Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

  Tory had just turned thirteen when Rainbow laid her second egg.

  It came the day she started her first period. Rosalie gave her a cup of tea for her stomach and a Midol for the cramping, and let her stay home from school, lying on the couch eating toasted cheese and chicken noodle soup. For once, Tory let Rosalie fuss over her, bringing her magazines and a pillow for her feet. She lay there most of the day, reading, until Ethan came home from school and the twins, then eighteen months old, got up from their nap in their usual noisy fashion. Tory wandered out to the chicken coop to get away from the din. She felt fragile and headachy, tender all over.

  By that time there were nine hens in her flock. Her first layers had come when she and Henry went to the feed store in Newport to buy scratch and grain for Rainbow. The feed store owner took her in the back to show her some leghorns that had come in for a Newport farmer, and Tory begged Henry to buy her one. He bought three, and Tory’s little egg business began.

  In the next year, she acquired Pansy from a woman who was moving into a retirement home, and the first of her Barred Rock layers from a man Henry met at the barbershop, who had heard of Tory’s enterprise, and had more chickens than he wanted. More Barred Rocks came from him a few months later, at the same time Tory discovered the joys of the Catalog of Contemporary Poultry and the satisfaction of showing her hens in 4-H shows. Her Black Jersey Giants were a birthday present from Henry—well, the card said Henry and Rosalie—and her single, prized Arucana she bought with some of her own egg money. She was proud of every hen.

  She spread fresh grit in the pen and pulled a handful of corn from her pocket. Pansy came running, chirping. The other hens were spread out around the ramp to the coop, and at the top of the ramp, Rainbow stood with both feet set, claws curled around the joist. As Tory watched, one of the Barred Rocks tried to come up into the coop, but Rainbow, with a single ominous cluck, warned her off.

  “What are you doing, you crotchety old thing?” Tory asked. As she approached the coop, Rainbow stepped backward and waited just inside. The Barred Rock stepped up on the ramp, bringing another warning from Rainbow.

  “Okay, okay,” Tory said. The Barred Rock chirped plaintively as Tory moved past.

  Rainbow had jumped up beside one of the nests. And there, on the shredded newspaper, was another sunset-colored egg.

  This time Tory hid the egg inside her sweater, and after finishing with her chickens, she smuggled it up to her room. Rosalie called as she passed, “Victoria? Are you feeling better, dear? Do you need anything?”

  “I’m fine,” Tory answered, and hurried on. She pretended not to notice that Rosalie had followed her out of the kitchen and was standing at the foot of the stairs, gazing after her. The twins were banging pot lids on the floor of the kitchen, and Ethan was watching cartoons with the volume up to drown out the banging. Tory felt her cramps coming back, and she wished everyone would simply go away and leave her alone.

  She sank onto her bed and gazed at the pink-and-lavender egg in her hand. Like the first, it was long and narrow, with symmetrical ends. She set it on her pillow, and went to her desk drawer to get the shards of the first egg, and laid them beside the new one. The image inside the first had faded to grayish blotches.

  Tory picked up Rainbow’s new offering and cracked it on the edge of the lamp.

  Like the first, it fell into neat halves. And like its predecessor, it held an image.

  It was the same, the woman’s vague face, long black hair, dark eyes, a narrow hand. Narrow, like Tory’s own. Dark eyes, like her own. Magda. The missing queen.

  Tory stared out of her bedroom window at the yard, the neat chicken coop, the pen with its wire covering to keep the hawks away. Rainbow marched at the outer edge of the pen, her neck craning this way and that, her comb shining in the sun. As Tory watched, she tilted her head up to the window. Then, imperious as always, she turned her back and strutted away.

  And now Tory was sixteen. The other high school kids called her “the chicken girl,” which she had learned only when Ethan announced it to everyone at the dinner table.

  “You—you little troll!” Tory shouted before she dashed to her room to sob on her bed. Henry, in a rare display of temper, had ordered Ethan to his room without dinner. Rosalie had tried to make it up to Tory with the offer of a shopping trip into Spokane, but Tory only shook her head. Rosalie made Ethan come to her room to apologize, and Tory slammed the door in his face, just missing his fingers on the doorjamb. She told herself she didn’t care what the other kids thought. She didn’t need them.

