soon learned the name of each mirror consecrated to the moon, each moor and slough, the nearest so close we could have touched it with the toes of our boots, a harsh land, now in the process of drying up and hardening but still rotting, a traitor to the imprudent foot: the marsh of Gobble-Ox.

All need for sleep forgotten, I was loath to leave this wondrous nocturnal scenery, where the only missing element was a touch of life. I said to Sylvain, ‘What a pity that this fabled Ghoulbird of yours is only a legend; otherwise, I would have listened to its song and applauded with enthusiasm!’ The servant grabbed my arm and squeezed it. I realised that my words had robbed him of his pleasure. His voice dropped to a whisper.

‘Never ever make such a wish, sir,’ he breathed out. ‘Particularly not under a full moon…It’s the kind of night the creature would choose to lead us to our deaths…’ And he forced me to leave the roof terrace. Back in the garret room, he carefully locked the door to the tower. In the light of the lamps, I was surprised to see his crumbling face covered with perspiration. Not to mention his manifest apprehension, so strong I felt almost compelled to reassure him by patting him in the back. But, made curious by his extreme reaction and exploiting my previous display of disbelief, I used a more artful way to restore his trust. I managed to have him sit with me on the edge of the bed and, matching the tone of my questions to his concern, I obtained a few details about this dreadful bird.

And so I learned that the bird mentioned by Mr. Tibaldière existed. Better still, the bird’s favourite place was the marsh of Gobble-Ox, right here, five or six gunshots from us and at an equal distance from the village. Its appearance was not at first frightening, and it could look like any common bird, but shifted continuously from one species to the next to fool its victims. In its call, an additional note rang out…a bit strident. It was the Ghoulbird’s curse…To listen to it was to lose one’s will to the bird and forever be the creature’s slave. Obedient, the victims rose from the beds, left the security of their homes and went out in nightclothes, like sleepwalkers, heading toward that bird of Hell, which rejoiced in any new prey. The victims went to the bird, oblivious of the mud that squelched under their feet, not realising they were padding through the marsh. And the creature would draw back, retreating further to lure its prey into the slimy depths that captured and swallowed its victims without mercy. Pessaut, Guérin, the woman called Marguerite, and so many others had died in this way. Their bodies were never found, only the footprints in the hardened banks of the Gobble-Ox, which, without doubt, had shared the meat with the Ghoulbird.

But the creature betrayed its presence in one tell-tale way: most other birds do not sing or whistle at night. So when you heard it, you had to move quickly and bolt your door, barricade up all the openings, clasp your hands over your ears, bury yourself deep under the blankets and, above everything else, be in the company of at least another person so that one could prevent the other from responding to the evil call…

Having unburdened himself of this awkward secret, Sylvain departed in great haste, taking the lamp and leaving me in a pitch-black room. I heard him double lock the door, probably out of habit, and step down the stairway, stumbling in his haste.

The silver needle of the moon, taking advantage of the open window, slanted into the darkened garret without disturbing the heavy silence, which then engulfed me. I undressed and lay down on the bed, my fatigue dulling the stressful images put into my head by the superstitious servant.

The heat prevented me from falling asleep immediately. I tossed and turned, feeling oppressed, until I decided to get up and open the door of the tower. After some blind groping, I found it. The fresh air that blew through the doorway joined the draft that entered through the window, bringing me relief. I went back to bed, and this time I slept right away.

I dreamt a dream agreeable at first but, little by little, it filled me with a vague uneasiness…I found myself in a vast ballroom, in old-fashioned garb, relaxed and content, sitting in an armchair…A beautiful young woman asked me to dance, favouring me with the most charming smile…But I declined rudely and remained seated instead of rising to my feet, eager to grant her the dance she’d requested…She, without seeming to be in the least shocked by my attitude, laughed in a strange way, with three high-pitched notes balanced by pauses, creating a peculiar rhythm…Then, taking me by the hand, she pulled me into her arms…I felt myself become heavier and heavier. But her gentle strength gradually managed to lift me…Standing, I felt a sensation of nakedness and a sudden embarrassment forced me to flee…I ran into a wall or a closed door, I did not know which…I fell, and people came to pick me up, pitying me…Their hands supported me and pulled me away into a park smelling of freshly cut grass…They led me to a well and, once there, either for fun or malice, they pushed me forward, to make me step over the edge…

I resisted the motion, letting myself fall to the ground, where, seized with a sudden terror, I hunkered down, refusing to participate in this stupid act…And again I heard the shrill laughter of the young woman, who had become invisible. All my attention was riveted on the unseen woman, as I was filled with a belated regret for not having accepted her company…

The chill of dawn woke me. I was on the terrace of the tower, lying on the ground and shivering. A gray mist covered Guernipin, which the rising sun gilded progressively. After the first moment of astonishment, it wasn’t difficult to understand the reason why I was lying there. Surely, I had wanted to escape the sweltering garret room and, seeking fresh air, I had risen, half-conscious, to spend the rest of the night up here. Leaning out from the parapet, I discovered the impressive drop, and, upset, I realized that I had been on the point of falling from that height!

