
The witch went out

in the snow in the night in her bare feet, naked under her nightdress. She carried an apple and a paring knife in a stone bowl. She set the bowl in the snow before the Juniper Tree, took the apple and pared the red skin from the white flesh...

The knife slipped and bit into the mound at the bottom of her thumb. She licked blood from her thumb and squatted over the bowl.

She sat in the snow drifting down on her hair, staring at her red blood on the white snow.

'Give me a child,' she said. 'Give me a child as hot as blood and as pure as snow.'

And the witch slipped from her nightdress and embraced the Juniper Tree. The branches scratched her pale bare skin, leaving little trails of blood...

' _You can't go on crying forever, Falco.'_

# The Juniper Tree

A Folk Tale

by asotir

Eartherea Books  
Here and Beyond
Table of Contents

Afterword

## 1

It was a long time ago. It must have been two thousand years ago, maybe even more. Back then nobody was sorry, nobody was mad. Everybody got along back then. Everybody was happy and everybody had everything they wanted, before I was born.

THERE WAS A COUPLE who lived on a cliff by the sea. The house was known as White Quill on account of its color and they called the cliff the Beak. You couldn't see the house from the road. The woods around the house closed it off from the rest of the world and you had to drive through the woods down a long winding driveway paved with gravel before you came out between the trees and saw the old house tall against the sky. Behind the house a green lawn led to the Beak. The Beak fell straight down to where the waves' foamy mouths licked and gnawed the grimy stones. You know how greedy the sea can get.

On top of the Beak stood the Juniper Tree.

The Juniper Tree lived there before the man and his wife. It lived there before the house. The Juniper Tree grew up in the wind all bent up and twisted as though the tree was trying to look out the water and behind at the woods and back around at itself at the same time. The wind came off the sea and breathed into the branches of the Juniper Tree, and the branches whispered and muttered and talked it over with the wind, finding out what went on in the world beyond the Beak, behind the sea and past the woods that ran up and down the seashore ever since the ice melted and grumbled into the North a million years ago.

The man who lived in the house was strong, and his wife was beautiful. They were young and good-looking and rich in things and land. They had everything anybody could have wanted. They should have been satisfied, and he was, but she wasn't. She wanted more. She had to have a child.

Out in the yard, out in the dark, the wind whispered to the Juniper Tree, and the woman listened in.

She leaned out of the window into the night. She opened her arms. The wind caught in her hair and kissed her hands. Her fingers cleaved the wind like wings.

In the room behind her the man came out of the bath. He was big and hearty, with a bushy beard and golden hair curling over his head. He was rubbing a towel in his hair and singing to himself. The light in the room went out and he stopped singing.

Deep in the room near the window, the woman held herself quite still. She was slim and tiny with dark hair, and moved quick like a bird. She wrapped herself in a cape made out of black feathers, so the man couldn't see her. From out of the darkness she whispered:

'King Bear!'

'Sparrow-witch?'

'King Bear! Bjorn the King of Bears!'

'Ariela?'

'Bjorn. Bjorn! Bjorn...' It was like she was singing it in that voice of hers.

He came deeper into the room, groping with his arms, but he couldn't find her if she didn't want to be found. Then she stepped in front of the window where the wind from the Juniper Tree breathed all around her, the air billowing with the scent of her and she opened up the feather cape and welcomed him inside.

And the man felt his heart ache because he loved her so much. He wrapped her in his arms.

'Ah, little witch.'

Outside, the Juniper Tree stopped its whispers long enough to hear the moan of the witch when she said,

'Yes, Bjorn, I love you, I love you, I love you, my king...'

But the nights came and went and they still didn't have any children. It only made her want one all the more.

One gray frosty dawn the man found his wife sitting out on the stone beneath the Juniper Tree. She was looking out to sea and sighing, naked in her shift.

The man brought her feather cape and covered her.

'You'll catch your death,' he said.

But she shook her head.

'Still not sure?' he asked.

She turned her head about and stared at him. Her eyes were like glass beads and her nose like a beak. She reached down under her shift and brought her hand up to his nose. There was blood on her fingertips.

'I thought he came at last,' she said. 'But I was only late.'

He kissed her hand. 'We'll have a child one day. We'll have a beautiful child.'

She twisted her head away so he wouldn't see the tears that burned in her little black eyes.

'Cast me aside, King Bear.'

'Ariela!'

'I mean it. You must divorce me. You need a child. Or else who will gain all your treasures?'

'Your child. Our child.'

'When I was a very little girl, I wanted to have a younger brother, to dress and look after. I prayed to my Mother, Give me one! But he never came.'

'Ari, don't...'

'Go to your work, Bjorn. Go about your business, now, please go.'

The tone in her voice broke the man's heart. He didn't know what to do. He looked up to the old Juniper Tree and shook his head. At last he turned and trudged off. He left the house and traveled to his business far away.

THREE WEEKS LATER it snowed and the witch went out in the night in her bare feet, naked under her nightdress. She carried an apple and a paring knife in a stone bowl. She set the bowl in the snow before the Juniper Tree, took the apple and started paring the red skin from the white flesh, the way it had to be. The knife slipped and bit into the mound at the bottom of her thumb. Her blood dripped on the snow. She set the apple down beside it. She licked blood from her thumb and squatted over the bowl.

She sat listening to the snow drifting down on her hair, and staring at her red blood on the white snow.

'Give me a child,' she said. 'Dammi un bambino rovente com' il sangue e puro come la neve.'

Give me a child as hot as blood and as pure as snow.

And the witch slipped off her nightdress and embraced the Juniper Tree. The branches caught her forearms and scratched her pale bare skin, leaving little trails of blood. It liked scratching her. You could tell.

She looked up into the old tree, and asked it, Please...

'Per piacere. Dammilo?'

Please, give me one?

But the branches of the tree didn't budge. A bird in the tree looked down on the witch and shook its head.

'Dammilo!'

More birds came. They filled the branches and peered out from under darkness.

'Dammi un bambino rovente com' il sangue e puro come la neve. Mi Dio! Give me a child as hot as blood and pure as snow – and I will give you anything! Anything you ask!'

The wind climbed off the sea. The snow swirled round the yard. The branches of the Juniper Tree shook and all the birds took flight.

The little witch arched back her head. Her bright red mouth hung open. Her black eyes squeezed shut. Her white teeth bit together.

Her nails, long and sharp like a witch's nails should be, dug into the bark.

The birds scattered in the night sky, screeching and croaking. It seemed like they were warning her. Or maybe they were afraid of her and of what she might do next.

The witch went stiff and the breath caught in her throat and she fell under the old tree. She lay there a long time, turning a little and whimpering. At last she got up. She pulled her nightdress out of the snow and slipped it back on, shivering when the snowflakes melted against her skin. She put the paring knife and the apple and the curls of apple peel into the stone bowl and went back inside.

She made it upstairs and toweled the snow off her hair in the bathroom, in the dark. Only it wasn't all dark because when the snow comes down like that, there's always some light around. There was enough for a witch to see.

She walked into the bedroom as quiet as could be. She slid into bed alongside her husband. She curled up against his back and let her fingers creep around his chest, light as feathers, not waking him. She listened to his breathing and soon her breath came and went just like his and she was sleeping too.

She was smiling in her sleep.

## 2

Dad never knew how I started. He never knew what my Mother did.

A COUPLE OF WEEKS went by after the little witch pared the apple and embraced the Tree. White Quill stood quiet in the night, and the wind moaned low in the Juniper Tree.

A shadow crossed over the tree. It was the shadow of a dog, padding across the Beak.

The dog crouched down. It was all white except for the eyes and the ears and they were red. It stared at the house. All the lights were off except in the great-room where the Christmas tree lights twinkled through the glass terrace doors.

The white dog growled.

But lights shone from headlights in the woods. A black car drove up the drive and its tires crunched the gravel and stopped. And the dog slunk off into the woods.

Bjorn switched off the motor and stumbled out of his car. It was a long sleek luxury car, brand new, and it cost a lot. He loved that car. He had a party hat on his head, and he was mumbling 'O Come All Ye Faithful' in the back of his throat like a saw cutting the heart out of a tree.

He staggered around the house onto the terrace, and swept the glass doors open with both arms.

'Ariela? Ariela! Hey-ho, I'm late!'

He turned the lights on. The light flooded the stone terrace and shone out onto the Juniper Tree on the Beak.

King Bear stood still as stone.

His wife lay under the Christmas tree. Her black dress was flung up high above her knees. There was blood on her naked thighs. Her legs looked nasty pushed apart like that.

Bjorn tore off the party hat. He knelt and tugged down the dress. 'Ari,' he said, 'Sparrow-witch,' but she didn't answer and she didn't stir.

He scooped her up in his arms.

'You're so light, there's nothing to you but air.'

He carried her upstairs.

Through the bedroom window, the stars glinted on the stone bowl with the paring-knife. The man didn't turn the light on. He laid his wife down on the bed. He chafed her arm.

'Ariela! Come back to me, Sparrow-witch!'

'Bjorn. My king.'

'What happened? What did you do? I'm calling the doctor.'

'No, don't. It's done now. Everything is fine.'

She nestled her head deep in the pillow, closed her eyes, and smiled. 'You were right,' she said.

THE WINTER COVERED the woods and the house and the lawn with snow. The Juniper Tree never got snow on it. Maybe it was the wind always shifting its branches that kept the snow away. Or maybe it was the sea-spray and mist that leapt up the Beak day and night.

And a month went by and the snow melted. And two months were gone, and everything was green.

Then the rains covered the coast. It was raining everywhere, all the time. The rain spilled off the gutters around White Quill and overflowed the barrels. The grass in the lawn sprouted thick and wild.

And three months were gone, and the flowers came out of the earth, and Bjorn built a Straw Man under the Juniper Tree. In the afternoon the witch sat on the grass with wildflowers in her hair. She wasn't thin anymore; the child was inside her, getting big already.

Bjorn came up behind her in his black tuxedo and his raincoat draped over his shoulders.

'Hey-ho! Don't look!'

She smiled and put her hands up over her eyes. 'I won't peek,' she said, but of course she did.

He knelt behind her. He was wrestling with something under his coat.

'All right – now!'

He pulled out a baby lamb with a red bow tied around its throat.

She gasped and laughed. She tried to hold him but the lamb skittered away. The man started after him.

'No, Bjorn, let him be! I know what your name is, little lamb. It's Giorgio, isn't it? Giorgio, Giorgio! Veni qua, Giorgio!'

The lamb sidled on up to her. She kissed his head and his ears, and the wind rustled in the Straw Man's flower crown.

And when four months were gone, all the trees in the wood grew green.

And when five months were gone, Ariela slept beneath the Juniper Tree in a muslin tent that her grandfather had brought her from his voyages around the world. Deep in the night the old tree smelled so sweet that her heart beat wildly, and she was beside herself with joy.

And when six months were gone, the fruit was large and fine, and then she was quite still. And she prayed beneath the Juniper Tree, and stole a handful of berries, and ate them. And when she kissed the little lamb, her kisses left dark stains on his fleece.

'Are those juniper berries you're eating? They can't be ripe yet.'

'No, I could eat them day and night!' She took another handful and stuffed them into her mouth until her cheeks were two balloons.

He plucked one and tasted it. He spat it out. 'Ugh!'

That's when they heard the dog barking, deep in the woods. Bjorn didn't see it and Ariela didn't either, but it was the white dog. You could feel that it was.

And when the seventh month was almost gone she fell sick, and she was sorry she ate the juniper berries. That was when it happened. She hurt, and the child hurt, too, even though the Juniper Tree looked after him the way it always did.

When the eighth month came, she never went out. She stayed in her room, and only went out into the bathroom. That's where he found her.

She was lying on the white tiles in the dark, reaching about, not knowing what she touched. The pain blinded her. Bjorn stood in the doorway like a giant, but he was helpless, he didn't know what to do.

'Ari, what is it?'