  The Jones house hummed with activity. The twins were in kindergarten every morning, and Henry was busy at work, staying late each evening, leaving early each morning. Rosalie seemed tired all the time. Tory buried herself in her schoolwork and her hens, scouring the catalogs for new ways of increasing her egg production, for sources for replacement hens when one or the other of hers quit laying, reading the mailings from colleges with animal husbandry programs.

  She didn’t tell anyone, not even Henry, that she had the third of Rainbow’s eggs, unbroken, hidden in the back of her desk drawer.

  Two awful things had happened on the day she found it.

  She’d been excused from study hall in the library to work with the 4-H advisor. When she came back, handing her pass to the teacher and looking for a seat at the long tables, Josh Hudson looked up as she walked past him. He took a long, noisy sniff. “Mmm,” he said, just loudly enough for all the kids at the table to hear him. “I smell chicken.”

  Alison Blakely was next to him. She laughed, and then everyone else at the table laughed, too. Tory was so humiliated she could hardly see. She blundered into a chair, like some toddler just learning to walk, her backpack banging against the person sitting in it. Her hair fell into her eyes, and her feet felt as if they no longer knew where the floor was. Charlie Williams leaped up to help her, putting his hand under her arm, grabbing her backpack as she stumbled forward. He meant to be nice, she knew that, but somehow that made it worse.

  And Josh clucked. Clucked!

  Giggles rippled up and down the study table, until finally the teacher left her desk and walked over to see what the disturbance was. Still, Tory knew they were laughing behind their hands, passing each other notes, avoiding her eyes. Charlie pointed out the assignment in the history book, and she stared at it, but she couldn’t make sense of the words on the page. Her face felt hot enough to melt right away from her bones.

  And it was at dinner that same night that Rosalie and Henry made their announcement.

  “But you can’t be!” Tory wailed at her stepmother. “You’re too old!”

  Her father growled, “Victoria!” Even Ethan sucked in his breath.

  Rosalie stared at her, her eyes round pools of surprise and hurt.

  The twins gazed around the table, chubby faces beginning to pucker for tears.

  And then Tory realized that Rosalie had finally taken off the hideous pink apron and was wearing a maternity dress. Her dress bulged in front, a sign Tory knew she should have recognized. She felt tears of shame and despair starting at the back of her throat. “Excuse me,” she whispered. She shoved her chair back and ran to the solace of the chicken coop.

  It was just too much. There were already too many children in the house, too much noise, too many demands. And it was disturbing to think of Henry and Rosalie . . . No, she wouldn’t think of it. It was gross. She raced up the ramp into the dimness of the coop and leaned against the wall, crying into her hands. “I hate it here,” she sobbed. “I hate it here!”

  For long minutes she stood there, wishing she were anywhere else but here in this stupid house, in this stupid town, in her stupid school, where she didn’t matter to anyone or anything.

  Something stabbed at her shin. She gasped and dropped her hands.

  Rainbow had come into the coop and was pecking at her leg with her sharp yellow beak. When Tory crouched down beside her, Rainbow pecked at her arm. With a shuddering
sigh, Tory held out her empty hand. “Nothing here, Rainbow,” she said brokenly.

  Rainbow ignored her hand and pecked her leg again. Tory stood up. “Rainbow, you old crank, I don’t know what you want! I never know what you want!”

  Beyond the tall hen, she saw Pansy hovering in the doorway, fearful of Rainbow’s beak but wanting to be petted. The other chickens were happily scratching in the grass outside, in the twilight. Rainbow pecked at her again. “Ouch! Rainbow!”

  Pansy, with a nervous chirrup, dashed away down the ramp. Rainbow craned her skinny neck up at Tory and took a few hops toward the nests.

  “Oh,” Tory said softly. “Oh, Rainbow—did you—?”

  She scanned the lower nests, seeing nothing, and then stood on tiptoe to see into the upper ones. There it was. Rainbow’s third egg.

  It glowed like a sunlit cloud in the semidarkness. Tory lifted it out of the nest. As before, it seemed to weigh nothing, and it was cool in her palm.

