Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  “Birds Mender couldn’t save. On roads. At the airport. Found one under an electrical transformer, scorched.”

  “All these wouldn’t fit in your cooler. How do you clean them?”

  “Ants.”

  “Huh?”

  “Western thatching ants. Formica obscuripes. Above fifty degrees Fahrenheit, they can strip a bird in days.”

  “Oh, man. Show me?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I suppose. They are currently consuming a barred owl. Should be ready in a week.”

  “I’m in. You’ll let me know?” I wouldn’t be on the bus yet.

  Burnaby nodded once, then trailed after me as I moved along the bench. “I prefer mornings to repair them.” He pointed at the row of windows above the work surface. “Before noon, sunlight illuminates bone details. But that light changes by the hour, so I wait to paint until the sun passes the barn’s peak.”

  “Paint?” None of the skeletons had paint on them. “You varnishing the bones or something?”

  He ambled to the back of the shop, pulled a stiff paper from a portfolio, and laid it next to a raptor skeleton diving toward a bony pigeon. “Peregrine,” he said. There on the page, a watercolor falcon dove from a cloud, its wings tucked and blurred with speed.

  Burnaby’s liquid eyes lit as they swept the painting. “A peregrine uses gravity’s acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared to increase her own flight velocity.” He slanted his arm along the diving bird’s trajectory, with his elbow pointed at the ceiling. “She considers gravity and adjusts her angle when she aims at her moving prey.”

  Lost in his description, his tension eased, and his sentences smoothed and lengthened. He stroked the skeleton’s spine before he continued, his hands fluid.

  “When she pulls out of a dive, the g-force stress concentrates on her wings, which connect to her body right here at the sternum.” He pointed to invisible tissues on the skeleton. “Muscles more powerful—and proportionally larger—than any others she has. Exactly what she needs.”

  “Wow.” I touched the breastbone where those muscles would attach. His painting captured the feel of the height, the plunge, the bird’s hunger. Reminded me of that hang-glider cliff near Chelan when a hot updraft dared me to leap.

  “I’m on to you, Burnaby. You could talk about those tears if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to.” His cheek started twitching.

  “But you … Never mind.” I didn’t mean to make him nervous. Maybe he really didn’t know what he created here.

  Or maybe I was the one who didn’t get it. Didn’t get him. Suddenly I wanted to. I gave him a thumbs-up and returned to the portfolio.

  “May I?” I lifted the cover a few inches.

  He opened it the rest of the way, and I entered an astonishing collection of stories told in ochre and vermillion, raw sienna, and Prussian blue. Swallows dived at an indifferent bald eagle. A great horned owl brooded her eggs protectively. A satisfied osprey tore at a fish beneath its talons. Every bird carried a passion that coursed straight through Burnaby’s paintbrush, each a resuscitation of one of his skeletons.

  He pointed at a skeletal falcon’s hipbone. Was he breathing faster because of the bird? Because of me? My pulse raced.

  “The shape of the ilium mimics current mathematical theory about the universe’s gravitational fields.”

  “Yeah?” My brain was firing on all cylinders.

  “This part of the bone.” He touched an arch on the hipbone. “See the hyperbolic paraboloid?”

  Seconds passed before the beautiful, curving imagery meshed for me. I eyed the boy with wonder. Burnaby wasn’t trying to impress me. He wanted me to understand. And he was speaking the language I loved most, the language my granddaddy taught me: mathematics, tossed into the mix of physics and birds. And watercolor.

  “I sure do. Hold it right there. Back in a sec.” I raced to my room to retrieve Gram’s little owl pelvis. I returned minutes later, panting, to find Burnaby holding a small, stiff brush and digging through a box of paints. I unclasped a chain from around my neck, removed the silver C Daddy gave me for my birthday, and slid the tiny hip onto it. I held the ends of the chain in front of him, showing him the bone.

  “Hipbone.” He petted the ilium with one finger, then twisted the links until the bone swiveled.

  I smiled at him. “For you.” I passed the chain around his neck and clasped it. He looked scared as a cat at a dog pound, but he stood still.

  “Perhaps a barn owl.” Those mossy eyes shone.