'Oh – I'm dying—'

More pain came. She grabbed the bathtub lip. The wind tossed the curtains over the stone bowl and the light gleamed through the lace and touched the bathtub lip smeared with blood.

'Promise me, King Bear. If I die, you bury me under the Juniper Tree.'

'Under the tree?'

'You'll do it, won't you? Promise me. Do you? Do you promise me?'

'Yes, all right, yes, if you die, only you won't die, please don't die, now come into bed, try to stay quiet until the doctor comes.'

He lifted her gently with his big hands. He carried her into the bedroom. A bright light splashed through the window and a great growling voice followed it. Then the rain started pattering and roaring onto the floor.

He sank her deep into the pillows.

Another light flashed in the window, and a big _boom_ shook the whole house, and every light went out – like that. The rain came down in a great big sigh, just raining and raining onto White Quill and the Beak and the Juniper Tree. The old tree bowed under the rain and looked up under its branches to the house, waiting for the one sound that would tell it that it was done.

Late in the night, almost come morning, the Juniper Tree heard the sound. It was a little mewling _caw_ , like a bird's croak. It was the first sound the child made in his life.

AND SO THAT NIGHT the child came. The little witch won at last her heart's desire, and she named him Falco, for that was the name she had called her little brother, when she was a small girl and fancied that she had a little brother.

She hardly minded the doctor. Mostly she lay in bed and looked at Falco. Her eyes were so greedy, it was like they were licking him head to toe and eating him up. The child didn't mind. He loved her with all his little heart even before he knew what love meant. She was every happy thing to him. Even when Bjorn put Falco in the crib so Ariela could rest, she lay looking at the little one with smiling greedy eyes.

Bjorn saw the doctor out and came back in. He had a little bottle in his fist, and an eye-dropper that went with it. He held the bottle under Ariela's nose and she sniffed.

Falco lay in his crib and waved his arms and laughed.

'Is it right this time?' asked Bjorn.

'Almost. Almost, my poor, dear witch's assistant! Milk and sweetwater have to be mixed tanto, tanto. You know what my grandmother said? She was so old. Very Sarda. Molto primitiva.'

'What did she say?'

'She said, Give the baby one drop of this – one drop only, mind you, one drop is plenty, and more than enough. Two drops and it's murder! And then the baby is blessed.'

'Blessed?'

'Si. Beato. Beato, so that as long as he is loved, he will be the happiest child alive in the world.'

Bjorn picked Falco up from the crib. He held him in his big arms. He winked at him. 'What a Thanksgiving King he'll make!'

'Let me hold him again.'

He shook his head. 'You're tired.'

'Bjorn...'

Whenever she said 'Bjorn' in that way, he had to do what she wanted. That was the law. So he let the child sink back into her embrace, and into the warm milk-smell she had.

She held Falco up above her in her hands. The child looked down into her face laughing underneath him. She lifted him up, and down, and up, and down, and he waved his arms in the wind.

'Oh, pretty bird! Falco! Falco! Sventola, Falco, sventola! Fly, fly! Oop!'

'Let me, don't strain so.'

'Ah, mio King Bear, this is so much... tanto... he is so much... Falco! Mi piaci. I see you... at last...'

There was a little hiccup in her voice. The child felt it right away, but the man didn't. He only knew that she closed her eyes, and her lips still smiled, and a little sweat shone on her face.

'He looks just like you. That's why I like him. He looks like the baby brother you said you wanted.'

Bjorn put the child back in the crib. It cried. It wanted her back. How could he take her away?

'Ari?'

Bjorn felt her neck and wrist. He listened to her breast. He fell back into the rocking chair and stared at her. His face was set like stone.

Outside, the branches of the Juniper Tree were dancing in the wind.

The child cried for a long time. The man just sat and stared. He stared at the bed where his wife lay. She was there and she wasn't. It looked like her, but the sparrow-witch had flown away. She flew high in the wind and was gone.

Already it was getting dark. The dark crept up out of the corners of the room, it seeped through the floor boards, and it sifted down across the ceiling.

From the little bottle Bjorn drew out the eye-dropper. He leaned over the child, dark against dark, and squeezed one drop onto the tiny lips.

The child licked at the drop, warm on his tongue. He felt it spreading down his mouth, his throat, into his tummy. It tasted like his Mother. It filled him up and he stopped crying.

'Here. Not too much, now. What was it she said?'

Bjorn took back the bottle. The child reached for it, wanting more. People always want too much when they can't have any more.

'Look, Ari. It's Falco. Look... Do you want more? Here.'

Bjorn dipped the eye-dropper into the little bottle and pulled it out again. He put the end of the eye-dropper into the little mouth. The child tried to suck on it, but it was glass, and hard. But Bjorn squeezed, and filled the mouth with liquid, so warm, so sweet.

Bjorn sat back on the bed, and the hand lying beside him stirred.

'Look, you're moving. Was it a trick? Tell me it was a trick. Wake up and laugh at me because I'm an idiot. I won't mind. Really...'

The child pushed the eye-dropper away and cried again.

'More? No, Falco, no more. There isn't any more.'

Bjorn put the bottle on the night-stand, very gentle, so the glass only made a tiny little _tink_ when it touched the marble. He let the child slide into his lap. His face never looked at his son. He was looking at his dead wife.

Then the dark engulfed the room.

WHEN DAY BREAKS past the forest the Beak is always wrapped in fog. Giorgio liked to crop the grass then, when it was wet and full. But that morning Giorgio went to the end of his tether, as close to the house as he could go, even though he had already eaten that grass down to the roots.

The white dog was lurking at the wood's edge.

And the Juniper Tree was all twisted up that morning, even worse than usual.

Under the Juniper Tree the man was digging with a spade. There was a pile of driftwood under the stone seat where the woman's corpse lay in her velvet dress.

The white dog sat under the dark trees and licked his teeth and stared at them with hungry eyes. At last a whistle sounded, and the dog got up and padded away.

Giorgio tugged against his tether. Bjorn trudged back into the house. The Juniper Tree drooped its branches over the grave of the little witch.

## 3

I wasn't supposed to live. I was supposed to die before I was even born. But she gave me her life instead. I got life and she got death.

SO THE MAN buried his first wife under the Juniper Tree. After that the weather turned foul. The sky grew dark and mad. Cold winds came and it rained and the waves shook the Beak.

The rain poured down on White Quill in the woods. The windows rattled and the slate tiles trembled. The lamb hid under the shed at the end of the porch.

When night came the house stayed dark. There was a little light in the upstairs window where a year before the little witch had leaned into the wind.

Night passed into day and the storms followed one another down the coast out of the arctic seas. The Juniper Tree bore the storms patiently. The old tree had weathered many storms in his long long life. Then late one night the wind gave over a little. The rain lessened. When the brightness came before dawn the clouds were rising and a new wind was pushing the tails of the storm-clouds inland toward the mountains.

The Juniper Tree watched the new day climb out of the woods.

In the woods a redheaded woman walked by in a sea-green dress. A big white red eared dog padded at her side. The woman stopped and looked through the trees at the house. She watched the lonely house. Then she stole back deeper in the woods.

Giorgio poked his head out from under the shed. He started grazing on the grass. The grass was long and thick after the rain. Giorgio didn't even look up when the man came out of the house and walked past. Bjorn still wore the black suit he wore when he dug the grave. His face was beaten and sad. It looked like he had been out in a storm for a hundred years. Already the laugh lines were ironed away. It was like they were never coming back.

He stood awhile at the grave beneath the Juniper Tree. The grass was growing on it already. Nothing lasts for long.

He walked under the Juniper Tree to the landing over the Beak. It was made out of wood and once it had been painted white, but the paint peeled and faded in the wind and salt. Whitewashed wooden steps went down to the rocks below.

The man climbed down the steps. He held onto the rail and walked gentle and the steps creaked and rocked under his shoes.

The thirteenth step down was painted a rusty red and it was loose. The man bent and reached below the Red Step to the ironwork that held the steps to the rock. He twisted the rusty bolt tight. Then he stepped gingerly past the Red Step and down to the shore.

From the top of the Beak the Juniper Tree could see the rocks and the waves along to the next headland. The waves still crashed big and wild from the storm. The waves were so mad they seemed happy, the way crazy people get. The man walked above the waves' reach. He stepped from stone to stone around the tide pools.

In one pool the man found a dead seal. Just past it the redheaded woman was sitting on a rock combing her hair. Just then the sun broke through a hole in the clouds. The light shone off the water onto her sea-green dress and made its colors dance like flames.

The white dog came and growled at the man.

'Tang-Tang! Stop that!' said the redheaded woman.

The dog hunkered down and showed his teeth.

'Never mind him. Tang-Tang won't hurt anyone unless I tell him.'

Bjorn stared at her. She held out the comb.

'Help me?'

He took the comb like an idiot. He started combing her hair.

'Hi!' she said.

'Hello. I'm Bjorn Hansen.'

'Very nice to meet you. I'm Raynhild, Raynhild Ingebjorg Borgrim. But everybody calls me Rayn.'

She took back the comb and they shook hands. Rayn jumped down and the dog frisked around her. She taunted him with a stick, hurled the stick away and the dog scrambled after it.

'Do you live around here?' she asked.

He waved his hand behind him. 'The house on the cliff.'

'Well now. I know that one, it's pretty. I go to university, I'm an exchange student from Norway, do I talk too fast? – that's what my friends tell me.'

'Your English is good.'

'TV – movies and comic books – Superman – Rock and roll! Anyway, I've to do only one year more before graduating. Hotel Management. It's just a glorified study of cooking, housecleaning, and ass-kissing. I want to run a resort somewhere. Don't you think that's a good way to travel?'

'Where do you want to go?'

'Well now. Everywhere, really. Someplace hot, someplace snowy, someplace strange. I'll never go back home, my brothers and sisters are so jealous.'

'Do you have a lot of them?'

'Six sisters, three brothers. Litters run big in my breed.'

'And your parents?'

'My Mommie's dead.'

'I'm sorry.'

'My Father's alive, that's what you should be sorry about. His money keeps _him_ alive. Well now, but how I chatter on! Tell me about yourself. You must be rich to own such a big house?'

'I make timber. Boards, plywood, that sort of thing.'

'The mill up the river? Is that yours?'

'And some timberland up country.'

'Well! You're a regular Money Bags! Does it make you happy?'

Bjorn looked out to sea. Rayn teased the dog and watched him.

'Well now. Did I insult you?'

'My wife died.'

'Did you kill her?'

He shook his head. It was like he didn't really hear what she said. He answered in a faraway voice, 'I don't know. I was there. She died. I didn't do anything...'

'And you're alone now?'

'I have a baby son. At the house.'

'Well now! And all alone? That's awful! Come on, we must get you back straight away. Tang-Tang!'

The white dog romped up and they headed back.

He helped her up the wooden steps, up toward the top of the Beak where the Juniper Tree was waiting. She acted scared and made him hold her hand and arms. She leaned against him in the wind and her scarf slapped his face with the scent of her.

When they reached the Red Step he took her by the waist. 'Careful,' he told her. 'It isn't safe here.'

She curled up in his arms and looked into his face. Her eyes were round and her mouth was open. Her tongue danced over her teeth. 'Why? What's the matter?'

'The bolt under that step isn't any good. It gets loose all the time. I'd bring a wrench and really screw it down, only it would strip the threads and come out. Here.'

He bent down. She let her legs and hips rub against the side of his face. He reached around her legs and twisted the bolt with his fingers. It went around two turns before it snugged up.

'That should do it. You go up first, hold the railing, and lean toward the landward side.'

'No, I'm frightened,' she said. Her voice was humming like a low fire.

'You'll be fine. I'm right here to catch you if anything happens. Only it won't.'

She sort of wiggled in his arms and took a step up. Then her shoe was on the Red Step, and she rocked back and forth a little, and the whole stairs rocked and shuddered in a sick way like it was about to fall off.