The second day with M. de la Tibaldière was as fascinating as the day before. The man knew so much – the mystery of the onager, the cyclical migration of the warthog, and provided anecdotes and biological digressions as arguments. We lunched in the park, in the temperate shade of a cedar tree as the wind, blowing gently, failed to ruffle its leaves. The table was a long tombstone taken from the floor of a deserted abbey nearby; we ate heartily on the belly of an austere priest stiffly engraved in the granite.

In the evening, we had yet to explore the second floor where, according to Mr. Tibaldière, suddenly excited by his own words, rested the jewels of his collection: coelacanths, large saurians from Borneo, and other survivors of antediluvian times. Therefore, I dined again at Guernipin, but I managed to escape the lecture after the meal. By now the place was familiar to me so I went to bed alone, this time keeping the lamp. And, fearing a new awakening on the roof terrace, I left the door to the corridor open but firmly shut the door leading to the tower, to avoid renewing the misadventure of the night before. I went to bed and began reading a book, but hardly had I reached the third page than it slipped from my hands. I blew out the light and let sleep come. This time the heat did not torment me, on the contrary! Again, I was involved in a dream that seemed light-hearted in the beginning…I visited Guernipin on my own, only to discover new rooms of an amazing variety…I could finally handle birds, touch soft plumage…Mysterious birds of unknown shapes, which came alive and quivered under my hands…Soon they were so numerous they crowded me, pushing me, guiding me to the freedom of the park, where they remained around me, driven by a silent determination…Mr. Tibaldière appeared on the front steps and indignantly shouted to come back before his most precious avian specimens escaped forever…Anger choked his cries, to the point they resembled a bullfrog’s call…But, not listening, I suddenly ran away, now at the heart of the cluster of freed birds, whose wishes I obeyed, and which led me so fast I was out of breath…I ran on until I felt a terrible tightness to my heart…Choking, I felt myself gradually hindered in my race by viscid forces, which woke me suddenly.

Today, I find it impossible to describe the violent revulsion I felt while I was victim to that cold thickness. Brusquely, I returned to reality, and found my feet in gluey mud up to my thighs. Hadn’t I been sleeping? Where was my bed? And Guernipin? Where was I? Prisoner to a monstrous vacuum that was slowly sucking me in, I was trapped within a stinking, nauseous swamp. My hands, my arms, in vain sought purchase: a root, a branch, my life…Sudden bellows, reminiscent of an angry bull, broke my struggle. From the marsh where I was sinking, they tore at the night. Despite my terror, I identified a heron’s call. But instead of being regular in their three consecutive notes, these cries came with no pattern, no rhythm.

Then I saw it…thrashing next to me. And Sylvain’s comments came back to me: the Ghoulbird. Did it exist? Yes, it did, for this could only be the mythic bird, shaking with justified laughter at its gullible and ridiculous prey. And here I was, in the middle of the Gobble-Ox Marsh.

Nevertheless, I saw the bird hop around as if under the same threat from the swallowing slough. Seeing my redoubled efforts to break free from the mud that was gradually gaining on me, the bird cried louder. I would have thought it wanted to coax me into escaping the quagmire. I finally managed to reach the nearest stretch of grass and, extricating myself from the greedy mud, I crawled to safety. The heron, which had come closer, supported me by flapping his wings, helping me to reach the firm soil of a pebbly path. If I did not collapse into a heap, I owed it to the angelic bird that nudged me with its beak, and forced me to rise and head for Guernipin, a solid and reassuring sight within reach of hope.

Then I felt an invisible, hostile force that knotted my spirit with terror. I felt the terrifying sensation of a huge but impalpable single wing flapping around me, as nimble as a ray of nothingness in the ocean of night, an immaterial reality that pushed me with relentless perseverance to bring me back into the swamp. Without the frantic cries of the heron, which was engaged in a frenzied dance to come to my rescue, inciting me to flee, I confess that I wouldn’t have resisted the Thing that held me enthralled.