  “If you say so.”

  Awkward, for both of us, so I returned to his paintings and pulled one from the stack—a rendering of a Canadian goose pacing a highway’s shoulder. Open-billed, it stretched its neck as if calling. Its mate lay dead on the pavement.

  “Oh, Burnaby.” Something in the honking bird’s posture. Grief ?

  “This one needs more feelings.” He touched the goose’s throat.

  “No way.” That picture ripped my heart. Geese mated for life, and now these two … I thought of Burnaby’s parents. And my own.

  He retrieved his bowl of tears, dunked his fingertips in the liquid and brushed them over the mourning goose’s breast. Then he dipped a stiff brush into the bowl and blended tears with a dab of red paint he squeezed from a small tube. With the brush upright, he flicked the bristles, sending a shock of speckles over the area of the painting he had dampened.

  I gasped. He was ruining the image with those little red dots, which smeared on the wet paper and marred the pacing goose’s creamy breast.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Alizarin Crimson. Fugitive paint.”

  “Which means …?”

  “Focal points. The color lands like fresh blood. Tears carry the emotion.”

  I locked my eyes on the goose’s foot until his words registered. Literal Burnaby believed his tears turned that red into actual anguish. Sorrow. Goose pain. Whatever.

  “Whoa. Why fugitive?”

  “An unstable lightfast rating of four. The color will fade with age and UV exposure. Changeable as pain.”

  So. Given time and light, the spattered goose would heal.

  Either he wished, or he knew.

  CHAPTER 14 ~ AGGIE

  Prowler

  At sunset on Aggie’s fifth day in the woods, a dragon wind arrived. Gusts from the rogue southeaster bowed trees heavy with new leaves and licked them with its hot breath, until flocks of green shriveled, broke from their branches, and flew. Leaves slammed and flattened against Aggie as she adhered to her schedule and scaled the last tree of the day, a young cottonwood along the river. Defiant, she aimed her face into the escalating current. Wind or no wind, she would climb. Since morning she had felt like fighting everything. Especially the wind.

  Dad liked wind. On a blustery hike to Dock Butte, he said it reminded him of the Father’s breath. “Invisible. On the move.” He had stopped her on the trail and tapped her chest. “Inhale. There. Breathe him in, Aggie. He’s oxygen. So close and good.”

  Aggie scowled, remembering. Oxygen fed the fire, didn’t it? Now she had no parents. God’s good breath? Good how? “Not FAIR!” she wailed toward Mender’s house. Gusts muted her yells.

  The gale kicked up even stronger after sundown. Aggie crawled into her den to escape the pummeling, to wait out the storm. Her log damped the noise and, wearied by the howling air and anger, she slept.

  Until a low rumble purred outside.

  More wind? No. The squall had blown itself out hours before. This sounded like an idling engine. The vibration grew louder until something blocked the dim light at her burrow’s entry.

  Goosebumps erupted on Aggie’s arms, legs, torso; her mouth went dry as the interloper marked its arrival near the mouth of her cave. Not with a skunky scent. More like a litter box. She thought of the little calico and knew this was no litter box cat. This was rough, musky. Musky pee. She gagged at the smell.

  Frantic, she leveraged herself away from th
e entrance, but slipped. Her hands skidded forward on the silky mattress and bumped a dry cushion and some bristles. Nose. Whiskers. She yelped and shrank to the rear of her cave. The head withdrew, and a giant paw replaced it, swatting the space in front of her until it snagged her shirt.

  Her hysterical shrieks thinned the cramped hollow’s air as she pummeled the invader’s foot. When the claws let go, a furry muzzle appeared, its mouth wide and yowling foul air at her.

  Cougar!

  As if bailing a sinking boat, Aggie scooped dirt and downy fiber and flung it into the mountain lion’s immense face. It retracted, growling, so she edged toward a piece of shale between her and the doorway: her cutting stone, mere inches away, but within range of those terrible paws, those monstrous teeth.

  Her hand shot to the entry, and she snatched the rock. A paw flew past, narrowly missing her. Panting, she clutched the shale to her chest. The lion lay on its side, slapping at the air in front of her as if playing with a ball of yarn.

