Eva nodded. She threaded the dishtowel through the ring by the little sink. “Can I do anything?” she asked.
“Let me stew in my own juices for a day or two,” said Grandma Harken. “Go fuss over someone who’ll appreciate it.”
Eva smiled faintly. “You’re the one I worry about.”
“I’m not dead yet,” said her mother. “And I’ve still got a trick or two left to play.”
She made an effort to be pleasant for the rest of the evening, and even let Eva extract a promise that she’d try to sleep more.
It ain’t a lie exactly. I’ll try to sleep more once I’ve stood off my tomato thief. Whatever they might be under the feathers.
As soon as her daughter had left, her whole demeanor changed. She laced on her good boots, in case she had to run, and locked Spook-cat in the bedroom. She put her garden shears in her apron pocket and made sure that her shotgun was loaded up with rock salt.
Grandma Harken knew more about shapechangers than anyone in town would have guessed, and that meant that she knew enough to be careful.
Mockingbirds are cousins to ravens, and that’s a bad game to get mixed up in. Never had any patience for riddles.
“Blessed St. Anthony,” she prayed, as she folded her quilt, “give me strength to defend my tomatoes.”
This seemed like a rather trivial thing to bother a saint with, once she said it aloud, so she added “And—err—defend me from temptation, amen.”
She pulled out her silverware drawer and dumped it on the kitchen table. With a ball of twine in one hand, she set to work.
By the time night fell, her best kitchen chair had been altered all out of recognition. She’d tied every fork and spoon to the back of it, flat with the bowl up or the tines out. Leaning back onto it would get you poked in a dozen places. There was one ladle aimed directly at the small of the back.
Grandma Harken was rather proud of that ladle.
She dragged the chair out on the porch and sat down on it, sitting bolt upright. She had a cup of tea in one hand—herbal, because she didn’t need to spend another night like the last one.
And she waited.
She dozed off once or twice, but as soon as she slumped backwards, the forks and the spoons jabbed her awake. The moon moved carefully in the sky overhead.
It was nearly midnight when she fell asleep—really asleep—and that lasted nearly a minute. But the ladle prodded her in the small of the back and forks were pressing into her shoulder blades and she came awake immediately.
The mockingbird landed atop the tomato cages and looked around. It was impossible to read anything in those small white eyes, but Grandma Harken thought it looked … furtive.
She kept her eyes lidded. Surely the porch was too dark for it to see her watching through the slits.
After a few moments of standing there, glowing like anything, the mockingbird dropped into the center of the bushes. Light splashed over the garden, briefly turning the squash and beans into a fantastic landscape of black and white … and then the light was gone.
In the dimness, she could see a figure standing up. The figure bent down, and came up with something in its hand.
Grandma Harken cocked the shotgun. The noise was like a crack of thunder across the desert.
The figure froze.
Grandma Harken looked down the barrel and said, “Don’t move. And don’t you drop my tomato.”
The mockingbird laughed. It was a woman’s laugh, short and rueful, but there was a bird’s hollowness behind it.
“If you shoot me, it won’t be very good for your tomatoes.”
“I ain’t getting much good out of them at the moment anyway,” said Grandma Harken. “Come out from between them, and don’t do anything sudden.”
“I won’t.”
She came out from between the plants, still holding the stolen tomato aloft.
Without taking her eyes off her captive, Grandma Harken leaned over and opened the back door. Light flooded out and lit up the face of the mockingbird-woman, where she stood at the foot of the steps.
She was human-shaped, short and broad in the hips, but not human-colored. She had a dark grey back and the white belly of a mockingbird. Her face was grey and black from the lips up, her chin and throat white.
She was naked, but she had feathers instead of hair. Her eyes were starkly orange.
Grandma Harken’s hand didn’t waver on the shotgun, but her mind was off and running like a jackrabbit.
She was never born a shapechanger, not looking like that. Whatever she’s done or had done to her, it came from the outside in.
Huh.
Can’t imagine why anyone would try to turn herself into a mockingbird, but there’s strange people in the world and no accounting for taste.
At least she ain’t a kachina, or anything that looks like one. She’d been a trifle worried about that. Grandma Harken’s relationship with the people up on the three mesas was distant but cordial and she wanted to keep it that way.
People get awfully tetchy when you point a shotgun at their spirits.
Well, you couldn’t blame them. If blessed Saint Anthony came walking through the desert, Grandma Harken would’ve been pretty miffed if somebody shot him full of rock salt.
The shapechanger came up on the porch. She moved slowly, but slowly like a woman who’s got a gun pointed at her, not like someone who isn’t fitting inside their skin.
“Go on inside,” said Grandma Harken. “I’m right behind you.”
She got up. The mockingbird-woman glanced at the chair, wired with silverware, and laughed. “So that’s how you stayed awake,” she said. “Suppose a magic sleep can’t compared to a bunch of forks in the back.”
Magic sleep. It wasn’t just me getting old. That was a magic sleep.
Grandma did not punch the air and whoop, because that would have been undignified.
Instead she said, “I figured it wasn’t natural,” and sniffed.