'Oops,' she said, and giggled, and pranced up two more steps. She acted like it was an accident. She acted like she was scared. Bjorn looked up at her with the wind flapping her scarf around, and he believed every little thing she wanted him to.

But when she went past the Juniper Tree, she wasn't acting. She walked by it fast and didn't look up. She was glad to get onto the terrace, you could tell that much.

Bjorn let her in through the glass doors. Rayn looked around.

'What good taste your wife must have had. But so big! You ought to have someone look after it while you're working.'

'What about you?'

'Pardon me?'

'Will you look after us?'

'Well now! I know just the thing for you, you naughty boy. Let me get you a drink – whiskey, okay?'

Bjorn nodded. He watched her as she walked to the liquor cabinet. He was always watching her. Every move she made was like a show.

'I knew it – see, I know what you like already.'

She touched her glass against his.

'Clink-clink. Your health, Mr Hansen.'

'Skoal.'

They drank some. She had a funny way of drinking. She tilted up the glass and let the drink almost touch her lips. Then she slid out her tongue and lapped at it like a dog. He stared at the way she did it.

'You haven't answered me. About staying. And taking care of the place.'

'But I can't. I mean, I have my studies.'

'Take the semester off. I'll pay whatever you ask.'

'Money, money, money...'

Bjorn couldn't stop looking at her. She watched him back. All that time there was a faint sound like mewing from somewhere in the house. At last she looked up and away and arched her eyebrows at him. Then Bjorn came back to himself and heard the crying.

'That's him,' he said. He started toward the stairs but she stepped into his way so he bumped into her. She pressed against him and worked him back and settled him into the dark old Morris chair.

'You stay. This is woman's work.'

'His name's Falco.'

'Falco, how pretty!'

Rayn mounted the stairs, and Bjorn watched her from the Morris chair. Her hips rolled as she walked up the steps. At the landing she paused and looked back down at him. She laughed and her teeth flashed fire in the gloom and she went on up where he couldn't see her any more.

At the second landing the stairs turned again, and a smaller, narrower set of steps led up to the attic. Rayn poked around in the rooms on the second floor. There was a bathroom and three bedrooms, one small, one medium, and one big. The cries came from the big bedroom. She stepped to the doorway and peered in.

'What a mess!' she said. She clucked her tongue and opened the windows.

From the cliff where the Juniper Tree stood, her red head showed in the window.

'It's better with fresh air, isn't it, little sir?'

She bent over the crib where the child was lying and kicking his legs and crying.

That was the first time he saw her. He was only a couple months old but he never in his life forgot it. Her face was pretty. Her perfume smelled like a hundred different flowers with oils and herbs and things out of the woods burning, like smoke.

'I expect you're hungry, isn't that it? And starving for affection, poor thing.'

She slapped his face, hard.

For a moment the child stopped; then he started bawling even louder.

Rayn slapped him twice as hard. That shut him up.

'You will learn, little sir, that children are liked better when they are seen and not heard. And now I will get you your milk, okay?'

Down in the great-room, Bjorn was sitting listening. The house was quiet for a change. He sighed and nursed his drink, until Rayn came down.

'How did you get him to stop crying?'

'Oh, we women have our ways.'

She went to the closet and pulled out his raincoat.

'Now go to work. Don't come back until tonight. Then we'll see, Mr Hansen.'

Bjorn wandered out to the black sleek car. He was holding his case and his umbrella and looking up at the house. Then he got in the car and drove off.

In the big bedroom, Falco heard the car go down the driveway. Then he heard the woman's shoes on the stairs again.

She filled the doorway.

He stared at her. He didn't dare cry. He didn't dare breathe.

'Well now.' She smiled and gave a little nod.

'Now, little sir, the house belongs only to you – and me.'

Bjorn never knew what went on between those two the rest of that day. He didn't really want to know. Falco knew but later on he couldn't remember. Some things are harder to remember than others. Some things you don't ever want to remember.

So Bjorn drove off and left them. He drove down the road and through the trees to work. It was a long time since he felt like working. It was a long time since he felt like he was good for anything. Not since Ari died.

He turned off the road by the river and drove down under the sign:

HANSEN LUMBER

From the mill buildings the ripsaws screamed and sang, eating up the logs fed into them and shaving off their bark. The squared beams were carved into planks. The sawdust flew and spilled in heaps.

Bjorn walked across the yard to the office shed. It was small beside the large buildings with the saws, the stacked and drying lumber, the mountains of sawdust where the big trucks came and went.

He entered a long room all of different strains of wood, with a window overlooking the yard.

His assistant Mary-Louise Cartwright and Arne Anders, his lawyer, greeted him.

'Bjorn! Welcome back!' said Mary-Louise.

She hugged him. Bjorn didn't know how to react to that. It wasn't the way she usually greeted him. He never did figure Mary-Louise out. So he just asked, 'Why are you in? It's Saturday. Isn't it?'

'There wasn't much happening at home. And besides, you're here.'

Bjorn shook Anders' hand.

'Are these what you call lawyer's hours? We still solvent?'

'Barely. Hodgekiss wants Tall Pines.'

'We've got to cut them,' said Mary-Louise.

Bjorn stared at her.

Anders handed Bjorn a sheaf of papers. 'Here. Look at this.'

Bjorn glanced over them. They were all legal documents. A loan to the mill, with terms and conditions. He frowned.

Mary-Louise said, 'Hodgekiss will give us the loan. But the terms...'

'I see.'

'It'll buy time,' Anders said. 'Three years, say? But if you can't pay it back – and he's made damn sure you can't—'

'—Then I lose. Okay. So what?'

Bjorn took out his pen and slashed his signature across the papers.

Mary-Louise stared. 'Bjorn! What brought this on?'

'I don't know. I feel like I've come back to life again.'

He dove into the business. He talked things over with the foreman, he looked over the schedules of deliveries, payments, inventories. He ate at his desk standing up. Most of the day he was in the sawmills. He breathed in pine resin and sawdust. The screams of the saws shook his bones. The hardhat and earmuffs and face shield felt odd to him at first, after so long away. Then when he picked up a sandwich he was surprised to find he still had them on.

It was dark when he left. The saws were quiet and still. The men had all gone home. Mary-Louise he had ordered home only a half an hour ago. He walked across the yard in a light rain and stood beside his car. He looked back over the mill. Then he got into the long black car and drove up to the road. He sat at the end of the drive and for awhile he stared in the rearview mirror at the lighted sign behind him, the sign with his name on it.

WHEN HE GOT HOME he found everything tidied, picked up, and polished. Jazz played on the stereo. Rayn welcomed him at the door with a drink in her hand. But the look in her eyes did more for him than the whiskey in his belly.

They had dinner by candlelight.

'Did you find everything you needed?' he asked.

'Of course! But what could be more boring than listening to me talk about dusting and cooking! Tell me about the mill.'

'Well, the mill itself is one thing, but the big problem is feeding it. You see, it's owning the right timberland that makes for true wealth in this field. What?'

'Oh! Nothing. You're so serious about it, all your money, all the things you take to yourself and own. It's funny, that's all.'

After dinner he remembered the child. Rayn took him to the big bedroom and they tucked the child in for the night.

'He won't stay quiet long,' Bjorn warned her.

'Well now! We'll see about that. Mr Falco and I are reaching an understanding, aren't we, little sir?'

They closed the door until it was just ajar. They stood out in the hall. Rayn pushed open the door to the small bedroom.

'I took this old room, I'll send for my things later – it's all right, isn't it, Mr Hansen?'

'Yes...'

She leaned against the doorjamb, humming. Her eyes were bright.

'So, you will stay?'

'If you'll take me, Mr Hansen.'

'Don't call me Mr Hansen, please, you make me feel older than the trees.'

'All right.'

He didn't know what he was saying anymore. It all sounded like nonsense in his ears, like something in a language he never learned. He breathed her scent, like wood-smoke. She was smiling at him but he didn't know if she was saying anything or not. He took her head in his hands and kissed her.

Her glass dropped and ice cubes scattered down the stairs.

'I'll get that.'

'No. Leave it. Leave it, Rayn.'

'Well now. Mr Hansen. Well now.'

He kissed her again. Or maybe she was kissing him. She was the one who broke it. She leaned back again breathing hard.

'Whew! One gets so out of breath.'

He nodded. He was breathing hard too.

She looked up at him from the corner of her eye. It was a shy sly smile. It was almost a leer. She tugged on his hand and he came. She drew him into the little room and he went.

Outside in the darkness the Juniper Tree kept guard. Through the high window it could see the little bedroom was dark but in the big bedroom a night light was burning. In the crib, the child kicked his legs and whimpered.

THE NEXT DAY was Sunday. The man and the redheaded woman didn't leave the house. They didn't get dressed, either. When the darkness came back the redheaded woman turned on all the lights except for the big bedroom upstairs. She didn't wear much and neither did the man. They went at each other on the couch, on the floor, on the counter in the kitchen, and in the antique Morris chair.

The lights stayed on all night.

Two weeks later, on Wednesday, a hearse drove out of the woods.

Two mill-workers got out, walked to the back and slid out onto the gravel a Trunk. It was made of wood and iron and painted like Danish furniture from hundreds of years ago.

Rayn stepped onto the back porch in a green blouse and tight blue jeans.

'Oh! It's here, Bjorn, come and see!'

The man came out. He wore old slacks and a fisherman's sweater.

The mill-workers waved to him and drove off. The white dog barked and jumped around the chest.

'What is it?'

''What is it?' Money Bags says. It's my Mommie's Trunk, silly, it's her chest with all her things in it, her wonderful, special things!'

'From your father?'

'It's all that's left of her since she died.'

'See, your father isn't so bad.'

She crouched down and kissed the Trunk, lots of little pecks.

'He's horrible, I hate him. I do.'

'He sent you the Trunk.'

'He can afford to. As if he could make a present out of something that belongs to me anyway! And after he practically drove her into her grave.'

'It looks heavy.'

'Well now! Will you stop teasing and carry it in – quick, before it gets wet!'

Bjorn hoisted the end of the chest onto his back. He staggered under the weight. He started up to the porch.

And the rain started for real.

Rayn held the door open for him.

'Wait.'

He went in and Rayn took a turn about the porch, nodding to the dog.

'Yes! Yes, silly puppy! It's here! We have it back again!'

Bjorn stepped back out.

'Now let's do it properly, shall we, Mrs Hansen?'

'By all means, Mr Hansen.'

He carried her over the threshold.

THAT NIGHT the redheaded woman went through the Trunk. Bjorn had set it in the middle bedroom and stood in the doorway watching her rummage through her things. Little lace underthings were the first things she pulled out. They filled the atmosphere of the room with their perfumes, smoky and deadly. Bjorn got a little dizzy from their intoxication.

The Juniper Tree shuddered in the wind.

Bjorn stuck his head out the window to the big bedroom and closed the shutters.

He closed the window. Now there was only his shadow crossing the slats in the shutters.

Inside the room, Bjorn stepped over to the crib. When the child saw his face again, he couldn't help it, he had to whimper a little.

'Oh, Rayn will see to you, just wait.'

Bjorn carried him in the crib across the room out into the hall.

'You can't go on crying forever, Falco.'

He shut the door behind him and locked it. He stood for a moment, looking at the door. Then his hand closed over the key and pushed it deep into his pocket.

'Good-bye, Ari,' he said.

He picked up the crib and went up into the attic. Falco swung in the crib, looking back down as the door to his Mother's room disappeared down the stairs.

## 4

Years went by. Nobody killed anybody, nobody died. I got a little sister. They called her Greta. And they were all happy together, the three of them, like cookies and ice-cream. But I didn't get any.

AFTER BJORN married Rayn, White Quill changed. It didn't even look the same, though you'd have a hard time saying how. The big bedroom was kept locked and not even Bjorn went in there anymore. He slept with Rayn in the middle bedroom, though the room showed no sign of him and they all called it Rayn's room. Men came and sealed off the master bath from the big bedroom and opened it to Rayn's room instead. She had them redo all the fixtures and put in a big red tub. Their daughter Greta slept in the small bedroom across the hall.

