by Asotir
‘Oh, new cleansers. “Mighty powerful – as seen on TV!” Come eat, I made something special, and Greta helped.’ Mama giggled.
‘Did Arne come by? He said he’d drop off some papers.’
‘Your lawyer? I didn’t see him.’
She went into the kitchen. Papa sat down and tucked in his napkin.
‘Greta, are you crying? What happened? Isn’t Falco eating tonight?’
Mama emerged from the kitchen with the soup-vat. Something scratched at the back door and Greta snapped her head round at it.
‘Oh, it’s Tang-Tang. Goose, be a dear and let him in.’
Greta climbed down out of her chair and went to the back door. Tang-Tang came in with the cardboard bird-woman in his jaws. Behind him the papers fluttered in the wind. Greta watched them fly.
Behind her she heard Mama say,
‘The truth is, Falco is spending the night at a friend’s house. You don’t mind?’
‘No, of course not. I didn’t know he had any friends. He’ll be back for Thanksgiving, won’t he?’
Greta walked back to the table. Mama was holding out the ladle with a pot-holder under it to catch any drippings, and Papa was leaning over it to taste the soup.
‘Well now, I would hope so. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without our little sir, would it?’
Greta climbed back into her chair. She stared at Papa, and his face bending in above the ladle, and his lips sipping the soup.
Greta was staring with all her eyes. Her mouth was hanging open. She couldn’t believe it. Mama smiled at her and winked.
Papa leaned back and cleared his throat. It came out like a growl.
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘My that’s tasty!’
His beard sprouted out all shaggy and wild. It covered his chest down to the table. Mama filled his bowl and he hunched forward over it. His face hung over the bowl and the steam and savor from the soup, the horrible soup, wavered before his eyes and left little droplets on his huge rough eyebrows. His hair hung down his brow and covered the rest of his head, only at the sides in back the tufts of his ears popped up, brown and quivering. He brought the soup spoon up before his lips and opened his mouth wide, like a barrel filled with great jagged teeth. Greta could see deep into his mouth all the way to the back, where fleshy folds, red and raw, trembled greedily. Then the hairy lips swallowed the end of the spoon and the mouth vanished behind the beard. The big paw tugged on the little spoon-handle. The unseen mouth tugged back and the bristles flexed. When the bowl of the spoon broke free, it made sucking sounds like when Greta pulled her bootie out of some mud that wouldn’t let go.
‘Ahhhh.’ The huge thing growled in satisfaction. Then the shoulders bunched and the paw came down again, and another brimming spoonful went into the cavernous mouth.
‘More, give me more!’ His fingers, dirty and rough with long nails like claws, tore hunks out of the bread and stuffed them into his mouth. His spoon scraped the bottom of his bowl and he held it up for more. He burped, burrr-aowp! and sniffed and snuffed over the soup. He set down the bowl again and started shoving spoonfuls into his mouth.
‘Like it?’ asked Mama.
‘Delicious, extraordinary! Can I have a larger bowl? I’m ravenous tonight.’
‘Of course.’
Rayn started filling him a huge bowl.
‘I hear the ham-bones, didn’t you strain it yet? Well, Tang-Tang, you’ll have a treat tonight too!’
Greta looked away. But she still heard her Papa say in his big happy voice, ‘Umf! I’m still hungry, Rayn, may I have another bowl?’
‘Darling, you can eat all the soup yourself, Greta and I don’t mind, it will mean more room for pie for us.’
‘You can have the pie, but this soup is mine, I simply must eat it all!’
Greta looked back.
Papa had grown more monstrous. He growled and tore his bread apart. At last he lifted the huge bowl above his face and poured the soup into his dark gaping maw, and the soup streamed like blood down his beard. He shook the glasses and the table. He wiped his beard with his sleeve, belched again and laughed, loudly, for no reason. From under the table Tang-Tang growled. The thing in Papa’s chair banged its paws on the table and growled back even louder, until Tang-Tang whimpered and curled up under Greta’s chair. Bjorn barked a laugh, reached deep into his bowl and scattered the bones under the table.