And I understood at last! I realized that the Ghoulbird – be it owl, crow, heron or any bird that happened to be there and sensed the threat – was neither a legend nor an enemy of man, but a protector…that it warned of the unspeakable danger it perceived…That its cries, far from being cursed calls, were a warning: terrified, the bird screamed against fear, not to elicit fear!…The Marsh of Gobble-Ox, foul lair still preserved after thousands of years, harboured an invisible ravenous monster, survivor of the times when dark powers ruled under the subtlest forms!

I then glimpsed two greenish and fleeting glows…An illusion, a reflection of my fear? No…those glowing spots were eyes! Screaming in revulsion, I wrenched myself free from the horror that had chosen me and had already failed to lure me in my sleep, out of my bed at Guernipin.

At sunrise, Mr. Tibaldière, eager to show me around the floor of prehistoric ancestors, surely gave Sylvain the order to wake me up. But all the servant could find of me, apart from traces of mud left everywhere, was this note, doubtless destined to remain a mystery:

…Never, ever, kill the Ghoulbird…

The post Ghoulbird appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Was it the men I saw launch themselves off the cliff, the ones that hid behind the ashen clouds? What names did they call one another? Describe to me their plumage and whistle patterns.

Ocelia, my little sister, I will reclaim your feathers.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, don’t blame Mama and Papa. They love you just as I do. They did go to the magistrate and describe the men who attacked you.

We know their names now: Dagger Beak, Lash Tail, and Shrill Whistle. They come from the old bloodlines. The King’s laws are on their side.

Ocelia, please do not despair. I promise, you will be whole one day. You will sing and you will dance. You will soar across the crimson skies and fly over the snow-capped mountains.

I may be the featherless daughter, but I am bold beyond fear. I will hunt down the men who hurt you. This I solemnly swear.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, I might not return to you soon. I will ask pigeons to carry my letters. Please pray the winds favor them.

The men who hurt you have left for war. I know, I hadn’t heard of the war either. I will explain to you what I have learned. Bear with me, if I ramble, for all of this is news to me too.

Some of us are born with feathers and wings, like you my dearest Ocelia. Some are born with beaks and claws, and they, too, are much cherished. I was born lacking, more human than a bird, with thick limbs and no grace, beakless and wingless. Yet I never cared to become more. I was destined to serve you.

But not everyone accepts their fate — they yearn to become more. They acquire feathers by any possible means. They resort to foul and mean potions. The poor hunger for fame and wealth. The very rich, I have heard, compete for the most striking plumage.

What does this have to do with the war? I shall reveal that next.

Beyond the snow-capped mountains, far, so far in the east, waves hide under a turquoise blanket a sandy reef called Lek. Every summer for two precious weeks, waters part to reveal the best mating grounds. Believe it or not, my dearest sister, anyone conceived there will be born whole.

In the east, a movement has started — they call themselves Purists. They were born whole, and they firmly condemn all transformations. But even their children may be born lacking. Hence they want to conquer Lek.

Did you know that our King keeps an aviary? He owns toucans, parrots, and hummingbirds. He wasn’t born with his majestic plumage. No, it is a gift from the birds and his subjects. The King himself has transformed.

Therefore there will now be a war against the Purists, over the precious Lek. Over the tradition of becoming more, no matter how some misuse it.

I do not care about Lek or the war. I only care about your feathers. The men who hurt you have flown east. I shall follow by foot.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, think of me when you fear that all is lost. Look at the skies for the eagles of the mountains. They are kind and considerate creatures.

Please don’t think ill of me when I confess this to you: I almost gave up on the icy heights. I traced the men up the treacherous slopes. But I lost my way in the labyrinthine ravines.

I feared that they’d chosen to fly, but I swore to myself I wouldn’t give up. I trudged forward in the knee-deep snow. With no down to warm me, I shivered and shuddered terribly.

As days passed by, I ran out of food. I gnawed lichen for hunger. I sucked icicles for thirst. Eventually I collapsed in snow.

It was then that I glimpsed the eagle, a sacred true bird soaring above the clouds. Exhausted beyond shame and embarrassment, I called out for help.

The old eagle with a chipped pale beak took pity on me. He spiraled down from the bluest skies and wrapped his strong wings around me. He comforted me with long hoots and low whistles. He wanted to know why I wandered alone in the mountains.