The mockingbird-woman went inside the house. Grandma shut the door and gestured to a chair with the shotgun. “Have a seat.”
“You planning on shooting me?” asked her captive.
“Hand over that tomato and I won’t shoot anybody.”
The mockingbird woman handed over the tomato. Her hands were hard and charcoal-colored, the nails long and diamond shaped. They creased the red skin of the tomato just slightly, but didn’t break the surface.
“Why’re you stealing them?” she asked.
“Ain’t for me,” said the mockingbird-woman.
Grandma’s eyes flicked to the woman’s strange orange ones. “Ah.”
“Don’t ask me about it,” said the woman. “There’s not much point.” She opened her mouth, and Grandma saw that her tongue was black, and there was a thick silver ring through it.
“Surprised you can talk at all,” she said.
The mockingbird-woman shrugged. “You learn to work around it.”
Grandma nodded. “So you haven’t eaten any of these tomatoes?”
“Not a one. Give you my word.”
And that’s another strike against her being born a mockingbird. No member of the crow clan’d hand out their word so lightly.
She hefted the tomato. She’d made bread earlier in the day, and a little dab of mayonnaise, for the tomato ripening on the counter. Best to eat it up quick. Neither one would last long in the hot desert air.
“Sit a spell,” she said, “and we’ll fix that.”
Grandma Harken sat at her dinner table with the mockingbird-woman and they ate tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise and a pinch of salt.
It was every bit as good as Grandma Harken had been hoping. The tomato was sweet and acid and firm. It tasted like a morning in summer before the sun burned everything down to the bone.
That tense place in her chest loosened up a little. The world was hard and fierce, but it also contained tomato sandwiches, and if that didn’t make it a world worth living in, your standards were unreasonab
ly high.
“So you ain’t wearing a mockingbird skin,” said Grandma Harken, watching her guest eat up the last crumbs. “You’re not taking one off and putting it back on again.”
“Nope,” said the woman. She licked one of her charcoal fingers and pressed it down on the crumbs, then licked them off again.
“And you were never born that way, either.”
“Born same as you,” said the woman.
Grandma Harken smiled sourly. “I very much doubt that,” she said. “But born human, I guess?”
“You guess right.”
“You under some kind of spell, then?”
The mockingbird-woman tapped a fingernail against the silver cuff on her tongue and said nothing.
“Ah,” said Grandma. “Well, then. You got a name you can tell me?”
“Marguerite.”
“And I’m Grandma Harken. And we’re all introduced now. You like being a mockingbird?”
Marguerite stretched. “Don’t mind being a bird,” she said. “Flying’s less fun than you’d think, but it’s got its moments. I hate being small, though, and hawks are bastards. And owls.” She shuddered, and the feathers on her head all puffed up like a crest. “They don’t make a noise when they come up behind you.”
Grandma Harken nodded. She respected owls, but she did not want them hanging around the house.
“May I have some water?” asked the mockingbird-woman.
When someone in the desert asks for water, you give it to them. There weren’t many rules in the desert, but that was one of them. Grandma Harken got up and poured out a glass for each of them.
Then she made coffee. Between last night and tonight, she was running down to the bottom of her supply, but she had a feeling that Marguerite might appreciate it.
As soon as the smell began to fill the room, she was rewarded. The mockingbird-woman’s head lifted and her dark-gray nostrils flared. “Coffee,” she said hoarsely.
“I got a little cream to go in it, if you want it.”
“Be grateful.”
Grandma Harken got out the cream and the sugar, which was nearly as dear as the coffee.
Still, much like tomato sandwiches, there was a time and a place when what you needed was coffee, and nothing else would do.
Grandma poured the coffee out into earthenware mugs and slid the cream across. “From Spangler’s cow.”
(She did not know why she told the mockingbird-woman this—it seemed unlikely that the odd enchanted creature would be familiar with Spangler or her cow. Still, Grandma felt on some level that if you were drinking something that came out of another living being, you ought to be on a first name basis. The cow in question did not actually have a name, other than “that damn cow,” so this was the closest approximation.)
Marguerite wrapped her scaly fingers around the mug and breathed in the steam.
Grandma let her sit in silence with the coffee. When she finally lifted it to her lips, it was a gesture as ritualized and heartfelt as communion.
She closed her eyes and Grandma thought that she might be crying a little, if birds could weep.
Well. Never underestimate the power of a good cup of coffee.
She poured herself a cup. Sleep wasn’t coming tonight anyway.
“I won’t come back,” said Marguerite. Her voice was thick. “I’ll tell him you caught me. He can get his tomatoes somewhere else—”
Her voice cut off suddenly, with a metallic click, as if the cuff on her tongue had struck her teeth.
“I’d rather they didn’t get stolen,” said Grandma Harken mildly. It seemed important to talk to fill the sudden silence. “But you’re welcome to come back, if you like. I don’t mind company.”
She considered for a moment, then added, “Well, specific company.”
Marguerite shook her head. Grandma could see her rolling her tongue around in her mouth, as if trying to find a tender spot. “Not smart,” she said, finally.
“Would you be in danger, then?” asked Grandma Harken.