Greta watched Tang-Tang stretch out his neck toward them. She slid down and pushed the dog’s muzzle back.
She put Boney in her chair and gathered up the bones.
Above the table she heard Papa say, ‘Is that all? What a meal! I’m stuffed, just stuffed.’
Greta squeezed out from under the table.
‘Greta! Gooseling! Where are you off to?’
But Greta ran across the room. The back door loomed in front of her and she opened it and dashed out.
* * *
SHE FELL TO her knees beneath the Juniper Tree. She laid the napkin open. A little pile bones huddled in it, and that was all that was left of Falco.
The Juniper Tree stood against the dark sky. From its branches came the song of a bird.
‘I’m sorry, Falco. But I’ll put you back. I’ll put you back with your mother.’
She scratched a hole by the grave. She wiped her nose, leaving dirt-tracks. Her party dress was getting dirty too.
She pushed the bones in the napkin into the hole and filled it in with dirt. All the while she whispered his name.
‘Falco, Falco, Falco…’
* * *
THAT NIGHT AS always the Juniper Tree stood guard between the Beak and White Quill.
The dinner table was strewn with plates and vessels of food and the great-room was empty. There was a pale flash through the window and far-off thunder from outside. A pallid shape moved from behind the Morris chair. Tang-Tang lumbered to the picture window and stood looking out, wagging his tail.
The lightning burned on Tang-Tang’s face at the window. He bared his teeth and growled.
The rain poured on the muddy patch, and a stream of muddy water flowed out of the grave, with dark threads of something mixed in it. It was blood, and the stream ran past the juniper roots and out over a notch down the stone face of the cliff.
Up in her room Greta lay in her crib, crying in the dark. Lightning flashed. She couldn’t sleep. Then she slept but woke up from a dream.
She climbed out of her crib, out the door, down the stairs and out the door.
She toddled across the lawn in the rain to the Juniper Tree. She stood looking up at it. She was trying to remember the dream she had before she woke up. Then she found a tiny black birdie in the branch. His wing was caught.
Greta freed his wing and soothed his feathers.
‘There, Falco,’ she said. ‘That’s better.’
She turned and went back to bed.
10
Where did I go? What happened there? I can’t tell you much.
NOW YOU MUST remember back to Falco and to the last moments of his life.
When Rayn opened her Trunk and let him peek inside, for a moment, he had a taste of paradise.
He leaned against the side of the Trunk and dangled his head over the edge. It kind of scratched his throat but he didn’t even notice. He stretched his neck forward and thrust his head inside.
Inside the Trunk were Rayn’s most secret private things. Things made out of silk and lace, and old books from faraway lands, and little balls of scents and herbs, and chocolates and candies and the spiced dry apples that were her favorite, the things he never got to taste. His head was buzzing with the smells all rising up together like smoke from a fire where a hundred different woods are burning. He saw things in there he only dreamed about, and other things he never even guessed. It was like a flower opening up and breathing out its smells and he was like a bee buzzing around.
Then darkness filled it. What happened next came so fast he could hardly keep track of it all. It came in tiny glimpses. First the
darkness filled the trunk. Then he started to turn his head to see what was up. He could remember Rayn’s face all crumpled up with hate and a rush of air on the back of his neck and the creak of the hinges of the Trunk. He had a glimpse of the black triangle of the lid coming down.
Then pain splashed over the dark in white and red. It was like it was blinding him and shouting in his ears. It was the worst pain he ever felt.
Then it was gone.
He didn’t know what happened next, it wasn’t all that clear. He couldn’t see anything. He could hear a sort of whisper or moan like a low wind in the branches, it rose and fell. It was kind of like people talking downstairs and he knew they were saying something only he couldn’t make out any of the words or the voices too good. There was a funny taste in his mouth, in the back of his throat if he had had a throat, which he didn’t – he didn’t think. It was like when you get a nosebleed and the blood drips down the back of your throat and starts drying up there, kind of like that. He felt a little cold.