That left no place for the boy, so Falco was put in a room in the attic at the top of those twisting narrow stairs. The room held an old dusty washstand, a small iron cot, and cardboard boxes under the bed where Falco kept his clothes.

He made his own toys with bits of cardboard and paper he got out of the garbage. He pulled Rayn's fashion magazines out of the recycling and looked at the pictures of pretty women. They were all smiling and laughing like Rayn. He pasted their faces onto cardboard bird shapes and hung them on strings. When the wind blew into the window, the birds danced around over his head. He lay on the cot and stared up at the birds and how they flew under the ceiling.

He spent a lot of time in his room. He must've done a lot of bad things, because Rayn was always sending him to his room.

If he stood on the end of his cot on the iron foot bar, he could see the back yard through his window. He could see the water and the end of the lawn and the Juniper Tree standing guard at the Beak. Whenever he looked out the window, the Juniper Tree nodded back to say Hello. Falco waved back but he didn't tell anybody about it. He didn't tell them much.

The rain fell and the sun shone on the Juniper Tree. Birds sang in his branches. They sang sad songs, lonely and mournful and hurting.

Falco put pictures of birds on the walls when he found them in the magazines. He used to dream about birds sometimes. He dreamed he could fly. But he couldn't.

Sometimes he cut out pictures of kids in the magazines. He took the pictures into the bathroom with him and he looked at the pictures and then he looked at his face in the mirror over the sink. He was eight years old – he only got to be eight before it happened. He looked at the pictures of the kids, all fat and happy in clothes from the ads. Falco didn't look like them. But sometimes he found pictures from articles about other countries where there was some disaster or something and everybody died. They had pictures of kids starving and dirty. They were more like him. He couldn't read the articles too well but he thought they were all about the people who went flying around the world giving those kids food and new houses and clothes and whatever they wanted. He used to wish somebody would fly around here and give him food and clothes and a new house. He knew it wouldn't happen.

His room was once a cabinet or closet up under the rafters. The cot was tucked under the eaves with just a space between the door and the window. That was okay so long as nobody came in and slapped him or nothing.

He used to save scraps of bread in his pockets. He found a tin pie plate in the attic and he put it on the windowsill with crumbs on it and opened the window. Rayn said it was a dirty habit and Falco was a dirty boy and she was ashamed of him. She told him to shut the window and keep it shut, all sorts of nasty things could come in, but he left it open anyway when he thought she wouldn't find out.

Sometimes a bird came to picked at the crumbs.

Falco sat on the cot and stared at the bird.

The bird cocked his head. Falco cocked his head.

Downstairs he could hear Rayn singing. That's why he didn't want to go down.

Fridays were bad days. Rayn was prettiest on Friday, she laughed a lot and smiled and put on extra perfume and wore naughty things all day. Friday they sent Falco home from school early, and he had to be alone with Rayn all afternoon. But Saturdays were worse.

On Saturday Falco's dad still went to work all day but there wasn't any school at all. And all day long Rayn had her eye on him. All the bad things she said he did on Friday just to make her mad, she saved them all for Saturday.

On Saturday morning, Falco lay on the floor inside his door and looked down through the rails. From there he could just peek into Rayn's bedroom. He didn't want to go down yet. He didn't want to get noticed.

Rayn was singing and stripping her bed. She did wash on Saturday. Her sheets were hot pink with roses and flames sewn in. Greta was in there too. She was always hanging around. She must have been four then. She was probably playing on the floor with her dinosaur toys. She got all the toys she wanted.

Greta was pretty, but she was chubby on account of they fed her so much. She used to go around all the time in designer dresses even when she was just playing. That was all right with Falco. She was a girl. She was okay, he didn't have anything against her except she cried so easy. It wouldn't take anything to start her bawling. Then he usually got a slap and Rayn would pick up Greta and hold her and kiss her over and over. Falco never saw the point in crying. It didn't get him anywhere.

He listened to Rayn singing. Her voice was something. Back then he was half in love with her. When he heard her singing like that he had to sneak downstairs and hang on the railing so he could peek deeper into her room. He could see her bending over her Trunk, still singing.

'Would you like a sweet, little goose? A special, special sweet from my Mommie's Trunk?'

She gave Greta a piece of candy or something from far away. Greta played with it.

'Did you know you have a rich Daddy? Yes! He's Mr Money Bags! And because you're such a pretty girl, he loves you best of all!'

She put the sheets in the basket, plopped Greta on top and carried her downstairs, singing all the way.

Falco ducked back out of sight until it was safe to sneak downstairs.

Downstairs the Thanksgiving decorations were already up. Rayn put the basket by the Morris chair. It had a sign on it, the sign they put on it every Thanksgiving:

The  
Thanksgiving  
King

Greta tried to climb up the chair. Rayn kissed her again.

'Well now! What a clever girl you are! You know what that is, don't you? That's your chair! That's the chair for the Thanksgiving King! Two weeks to Thanksgiving, and then you'll get to sit in it, just you and you and you!'

She tumbled Greta back into the basket and carried her out the door.

Out in the sun Rayn hung her sheets on the clotheslines. The wind made the sheets billow like flags or sails or big tongues of fire. Rayn's dress billowed too, bright like fire.

Falco crept under the porch. It was covered with crossed white laths so they couldn't see him. He hung on the laths like on bars on a cage and watched them.

When she had the sheets up, Rayn started hanging up her naughty things. Her underthings and such. Greta played in the grass with her dinosaurs. Greta was nuts for dinosaurs. They gave her a set that was all bones of dinosaurs and she tried to snap them together but she never got the shape right and the head usually ended up on the tail or something like that.

When everything was up, Rayn put Greta in the empty basket and took her back inside. Her high heels stabbed the porch boards over Falco's head. He was thinking about coming out when the porch door creaked open again and she came out with the dog.

Tang-Tang was always growling at Falco and trying to bite him. He had a lot of scars from the white dog. When Tang-Tang bit Falco, Rayn would laugh and give him a dog-cookie and let him lick her face. So when she brought him out, Falco crawled back under the porch as far as he could.

But the white dog went bounding after her. She lured him across the yard, away from the Juniper Tree to the landing on the cliff. Tang-Tang ran on down the steps in front of her, but Rayn paused and looked back at the house and smiled. Falco was at the lath cage then but he pulled back when she looked. He thought she was looking at him. But he must have guessed wrong, because she didn't come back and scold him, she just skipped down the steps.

After a while it seemed safe so he came out. He went over to the clothesline and looked up at Rayn's things dancing in the wind. She had the prettiest things and they always smelled like nothing else in the world.

Then he went over to the Juniper Tree.

'Hello, Juniper Tree,' he said.

The Juniper Tree bowed to him.

Sometimes Falco tried to look into the Juniper Tree and see what its face looked like. He was sure the tree had a face but he could never make it out. But sometimes he could feel what its face would've looked like if he could've seen it. Sometimes Falco knew the Juniper Tree was smiling, and sometimes he knew it was frowning, and sometimes it was like it was trying to warn him or something, that kind of a look.

Under the Juniper Tree there was a seat made out of stone. They used to pile logs under it for the fireplace sometimes. His Dad did anyway, Rayn didn't like it and told him not to, which was funny, because she was always lighting candles and setting fires.

Next to the seat there was a stone that stuck up from the ground a little. On the stone they had carved three words Falco knew by heart:

_Ariela_  
_Flew_ _Away_

He sat down on the grass and stroked the stone. His dad said his Mother was curled up in the ground underneath that stone like a chick inside its shell.

He could hear Rayn laughing. He got up and went to the landing.

The waves crashed into the rocks on the shore. Rayn was down there playing with Tang-Tang.

She waved a stick in front of Tang-Tang's face. He tried to bite it but she pulled it away at the last minute so he couldn't get any. She laughed and talked to him. She used the pretty words she had that Falco never understood. His dad said those were words Rayn learned far away in another country someplace. When she used those words Falco used to feel funny inside. He used to call them Rayn's magic words.

She threw the stick when Tang-Tang was worked up so much Falco was afraid he was going to bite her, even her. The white dog growled and tore after it. He pulled it out of the water and ran back to her, so proud. Big deal, anybody could've done that. But then seagulls came and Rayn said more magic words to Tang-Tang, and he went chasing after the birds.

'Watch it birds!' Falco said. They didn't listen though. They thought they were safe with their wings. But they didn't know Tang-Tang the way Falco did.

Most of the birds scattered in the air and it looked like they were all going to get away. Then Tang-Tang caught one. His jaw worked on it and Rayn laughed. Tang-Tang dropped the gull on the rocks in front of her naked toes. The gull was bent and its head flopped the wrong way and after that it didn't move. Rayn clapped her hands and sent the white dog off again. Tang-Tang must have killed six or seven gulls that way. They made a little heap in front of Rayn. Even from the cliff Falco could see the broken feathers and the blood. There was blood on Tang-Tang's jaws too when Rayn bent down and kissed him and let him lick her face.

He felt kind of sick. He couldn't stop staring at the dead birds. He wondered if that was what his Mother looked like in the ground beneath the stone.

Rayn and Tang-Tang started back. Tang-Tang romped up the steps with his tail straight up like he was saying, 'Come on, hurry up!' Then he raced back down to her and nosed around her skirts.

When she reached the Red Step, Rayn stopped and looked up and Falco ducked back down so she wouldn't catch him spying. In a bit he peeked over the grass again. She was on her hands and knees and reaching under the Red Step. He couldn't make out what she was doing. Tang-Tang poked his big nose in and she pushed him away and said something to him. He bounded up the steps, shaking the whole pile of them. He was almost at the landing when Falco turned and raced back to the house. He crawled under the porch again, barely in time. The white dog stood growling at him through the laths.

Rayn popped up and walked toward the house. She petted the dog, as pretty as ever. How could she do things like kiss Tang-Tang over the dead birds and still look so pretty? But she only looked prettier when she did mean things.

She came back to the porch. She was looking right at Falco through the cage. Maybe she wasn't, because she didn't say anything. But it sure felt like she did, so he crawled back deeper.

She turned about and sighed out loud. 'What a wind! I hope none of my things blows away. I would hate to lose anything. They are all so precious to me,' she said. Then she went in.

Tang-Tang growled at Falco again. He was still wild from playing down on the rocks and Falco could see his teeth all bloody. On his throat two metal disks hung and made a little metal sound when they hit. _Tang, tang_. _Tang, tang_. Probably that was why she called him that. _Tang, tang_ was probably the last thing the seagulls ever heard.

'Tang-Tang? Tang-Tang! Come in here, silly puppy!'

Tang-Tang gave Falco another growl, like, 'I'll see you later,' and went inside.

For a while Falco hung onto the laths and looked out on the sunshine. Rayn's sheets and things blew on the line. Then one of her things, it hugged her breasts and she called it a camisole, it took off from the line and went flying.

It landed on the grass. It moved a little in the wind, like it was alive.

He couldn't hear anything in the house. By then Rayn and Greta and Tang-Tang had gone into the kitchen or someplace. Probably she was giving Greta more food. She was always giving her food.

Falco crept across the lawn where the camisole lay fluttering. It was hot red like it was on fire. He almost picked it up but he wasn't sure it was okay for him to touch it. The wind blew at it again. He followed, and the camisole hopped to the edge of the cliff. Then it blew over.

He lay down on his belly and looked over the cliff.

The camisole was caught on a rock where there was a little dirt and a weed or something was trying to grow out of nothing. It was down a little past the Red Step.

Something pushed Falco from behind. It was Giorgio.

'Hey, who let you loose?' Giorgio wasn't supposed to be off his tether, not ever. Rayn got sore when he got free. But maybe he chewed himself free. He did that sometimes. He butted Falco and Falco petted him. Giorgio smelled like the green things at the wood's edge that he liked to eat. Falco liked the feel of his wooly coat, it tickled. Giorgio was his friend. He was probably his only friend.

