Nightbird

by Alice Hoffman

  “I saw him,” she said, her tone soft. “The one they talk about. He’s real.”

  We were both shivering, but for different reasons. I was afraid, but Agate seemed enchanted. I looked at her and I knew that for the first time in all these years, despite the danger, despite the curse, my brother had allowed himself to be seen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Star-Crossed

  YOU WOULD THINK AFTER TWO HUNDRED years a curse would have less of a hold and finally begin to wear off, like ink fading on an old piece of paper. But that wasn’t the case.

  In our family it had always been a tradition to remove the tiny wings on the day before a boy’s first birthday. A mixture of herbs was added to the baby’s milk, along with a dozen or more ingredients that were kept secret. Once the child drank this concoction, his wings would begin to disappear, shriveling little by little, inch by inch, until they fell off and feathers covered the floor. But there was a price to pay to be like everyone else: From that time onward, the individual would be fragile, feverish and tired all the time, unable to play childhood games or even lift his arms over his head. The Fowler boys’ bones would break easily, and some were confined to their beds. Even when they were grown men, their spines would ache every time there was a storm. My own grandfather had trouble walking and always used a cane. I remember coming to visit and sitting out on the porch with him, watching flocks of blackbirds fly past, as if there were inky clouds above us.

  “That’s freedom,” he said to me, and even though I was little more than a baby, I heard the longing in his voice.

  The herbal cure only worked before the child’s first birthday. After that, the wings were set in place. The curse was unbreakable.

  My mother was different from the rest of the Fowlers. Maybe because she had been out in the world and had witnessed how people lived their lives far from Sidwell, she refused the cure for my brother. She didn’t care that every boy in our family for nearly two hundred years had had his wings removed. The process was dangerous and painful and she wouldn’t stand for it.

  She had her own methods when James was young. When we lived in New York City his wings were small enough that she could bind them before we went out; then she’d slip on an oversized sweatshirt. In crowded Manhattan no one noticed a pretty young mother, a little girl with dark hair in a stroller, and a handsome, serious five-year-old who didn’t run off in the park as other boys did to play soccer or baseball, but instead stayed beside us, grounded, always well behaved, but set apart. He knew he was different even then.

  I don’t remember my father very much. He disappeared from our lives before I was old enough to know him, but my brother says that he often took us to the swings in Central Park. He would whisper to James that anyone lucky enough to experience flight was special. James would close his eyes and take a deep breath. Up in the air he finally felt free.

  “What was he like?” I used to ask when James and I were alone.

  “Tall, quiet, someone you could trust to catch you if you were up in the air.”

  But all I recalled was a shadow, and as the years passed, even the memory of that shadow seemed to be disappearing.

  I was never quite sure what happened to my parents, or why they had separated. Every time I brought it up, my mother turned away.

  One day I was thinking about my father while I was doing my homework in the history room at Town Hall. My class had been assigned to write about Sidwell’s founding in 1683, and I was doing research about the town’s first library. It had been situated in an old wooden cabin on the town green. The building still existed, but was currently used as a tourist center. People visiting Sidwell stopped here for maps and a list of sights they should see on their way to Lenox or Stockbridge. Recommended highlights were the Montgomery Woods, Last Lake, the Starline Diner, and the bell tower at Town Hall.

  For some reason reading about the early days of Sidwell made me think about my family’s early days in New York. I puzzled over how little I knew of my own family history, and how I longed for something I’d never even known and would probably never have. I started crying, something I’d never done in public before. I was especially embarrassed because Miss Larch was entertaining an elderly gentleman who wore a tweed jacket and carried a silver-tipped cane. He gazed over at me and made a clucking sound. I could tell he felt bad for me. The fact that someone I didn’t even know pitied me made me feel worse.

  Miss Larch whispered a few words to her companion and I heard him say, Oh, yes, of course. Don’t mind me.

  She brought over a freshly brewed cup of black orchid tea and sat across from me. The tea was especially fragrant. From that day on, it was my favorite. The scent reminded me of rainy days and libraries and a jumble of gardens where there were flowers in bloom.

  “This particular blend is very good for sadness,” Miss Larch said, urging me to try it.

  “Won’t your friend be upset to be left alone?” I asked, wiping at my eyes. I didn’t really mind crying in front of Miss Larch. I probably knew her better than anyone else in Sidwell.

  “Oh, Dr. Shelton is a very patient man,” she assured me. “And very well educated. He won’t mind entertaining himself.”

  The elderly gentleman with the cane was reading a book of poems and sipping tea. When he looked up he caught me staring and he called out, “Just ignore me! Enjoy your refreshment.”

  The tea was delicious, flowery and dark. After I took a few sips, I felt a funny tingle in my throat. It almost felt as if something had been unlocked inside me.

  “Some people say black orchids make you tell the truth.” Miss Larch had gray-green eyes that reminded me of still water. She was very calm, maybe because she was so old and had seen so much. She’d been through hurricanes and storms and harsh winters and she was still here.

  “I was thinking about my father,” I admitted.

  “Ah, missing him, I suppose.”

  I went on before I could stop myself.

  “I just don’t understand why he would never come to visit even if he did break up with my mother.”