  Rainbow gave a loud, satisfied cackle and swaggered out of the coop. She paraded through the rest of the flock to the far end of the pen. Pansy dashed in to cluck at Tory.

  “Look at this, Pansy,” Tory said. She held out the egg. “She left me another.” Pansy made a mournful chirp. “I know,” Tory told her. “I don’t understand it either.”

  Carefully, she wrapped the egg in a fold of newspaper, and tucked it inside her sweater. She shooed the hens into the coop for the night and then went into the house, hoping to slip through the kitchen unnoticed.

  Rosalie was still at the sink, washing dishes. Tory’s job. She looked up when Tory came in, and Tory saw that her eyelashes were wet, her round cheeks blotchy. She pulled off her rubber gloves, and came to put her arms around Tory. “Victoria! Won’t you talk with me?”

  Tory felt the hard swell of Rosalie’s stomach against her, and she pulled away, revolted by it. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry about the dishes.” She turned toward the stairs.

  “That’s okay, Tory,” Rosalie sighed. “I know you’re upset.”

  Surprised, Tory stopped on the second step. Rosalie had never used her nickname before. Rosalie looked up at her, her lips trembling. Hesitantly, she said, “It’s perfectly natural, you know. For us to have . . . for there to be another baby.”

  Tory nodded. “I know. I’m sorry I acted that way.”

  Rosalie stepped closer. “Dear, I don’t want you to apologize. I . . . I just wish . . .” Her lips trembled again, and she pressed her finger to them.

  Tory put her hand inside her sweater to touch the newspaper-wrapped egg and wished she could just disappear.

  “Never mind,” Rosalie said in a choked voice. She turned back to the sink, her shoulders slumping. Tory, aching with confusion, went on up the stairs.

  She unwrapped the egg on her bed and stared at it. The others, in the back of her desk drawer, had faded. This one, she supposed, had another image, but if she broke it to see, that image too would fade. She was too old to be imagining castles and princesses now, but she still dreamed of her mother’s return. And suppose there was never another of Rainbow’s eggs?

  Tory picked up the egg and went to stand beside her window. Stars had begun to twinkle, and the shreds of cloud glowed a misty white. Tory held the egg to her cheek as if she could feel the image through the shell, imprint it on her skin. Everything was changing. If her mother didn’t come soon, it might be too late.

  Two days before Christmas, Tory woke to the sounds of tense voices in the kitchen. She sat up and peered out her window. It was still dark, but snow had fallen during the night, and it glowed with starlight. Her bedside clock read 5:10 in big red numerals.

  Tory pulled on her robe and went to the top of the stairs to peer down into the kitchen.

  Her father was speaking into the phone. “Yes, yes. Okay, Doctor. We’re on our way.”

  Tory hurried down the stairs, her feet bare, her hair tumbled in her face.

  Rosalie sat at the kitchen table, her hands on her belly, her face haggard. She tried to smile at Tory, but it was a pale attempt.

  “What’s wrong? ” Tory asked. A chill ran through her, from the bottoms of her feet on the cold linoleum all the way to her fingertips.

  Henry was helping Rosalie up, pulling a coat around her. “Rosalie’s having contractions,” he said hoarsely.

  “But—but it’s too early, isn’t it?”

  Rosalie leaned against Henry, but her eyes met Tory’s. “It is, dear,” she said, her voice rough with pain. “I have—” She didn’t finish her sentence but bent forward with a groan, as Henry supported her.

  “We’re going to the hospital, Tory,” he said, already turning toward the door. “We need you to—to take care of things—” His voice, too, trailed off. He looked over his shoulder at her, a look of mute, frightened appeal on his broad face.

  Tory had never seen her father frightened. She stood glued to the kitchen floor as if roots had grown from her feet. She stared at her father, at Rosalie’s hunched figure. “Me?” she breathed. The darkness beyond the kitchen window, the gleam of the new snow, the nighttime chill in the house all took on nightmarish qualities.