Falco sat on the landing and looked down. The camisole was still hanging onto the rock and the weed.

Giorgio started to go out onto the landing but Falco pulled him back.

'No, Giorgio, go back, it's not safe, how many times do I have to tell you, are you dumb or something? The steps are rotten. Dad says. If you go on the steps you'll fall on the rocks and break your neck. I'm not allowed there either and I'm ten times smarter than you are. Come on.'

He hauled on the lamb's collar and dragged him back across the lawn. He tied him up again and moved him to another peg in the shade by the woods where the good green stuff grew.

Through the glass doors he thought he saw Rayn looking out. He turned away and petted Giorgio. He acted like nothing was going on. When he looked back she wasn't there, so maybe he was wrong.

He went back to the landing and stared at her camisole. It fluttered in the breeze, taunting him.

If he lay on his stomach on that step down there, he might be able to reach it. Rayn had gone down and come back up okay. She even had Tang-Tang with her, and the dog was as big as Falco all by himself.

He took a step onto the landing.

The old boards creaked and rocked in the wind. He wanted to step back but Rayn's words wouldn't leave his head. _I hope none of my things blows away. I would hate to lose anything. They are all so precious to me,_ she said. If he could get the camisole for her, maybe she'd give him a kiss. Sometimes she did give him a kiss, after all. It wasn't like she only hit him all the time.

'What do you think, Juniper Tree? Should I?'

The Juniper Tree bristled in the wind. It didn't seem too fond of the idea. But Falco had already made up his mind. He was thinking about Rayn.

He went down the steps, one at a time. He was clinging to the rail and being as light as he could. The stairs swung out from the cliff and rocked back. It gave him a kind of sick feeling in his stomach.

The seagulls soared by, crying.

'No, I can't fly like you. I don't have wings.'

But he heard something else in his head. It was like an old song he heard a long time back and forgot, but then it came back:

Sventola, Falco, sventola.

Then he felt lighter and his throat stopped choking so tight. He looked out over the water when he stepped across the Red Step. It was like if he didn't look at it, the Red Step wouldn't know he was there.

He lay down on the step. He slid beneath the outer rail. He had to slide out farther. Straight down below the waves smashed the rocks to foam. Some spray blew up on him. It tickled and tasted salty.

He reached but couldn't get to it. He had to crawl out more. His shirt was pulled out of his belt and the edge of the step scraped his belly-button. He was hanging so far out his legs came up like he was going to blow away. And the steps creaked and swung way out, but his hand moved closer and the camisole wrapped around his hand.

He twisted back onto the step. He clung to it and held the camisole against his face. It was softer than anything. It smelled like her. It smelled like her towels in her bathroom after she took one of her long baths and then she rubbed the towel all over herself up and down and in between.

He went back up. On the way he saw the nut on the Red Step was gone. The bolt was there but the nut that held the iron onto the bolt was missing. The iron bracket bounced up and down on the bolt. Sometimes it bounced so high it lifted clean off. That must have been what Rayn was doing when she knelt down and felt around there. She must have seen that the nut was gone and she was trying to find it to put it back on. That must've been what happened.

All the same Falco had a sick feeling in his gut all the way across the lawn and up onto the terrace and into the house. Just as he had figured, Rayn was in the kitchen. He couldn't see Greta anywhere or the white dog either.

Falco hung around the kitchen door. He felt bashful. He felt like a fool. What was she supposed to do when he gave it to her? He stared at the camisole in his hands. It burned like fire. Maybe he ought to keep it. Maybe he ought to put it inside his pillowcase. But she'd miss it when she went out to get the wash. She'd miss it now and later she'd find it in his room and call him a thief and then he'd be in it good.

He let go of the door and walked into the kitchen. She was making soup in a vat on the stove. She turned around and saw him and her eyes lit up like she was surprised.

'Well now.' That was all she said.

Falco couldn't say a word. He looked down and away and he pulled the camisole out from behind his back and held it up to her.

'Did you find this, little sir?'

He nodded.

'It blew off the line? You chased it and brought it back to me?'

He was looking at her ankles and her legs. He didn't dare look up to her face. There was laughter in her voice. Was she laughing at him or was she only happy to get the camisole back? Falco couldn't tell.

He heard her put the spoon and oven mitt on the counter. She bent down so that her face came very close to him.

'What a good little sir you can be sometimes. You may kiss me now.' That startled him and he looked up. She had her face turned with her cheek toward him.

He leaned forward into the nest of scent that her body breathed out and he let his lips touch her cheek.

Rayn laughed. 'Well now little sir, what do you call that? Do you call that kissing? What a weakling little man you'll be! Here, let me show you how the thing is done.'

Then she held his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth. He felt her tongue licking his lips before she let him go.

He stumbled back. His face was on fire. He could hardly breathe.

She stood and let the camisole hang free in her hands. He leaned against the counter. He didn't know anything anymore. He just stared at her.

Every once in a while she let him kiss her. Every once in a while she kissed him back – like that. Falco had thought about running away plenty of times. But even when he put his things together and was all ready to go, the thought of Rayn's kisses kept him there. He knew he could never get away from her. He didn't _want_ to.

Then her face changed.

'But look here,' she said. She held out the camisole. There was some dirt on it from the cliff.

'Just how did you know when this fell from the line, little sir? Were you peeking again? Or did you come sneaking around to touch my things, my personal and intimate things? What a naughty boy you are. A dirty boy, a sneak. You are peeking all the time, aren't you? Look at your hands, how filthy and vile. You stained my beautiful cami. I must throw it away now. I must destroy it. I must _burn_ it in hot flames. All because of you.'

She caught his chin and twisted his face back and up and made him look at her.

'You know what this means, don't you, little sir?'

He nodded.

'What does it mean?'

'It means you have to punish me.'

'You bring it on yourself, you know. I don't enjoy doing it. You only get what you deserve, little sir. You only get what you deserve.'

She slapped him and he fell against the stove and his knees gave out and he slid down on the tile.

She helped him up. She took a rag out of her apron.

'Oh, little sir, why do you make me punish you all the time? Why must you be so bad? Blow.'

He blew his nose into the rag and she sat him on a stool at the counter. She tied a napkin under his chin.

'Well now, I'll get you something to warm you up. Would you like some black bean soup?'

He nodded.

'Say please. Or there'll be no more food for you today.'

'Please, Mommie.'

'Don't call me mommie, little sir. I'm not your mommie. What is my name?'

'Rayn.'

'That's right, my name is Rayn, and that is what the little sir must call me.'

She brought the ladle and poured it into the bowl. The steam-cloud swam in his face.

'Don't eat it right away, it's piping hot!'

She went back to the stove.

He dipped his spoon and fork two-fisted into the black soup. Rayn turned back to the counter and her apron brushed against his arm. Her hand tipped the soup bowl and it spilled into his lap. He pushed back from the counter, shouting, and Rayn's face leaned in above him.

'Well now little sir, that was a naughty thing to do!'

And somehow the stool tipped and he fell. He got up, wiping at the heavy greasy black on his pants.

'You spilled it! My, that must burn! Quick, go to the bathroom and wash up!'

He ran away.

In the bathroom he shut the door behind him. He turned on the light and peeled off his T-shirt and fell rolling on the floor kicking his pants off over his sneakers, trying to get it off before it burned even more.

Rayn came up outside the door.

'Little sir, are you all right?'

He heard her put her key in the door and lock it.

He stood quite still at the sound of that click. Now he was locked in the bathroom with his dirty clothes. Already the dark stains of the bean-soup on his pants began to smell rotten and sour.

He waited but Rayn didn't come back. Once he scratched at the door but she wouldn't answer.

He sat on the rug and leaned his head against the toilet and stared at the door looming high above him.

IT WAS DARK that night when Bjorn came home. It got dark early those days. The sun fell away like a fire going out in the sea, and then the sky turned red with flames, and then the colors drained out of the clouds and the stars peeped out. Around White Quill the woods were black, as black as though they marked the end of the world. Then lights came shining behind the tree trunks and the tires came crunching up the drive.

The black luxury car pulled up behind the house.

Bjorn came in and set his case on the chair by the door. He was taking off his coat when Rayn slunk up behind him with a fresh drink.

'Welcome home, Mr Hansen.'

She coiled her arms around and kissed him on the neck, biting his flesh a little with her teeth.

AFTER DRINKS, the family sat at table as usual. Bjorn sat at the head, Rayn beside him, and Greta across from them in her high chair. Falco's chair was empty. Bjorn looked at it and shook his head. Rayn let her fingers tickle the back of his neck.

'You can't make him eat, you know.'

'I don't know what's gotten into the boy lately.'

'He'll be better come Thanksgiving.'

'No, he's always jealous when we don't make him Thanksgiving King.'

Rayn tied a napkin round Greta's chin, a black one with green and golden dinosaurs on it. 'And do you know what these are, my darling?'

'Di-no-sawers.'

'Yes! Oh you clever clever girl!' And she kissed Greta.

Rayn left and came back carrying the soup-vat. She dipped the ladle into the vat and stirred.

'Oh, is it your black bean soup?'

'Mind the ham-bones, it's not strained yet.'

Bjorn frowned at the stairs. 'Falco! Falco, come down and eat!'

But Falco was locked in the bathroom, sitting in his sneakers and soup-soiled underpants.

Bjorn plucked a bone out of his spoon.

'Tang-Tang! Tang-Tang!'

Bjorn tossed the ham-bone under the table and the white dog nosed his way in between the chairs .

Greta put her head below the table and watched Tang-Tang gnaw on the bone. Rayn laughed. Her voice was pure as bells.

'You see, all our babies want their treats.'

She got up and walked to the bathroom door.

INSIDE, FALCO saw the glass knob rattle against the lock.

His dad's voice sounded from far away. 'What is it?'

Rayn's voice answered, 'The bathroom door is stuck.'

'Hang on.'

Falco heard him join Rayn at the bathroom door.

The glass knob turned again. Through the door he heard their voices.

'It isn't stuck,' his dad said. 'It's locked.'

'Well, why would he do such a thing?'

'Falco, are you in there? I've just about had enough of your pranks, young man. Now unlock the door and come to supper.'

Falco looked down at himself. What could he say? He was dirty, naked, shameful. All he wanted to do was get away. High over the tub he looked at the small frosted window. He climbed on the edge of the tub. Too high. He couldn't reach it.

He heard his dad's voice again. He sounded mad now. 'Falco, open this door!'

'It's no use, he won't answer. Another of his tricks. Didn't I tell you about him?'

Falco knelt inside the tub. He took hold of the shower curtain and started to pull it round.

The rings of the curtain dragged on the shower rod, screeching.

His dad's voice boomed, 'We'll have to get your keys and unlock it if he's going to pull stunts like this.'

'Well now, never mind. I can bear to use the washroom upstairs if I have to. It isn't worth the fuss, I put up with his antics all day long.'

Falco huddled in the tub. He jammed his fingers in his ears and hummed inside and drowned out their voices.

Overhead the high window hung half-open, and through it he could hear birds singing outside. If only he could go out there beyond the glass where the night air stirred and lifted away from the house, out beyond the dark leaves where stars were shining, and the air grew thick with birds' songs, and higher still where the last leaves fell away the heavens lay wide open, glittering in another place...

DEEP IN THE NIGHT Falco woke up. He had fallen asleep in the bathtub and the back of his head hurt. He sat up and rubbed his head. Something was changed but he didn't know what it was right away. Then he saw.

The bathroom door was open.

A little light spilled from the hall onto the door. There didn't seem to be anybody out there.

Now he knew what woke him up. He remembered sounds like _clink_ and _clunk_ when the door unlocked and opened. That was what woke him.

He stepped into the hallway. The night was cold on his bare legs. He went to the kitchen. He wasn't hungry but his mouth was dry. He didn't dare open the refrigerator door though. The light might bring Tang-Tang. He got a glass and some water from the tap. He drank and drank.