  Slowly, she raised the rock like a hatchet and waited. When the lion again reached for her, she plunged the stone’s sharp edge across the animal’s toes. The cat screamed and recoiled. The retreating foot tore the stone from her hand and flipped it toward the door. When she scrambled to grab it, the paw, claws extended, struck at her, ripped her shirt.

  And snared her. One razor-sharp hook dug deep, slicing the underside of her forearm between elbow and wrist. Aggie squealed in pain and clamped her injured arm to her body as the claws resheathed and the puma’s foot receded like a seaside wave.

  The smell of her blood mingled with the animal’s odor as the cougar paced outside. Ten, eleven, twelve. She counted every pass of a leg until the motor-like purr again filled the cave and the mountain lion’s head blocked the hole a third time.

  This time, she screamed from the caverns of her lungs. The pressure from the sound she hurled at the puma spread into her head and eyes, threatened to rupture and spill her guts beside the dark clots beneath her. Undeterred, the cougar, its ears flat, lowered its muzzle, bared its teeth, and hissed.

  Finally, emptied to her marrow, Aggie stopped screaming to breathe.

  The lion seemed surprised by the quiet. It inclined its head as if listening, closed its jaws, and rumbled a breathy purr before it slipped into the night woods.

  Uncontrollable shaking began in her torso, spread to her limbs. Her dripping arm stuck to her shirt, and cottonwood batting clung to her in tacky wads. Cowed by the lurking cougar, she lay immobile and pressed the wound harder against her grimy clothes to stanch the bleeding.

  How much longer could she sleep underground? Live in this forest? She had called wilderness friendly? Hah! How did she ever think that?

  Her arm ached as she argued with herself, remembering that she needed the trees and thickets, the ravines and marshes and caves. Needed every inch of the untamed forest to hide her from Cabot and the other orange caps, whose plans for her were far worse than a cougar scratch, any old day. Since that night when the dog passed her cave, searchers had returned four times, missing her only because their noisy advance forewarned her, told her to climb. Only because the forest concealed her.

  Well, she couldn’t climb now. Pain speared her arm. Next time those dogs would smell her blood.

  CHAPTER 15 ~ CELIA

  Hoe

  Gram was not happy with me. I had left her with a dangling phone and a nasty message for my dad. Regardless, I waited two days to make amends. I would have stalled even longer, but unless I earned some cash, I’d never get home. And in my restricted position—miles out of town with no car—the strawberry farm down the road was my only potential employer. I needed Gram’s signature as my guardian. My temporary guardian.

  Besides, when she didn’t give me reasons to buck her, she was pretty cool. I wanted to smooth things over with her before I terrified my father by running off, so on the third morning after he called, I put on my gardening gloves. “Want to pull a few weeds, Gram?” We hadn’t unearthed a single dandelion root together since I blew her off. With all of us searching for Aggie, the closest I’d been to the garden was two mornings earlier, when I opened my bedroom blinds, saw the gate swinging, and ran outside in my jammies to close it before the dogs could chase a rabbit into Gram’s lettuce.

  “Do you?” She smiled at me. Searched my eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I waited while she retrieved her hat and hoe and followed her to the fence. Inside the gate, she lurched to a stop.

  “What happened out here?” Strewn vines led to a ruined row of pea plants. Baby carrots lay crushed, their lacy foliage shredded. “Were you that angry, Celia? Why not talk it through?”

  Her accusation landed on me like an uppercut. She thought I ripped up her garden to get even. I shook my head in little snaps and crossed my hands over my chest. “Gram. No way … I would never …” I didn’t want to act defensive, but I had already heaped my plate with misdeeds. I did not need this one for gravy.

  Her glare pierced me. She didn’t blink, so I turned my gaze to some adolescent beet greens.

  “I saw you running back from the garden in your pajamas.”

  “The gate was open. I ran out to close it. I am not responsible for this, Gram. Really.”

  She weighed my words, then turned to appraise the torn rows. Her countenance softened. “You were so angry. I assumed—”

  “I closed the gate to keep the dogs out. I didn’t come in here.”

  She flicked my ear lightly and locked her eyes on mine. “But if you didn’t do it, who did?”