“Nah.” She spoke slowly, and Grandma got the impression she was picking each word carefully. “Not really. I’m the only one of me. Can’t be another. You understand?”
“Not yet,” said Grandma. “But I’m starting to, I think.”
She poured out more coffee. Marguerite’s hand shook as she added the cream.
“I won’t tell anyone you were here, if it matters.”
“It won’t matter,” said the bird-woman. “Too much talking, now.” She drank the coffee greedily. “Thank you for this. It’s been … a long time.”
Grandma Harken nodded.
The light outside the window was starting to edge toward gray. Marguerite looked at it and sighed.
“Should get going,” she said.
“You can wait ‘til the owls roost, if you want,” said Grandma.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like that.”
Whatever leash she’s on, she’s got some slack, thought Grandma Harken. But does she want off that leash?
“Whereabouts you from?” she asked. “Originally, I mean.”
“Oh, my.” Marguerite leaned back. “North of here a good way. Other side of the Gila.”
Grandma Harken nodded. There were towns up that way, although she’d never been out that far. “You got any people up there that might appreciate word?”
Marguerite inhaled sharply.
After a moment, she said, “No. No sense poking old wounds. Thank you for the thought.”
“Seems I might have poked one myself. I’m sorry.”
Marguerite set down the coffee cup. “No harm done.”
She rose. Grandma Harken saw her only chance slipping away, and decided to be blunt. “You’re got one leg in a trap,” she said. “You want it opened?”
“No one can open it,” said Marguerite.
“If somebody could, though?”
“It’s too dangerous—”
“I’m a lot older than you, and a lot meaner,” said Grandma Harken, annoyed. “And I don’t take kindly to being lectured by a tomato thief. I ain’t promising you anything and you ain’t asking me for anything. Just yes or no.”
The mockingbird-woman stared at her for a moment, then her lips widened in an unwilling grin. Her teeth were shockingly white against her black bird’s tongue.
“I’d give it all,” she said. “But now I’ve got to go.”
“Go slow,” said Grandma Harken. “And watch for owls.”
She opened the door. Marguerite went down the steps and her skin blazed suddenly silver. By the time she reached the bottom step, she was shrinking, as if she were hunching down.
Then she was a mockingbird again. She took three hops on the dusty garden path and launched herself into the air.
Grandma Harken nodded to her and raised a hand. The fiery bird flew to the top of the garden gate, and then away.
“Well,” said Grandma Harken. “Good thing I put on my good boots.” She snatched up the bag by the door, opened the bedroom so that Spookcat could get to water, and took her walking stick into her hand.
Then she opened the garden gate and followed the spark of fire into the desert.
By the time the sun came up, Grandma Harken was hot and thirsty and tired.
Her water bottle was nearly empty. She had lost the mockingbird twice, and then found her again as she took flight. But now it seemed that she had lost her for good.
She was well up in the desert now, and there was something strange going on in the air.
It wasn’t anything you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. A little bit of heat haze in a place that couldn’t be hot enough yet to ripple. A wash that had water in it, except that Grandma knew damn well that it didn’t, not this time of year. Palo verde needles that moved in a wind that wasn’t happening anywhere near here.
You had to know the desert well, or have a good sense of the uncanny. Grandma had both and she didn’t like it.
“Blessed Saint Anthony,” she
muttered. “Somebody’s folding the world.”
There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it, as near as she could tell. It didn’t look deliberate. It seemed to follow in the wake of the mockingbird.
Two places lying close together, and sometimes you put your foot through one and into the other. Whatever she’s doing, she’s moving in between ‘em.
There wasn’t anything terrible in that other place, so far as Grandma knew—or at least, nothing that wasn’t already terrible in this one. It wasn’t anymore full of monsters than anywhere else. It was just a little bit different. The places bled into each other all the time. It wasn’t at all unnatural.
It was damned inconvenient, though, if you were trying to track a thing the size of a mockingbird.
She stomped over the sand, leaving tracks that were mostly bootprints. Sometimes the world folded around them and the tracks were bare feet.
Once or twice they belonged to a jackrabbit.
She stopped at last, taking another drink of water, and looked around. It was going to be a long way back. If the one wash was still full when she passed it again, she’d have to drink a little water from it.
And it’ll give me the runs, too, like as not.
The bird was nowhere to be seen. The hillside was an intricate pattern of white powdered earth between dark green scrub.
The first cicada began to buzz, and its brethren chimed in, until the air was a long rattling hiss of heat.
There were two long metal rails across the ground on the opposite hillside. A little green scribble of a weed had grown up along the slope, but nothing grew between the tracks.
When she breathed in, she could smell it faintly—the hot gunmetal smell of the train-god.
The tracks ran off toward the horizon. The burning mockingbird was nowhere to be seen.
Grandma exhaled. “Well,” she said. She spoke out loud, so the tracks could hear her, just in case something was listening. “Well. Guess it’s time to go pay a call on the Mother of Trains.”
She walked back into town, which took long enough to convince her that she didn’t want to walk clear to the train station. She swung by her house, fed Spook-cat, and left a note for Eva. Then she set out for the stable.
Jackalope Wives And Other Stories Page 15