For a while he must’ve hung around his body where it was, where Rayn and Greta dragged it. They must’ve dragged it into the hall and down the stairs bump bump bump, only it didn’t hurt him. He thought she took him in the kitchen. She took off all his clothes but he didn’t know what happened to them. Her hands were all over his body, touching and feeling. She never even let him sit in her lap before.
He got a headache when she took the hammer to his head. She had to beat on it a long time until the bones were in bits as small as she wanted.
After that there was the fire under the soup-vat and the fog got warm. It turned into smoke full of the smell of her spices and herbs, all the good things that only Rayn knew about. He kind of floated up higher. It was like he was spreading out like mist when the sun comes up.
He heard something back there. He was leaving and going away. There was a light far off in the dark, it wasn’t any ordinary kind of light because he still couldn’t see anything, only he had a sense of it like he could feel where it was coming from. He went toward it. He was leaving and going away. Then he heard something back there.
It was his Mother’s Song.
Dinner must have been over then. His dad had eaten him and cleaned up his bowl with the bread and licked up the last drop of gravy. Greta must have gathered his bone-bits in her napkin and taken them outside. That’s where he heard his Mother’s Song, outside in the yard under the Juniper Tree. If Greta hadn’t taken his bone-bits out there he never would’ve heard the song.
She was singing it. His Mother, that is, Ariela, his dad’s little witch.
‘Falco, Falco, veni, veni qua…’
She was singing it and calling him and he had to come back. If he had had eyes he would’ve been crying. Every part of him scrunched up.
‘Mom? Mom?’
‘Falco, caro, veni.’
He felt something. It was like her hand took his hand. Her hand was warm and soft and small. It was so tender. It was everything he never had before. She took his hand and drew him on.
They were outside the house somewhere. The buzzing that he heard was like the sound of the waves under the cliff. She must have pulled him closer to where she was in the ground under the marker beneath the Juniper Tree.
The Juniper Tree was there all right.
For the first time he was aware of him, really aware. He always had the feeling like the Juniper Tree was more than just a tree. There was always something bigger, kind of like a ghost or shadow hanging over the branches. Now he heard his voice.
‘Hello, Falco,’ it said.
The voice was deep and old. Some gruff but strong.
‘Hello,’ he answered. Then, ‘No, Mom, don’t—’
Her hand was letting go. He tried to grip harder because he didn’t want to let her go. It was like trying to grab onto a breeze.
‘Falco, go with the Juniper Tree, he will help you now. Falco, te adoro. Ti ricordi, Falco. Sventola, Falco, sventola.’
Her voice drifted off. She went back under the roots of the Juniper Tree and left him. He tried to follow but he couldn’t get past the big ball of roots just under the ground.
He was alone again.
This time it was worse. When she left him before he was only a baby and he didn’t know anything. He thought he could remember that, and it wasn’t as tough as this, but maybe he only thought he could remember, maybe all he knew was what the Juniper Tree told him.
For a while he was just hanging there, half in the ground and half out, nowhere really, in darkness without eyes to see. Then he started to hear the Tree’s voice again. He was whispering and muttering in his raspy deep voice. It went on a long time. It was like he was telling out an old poem that didn’t have an end.
The Juniper Tree told him everything then. He told him about the King Bear and his little witch, and the stone bowl with the apple and the snow. He told him when Giorgio came and how his Mother wanted him so much, she went through all that pain to bring him into the world.
He told him about when his Mother died because she was so happy. He told him about how his dad almost died because he was so sad. He told him all about Rayn and the voices that talked in her head and practically screamed her ears out when she slammed the lid of her Trunk down and cut off his head.
The Juniper Tree went on mumbling and grumbling and telling him everything. All night long he listened. He grew up that night. He learned a lot about Rayn and his Dad but he learned a lot more about him, about Falco. Before that night was over he could look back on Falco and what he’d been like, and he knew now he was somebody else. Falco was him and he wasn’t, not any more. Or maybe he should say he wasn’t Falco.
Something else happened in the night. He grew back together again.
Only he was different now.