  So she was still blaming me. Great way to talk it through, Gram. I broke eye contact and sent my sightline to the ground, where it landed on a strange print. A pad with five faint dots above it marked the soil where peas were missing. A foot away, another set of indentations. An animal could have made them, I supposed, but they resembled tiptoes. Human. Child-sized. The only wild child who could have danced in the garden was Aggie. Was she hiding right here on Mender’s farm?

  I walked the rows looking for more, but the rest of the thickly mulched garden showed only a few weeds poking through. I was searching through the strawberries when Gram whacked her hoe into the mutilated pea patch.

  “Gram! You’ll wreck them!”

  Too late. The footprints had vanished into the soil.

  “Wreck what? They aren’t growing back, Celia. I’ll replant.”

  I glared at the hoe blade, fuming. Not only was Gram falsely accusing me, but she had destroyed evidence everyone was hunting. She would never believe I had seen those tracks, and I was too irate to try to convince her.

  Had I seen them?

  “I need a walk.” Bent over the carrots, Gram waved me off.

  I spent an hour in the woods but saw no more of the peculiar little marks. Did the child drop out of the sky? I found the tree where Burnaby and I located those chewed berries. The lab report had been inconclusive, but who besides Aggie could have barfed them up? I shaded my eyes and examined the hulking fir for any sign of activity in its branches. Nada.

  If I hadn’t seen those prints, I’d have blamed some crazy raccoons for fiddling with the garden gate’s latch and having a heyday in Gram’s tidy rows. But those were no raccoon tracks. With each passing minute, I grew more certain that the prints belonged to a child. A girl who had evaded all of us so far.

  Lingering in the warm field, I let my thoughts roll over the trees. Why was she hiding? What was she thinking?

  If I were in her skin, I’d be coming to terms with my parents falling in that fire. My home burning. My belongings enriching the soil as charcoal. My next closest female relative, Aunt Nora, would get snot all over me if I got near her, and I would go deaf from Uncle Loomis telling me what to do at 10,000 decibels. Besides, I’d smell like cow pies if I lived with them.

  Okay. Rewind. I paused and tried to visualize the ten-year-old girl. What really was going on with her? For one, she had to be starving. And heartbroken. And scared. So scared. If my suspicio
ns were right, she had witnessed her home’s incineration. Didn’t know if her parents were dead or alive. Now she couldn’t go to her dad when she was curious or worried or just wanted to talk to him. Like I could with Daddy. Before.

  The child was probably missing her mom, too. Why didn’t she at least want her aunt? Was something keeping her from going to Loomis and Nora? Would she choose these woods over them? Burnaby said she liked trees. Or did she come here to find him?

  The sun-dappled forest crowded around me, fragrant with summer. If I were you, Aggie, I’d run here, too.

  I took my time walking back to the house.

  “Gram?” The kitchen was empty, so I checked the rooms on the main floor. Climbed the stairs to the landing and scouted the hallway. All the doors stood open. “Gram, you here?”

  She wasn’t.

  But from the window at the top of the stairs, I saw her below me, in the side yard. She was kneeling near her roses, facing the sky with her eyes closed, lips moving, hands in her lap. Her Bible lay open in the grass. Again.

  I swear my grandmother spent more time praying than anyone I knew. Daddy, raised by her and Granddaddy, tried to be perfect, not devout. Mother was outright hostile to people with trust in anything other than themselves, and, frankly, I believed in things I could prove. So Gram was something of a curiosity to me.

  I knocked on the window. Not the most courteous thing to do, interrupting her and her God, but I needed to clean off the mud between us. I hoped my sour stomach would benefit.

  She smiled up at me and waved me outside. My insides warmed, and I hurried to her. My sweet Gram. Despite her conspiracy with my Daddy and her secret purge of Granddaddy’s shop and her alliance with Burnaby for years, I didn’t want to be unkind. My parents were the problem, not her. She patted the grass beside her and I plunked down.

  “Gram. When Daddy called? I lost it.”

  She swiped her arms and thighs like she was brushing off lint. “That’s behind us, honey. Clean slate?”

  A ladybug landed on my foot. “Not that simple.”