I shared the wrong that had befallen you. I did cry fat, heavy tears.

He had seen Dagger Beak, Lash Tail, and Shrill Whistle, and told me, that if he’d known of their crimes, he would have shredded them to death. But he hadn’t known, and thus he felt obliged to help me on my quest.

The eagle took me to his nest to recover. He brought me mice and kept me warm. He spoke of General Blue Swan, a fair and fearless leader.

When I had recovered my strength, he flew me over the mountains. I clutched his talons tight, though I knew he would never let me fall. At last, I saw a city shivering on a cliff, the tall and foreboding Fortress of Flight.

At the iron-wrought gates the eagle gave me a gift valuable beyond naming a price. Three feathers from his glossy gray plumage: one from his tail, one from his wings, and one from the underside of his white belly.

Ocelia, my dear little sister, please thank him if you see him. He gave a part of himself without me asking. That, if anything, is noble.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, Dagger Beak is dead. Not by my hand and not by my doing, but from a fall down the fortress’ steps. This all happened before I arrived, and by then Lash Tail and Shrill Whistle had already fled.

I saw the body of Dagger Beak and identified the feathers that had belonged to you. Yet I cannot send back those feathers, for any feather plucked from a corpse brings only illness in its wake.

But do not despair, Ocelia. I have devised a plan. Bear with me, dearest little sister. I shall explain everything.

The eagle had warned me that people lead a poor life here in the mountains. Sure enough, by the gates of the Fortress of Flight crippled veterans sold their feathers. I shied away from their vermin-infested trade, the tattered items on display. In the city square, mothers begged for down feathers, to ward off the constant chill. Plucked children tugged at their ragged hems, for thefts are not at all uncommon. I passed them all with my gaze turned down, hiding my eagle feathers. As I am wingless and featherless, they ignored me as though I were but one of them.

First thing in the city, I asked after the men, and soon learned of Dagger Beak’s demise. Many thought he got what he deserved when he broke his neck in drunken stupor, but the loss of your feathers pained everyone. Next I inquired about General Blue Swan, and the alleys filled with tall tales. Many confirmed the eagle’s words. She is a fierce, but just leader. She has plucked ten thousand feathers from the epaulets of the Purists. She is recruiting new warriors and will sponsor their transformations.

A crowd had gathered by the gates of the fortress. I ran to join their ranks. We waited all through the night. Hope kept me warm, I think.

At dawn the gates were opened and people rushed to the courtyard. Warriors armed from beak to claw guided us to a long line. They ordered us to be silent and still, and naturally we obeyed.

General Blue Swan strutted to the courtyard, feathers shining with indigo and emerald green. Breath caught up in my throat as I beheld this bird warrior and wondered at her clawed hands. Her beady eyes glinted with wisdom. Her beak narrowed like a spear. Her legs were long, talons scythe-sharp. She kept her blue wings folded against her back.

One by one, she dismissed the postulants, and I must admit that I feared for myself. But she halted before me. She locked eyes with me.

I thought of you. The great injustice.

She clasped my shoulder, claws curling against my coat. She tilted her head, revealing smooth blue neck. She croaked a high-pitched note of approval.

Believe it or not, I am to become a warrior. I am to meet the Bird Master and consume the eagle’s gift.

Ocelia, I am doing this to better serve you. You do understand my reasoning, don’t you?

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, you won’t recognize me when I return home. To serve in the ranks, one must transform, and that is what will happen to me.

General Blue Swan took all the new recruits to see her Bird Master. He lives in a tower in the fortress, beyond dozens of winding staircases. Outside his quarters, chaos ensued as the young men started to bargain. The initial feathers used in the potion determine what kind of warrior one will become.

Hawks and falcons. Eagles and herons. Everyone yearned for speed, power, and grace.

Chicken and goose. Sparrow and starling. Can you imagine a warrior small, plump, and slow?

But there’s more to that, complications. A feather found matches three plucked ones. A feather donated three found ones. A dead man’s feather makes you sick, and might take you to an early grave.

I remained back, pretending shyness, and showed no one my eagle feathers. I kept even the general in the dark, though she studied me from behind a raised wing.

When it came my turn to meet the Bird Master, at last I revealed my secret. The white parrot frail with age gazed at me, red eyes bulging, irises narrowing. The general and he glanced at each other, and then they burst into laughter. I think my cleverness impressed them.

I need to tell you about the transformation spell.

