Bewere the Night

THE FOWLER’S DAUGHTER by Michelle Muenzler

It was one of those autumn days, late in the season, where the scent of wood-smoke clung to the air like a drowning man. The dry meadow grasses crackled beneath the long stride of my boots, and the cold iron of my dad’s shotgun bit through the layered flannels that had also once been his. I’d flushed two pheasants in the far meadow, and now the strung-together pair swished against my back in a halting rhythm.

At the fence, I slipped through an old break. Its wood had been strong once. When I was a little girl, I had clambered along its length and pretended to fly. But that was a different me, a different fence. Given enough time, everything falls apart.

Like my dad, for instance.

I cleared the last hillock, bringing our shack and the pond into view.

“Dammit.” My curse startled some quail into flight.

In the brown waters of the pond, my dad was sunk to his waist, floundering after the geese. They cackled and hissed and led him deeper. I slid the gun from my shoulder and set it in the grass along with the pheasants.

“Out of the water, Dad!” I called, hastening toward him.

His slow spiral inward continued. I grit my teeth, splashed into the icy water, and dragged him ashore; all the while, a furious itching staccatoed my calves.

“Where is she?” he asked, his voice the high-pitched whisper of a child. He shivered in my hands.

“Not here.” Never here. At least not when we wanted her.

I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, wiped the blood spittle from the corner of his blue-gray lips, and carried him home. A change of clothes and a triple layer of quilts soon quieted his shakes.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

His eyes were already gone, lost in old memories. Did he ever dream of me, or had the geese taken even that? I trudged to my fallen catch in the meadow, a light wind pricking my cheeks and warning of colder days to come. As I bent to retrieve the pheasants, a sudden itch crinkled deep in my spine. I turned to the northern horizon. There, a dark wedge of geese pierced the blue glass of the sky like a bullet.

Mother was coming home.

I cleaned the pheasants and dropped them into a pot of yesterday’s broth. Over the long afternoon, they disintegrated, flesh splitting from bone, and filled the shack with their fatty aroma. When only a sliver of the sun remained on the horizon, I left my dad wrapped in quilts and marched to the pond’s edge, an old dress clenched between my fingers. Mother was waiting, swimming in quiet circles.

She changed as the last rays of red slipped away, her feathers falling into gold-flecked dust, her skin stretching toward the sky. Human again, if you could call her that.

She struggled to her feet, unsteady, and wiped the mud from her knees. “I am home.”

Her voice always startled me at first, too quiet for my memory of it and too soft for the hard angles of her face. I squeezed the dress until my fingers burned.

“Where’s your father?” she asked.

“Sick.” He was more than just sick this time, though.

“Then I must see him.”

I pulled the dress against my stomach. “It’d be better if you didn’t.”

She touched my cheek, and a deep itch fluttered in my shoulder blades. I jerked away and shoved the dress into her hands.

“Don’t touch me.”

“I am your mother.” A shadow flitted across her brow.

“In blood alone.”

She stared, her goose-dark eyes unreadable, then pulled the dress over her head and disappeared into the shack. I collected an old quilt from the porch and huddled near the pond to wait for dawn. Whenever the wind bit too hard, I tossed stones at the dozing geese. If I could have no rest, neither could they.

In the gray hour before dawn, Mother emerged, her face tight and pale. I rose from the grass, quilt still drawn tight around my shoulders. A wet hollow marked where I’d sat the night through.

“Satisfied now?” I refused to soften the bitterness in my voice. She’d kill him with her leaving.

“I will come for you in the spring.”

After my dad was dead, she didn’t say.

“I won’t be here. I’m selling the land and moving to the city. There’s already a developer lined up.”

Her eyes were quiet, but the trembling of her chin told me my barb had struck. She pulled the dress overhead, folded it carefully, and handed it to me. With her eyes on the eastern horizon, she stepped into the pond. I hated her stillness on the edge of change, her calm acceptance. I hated how easily she could let her humanity slide away, like the sloughing of dead skin.

I hated how easily she could leave us, every time.

“Wait,” I said, almost biting my tongue. Why should I have to speak if she would not? “You could stay. Until the end at least. Maybe I would feel differently then.” Or maybe she would remember what it was to love her family more than a flock of birds.

“They wouldn’t stay,” she said. “The dream of south is too strong.”

“Then let them go.”

She did not turn to me, and I almost lost her words as the first raw edge of dawn broke.

“I also dream.”

In a glittering rain of dust, she faded. Only the goose remained.

I expected the geese to fly at any moment, and I could see they expected it as well, but she kept them there. They circled the pond restlessly and wandered the meadow with their eyes glued skyward. My dad hid himself the full day, leaving only a brittle shell for me to watch over. His open eyes reflected nothing. When the sun bled into the horizon, the geese were still there. I hurried to the shore where my mother was waiting.

“You stayed,” I said, handing her the dress.

“Yes.” She pulled it on.

I clasped her hand, ignoring the deep itch shivering beneath my skin, and we walked together toward the shack. My chest was buoyant with giddiness. I could’ve flown right then.

“I’ll make you a warm place by Dad’s side tomorrow and make sure you’re well-fed and safe during the day. No fox will make it within a thousand feet.”

I glanced over, saw the shadows darkening in her eyes, and stopped.

“You’re not staying, are you?”

“The south still calls. You will understand. In the spring.”

She ran her free hand down my arm. I could almost feel the sickening pop of feathers bursting in her wake.

“No.” I pulled myself free and stepped back. “I will never understand.”

By dawn, I had settled at the pond’s edge, shotgun in hand. Mother appeared, shook her head at the gun, and removed her dress. She held it out for me to take, but I refused. Carefully, she set it in the grass.

“Spring,” she said. “Wait for me.”

Hadn’t I waited long enough already? I wanted to ask her, but the words wouldn’t come.

She slid into the water with ease and with the breaking of dawn became the goose again. Ripples fled across the pond, and her flock called out for reassurance against the tang of iron in the air.

“Stay,” I said, aiming at the nervous geese. For their lives, surely she would stay.

She circled a moment in silence, then honked, and all the geese but her burst into the air. I pulled the trigger, and lead shot sprayed the scattering flock. Three of them plummeted back into the water.

They were just geese, I told myself. Nothing less, nothing more. Even Mother, black and gray and full of spite like any common goose, was no different. I aimed the rifle at her.

“Stay.”

She glared; she hissed. She flapped her wings and hurtled toward the sky.

I fired.

Just geese, nothing more, I repeated again and again as her drifted in quiet circles. Between my shoulder blades, a deep itch fluttered and pressed for freedom.

I pictured the city until it passed.