  “You think he broke up with her?”

  I looked at Miss Larch carefully. She blinked and then smiled. I had the distinct impression that Miss Larch knew more about the town, and about my family, than anyone else in Sidwell.

  That was part of being a historian: you collected facts and saved them up for a rainy day, or maybe simply for the day when you most needed them.

  “Well, I’m not really sure what happened between them,” I admitted.

  “Here’s my suggestion,” Miss Larch said in a low voice. I felt as if I had wandered into a dream. Maybe it was the orchid tea that made me feel this way, or maybe it was simply that I’d never actually been honest with anyone outside my family before. “Don’t judge your father too harshly. Not everything is what it appears to be.”

  I thought about what she’d said after I’d left Town Hall. I was walking past the tourist center I was writing about for my class paper. Most people passing through town would have never guessed it had been the first library in Berkshire County. Its shelves had once stored 333 books instead of maps and pamphlets, and Johnny Appleseed had planned his route across the country at one of the desks inside. Miss Larch might be right about things not being all they appeared to be. It made me think that I had to look more closely at everything I saw, and not jump to conclusions.

  It was then I saw the blue painted fangs again. This time they’d been sprayed onto the side of the tourist center. Only now it wasn’t just fangs; there was an entire face.

  A monster crying blue tears.

  YOU’LL BE SORRY IF YOU TAKE OUR HOME AWAY was scrawled in small blue letters.

  A crowd had gathered round, the men of the Gossip Group among them. Some of the men were debating whether the jail cell at the police station would be strong enough to hold the monster when they caught him.

  Dr. Shelton came to stand beside me. He smelled like a combination of the moss in the woods and bla
ck orchid tea. Maybe that was why I said hello.

  “Remember me?” I asked.

  “I certainly do. What’s happening here?”

  “They think a monster is writing messages and stealing things in town. They’re talking about going after him.”

  “Miss Larch would say people need to look more carefully at what’s right in front of them.”

  “Would she?”

  I supposed they must be very good friends for him to know what she would say when she wasn’t even there. Dr. Shelton was not especially tall, and he had a bit of a limp, which was why he used the cane. Now that I looked carefully, he seemed a little shabby, but he wore a clean shirt and a tie that looked somewhat familiar. I thought I might have seen Mr. Stern wearing the very same tie, and wondered if it had been among the clothes I’d overheard him say had disappeared from his laundry line. The gentleman’s jacket was threadbare and he wore old hiking boots with different-colored laces, one blue and one white. But he had a nice, friendly face and bright eyes. And he was a friend of Miss Larch’s, which was the best recommendation.

  “Oh yes,” he informed me. “She’d surely say that. And she’d be right, as usual. Why, just look at it upside down!”

  Dr. Shelton smiled and walked on through the town green, whistling to himself.

  I looked at the graffiti awhile longer; then I did exactly as he said. I threw down my backpack and did a handstand, even though I wasn’t very good at it. Staring at the graffiti upside down, I understood that it was the face of an owl.

  There was no monster. I knew that better than anyone. But now I wondered if James was responsible for the graffiti. Who would be more on the side of the owls than my brother?

  I just hoped he wasn’t leading people directly to him.

  Sometimes I thought my mother should have listened to my grandparents. They said her decision not to remove James’s wings would lead to disaster and warned that he would never know a normal life. But my mother insisted he had a right to be who he was. It was only when it came time for James to go to school that she realized how much was at stake. The reality of the danger of his situation became apparent one day in Madison Square Park in New York, while we were waiting for the swings. Two mothers on line were talking about their children’s fear of monsters.

  “Flying creatures scare Willy the most,” we overheard one of the mothers say. “Any variety of dragons, the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, even bats, send him screaming and searching for a place to hide.”

  My mother grew flushed. She patted James’s head, but her expression was grim. “Don’t listen,” she said to him. Still, I’m sure he must have gotten an earful. I know I did.

  “Why, I have to check under his bed every night with a monster light,” the woman in the park went on. “That’s our flashlight. I’ve told him that if we ever do see a monster fly by, we’ll catch it in a net and bring it to the zoo. We’ll lock it up and never let it out again.”

  We left the park and went to our favorite diner, where my mother splurged on black-and-white cookies, frosted equally in chocolate and vanilla, along with hot chocolate dotted with marshmallows. But for herself, she only ordered coffee. And she didn’t even drink that. She tapped her fingertips on the tabletop and looked over her shoulder every time a new customer came through the door. That day was the end of us trying to be like everyone else.

  I don’t know why we left my father behind when we left New York after my grandparents’ accident. But I know my mother was terribly sad. She wrote a note before we piled into the car. I remember her crying as she slipped it into an envelope. Then she did something I’ll always remember. She sealed the letter with a kiss. There was a faint outline left by the pink lipstick she wore. The note was written for our father. So maybe Miss Larch had been right in asking who had left whom. My mother was the one who walked out and locked the door. I always wondered what our father thought when he came home to an empty apartment and saw the envelope on our kitchen table.

  I always believed he’d come after us.

  Despite everything, despite the note on the table, and the years that had passed, I still did.