In his candle-lit lair, the Bird Master ground my eagle feathers in an iron mortar. He produced a bone needle, poked my thumb, and sprinkled my blood into the feather dust.

As the general and Bird Master smiled at me, I swallowed the potion. It tasted like iron and nests and spring, of mice and boulders and heights. I consumed all as they chanted the spell, their voices weaving together.

When I stepped outside, the day greeted me with the cold winds of the mountains. My steps felt lighter, and I swear you this, I almost felt as if I could fly.

In two weeks the General shall march to Lek. During the six-month journey, I will transform. I shall become a feathered warrior.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, yesterday I thought I had caught up with the men I hunt. But I was wrong, it pains me to tell you, and that led to all sorts of trouble.

My regiment consists of seven hundred warriors, and more join us every day. Even the birds of old blood have answered the King’s call. They soar in the front with General Blue Swan. Their plumages of turquoise and vermillion brighten the gray mountain days.

The terrain remains rough, the descents steep, footing uneven. Some recruits whine as their bodies change. True, the transformation hurts, but I won’t say a word. Not when my bones elongate. Not when down pushes through my skin.

I don’t like watching the others wriggle, and so I march in the front. There I can see the scouts returning and keep an eye out for the men I hunt. To pass time, I flex my new muscles, the ones that will connect my feathers to shafts. I try and remain stone-faced — the seasoned warriors chuckle in their claws whenever they catch someone practicing.

It was yesterday when we halted to rest that I caught a glimpse of scarlet. I sneaked closer and sought cover from behind a moss-cloaked boulder. This is what I saw: a heron-legged man with red on his silver wings joking with a group of his friends.

Ocelia, I was so sure that at last I had found Shrill Whistle. I rushed at the man and tackled him down. I grabbed his wings, screaming accusations.

That was foolishly done—I can see it now—I was only one against many. And as his friends pulled me off him, I did realize, that the shape of his feathers was wrong. Your outer vanes are sleek and tall. His were short and wide.

General Blue Swan stormed to the scene, beak parted in displeasure. Heron Legs told I had attacked him. His friends witnessed my deed.

I apologized profoundly. I couldn’t refrain from crying.

Heron Legs demanded for an explanation. I stuttered out the whole tale.

I didn’t expect to be forgiven. But Heron Legs, he forgave me. His friends eyed me like I had gone mad. Perhaps I have. I don’t know for sure. This journey has tired me greatly.

General Blue Swan ordered the gathered crowd to disperse, but told me to remain behind. I feared she would dismiss me, but instead she took my hand in her claws. She wished me luck in my quest, but warned me not to act before thinking.

As far as other news goes, we’ve covered one third of the way to Lek. Today, I think I saw the forests in the distance. Endless green awaits us.

Ocelia, please believe in me, I will yet return home with your feathers.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, I have no tidings of the men. Every time I glimpse scarlet I flinch. But I have learned from my mistakes, and I no longer rush to action.

You see, Ocelia, protocols dictate what a warrior may do. We may not hurt one another. We may not disobey our superiors. But I might not have to resort to plots or force to reclaim your feathers. I have gained unexpected support.

Since that embarrassing incident, I have stayed away from the front. I plod in the back with the other recruits, listening to their curses and whining. We have descended into forests so dense that we hardly ever see the sun. Great wet clouds roll down from the mountains and chill us to the core. The down and feathers I have gained cannot yet ward off the cold.

We camped yesterday right after the sunset, and while we waited for the supply balloons, we built a big campfire. I soaked in the warmth, practicing how to control my feathers. A man approached me from the shadows, startling me with his soft voice.

It was Caius Heron Legs, the man with red and silver plumage. He tilted his tall beak politely and asked if I felt cold.

I denied and stroked the new feathers covering my forearms.

He shrugged his wings, but wouldn’t leave. He claimed my courage had impressed him. He offered to help me.

I cackled. I thought he was joking.

He brushed my shoulder with the tip of his wing. He cooed a soft, silly note. Then he hopped into the dark. No doubt returned to his friends.

I don’t know what to make of that encounter. Perhaps Caius really wants to help me. I can’t tell if he’s after something else. Though, my feathers aren’t yet worth stealing.

As I lay awake on my blankets, I thought of you. I thought of the war. I thought of the King and the Purists.

Dear sister, what do you make of it all? Don’t we all wish that those we love could be whole? Don’t we all want to hold on to the achieved privileges?

