Stillbird

by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

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  With her needs for warmth and food being, almost miraculously, met all through the winter, Stillbird had given herself over to the long hibernation of animals, sleeping through entire days when it was cold or wet outside, and only leaving the cave on the warmest days to trek through the woods, confident now that the crows would screech a warning to her should any human being approach. She even hiked back to the cabin for supplies on a couple of occasions and often walked to the rock and the oak tree where Jamie was buried. She barely remembered him now. Only the birds flying high overhead could see how closely Stillbird and Abel and Charles circled each other, never seeing each other, although Stillbird sometimes caught the odor of the men on the wind when they passed nearby to hunt or cut wood. He monthlies had dried up completely and with that change, her sense of smell became as keen as a dog’s.

  In early March, Stillbird could smell the change of the season, a soft humidity in the air, that balmy scent and feel that precedes the last winter storms. The buds that she had to get right up close to to see in January and February were now fat and colorful, pink and pale green and yellow, creating a cloud of lace around the graceful limbs of trees and the tangle of low-growing bushes that grew up in the patches of light, where the taller trees had been cut for firewood and timber to build cabins. The branches seemed to dance to a tune Stillbird heard faintly at the very edge of her consciousness, and she was sure they moved around on the hills at dusk, coming closer to surround her and protect her. Everywhere she walked, she felt nurtured by the hills and the trees, as she did by the cave itself and the creek that flowed into the forest from the mouth of the cave. Living at the source of all the water in the region, Stillbird often dreamed of floating down the creek, letting it carry her through the forest, the hills, past cabins and farmsteads and fields of grass where cattle grazed, and gardens, all kinds of gardens.

  Each year of her life with Abel and Charles, she had grown a different garden, placing the vegetables in different spots mixed with flowers, sometimes in rows, sometimes in circles, sometimes in patches. She remembered, as if she watched someone else, a child perhaps, running up to the loft to look out a small window Abel had cut under the eaves, at the design of her garden.

  She had stopped her nightly walks after the incident with the painter, but she soon became as immersed in her garden, making a kind of painting of it the way she arranged the tomatoes, the marigolds, the yellow squash in with the pale or darker shades of green of lettuce and peas and potatoes.

  One spring she would ring the garden with the tall corn, another she would plant it in a cross through the middle. She had been lucky in the site of the garden, with its endlessly sweet soil, the most hours of sunlight and a strong year-round spring just up the hill, so it was easy to irrigate when the summer rains didn’t come on time. So Stillbird dreamed also of gardens. In March she would be planting onions and kale, peas and lettuce, and they would be eating fresh greens even before she put in the tomato plants, nurtured along in a window in the sun, before being arranged in their part of her overall design, usually next to or alternating with marigolds, which she planted to keep certain bugs away, and because she loved the smell of them. Even the tiniest little growth of marigold left a strong, good smell on her hands. Later she would harvest them when she harvested the vegetables and use them to make a dye for yarn she spun from wool that Peter sometimes brought for her; a gift from his mother, who sent messages, but never visited in person. Stillbird tried to remember if she had ever seen the woman. It amazed her to realize some nights when she woke from hours of sleep that there were events in her life that she had forgotten almost completely, and then couldn’t decide if she remembered or imagined them. Had there ever been a painter emerging from a morning mist in an early spring snowstorm? What had happened then? Had they talked? About what? What had he looked like? She vaguely remembered Abel in this scene, but shadowy, as if he kept his face averted from her. In fact, she couldn’t remember Abel’s face clearly at all, and she was relieved, because she didn’t want his face haunting her dreams.

  Often Stillbird dreamed she was in the bottom of a boat, a strange dream for her, because she couldn’t remember ever being in a boat, or near a body of water large enough to float one, but she dreamed this many times, more than she could count during the winter and early spring. It was dark, for the boat was covered, and she lay in the very bottom where it curved down toward the center, and it rocked her peacefully back and forth from side to side and she would sleep and then she would smell the water that leaked into the boat and she would be afraid, but then not afraid, as the water rose to her feet and the side that she lay on, and it was warm and soon she would be covered in a blanket of warm water, rocking and sleeping. Then she would wake and smell the spring that rose from deep in the earth and flowed out from the cave entrance into the hills and the forest, and just by the cave opening, she could smell an abundance of watercress and moss and mint. She ate the watercress and the mint, but the earth itself, laced with the roots of these plants, smelled so good she wanted to eat the very mud, and sometimes she would taste it and swallow just a little, making her feel warm and satisfied even when other foods were scarce. Stillbird then remembered eating earth when she was a child and her mother had scolded her, but her grandmother--she was sure it was her grandmother--had laughed and told her that a little dirt never hurt any baby. But the woman had died before Stillbird had learned to talk, even to say the word grandmother. Stillbird remembered her grandmother for the first time when she ate the mud from the cave spring. And then, as the taste of the earth disappeared, so did the memory. She went back to sleep, awoke in the dark and saw the moon shining into her hiding place and slept again until the sun was high and hot in the sky.

  Some nights Stillbird awoke to see an animal outlined against the moonlight--a bear, or a deer, or the cat. Somehow she knew it was the same cat she saw from time to time.

  One day it was hot enough to bathe in the creek, the next, a soft, light snow began to fall. Stillbird hiked back to her cave, still smelling of the flowers she had caressed, snowflakes sparkling in her hair, and there she wrapped herself in a blanket and sat in the entrance watching the earth pale and glisten. The beauty of it took her breath away, and she didn’t notice the cold. The sun didn’t set in a brilliant display of color, but simply disappeared into the afternoon whiteness, and the sky darkened gradually into oblivion. Stillbird felt her way to her bed by the hearth, where the fire smoldered, always waiting to be blown into flame, and fed with new wood, new bones. This time Stillbird was followed by the cat, who no longer frightened her. “Grandmother,” she whispered, and the cat followed quietly to lay down beside her and keep her warm through the last spring storm.

  The cat dreamed of running over endlessly flat plains of billowing golden grasses, into a golden horizon, after a large and thunderous herd that she couldn’t see but could smell getting closer and closer. Stillbird dreamed that she was borne along as fast as wind, on the back of the cat, through that same land, and then the cat turned into the rust-red mare and they leaped over a wide, flat river, and then she became the cat, prowling the forest, sniffing out the mare, stalking the mare, and then it was a woman she found, bloody and dead in the cave, and Stillbird realized, still dreaming, that she was all of them. Still dreaming, Stillbird felt herself become the crow and flew higher and higher and watched herself and the mare and the cat, and she felt only movement, thought only movement, as she danced in the air, twirling, twirling, borne in dizzying circles on currents of air, currents of river water. She never stopped dreaming.