I warmed my wings in a patch of sunshine. The ground below gave off a rotting smell, manure attracting flies. In the past, I would’ve been disgusted by my diet, but now didn’t care, pleased that there were rows of small corn plants and any number of vegetables that I hoped to sample. Yellow tomato buds burst open along the fence. On the other side, a garden grew in fragrant patches with bright orange and red zinnias, roses, and daisies, next to petals of purple and white, making me nostalgic for walking the countryside with Cleo and bringing home armfuls of flowers. Back then, Samuel showed me how to use tools, a sander, an awl, a hammer while Cleo brought me to the beekeeper and bring home wax for our candles; she took me on weekends to her stall at the marketplace where I helped to sell candlesticks and candles embedded with fragrant shreds of thyme and rosemary, marveling at the fresh bread and cheeses with dark blue veins running through creamy centers, apples in baskets and baked in pies, all kinds of sausages with chunks of fat at their center. Sometimes musicians played lively tunes, as the wind blew colorful tents into billowing sails. Everything changed from season to season, and sometimes vendors who knew Cleo would give me a piece of candy or bread, lemonade in hot weather. I missed everything, dabbed my claws in the mud and made a pattern in the wet earth as I listened for any sound of Samuel.
“Hello, Iris.” It was the Jeweled Bird. She stood with her beak glittering in the sunlight, nearly blinding me. “Are you ready to leave on the great flyway, soar upwards and hunt for fragments of the 0+1 egg?”
I was almost afraid to answer. My voice trembled. “No.”
“No or not yet? What do you want to do, my daughter?”
It was always strange to hear her address me that way. “For Samuel to recover from the ghost plant, and for Cleo and Samuel to hear my song.”
She sang a sorrowful note. “La guida’s cup may have given you feathers, but it did not endow you with a bird’s clear heart. We shall see. Everything changes.” She left. I felt so alone, the day shuttered in bottomless darkness.
I fell into a pile of soft hay but didn’t know how long I’d lay there. I awoke to a beautiful clear sky, one meant for stirring ant hills with twigs and watching dandelion fly on the wings of seeds. I remained alert in the garden. Off to one side, I heard snoring. It was Samuel sleeping near the corn plants. “Wake up. It’s me, Iris.” I searched for his earlobe and pulled until it stretched no further.
I felt his hand bat me away. “Ouch! You’re not Iris. What have you done to her?”
“Never mind about me? How are you?”
“What trick has turned my Iris into a flitting bird? I must be dreaming, hit my head on the ground after running away from a bull.”
“You are not dreaming, father.” I perched on his shoulder.
“Come here little bird and tell me if this is true, if Samuel, the coffin and the candlestick maker, has become a raving lunatic. Have I gone mad in addition to everything else?”
I wondered how it was possible that I, who had never been able to talk to people, could now do so. Whether it was a trick of la guida’s cup, or maybe the water in Ruby’s hollow, I did not know. “You are not mad, father; it seems as though I’m a bird with beak and claw and feathers and always have been so; la guida’s cup has brought to the surface what was always there.”
“The bird speaks once again. But I don’t believe you. It must be the ghost plant clouding my mind with phantasms.”
“No father. I’m sorry I ran away from school. I was tired of Blake and everyone teasing me because I couldn’t speak.”
“Then you truly are my Iris, reborn as a bird?”
“I have followed you in the forest since the ghost plant dissolved your body.”
He rose up. “Molly said she’s trying to grow an antidote on a piece of sour potato peel. But who knows how long that will take? But I don’t want you to worry about me. What are you going to do?”
“I need your advice, father. What do you think I should do?”
He placed me on his finger and softly stroked my head. “My little bird. Some things we cannot change. You are the only one who can navigate your true direction, but I can tell you this: fly straight into your life. You will always have my blessing.”