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, I bear only bad news. Caius Heron Legs warns me that Shrill Whistle and Lash Tail might have transformed – they might have molted their precious plumage to remain forever uncaught. I do take his words seriously, for he has become a good friend of mine.

We are deep in the forests now, and I have never seen trees like these. The gnarly, thin roots suck mist from the air, and Caius collects the strangest specimen. Orchids bloom amidst the enormous leaves. Insects wriggle under our bare feet. Butterflies ambush us in hordes.

Ambushes… General Blue Swan thinks the Purists might try an ambush here.

I am afraid, I admit you this, as I linger awake writing this letter. Thinking of you helps me to calm my nerves. I know my rambling might bore you – don’t feel obliged to read more. You don’t owe me anything.

This morning I didn’t recognize myself when I glanced at the mirror. My skull had reshaped during the night. I have grown a curiously yellow beak. My eyes bulge a little, and they might yet turn rusting orange.

As we march through the forest, I have to carry my backpack strapped onto my arms. My chest muscles and shoulder blades throb. The first recruits already sport wings. I hope mine will bloom soon. Though, in the light of the bonfires, my shadow still searches for its shape.

I ache, as you may guess, as my bones hollow. I am taller now and hardened by the vast distances covered. The endless practice sessions with bows and arrows have shaped my new muscles strong. I know how to use a knife, though soon I can resort to talons and claws.

Feathers already cover my chest, my armpits, and my legs. At night, I do caress them. I am lonely, so lonely without you.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, today I killed a man. I sank my beak into his eye and watched him bleed to death. Please do not think me evil. He was one of those who hurt you.

We reached the lowlands three days ago, lush grass and dense vegetation. I had never thought, not even after the forest, that the world could be so green. When I told this to Caius, he suggested we stray a little from the known path. He wished to show me more wonders, and shyly I obliged.

As we strolled claw in claw, he pointed out to me curious creatures. White-faced monkeys hid amidst the foliage, white-tipped tails wrapped around the branches. Snails with copper shells slithered out of our way. Translucent wings of blue butterflies reflected the slanting rays of the sun.

We walked straight into the ambush.

I recognized your scarlet, the man Lash Tail from your description. The hawk with rainbow plumage wore your feathers right above his heart. Vultures, drawn to all things rotten, flanked him on both sides.

I glanced at Caius sideways. Had I placed my faith in the wrong person?

Caius’ wings arched like sails. He drew back his head, hissed at the vultures. He launched in the air, talons bared.

A melee of wings and beaks ensued. A cacophony of shrieks and cries. Two vultures against my friend.

Lash Tail laughed at me, the frantic beats of Caius’ wings. There was nothing I could do to help my friend. I strode to the man who’d hurt you.

Lash Tail’s cackle came in ugly screeches. He mocked me and called me a featherless wretch. What was I, a half-transformed, compared to a bird of old blood?

But I am faster than I look, and he failed to consider that I could now fight.

I attacked Lash Tail, talons stretched wide. I grasped for your scarlet feathers and managed to reclaim one.

He pushed me off, annoyed. I tripped on a root. He prepared to take to flight, to assault me up from the air. I grabbed his wing, claws shredding feathers.

We fell on the ground and rolled in the grass. Twigs poked holes in our plumage. Then I was on the top again. He buried his claws in my shoulders.

Writhing in pain, I drove my beak down, not knowing where it would land. As fate would have it, it sank deep into his right eye.

He screamed, and I rejoiced. Blood spread all over his chest as he twitched under me.

As he fell quiet, I realized that it was too late to reclaim your feathers. For I had killed Lash Tail, the man who had so hurt us.

From behind me I heard whimpers, croaks dampened with pain. I hastened off the body, rushed to my friend.

Caius lay between two dead vultures. His right wing hung limp. Lost feathers dotted the grass, silver against green, the colors already fading.

I cradled him against my chest, and he let out a miserable sob. As we sought comfort from closeness, a shadow covered the sun. General Blue Swan soared above us. She whistled a low, sad note.

Soon after Caius’ friends arrived and helped us back to the camp. No one asked what had happened. Justice here has different rules.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, you must wonder what became of your feather.

It pains me to tell you that when I return, I cannot give it back to you. Please don’t judge me before you have read the whole letter. Remember that I am still not fully transformed, that my feathers hold no power.

When we fought Lash Tail and the vultures, Caius was badly wounded. He lost dozens of feathers and shattered his right wing. His plumage dulled and claws ceased to shine, a disconcerting sign if any.