The last thing he remembered, the Juniper Tree changed his song. The old tree-voice got a little softer and started singing Ariela’s Song, with new words to sing with it. The Juniper Tree sang the words over and over and he sang with the Tree, half asleep, until he knew the words backward and forward.
The song was still in his head when he woke up.
He stretched and cocked his head. His shoulders felt different. His head, legs, everything felt different.
He opened his eyes and looked out through the juniper branches. He watched the mists creep back from the house in the light before dawn.
The house sat quietly in the calm early hour. The early dawn was gray and misty. The sky quivered and the wind off the water held its breath. Even the waves were small and slow. It was as though the world was waiting for something to take place.
From his branch in the Juniper Tree the black bird raised his head and scrawed.
11
People usually act sorry when somebody dies, but they never mean it.
THE SOUND of the black bird’s croak woke Greta. She climbed out of her crib and waded through the toys and dolls that filled her room. She stood in the door and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
Across the hall her Mama’s door was shut. Most mornings Greta wouldn’t even blink before she’d push the door open and climb into bed with Mama and pull on her hair and ask for breakfast, and usually Papa would be in there too, and Tang-Tang of course, whining to go out.
But this morning Greta shied away from her Mama’s door. She was afraid of her Mama after yesterday.
Then she saw the door to the Locked Room hung partway open.
The door to the Locked Room was never open. Greta had never even seen inside the Locked Room. Sometimes she had nightmares about it from the things her Mama had told her.
She dragged along a dinosaur skeleton into the hall. She went up to the Locked Room and peered inside.
In the gray light the room looked like an ordinary room. There was a big bed and next to it a rocking chair. Somebody was hunched over in the rocking chair but he wasn’t moving.
Greta poked her head in a little farther. The thing in the rocking chair looked like her Papa. It d
idn’t look like the monster that had eaten all the soup the night before. She wondered if her Papa had been hiding up in the Locked Room last night, because he was afraid of the monster too. All at once she felt so lonely that she went into the Locked Room and stared up at the shape in the rocking chair.
It did look like Papa. He sat in the rocking chair staring at the empty bed. His big hands lay on the chair arms. His back bent forward and his head hung down. His eyes looked tired and empty and sad.
Greta tugged on his sleeve.
‘Papa? Papa. Wake up.’
The thing stirred. He turned his head a little. His eyes blinked. ‘Uh … what?’
‘Take me someplace?’
He seemed to think this over. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Far away.’
‘All right… Yes. Let’s get Mama and go to Tall Pines to the cabin. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Greta looked down and pulled on the cord to the dinosaur. She shook her head. ‘No. Not Mama. Only me.’
Bjorn reached down and lifted Greta up and set her in his lap. He smoothed her hair. Greta shifted around and looked into his face. His eyes were big and soft.
‘I haven’t been much of a father to you kids, have I?’
He buried her in his huge arms and Greta nestled there as if she were sitting inside a cave.
‘All right, Greta. I’ll take you away to Tall Pines. We’ll have a holiday together, only you, only me.’
She climbed up his shirt and shyly kissed his beard. ‘Yes, Papa. Good Papa.’
In the kitchen Papa found a basket and they filled it with goodies. ‘We’ll eat on the way,’ said Papa, and Greta nodded. She couldn’t say more than a mumble with a muffin in her mouth.
The sneaked out the front door on tiptoes. Papa lifted her up and fastened her in the car seat. Then he started the motor and pulled back from the house.
Just before the woods got in the way Greta saw the Juniper Tree with the black birdie sitting in its branches. The birdie was a lot bigger than in her dream last night.
‘It’s a magic bird,’ she decided.
Then her Papa took the car out on the road and they drove away.
* * *
THE SOUND of the tires on the gravel echoed all around the house. It stole through the lace curtains and into Rayn’s dreams, casting a pall upon them and waking her.
The sky was bright outside the window. The newborn sun was just gleaming through the trees, slanting sunbeams across the walls. Rayn stretched luxuriously. She felt better this morning than she had in ages. The voices were quite still and her rest had been undisturbed by any other sleepers all night long, for Money Bags had never come in, and she had put Tang-Tang out in his kennel.