He crept upstairs as soft as he could. The door to Rayn's bedroom was open. Greta's nightlight shone across the hall beneath her door.

The narrow steps to the attic creaked when he was halfway up but nobody came out to give him a beating.

He crawled under his blankets and poked his head out the foot. He clung to the iron footbar and looked out the window. Out on the Beak the Juniper Tree stood watch like always.

That was one Saturday for Falco. It wasn't the nicest but it wasn't the worst either. There was really only one thing about that Saturday that made it stand out. It wasn't going onto the cliff steps, though that was the first time he ever did it. No, what made that Saturday different was a thought that came into Falco's head up in his room deep in the night, just before he fell back asleep.

The thought came out of nowhere. He must have dreamed it in the bathtub earlier, and he didn't know what to make of it. But when he thought it, he shivered.

_I'm only eight,_ he thought. _Soon it'll be my birthday and I'll be nine. It will happen before then._

## 5

The week went by and Friday came and Rayn dressed up and made nice to me and touched me a lot. That always meant trouble. Then it was Saturday all over again.

TO FALCO it always seemed the school week flew by and the dark shadow of Friday and Saturday, those terrible two days, loomed closer and closer and swallowed him up before he could peep. And then the horrible Saturday itself came dawning, and though Falco woke early every Saturday, he kept himself close in his room for as long as he could.

In the gray early twilight he watched the Juniper Tree bending in the wind. Under the tree lay his Mother's grave.

Falco stood on tiptoe on the end of his bed looking out the window at the Juniper Tree and his Mother's marker. He ducked back inside.

He could hear them downstairs moving around in the kitchen and front hall. His Dad was getting ready to go to work. He was about to leave again and all day long Falco would have to face her.

He went down to the door to his Mother's room. It was locked. It was always locked. It was locked since forever. He hung over the banister. How was he going to make it through the day?

My birthday is coming. It will happen before then.

What did it mean?

In the downstairs hall Rayn was helping his dad into his raincoat.

'Did the children sleep all right?'

Falco crept down the stairs. He heard Rayn's voice singing to his dad.

'Oh! Greta was an angel as always. But your son wet his bed.'

'Again? Poor Falco.'

Rayn looked up and caught him watching them.

'Well now! Spying again?'

'It's all right. Falco, did you have some troubles last night?'

He jumped down the stairs at his dad. He hung onto the tails of his raincoat. Don't go, he wanted to tell him. Don't leave me alone again. But he couldn't say that. He could only think of one thing to say and he just blurted it out. 'Dad, take me to work with you.'

'The mill's awfully busy this time of year. You'd be bored in no time.'

He hugged his legs. 'Please.' He wouldn't let him. It was hopeless and he knew it.

His dad's hand stroked his hair.

'Well, all right. If you like.'

Falco looked up. He couldn't believe it.

'Well, hurry up,' Dad said, 'get your things.'

Falco started up the stairs and stopped.

Rayn stood in the door to the kitchen. Watching him. He could tell how mad she was. Why was she mad? Suddenly he thought what might happen when he came back home and he knew he never wanted to come back here again.

He dashed upstairs.

It wasn't until the car door shut and the seat-belt snapped around him that he could trust that he was going, really going, and that Rayn hadn't thought up some way to keep him home. She stood on the steps to the front door. She hadn't said anything at all. Uh-oh, he thought. It was going to be worse than he thought. But the car pulled away and he looked through the back window, craning his head around to watch her staring after them until the trees cut her off and swallowed the whole house.

He turned and lay back in the seat. His dad's big hand wrenched the gearshift and the car ground up gravel and spit it back and threw them up onto the road.

The trees streaked past the mist.

He stared out the window. They were flying down the hill as fast as a hawk swoops. He looked over to Dad. Dad glanced back at him and smiled.

'It's been a long time since I took you to the mill. It's a little different there now. A sort of a holiday, you could say. But you mustn't tell Rayn about it, okay?'

'I can keep secrets.'

'Good boy.'

He squirmed in the seat. He knew this was going too far but he couldn't help himself.

'Dad? I didn't wet the bed. I didn't!'

Are you telling me your stepmother was lying?'

'No... not really. But I didn't wet the bed.'

'Young man, tonight you'll go apologize to her.'

'But it's not fair!'

His dad only looked at him then pointed his head at the windshield. Falco shut up. It was hopeless anyway.

THEY DROVE up and down the road through the woods. Over the hill and down to the riverside, the trees raced them but the black car always won.

The car roared to a halt and he stepped out and looked about the mill. Dad was right, it wasn't like it used to be. It looked abandoned.

'You can go wherever you want. Only remember, it's our secret, right?'

He watched his dad walk to the office building. He wandered toward the mill buildings.

The doors were open and cavernous and dark. He ventured in.

Inside, he kicked through piles of sawdust. He approached one of the saws, and let his fingers curl around one beak-like steel tooth.

He turned and raced back toward the door.

He slipped into the offices and tiptoed down the hall to the door to Dad's office. Through the glass walls he could see them.

Mary-Louise stood behind the desk holding a sheaf of papers. Mr Anders the lawyer sat nearby.

Their voices reached Falco from inside.

'Those the papers?' his dad asked.

Mary-Louise nodded. Her lips were tight.

'Let's see. Don't look that way. The men will be back Monday after Thanksgiving.'

Mary-Louise looked down through the window to the empty yard.

'Yes – for two weeks. What then? Another layoff? And another?'

'Just until things get settled.'

'Bjorn, you know only one thing will save us. Tall Pines has 10,000 hectares of prime hardwood – over three million board feet. We need that!'

His dad closed his eyes like he was trying to remember something. Falco had heard all about Tall Pines since forever. That was where his dad met his Mother.

IT WAS A long time ago. Maybe fifteen whole years. But Tall Pines looked like always. Tall Pines was full of old old trees and birds, and the birds all sang the same song, the song Dad called Ariela's Song.

When he was a lot younger, his dad used to hike through Tall Pines every chance he got. On that day so long ago, he heard the song and looked up.

On a branch a black bird cocked her head at him.

He took a pencil stub from his ear and jotted a mark down on his surveyor's map. He paced forward, measuring. He didn't think anything weird or strange was going to happen. He was just measuring. Then mixed in with the bird song he heard a woman's voice.

'Hello,' it said.

He looked up and saw a young woman with backpack and hiking clothes and short black hair sitting in the tree. And that was the first time he ever set eyes on Ariela, Falco's Mother.

'Hello,' he said back.

He was startled to find someone here.

'Are you a strip-miner?' she asked.

'Logger. What are you doing way—'

He didn't get to finish. Falco's Mother jumped down, pulled a spray can out of her pack, and shot paint across his face.

'Murderer! Tree-killer!'

She darted through the woods. Dad took off after her.

MARY-LOUISE cleared her throat.

'Mr Hansen?'

His dad sighed and opened his eyes. His eyes looked pretty sad. He placed the paper on his desk. Mary-Louise handed him a pen.

'All I ever wanted to be was a timberman. I remember Grandmother telling me tales about the Wood-Cutter's Son.'

Falco knew all about the Wood-Cutter's Son, his dad had told him those stories himself. But that was back when he was little. Dad hadn't told him any stories in a long time now.

'Tall Pines will keep us going for six years,' Mary-Louise said. 'You'll have Hodgekiss off your back and some breathing space.'

_No,_ Falco thought. He wanted to hammer on the glass wall with his fists and shout. _You can't cut Tall Pines! You promised!_

'I had a picture book of Paul Bunyan,' Dad said, 'and the blue ox.'

'In six years' time, the economy will come back. You'll still own Tall Pines, and we'll reforest it into modern wood-bearing cropland.'

But Dad told Falco he promised Falco's Mother that he'd never cut Tall Pines. He swore it on his honor. Otherwise she wouldn't marry him.

Dad looked at Mr Anders. Mr Anders didn't say anything. He was as calm and careful as if he was carved out of beech.

Mary-Louise touched Dad on the arm. She was standing close to him. She was almost whispering. 'You've got to. We have no other choice now.'

Dad looked into her eyes. Falco knew his dad wouldn't say no to her now. Rayn always got what she wanted from him when she stood close to him like that.

Dad nodded, and said, 'No.'

He pushed the paper away and gave her back the pen.

Falco felt like cheering.

'Mr Hansen – you can't refuse.'

'You did your best, Mary-Louise. We all did. But it couldn't be done.'

'It can be done. I have the answer right here. _This_ is the answer!'

'I made a promise to my wife. I loved her.'

Her face scrunched up. Falco never saw Mary-Louise that mad. 'You think that makes you special?'

She turned away. She looked like she was about to cry. She walked out the door.

Falco ducked out to the hall when Mary-Louise came out.

He ran down the hall. The doors and walls flew past him. It was like dad told him, when his Mother spray-painted him and he chased her under the trees in Tall Pines.

'WAIT! WAIT!' Dad had called after her.

'Catch me!' she shouted back. 'Ha!'

She dodged, but Dad caught her against a tree and pinned her arms.

'There! Ha yourself!'

It was beginning to rain, and the paint ran down his face. She broke out laughing.

'What are you laughing at?'

'What a mess you are!'

'You know, I'm not like that.'

'Like what?'

'What you said.'

'Prove it.'

The rain was misting over their faces and hair, and their faces were so close, and he kissed her on the mouth, lightly, just a little peck, he said. Only the kiss didn't end, and the rain streamed over their faces so there was as much paint on her face as on his and she looked funny too and they both laughed a lot. Everybody laughed a lot back in those days.

FALCO RAN all the way out the back doors and skidded up in the weeds outside his dad's offices. He was breathing hard. Dad was still there. He was leaning against the end of the window with his eyes shut. He was probably thinking about Tall Pines again, and Ariela. He wouldn't ever forget her or his promise. He said so.

Dad cranked the window open and Falco heard what Mr Anders was saying.

'The only other way,' Mr Anders said. 'It might not work.'

Bjorn opened his eyes and turned back. Mr Anders stood up at the end of the long table and shuffled papers like they were playing cards.

'If Tall Pines is no longer in your possession, it can't be seized in the court settlement.'

'So?'

'Give it away to someone. Someone you trust.'

'I could leave it to Falco.'

'How old is your son?'

'Eight years. Tall Pines really belonged to his mother. We spent our honeymoon there.'

'We could draw up the papers this afternoon. I must warn you, though.'

'What?'

'This mill and Tall Pines are the company's two principal assets. Hodgekiss would contest the agreement. A court could very easily overturn the deed and give Tall Pines to Hodgekiss anyway.'

'Then let's postdate the documents. If I gave the land to Falco the year his mother died, they couldn't say it was to avoid this bind.'

'That would be illegal.'

'Anders. We've tried a lot of things to save the mill. Well, maybe we lost. Maybe I have to go back to being a crew chief again, or even just a cutter. I don't care. But Tall Pines.'

'Well, but it wouldn't work. Land grants need to be recorded in the county offices. Still, what you could do is sign over the right to the trees to your son. That way Hodgekiss could claim the land but it would be useless to him. It will make him furious.'

He smiled to himself.

'His face will turn blue.'

'Purple!'

'Steam will blow out of his ears!'

They started laughing.

Falco left and wandered around the millworks. He threw stones out into the river. He chirped at the birds in the trees and tried to match their songs. The hours sped past. It was time to go back before he knew it.

THE BLACK CAR shot down the road. Falco watched his dad out of the corner of his eye. He was proud of him. He kept his promise. He couldn't be all bad. He wanted to say to him, 'Good Dad,' or something like that, only he didn't know how.

He looked out the window into the trees and thought about Tall Pines.

'Dad, do you remember my Mother?'

'Of course. You look just like her.'

'Her room is locked. I tried but I can't get in.'

His dad looked at him funny. Something went off in the back of his eyes. He was getting mad or something. What did he do now?