For a day and night the Bird Master cut and sewed and set bones right. I remained by his side all this time. Caius had fought for me—for us—after all.

General Blue Swan happened to visit when Caius’ fever suddenly spiked. She knew the stakes at one glance. She had seen bird-form fading before.

She plucked a blue feather from her tail and gave it to the Bird Master. But one feather alone cannot save a man who is about to lose his shape.

The Bird Master glanced at me, at my half-formed feathers. There was no time to go and gather donations from Caius’ friends. He needed another bright and strong feather, he needed it right at that moment.

Your scarlet feather burned against my chest. Twice worn, twice taken, made more powerful by that.

Ocelia, I gave your feather away, to save a good man’s life.

Please understand, my dear sister, we need Caius Heron Legs. Shrill Whistle still remains at large. But we will catch him one day, I promise.

***

Dearest Ocelia, please let me know what you think of all this. I only ever wanted to serve you. Please try and remember that.

I am not sure if you will read this letter or if you won’t ever break the seal. I will tell you my tidings nevertheless, how my hunt proceeds.

We have covered two thirds of the way to Lek. The jungle has given way to a gray and vast desert. Pebbles shatter under my curving talons, though I am lighter now. My thick plumage keeps me warm at night. I expect my wings to bloom soon. In a week or so, I think.

Caius has recovered well, but it is still unclear whether he can fly again. He must wear a sling on the wing that has turned scarlet.

I do not let him out of my sight. His friends make fun of me. But I think they respect me too, for each of them gifted me with a feather.

The Bird Master ground the feathers to dust. I cut my finger myself. The potion tasted of blood and ashes. I licked the cup clean nevertheless.

Each feather I consume changes me. Tell me, if that is how you want me to live. So far away from you. So far away from who I was.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, are you still mad at me? Tell me, what else was I supposed to do? Tell me, I beg you, tell me!

Since I am slightly upset, I will write only a short letter.

This desert is endless and harsh. The sun scorches our feathers and teases us with mirages. Brave scouts leave. They don’t return.

Caius collects twigs and roots. At night, he builds miniature nests. He thinks we are close to Lek. I think my wings might carry me soon.

Ocelia, your sister is marching to a war. Perhaps you could consider how that might make her feel.

***

Ocelia, Ocelia, this will be my last letter to you. Today I flew for the first time. Tomorrow I will march in the battle. I don’t think you will get your feathers back. I don’t think I will return either.

This morning Caius combed my feathers. He helped me stretch my wings wide. He ushered me to run. Faster, faster, faster.

The desert breathed a hazy breeze as I sprinted, flapping my wings. The wind caught in my feathers. My talons lifted off the sand.

I flew, Ocelia, I flew. I soared up with the air currents. The thousand birds marching below… No, they were nothing from so far above. Irrelevant. Insignificant. Only one of them mattered to me.

Caius whistled at me, a silver dot against gold. As I soared higher, higher in the sky, his friends joined the celebratory note. They approved of what I’d become.

I glimpsed glimmering blue in the distance. A mirage, I first thought. But no, it was the ocean. Not a trick played by the sun.

I called out for General Blue Swan. Yes, it was the ocean I saw. We would reach the Lek the next day. The word carried through the ranks.

As the evening crept upon us, we danced around bonfires. The sunset lit our feathers aflame. Red and blue and yellow and green. We sang and danced and drank like there was no tomorrow.

Caius and I strolled a way off, our path lit by the stars. He bent his long neck around mine. He embraced me with his unbroken wing.

As our breathing found the same rhythm, he confessed to me his love.

I remained silent. Could I love someone else besides you, Ocelia?

He spoke of Lek and the battle, of what might happen after. Perhaps I would let him build us a nest. Perhaps we could mate there. Perhaps we could raise children together.

Ocelia, what do you think? You always told me I could love only you. But I think… I think that, too, has changed.

Caius asked what I thought of his plan. I spread my wings wide. I embraced him tight. When there is no certainty of tomorrow, all we have is now.

Feather against feather. Claw against claw. I think there can be love.

Today, very soon, I will soar the skies, my talons ready to strike. I will slash down many a man. I will kill those who stand in my way.

I think there will be much blood. In the end we will all look the same. Even if Shrill Whistle is out there somewhere, I might not be able to find him. Ocelia, perhaps you’ll have to learn to live featherless as I once lived.

Dearest, dearest Ocelia, this is the very last letter. I have but one more thing to say to you. Please read my words with great care.