  “Please,” her father said. And before Tory could think of something to say, Henry and Rosalie were gone, the car roaring down the driveway, turning into the road toward town with little rooster tails of snow rising behind its wheels. For a long time she stood there, wondering at the empty feel of the house with her father gone. No, that didn’t make sense. Her father was gone every day, at work. The emptiness came from Rosalie’s absence.

  A strange thought crept into Tory’s mind. Did the castle have a queen, after all?

  She thought of all that would need doing, the things Rosalie did every day. The boys would want their breakfast. The twins would need their clothes picked out. Ethan would need to be told what chores to do, would need permission if he wanted to go somewhere with his friends. There would be lunch, and dinner if Henry and Rosalie weren’t back . . .

  Tory shivered, trying not to think of Rosalie not coming back. She didn’t know how bad this might be. Babies came prematurely, she knew that, but—two months? How serious was it?

  When the phone rang, she jumped a foot.

  It was her father. “We’re in the emergency room, but we have to go to Spokane,” he told her. “To Sacred Heart.”

  “Spokane? ”

  “Yes. The doctor says they have better equipment there.”

  “But when will you—”

  “Honey, I have to go. The helicopter is here.”

  “Helicopter?” Tory’s voice sounded thin in her ears.

  Her father’s voice was tight. “Tory, they want to get your mom there in a hurry. I’m going to follow in the car. You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

  “Dad—”

  “Yes, honey? I have to go now.”

  “But Dad—please, I want you to tell Rosalie—”

  But Henry was gone before she could squeeze out the words.

  Helicopter. Why did they send people to hospitals in helicopters?

  Tory was suddenly very, very frightened. Her knees felt shaky, and she sank into one of the kitchen chairs, her head in her hands. She didn’t realize till later that she hadn’t corrected her father when he referred to Rosalie as her mom. She hadn’t even noticed it.

  She felt a bit braver when the sun came up, the darkness shrinking back slowly, reluctantly, from the snowy landscape. The twins came clamoring down the stairs not long after that, with Ethan behind them. Carefully, trying not to alarm them, Tory explained that their mother had gone to the hospital in Spokane.

  “Where’s Dad?” Ethan asked. He had never resisted calling Henry his father. But then, he knew his real father—biological father, Tory corrected herself. And he didn’t like him much.

  “Dad went to Spokane, too,” she told him. She left out the helicopter. They might think it was exciting, but they might just as easily find it scary.

  “What about breakfast?�
�� Peter asked pragmatically. Tory set about making oatmeal. She scorched the pan, but she managed to produce three bowls of cereal. The twins tormented each other at the table, banging spoons, spilling milk and sugar, until Tory couldn’t stand it anymore. She let them take their bowls into the living room, to eat in front of the television. She set the pot to soak and wiped up the mess from the table. When she went to the sink with the sponge, she saw that a few hens were outside, scratching through the powdery snow, cackling among themselves. Rainbow was nowhere to be seen.

  Tory pulled on her coat and her lined boots and took the egg basket from its hook. Cartoon music blared as she let herself out onto the porch.

  Before she reached the screen door, a hysterical squawking began in the chicken coop. Tory froze.

  It was Rainbow, of course, but she had never heard the hen make that noise. The dog leaped up from his porch bed and began to bark, frantically, scratching at the door. The other hens scattered and ran across the pen, this way and that, as if something were chasing them, but Tory saw that they avoided the coop.

  Ethan came running. “Tory! What’s going on?”

  Tory said, “I don’t know,” as she hurried off the porch. Over her shoulder she called, “There must be something in the coop!”

  “Tory, wait!” Ethan cried. “What if it’s a coyote or something? ”

  Tory paused, her hand on the gate to the pen. Ethan was right. If it was a coyote, or a raccoon, she didn’t want to be in that coop with it. But Rainbow and the other hens . . . they were her responsibility. There was no one else to call on. She lifted the latch, the metal icy under her fingers. Just as she stepped through the gate, the rest of the hens came scurrying out of the coop. Rainbow gave one more loud squawk, and then there was silence. The border collie barked twice more, as if in query, and then he, too, fell silent.

  Ethan stared across the yard at Tory, and she stared back through the wire fence. “Are you going in?” he finally asked.