'Why do you have to look just like her? Don't you know what that does to me? To have to look at you?'

'Rayn has the keys, but if you asked her—'

'That room's been locked up for years, and you know why? You know why she died? She died because of you. You killed her, Falco.'

Falco stared at him. Dad looked serious. He looked like he meant what he said.

They didn't talk anymore the rest of the way.

## 6

I knew I had done something, something awful. I knew that since I was born.

RAYN WAS WAITING for them when they reached White Quill. The white dog warned her and she stood in the sidelight by the front door and watched the long black car glide up to a halt in the drive.

She watched the faces of the man and his ugly child. They didn't get out right away. The man sat with his hands on the wheel. For awhile the little boy didn't look at his father. At last he turned to the man, but the man was just staring straight ahead, not talking or moving. He didn't look mad or sorry, but something had made a rift between those two.

Finally the boy opened his door and went around the house into the woods.

Rayn smiled to herself and walked out to the car.

She opened the door and whispered to Bjorn. She knew the boy could see them through the trees and this gave the moment an extra piquancy of delight.

'Bjorn! Bjorn!'

Bjorn didn't answer. She let her wrist trace in the air in front of his face, and his nose wrinkled, smelling her scent, and he looked into her face. There was a lost look in his eyes. He looked like he was younger even than the boy. He whispered back,

'Rayn...'

She took his beard and kissed him on the mouth. She did it so as to make sure the boy could see her tongue twisting in his father's mouth like a coiling snake.

'Don't talk now, you know you never have to talk with me.'

She slid inside the car and straddled his lap and squirmed around. She did it all quite expertly even though the man's rolling eyes and lolling tongue disgusted her as it always had.

In the middle of it her head twisted all around on her neck and her eyes caught the little boy crouched behind a tree watching them. Her eyes glared red at him and he ran. He ran through the trees all the way to the cliff and the Juniper Tree.

The child's pet lamb butted him and he clutched and hugged him. Rayn tried to draw Bjorn's eyes away but he saw, and she felt his body wilting and she hated him for that weakness.

'I was mean to Falco,' said Bjorn.

'He hates me,' Rayn said in a little-girl voice, the one she used when she was strongest.

'Rayn! Falco doesn't hate you.'

'He does. He hates me. But it's all right. It doesn't matter.'

'I ought to make it up to him.'

'He's got to learn sometime. My Father always lied to me. Mr Money Bags. Do you like this?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Good. Close your eyes then, and let the little sir grow big his own way.'

She leaned in over him and blinded him with her breasts. From the corner of her eye she watched the boy get up and lean into the Juniper Tree and look out at the waves. 'That's right,' she said softly, 'be that way.'

'What was that, dear?'

'Never mind,' she answered. She stopped any more of his questions with her mouth and tongue.

AFTER AWHILE THEY were done in the car. When she got out, Rayn had to pull down and smooth out her dress. She helped Dad with his pants. They went around the stone path and in through the glass doors. Dad called to him, but Falco buried his face in the grass and Giorgio's side until they were in the kitchen.

Rayn struck a match and lit a hurricane lamp. Bjorn stood behind her in the doorway.

'Power failure?'

'Well now, I hope not, Mr Hansen.'

She set the lamp down. The orange light fell across the table spread with breads and wine and delicacies.

'What's this?'

'Just a little something for your appetites.'

'But the children—'

'I gave Greta her supper hours ago, and packed her off to bed. This is just for us.'

Bjorn lifted Rayn up and laid her across the counter. She stretched and sighed and he went on kissing her. He kissed her throat and down to where her blouse was buttoned. He kissed her wrists and fingers. He kissed her ankles and up to her knees and up higher until he was nosing her skirt over her hips.

Through the window, out in the dark and the rain she could see the boy sitting beside the grave-marker, spying on her as always. The pet lamb huddled against him. But Rayn lay back and closed her eyes and felt the rich man's mouth on her, and she guided his head silently until she was at last released from tension and care and the sweet, heavy bliss flowed sluggish through her. At least she let him believe that it did.

Later on she heard him go out into the great-room carrying the hurricane lamp and his case. He went to a closet in the back. On the closet floor was where the safe was.

Rayn arose and slipped into the hall. She took a glass of wine and draped his raincoat across her nakedness. She watched him take some papers in a red binder out of his case. He opened the binder and thumbed through the pages. She stepped out into view casually.

He shut the binder and stuffed it into the safe.

'Aren't you cold?' he asked.

'Come and warm me, Mr Money Bags.'

He crossed to her. Across the room the old ship's clock struck eight bells, and the dial read midnight.

'Do you know what day it is?'

'What day is it, Mr Money Bags?'

'Your birthday.'

'Just now?'

'Um-huh.'

Rayn slid down in his arms.

'And did Mr Money Bags make lots and lots of money for me today?'

'Naturally.'

'Good, I bought three bras today. And a thong teddy. Very bad. Very expensive.'

'Maybe we should have a sort of budget now. You know, just in case the economy gets worse.'

'Well now, I'm sure Mr Money Bags needn't worry over that.'

'We should start budgeting household expenses – groceries, that sort of thing. You know, Rayn, I have to talk to you about something. It's about—'

'What?'

He didn't answer right away. When he did his voice was changed. 'Would you like your present now?'

She nodded like a little girl. He led her to the closet. He opened the safe and took out a small wrapped box. Rayn opened it.

'Bjorn – no! It's too much.'

She took out of the box a necklace of diamonds strung on a web. He clasped the necklace behind her neck and guided her to the mirror and she let the raincoat hang open and looked at her reflection.

'Bjorn, now I have everything I ever wanted. If only my Mommie were alive.'

OUT IN THE YARD Falco turned away from the window and went back under the Juniper Tree. The rain started again. He looked down over the cliff.

Far below the waves smashed the rocks.

He blinked against the rain. He wasn't crying. Not really.

That night was a strange one. It was in the wind and the rain. Most of all it was in the boughs of the Juniper Tree. Falco felt it. He walked around the house in the rain all night long. He felt like he was locked out and he'd never get back in. The thought excited him but it frightened him too. The strange rain fell like little tears changing everything it touched. Even the white dog looked like he felt it.

INSIDE THE HOUSE Tang-Tang lumbered down to the closet door.

Rayn wrapped herself in the man's raincoat. He was asleep on the floor. She saw Tang-Tang at the half-open safe.

She went to the safe and started closing it when something caught her eye.

She took out the red binder with the papers assigning Tall Pines to the ugly little boy Falco.

Rayn replaced the binder and closed the safe, softly.

She looked down on her husband asleep on the floor.

Her face was cold and wet.

Upstairs in her crib Greta woke up crying. She must have felt it too.

Rayn took the lamp upstairs with her. She left Bjorn lying on the floor in the dark.

She put the lamp down and held Greta.

'Mama, Mama!'

'I'm here, little goose, tell Mama all about it. Was it a belly-ache? Was it a dinosaur?'

'It was a bird in the Juniper Tree.'

'Hush now, there's no cause to fear, the bird wasn't real.'

She stroked Greta's hair and kissed her. She rocked her in her arms.

'I'll look after you, Greta. I'll take care of my little goose. Does he think he can rob you, and give everything to that freak because he's a boy and you're a girl?'

She began to sing a little lullaby, making up the words as she went along.

'Mr Money Bags sat on a wall,

Mr Money Bags had a great fall,

and all the King's horses,

and all the King's men,

couldn't put Money Bags together again.'

## 7

It only got worse after that. Whenever you try to fix things they get worse. But nothing ever gets better by itself.

FALCO DIDN'T go back inside the house that night. He slept on the sand beneath the Juniper Tree. When morning came Rayn came unlocked the door and let him in without a word. Falco made his way upstairs to his room.

That Monday Dad went to work and Rayn fed Falco and Greta breakfast. Falco's oatmeal didn't taste right, though. He didn't want to eat it, but Rayn pinched the back of his neck with one hand and with the other she took her big wooden spoon and scooped up a glop of oatmeal and shoved it into his mouth. Half of it went onto his face. He barely had a chance to gulp before she smushed another big glop in between his teeth. After that he was ready to eat it and he tried telling her, but she just went on shoving it in until he was almost choking and he fell out of the chair.

She laughed. 'Well now little sir, how clumsy! And what a dirty smelly thing you are! Go outside now until the bus comes to take you to school.'

It was a cold morning. More storms were coming, blowing down off the water from far away where Rayn came from. Falco wished she'd go back there. But he didn't really want her to go. He just wanted her to be nice to him.

A wind tossed the branches of the Juniper Tree. Greta was playing with Giorgio. She was putting dandelions in the curls behind his ears.

Falco don't know why but that made him mad. He grabbed Giorgio away from Greta.

'Don't you play with him! He's mine! Mine!'

'Falco, don't!'

He pushed her to the ground and dragged Giorgio away under the Juniper Tree.

Greta got up and brushed off her skirt. She started to cry. She ran back to the house.

He watched her go out of the corner of his eye. He pulled hard on Giorgio's neck.

'Didn't I tell you? Didn't I? So don't start crying now!'

Rayn was watching through the window. At first Falco was scared she was going to come out and have to slap him. But she just went on watching him bending over Giorgio's neck and hugging him.

He went to school. In the afternoon he came back. He stayed outside as long as he could but it started raining real hard so even under the Juniper Tree got wet. Dad came home and hollered for him, and he had to go back inside.

Inside there were decorations everywhere. Over the hall was a string of paper cut into a sign:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAYN!

Falco made it. He cut the pages out of magazines to make the letters. He did it at school so it'd be a surprise. She took it from him and said, in a cold damp little voice,

'Thank you little sir.'

But it was like murder in her eyes. She was changed into her prettiest dress after cooking all day. The front of the dress was low and showed off her breasts underneath the web of diamonds. She smelled prettier than anything and her face and her lips were made up like a beautiful mask. But it was murder in her eyes and Falco knew it was all over now. She would hate him forever now. It was like war now and he didn't even know why.

He excused himself and went upstairs. He hung over the rail and looked back down.

Dad sat her down in the Morris chair and carried in a big birthday cake, candles burning, and he and Greta sang Happy Birthday to Rayn.

Greta wore a party hat and laughed and clapped, but Rayn covered with presents in her throne only smiled a cold smile.

'Now blow and make a wish.'

Falco wanted to go hide in his Mother's room. He tried the door but it was still locked. He stared at it.

He looked downstairs. He heard the echoes of the party from below. Even from upstairs he could smell the cake and ice cream.

Rayn blew hard into the fire and all the candles died. Greta and Bjorn cheered and clapped.

'And what did you wish for?'

'You'll learn later, little boy. If it comes true.'

'I'll drink to that.'

He downed his drink and went to the bottom of the stairs.

'Where is the boy? Falco! Come down if you want cake!'

'Oh, let him be, Bjorn. The boy simply has to learn that not everything will go his way. That is a lesson we all must learn.'

'Falco! Falco!'

Falco trudged down the stairs.

'At last! What's the matter with you? You'd think you didn't want cake at all.'

Rayn got up. 'Well now I know it's not proper to have the meal after the dessert, but now that our precious little sir has arrived, I'll bring out your special treat for you, and I made it even though my grocery allowance has been cut.'

Rayn went into the kitchen and brought back out a fresh roasted lamb.

The head of the lamb lay on the server alongside the meat, and it had two dandelions tucked behind its ears. It was Giorgio, slaughtered and roasted for Rayn's birthday feast.

GRETA'S EYES popped out.

'There now, what do you say to that, are you all hungry? Who's first to taste the meat?'

Falco tried to say something, but he couldn't.

Rayn looked on him with her sweetest smile.

'And what part of the carcass would the little sir like?'

He felt sick to his stomach. He ran out the terrace doors. Greta went after him.

'Falco! Come back! Rayn, that was a nasty trick!'

'Oh, Bjorn, don't bother, the child will get over it. We all have to make sacrifices, Bjorn, you told me so yourself. Didn't you?'