We must stop this, you do understand?

I had no little sister. I am not Ocelia.

I was once hurt. That I admit.

But I have learned to love again.

The post Ocelia, Ocelia appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Birding, too, can be a great social activity for many people, even those who spend time alone in blinds or behind giant scopes, waiting for a flicker of movement. You’re still performing this activity within the greater context of something called “birding,” or maybe even a “big year.” As a child, I kept a birding journal in which I would list every bird I saw on our travels. This started in the last year of living in Fiji and continued on through coming to Florida.

These lists were full of mystery to me because when I started them I didn’t know much about birds. To some extent, too, each line with a different bird listed was a secret code for something larger and more forthcoming. Certain moments recorded tersely in my journal open up even today to form my earliest memories: A unique kind of kingfisher in Fiji, a silhouette of a heron in Australia, and, most horrifically, a lolling lump tossed up above the reeds in Kenya, then disappearing again—tossed up, disappearing. It turned out to be a baby ostrich in the clutches of a lion. It’s hard to forget that image.

Birds can be both sympathetic and sinister in fiction because of their quality of seeming both like and unlike us. A person described in fiction as “birdlike” can embody the creepy movement of a Maribou Stork stalking prey or the frothy stillness, the feathered turbulence, of a Great Horned Owl on a tree branch. A birdlike person can be frail or powerful, friendly or menacing. Even a casual question on Facebook about favorite bird stories can elicit dozens of responses, evoke dozens of moods.

When it comes to weird fiction, you might assume that the sinister aspect of birds would be most prevalent, and it’s true that evocative imagery of this nature lies at the heart of stories like Eric Basso’s “The Beak Doctor” and classics like Du Maurier’s “The Birds.” But for the next fortnight, you’ll find evocations of birds that are more complex, and reflect, I think, the ways in which we revere and admire birds.

The stories we’ve chosen for our celebration of birds in fiction range from originals to classic reprints. Our showcase original is Leena Likitalo’s “Ocelia, Ocelia,” which plays with our perceptions of both birds and human beings. The story has an exuberance buttressed by sadness that I find refreshing. It also displays a wild imagination and a wisdom in knowing that imagination requires grounding in something real at times. The details about the birds, the reprise of the opening lines, the way the meaning changes—all of these things make “Ocelia, Ocelia” a unique story that I find hard to classify or to compare to other fiction.

A similar exuberance in a completely different register brings to life Greer Gilman’s “Down the Wall,” which to me dives down into the recesses of language and detail to create another unique approach that succeeds, like Likitalo’s story, in part by the boldness of its rhetoric. “Stilt-legs scissoring, snip-snap! the bird gods dance.  Old craneycrows, a skulk of powers.  How they strut and ogle with their long eyes, knowing.” Is there any possibility of a crane-crow after this not informed by those words?

The pirouetting dance begun by Gilman turns into a rough downhill plunge in Brian Evenson’s “The Din of Celestial Birds,” a kind of surreal dream of a horror story that begins with an empty cage and a memory of a feathered body and becomes ever more concrete and yet diaphanous as the story progresses. The opening in some ways seems to evoke Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and to respond to the strangeness of that story by creating an ever deepening abyss.

You’ll also discover more traditional chills and creepiness here, of course. Claude Seignolle’s surprising “The Ghoulbird,” translated by Gio Clairval, offers up not just sumptuous prose and an interesting narrator, but an ultimately complex and harrowing supernatural element. Seignolle is seriously underappreciated in the English-speaking world and “The Ghoulbird” was a translation specifically contracted for our The Weird anthology. We’re happy to offer it here to you online for the first time.

Liz Williams’ “The Hide,” also from The Weird, seems more like a birdwatcher’s approach to the weird, owing less to the Decadents than to contemporary mainstream fiction. With its precise characterization and the way the uncanny is layered into the story, Williams’ evokes the English landscape in a masterful way and leaves the reader feeling extremely unsettled.

Some stories have less of an uncanny element. Michael Blumlein’s tale of love and loneliness. “Bird Walks of New England,” another never before available online, contains at its core a possible mis-sighting or wrong-sighting of a strange bird. This element, almost akin to the heart of M. John Harrison’s classic “Egnaro,” tells us the world we live in is odd and driven by rhythms and seasons we only see the edges of.

I hope you immerse yourself in these stories over the next fortnight, and that you appreciate their range and the different kinds of treasures on offer. And the different views of birds.

The post WFR’s Weird Birds Fortnight appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.