Life went well. Oh, there were dangers. His was far from the only story hidden in the trees. Some he could not see. A few (a scaly burnt whisperer with yellow eyes, always hungry, always diminishing) followed him for their own reasons. From some he learned all he could and, when they weakened, put them away. A shovel and the trees can conceal a great deal.

Then his wife bore a child—his third, her first. A daughter. His own flesh and blood, with the same furious curiosity, the burgeoning power that had driven him to understand what ought to have stayed hidden. The bird-boys were proof of his abilities; the girl would continue them. His confidence grew. He moved his family into town at his wife’s quiet desire and to gratify his own pride, but continued his researches. Into what, I could not say. He found money.

His wife, brought unwillingly into a world of rough and dissonant voices, made her own plans.

Even flower women grow and change, with the strange alchemy of time and childbirth; they talk among themselves (did you think she was the only such woman in the world?). One night, when even the yielding flesh of flowers could bear no more, when the children were on the edge of flying away and the little strength she drew from them, the mild authority she exercised, would be lost to her, she strangled her husband, easily as a vine, buried him in the pits he’d dug for her fruit trees, and planted the saplings over him.

The girl was hers and the girl’s strength of mind could be turned to her service. The boys—clashing and heartless—she banished as monsters. They fled, trapped in a form never truly theirs, always trying to turn back into birds.

There were books and letters to teach her how to be real, to be a lady, although one who wilted in the heat of afternoon, who drew life from the lemons that drank her dead husband’s strength.

How gracious and peaceful life was.

Chapter 8: All Suns Set

CHAPTER EIGHT

ALL SUNS SET

When I opened my eyes, the cages had been emptied of dead and living birds, and I was quite alone. I stood, aching from the chill of the concrete, my dress stiff with drying blood.

I abandoned my ruined cardigan—no amount of white vinegar or careful mending would save it—and limped through the shed. The sun was setting, great sheets of scarlet and gold up the bowl of the sky, rubied with smoke from beyond the screen of saplings, and Gary was running water from the jerry can on the back of his truck onto Trish’s hands. In that light, I couldn’t see if it poured away bloody.

“Trish—” I began, but she pushed away from the truck and ran to the side of the shed. The wolf tattoo stretched and leapt. I could hear her being sick.