  Until he returned, James and I took care of each other. Whenever James sneaked out to fly, I was there waiting for him when he came back to land on the window ledge. On some nights he journeyed so far north he didn’t get home until dawn, when the woods were filled with pearly light. Sometimes he tapped on the door to my room to wake me and tell me of his adventures. How the night air was filled with different constellations, how he’d rested in pastures where the cows mooed with surprise when they saw him, how he’d walked through fields of bluebells. He drank from cold springs, took to the air with owls, found caves where he would be safe when storms came up from the west.

  He told me there were times when he wanted to keep on going, farther and farther north, to the edge of Canada, where no one would ever find him. In that frozen land he would hear only the echo of his own voice, and he would no longer feel like a hunted creature.

  In the end, though, he always returned, his clothes torn, brambles tangled into his hair.

  And now, Agate’s presence made him stay closer to home.

  Since the first day they’d seen each other, he’d flown over their house every night. But he had yet to try to talk to her.

  “You should,” I insisted. “You’d like each other.”

  He’d been locked away for so long, I think he didn’t trust himself to speak to anyone, especially Agate.

  “I wouldn’t know what to say to her.” I’d never seen him so unsure of himself.

  “All you’d have to do is be yourself.” If I was sure of anything, it was that. I’d seen the look on Agate’s face when she saw him.

  One day as my mother crossed the lawn, she spied James on our roof. It wasn’t even dusk, but after all these years of obeying the rules, he’d become reckless. Without thinking twice, he took flight and disappeared. My mother waited on the porch for hours worrying, squinting at the sky. I crept down the stairs after midnight to discover she’d fallen asleep in the rocking chair.

  In the morning, my brother landed lightly on the grass. He wore jeans and a gray sweater and his wings were folded onto his back. The wings were black, like a raven’s, with stray feathers that were an iridescent blue.

  Our mother woke at the sound of his footsteps. She went to embrace him, near tears. “What do you think the authorities would do if they found their monster?”

  “Is that what I am?” James said softly.

  “No! Of course not!” She hugged him closer. “But what will people in town think if they see you? That’s why this isn’t up for discussion. You have to stay home.”

  James moved away from her and narrowed his eyes. He was changing, becoming his own person. He’d had enough of being locked away. “I don’t think I can do that,” he said in a hollow voice.

  I was watching from behind the old wavy-glass window set into our front door. I could tell from James’s eyes, more black than gray, that he wasn’t going to do as he was told anymore.

  I didn’t blame him.

  One morning there was a knock at the door. It was Saturday and of course we weren’t expecting anyone, since we never had visitors. My mother asked me to send our unexpected guest away. I thought it was probably one of those door-to-door salesmen that sometimes came through town, trying to get everyone to buy some silly product no one needed, like an umbrella for two or a folding trampoline you could carry in a suitcase or a new kind of car-wash soap that didn’t need any water to do the job. I opened the door a crack. A man was pacing along the porch, talking to himself. He carried a rolled-up newspaper. When he saw me he froze.

  “Hello, Twig.” He was very tall and gaunt and had sad gray eyes.

  “How do you know my name?” I said, suspicious.

  “Doesn’t everyone know everyone else in Sidwell? Isn’t that what a small town is all about?” He noticed my cast and his eyes widened. “Broken?”

&
nbsp; “A slight fracture.” He still looked concerned, so I added, “I’m a fast healer. It’s almost perfect already.”

  “That’s good to know.” I was about to say good-bye, adding a Thanks but no thanks to whatever he was selling, when he took an old-fashioned fountain pen from his pocket. Before I could stop him, he stepped forward and signed my cast. He had a very nice signature and he drew a rose at the end of his name.

  “Ian Rose,” he said, introducing himself. “A rose is a rose is a rose.” He grinned. He had dark hair that was a little too long and somewhat shaggy. “I’m from the newspaper.”

  The last time I’d delivered pies to the General Store, I’d overheard the Gossip Group discuss a newspaperman from New York who had moved to town to take over as the editor of the Sidwell Herald. Even though he wasn’t a local person, they weren’t too upset that an outsider would now be in charge of Sidwell’s news. He was a nephew of Miss Larch and was living in the spare bedroom of her house on Avery Street. The Herald wasn’t much of a paper anymore, and people thought it would go out of business, but supposedly this fellow aimed to save it if he could. A few of the men made bets on the date the new editor would fail and the paper would close up shop.

  “We don’t want any newspapers.” I began to shut the door. “Thanks anyway.”

  “My aunt told me to stop by. She spoke very highly of you.”

  “Did she?” I was flattered to hear this. I couldn’t be rude to one of Miss Larch’s relatives, so I kept the door open.

  “She always came to New York to see me, at least once a year. I would visit occasionally when I was about your age, but I don’t really know Sidwell. Now that I’m here for good, I think I’m going to feel like it’s home in no time. From what I can tell, it’s a nice town.”

  “Yes and no. It’s more complicated than you would think,” I said, echoing Miss Larch’s sentiments.

  “Most things are.”

  I nodded.

  “I came to interview your mother,” he then explained. “We could have an interesting article about the orchard in the Herald.”