GRETA FOUND FALCO on the edge of the cliff. He was throwing stones into the sea.

'Falco! Falco, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!'

He didn't say a word. He didn't cry one tear. It was war now. The murder-eyes told him so. He threw another rock.

'That was a horrid thing to do to Giorgio, he was such a good lamb, I know you loved him very much.'

He turned to her ready to punch her, but Greta hugged him before he could do anything, squeezing as hard as her chubby little arms could hold. After that he couldn't stand it any more and he sobbed and bawled.

'It's all right, Falco, It's all right.'

'Greta, I'm sorry I was mean to you.'

He took Greta to the Juniper Tree and sat her down on the roots. She shook her head.

'No, I'm not allowed here, this is your place.'

'From now on you're allowed.'

They sat together on the Beak.

The sea birds soared and gathered on the Juniper Tree. Greta sniffled and sobbed and lay still. Falco smoothed her hair and petted her the way he petted Giorgio. His tears had stopped a long time since. He just sat quiet and looked out to sea.

But in his heart he was thinking, That's Rayn's birthday and mine comes next. It will happen before then.

What would happen?

## 8

The part about Rayn and what went on in her head, the Juniper Tree told me later on. I didn't make it up.

FALCO'S DREAD was well founded. Something in Rayn had indeed changed. She didn't turn into something else. She turned more into herself, and that was the worst thing that could have happened for Falco's sake.

Rayn lived on the brink of an abyss. All her life it seemed she walked there. On one side was the kind of life most people have, the kind they call 'good' or 'safe.' On the other side was the abyss like a drop into something deep and dark and awful. So why didn't she just turn toward the safe side and get back from the brink? Maybe because over the brink, down in the dark, she could hear voices. The voices were always whispering to her and telling her to do stuff. Mostly they told her, 'Come down here! This is what you want!' That sort of thing.

A long time ago something happened to her. She never thought about it now but it was always there. The voices that whispered to her out of the deep knew all about what happened but Rayn didn't know it at all, at least not if you talked to her about it or something. If you asked her she would only tell you that her father was a bad man and her Mommie was a saint, and that she always loved her Mommie and hated her father. She was always saying stuff like that to Bjorn. Hardly a day went by, she didn't let something drop about how mean her father was, how much she loved her Mommie.

But that wasn't what the voices knew. Something happened between Rayn and her father, and on account of that her mother died. That's what the voices told. Rayn's Mommie got sick and she died, and Rayn's father was mean, and something was going on between Rayn and her father. But the rest of it, the how and why, depended on the way you wanted to look at it. Rayn had her way and the voices had theirs, and they were always trying to twist her into believing them.

And what came out of it was that Rayn had to make herself pretty so that men who were older got to liking her, so they couldn't help themselves. She did a good job of it too. But then as soon as they did start to like her, and want her, and need her real bad, she started to not like them any more, if she ever really did like them, but probably it was all an act anyway. She listened to the voices coming from over the edge and if one of the old men had money she went for him more, and she hated him more than ever and did mean things to him and laughed when his heart broke and he started acting crazy. That was what really got her excited, when the men's hearts broke and they started bawling and begging, and some even threatened her, and they were big men but they never got to go through with any of their big words. That's what Tang-Tang was for.

Falco used to think it was just him. But Bjorn wasn't the first one Rayn smiled and winked and wiggled at. Falco couldn't even guess how many others there were. Hundreds maybe, who knows? But as soon as the mess was about to burst, Rayn got away quick. She had traveled half way around the world and had moved from city to city and from man to man.

And then she sat on a stone over the waves and combed her hair and played with Tang-Tang until Bjorn Hansen laid eyes on her. Right off she had her way with him. She moved into the house and even got him to marry her, and before the voices could drive her on to worse things, she had Greta.

Having Greta made the voices go away. They got quiet and sank down into the darkness like a fire burning low down to the last embers. But a fire lasts longer than the flames. Deep under the ashes the coals stay hot a long time, and if fresh wood comes, the fire will break out all over again.

Having Greta made Rayn think of her Mommie, and she began to act like she was her Mommie all over again, and a good woman, a pure woman, and a saint. But all the same she went on playing her games. She couldn't help it. It was the only way she knew.

She played Mommie and wifey and went shopping. She walked around the house and the woods, counting the acres, all hers, all hers.

But something else was in her way. There was the dead wife's child.

In the beginning Rayn didn't think too much about him, but as time went on she thought about the future, in case something happened to Money Bags. It was a little thought way in the back of her head. The voices whispered really soft and quiet. After all it looked like there was plenty to go around, and plenty of time to get it.

And then she saw the document in the safe. She found the other papers too, about Hodgekiss and the money Hansen owed and the mortgage on the house.

Mr Moneybags, he didn't have so much to fill his bags anymore.

That was the fresh wood that came piling up on top of the ashes where the hot old coals were waiting.

All that night after she found out, Rayn didn't sleep a wink. She walked around the house like a ghost. She took off her clothes and went out into the woods naked. It didn't seem cold to her at all because on the inside she was burning, burning, burning.

She went down the long way at the wood's end to the shore and swam in the ice cold water, and the waves hissed and sizzled into steam around her where she swam, and the birds flew away, and even the seals and the fish kept away from her.

She left the rocks and climbed back up the path. Steam like fog drifted behind her in the starlight. She must have smelled like incense, all smoky and wild even in the woods.

She slipped back inside the house and went up to her room. She closed the door behind her and locked it. She went into her closet full of all her pretty dresses. She pulled one down and put it on. She tore it off and tried another. She tore that one off too. Nothing could please her. Nothing could make her happy.

Mr Moneybags, he didn't have so much to fill his bags anymore.

The voices were louder now. She couldn't hear anything else. Only the voices telling her things. Bad things, terrible things, things nobody should have to hear.

She took a bath in fire-hot water. Not even that could scald her now, not the way she was. She got out after a couple hours and dried herself and oiled herself up with perfume and lotions, all her stuff.

It was like she was trying to keep busy, to keep from hearing what the voices said. But all the while they went on talking. They said things over and over again and they wouldn't stop. She couldn't block them out forever. Nobody could.

She combed and brushed her hair. She put on makeup. She made herself beautiful for her birthday. But there was nothing she could do about her eyes. Deep in her eyes there was only murder.

Then dawn came and she went about her day.

IT WAS TUESDAY before Thanksgiving. That was the date of that terrible day. The weather made it worse. The weather was clear and dry and uncommonly warm. At the mill, Mary-Louise was stuffing papers into a cardboard box on her desk. Anders appeared at the door.

'Hello, Arne. Bjorn's out.'

'Leaving, Mary-Louise?'

'I have a sister in South Bend. I think I'll get away from this part of the country for a few lifetimes.'

'When Bjorn comes in, would you—'

'—No. He only left half an hour ago, and I don't think he'll be back today. You better tell him yourself, Arne.'

'All right. I know it's been hard on you.'

'Arne – you'll probably find him at home, if it's that important. I can't imagine where else he'd go. What have you got, anyway?'

'The bankruptcy papers.'

'Go to his home.'

IN WHITE QUILL Rayn was opening her Trunk. It was early afternoon and the children had come home from school early for the holiday. Rayn had settled down a bit but the fury and fire that had blazed through her hadn't wholly gone. Her face was still pinched and mad and ugly. She pulled out old photographs of her father and mother, bundles of letters, and spiced cured apples. She scattered them across the floor. She paced about the room. She heard the voices everywhere. She heard them in the floor boards and the lamp and the bedclothes and the closet. She heard them through the window. She stood before the window and pressed her hands against the glass.

Through the glass far below she watched the little boy playing on the lawn.

'Mama, can I have a goodie?'

Rayn started. She whirled about.

Greta was standing in the doorway trailing one of her dinosaur dolls. Rayn frowned. She squatted down and began gathering back the things she had scattered on the floor. And the voices went on chattering.

'I'm sorry, gooseling, what did you say?'

'Can I have a goodie, please?'

'Oh! Of course you can, come to Mommie's Trunk.' She led Greta to the Trunk but she never looked away from the boy playing out in the lawn.

'Oh, yes!' Greta clapped her hands and leaned against the Trunk. It was taller than she was. She raised her arms and pushed up against the lid. 'It's too heavy,' she said.

'What did you say, gooseling? I couldn't hear, it's so loud in here.' Rayn's eyes ran across the ceiling. It seemed so low to her, pressing down, the spackles in the plaster shaping little mouths that grinned and whispered.

'It's heavy, Mama.'

'Of course it is.' Rayn knelt before the Trunk and raised the lid.

Greta went up on tiptoes and tried to look inside. 'Mmm, smells so good,' she said.

Rayn reached into the Trunk. Inside were bottles and sachets and lacy naughty things and boxes wrapped and tied with ribbons and bows. There were chocolates and hard candies lurking in the underthings.

'What shall I give you, what shall you have,' Rayn asked. Greta answered but Rayn shook her head. 'I'm sorry, darling, I can't hear you,' she said. She shook her head and frowned. 'Why must you all talk at once? No, I can't do that. What can I do? What must I do?' She kept muttering and asking questions of that sort.

Greta looked up at her mother. She let go of the Trunk and stepped back. 'Mama, don't scare me,' she said.

'Should it be this? No, this? Or... Ah! An apple, gooseling, wouldn't you like an apple?'

Rayn drew out a dried spiced apple and held it under her daughter's nose. Greta closed her eyes and breathed in the wonderful odors of cinnamon and cardamom and cloves and sugar dripping with molasses.

'Oh, Mama, how nice.' Greta held the apple up and stared at it.

Rayn was putting the apples back in their bag. She had to use both hands. She bumped against the Trunk and the lid swung down and caught one apple on the edge – _bang!_

Greta jumped and Rayn started.

'I'm sorry, gooseling.' She shook her head and squeezed her temple. 'What was it you said?'

She was staring at a bit of apple that lay on the floor. The lid of the Trunk had sliced it in half as clean as a butcher's cleaver.

'I said, doesn't brother get one?'

Rayn lifted the lid. She slid her thumb along the edge. It was so sharp. In all the years she had possessed the Trunk she had believed she had wormed her way deep into its every secret. Here was a new one, like an unknown continent. She let it fall again. _Bang!_

Greta tugged on her mother's blouse. 'Mama,' she said.

Rayn twisted her torso and her head swiveled about on her neck and glared down on her daughter. The look in those eyes made Greta's hair stand up.

'Mama – don't!'

Rayn snatched the apple out of Greta's hands.

'Yes,' she said, 'brother gets one too. You asked for it. Whatever happens now, you asked for it, little goose. Go call him up and he shall pick one out, whichever one he wants.'

'But, Mama, my apple.'

'Brother eats first. What are you waiting for, silly goose, go fetch him, now!'

GRETA WENT OUT on the lawn. Falco was playing under the Juniper Tree with his cardboard birds.

'Falco, what are you doing?'

'Flying.' Falco lifted a cutout pasted with a model's face over its head.

Greta looked back up at the house. The window to her Mama's room was open now. Through it came a sound like _bang._

'What was that sound?' asked Falco.

'What sound?' Greta asked.

'That. It sounds bad...'

Rayn's head showed in the window.

'Little sir! Come inside, I need you now.'

He looked at his birds.

'I'll look after them, Falco. Go on up, Mama has a treat for you.'

He went to the house. Greta watched him go. She picked up one of the bird-women and thought of the cinnamon smell.

FALCO WENT UP the stairs. He felt a sort of pressure growing with every step. It got harder and harder to push through. At last he struggled to the top.

Rayn stood in the doorway to her room. The light from outside shone all around her body. She was so pretty. She beamed down on him.

'Are you hungry, little sir?'

'No.' Something made him say that. Something warned him. Not hard enough!

'Wouldn't you like a snack?'

'No.'

'Are you cross with me, little sir? Don't be cross, I couldn't bear it.' She lowered herself, leaning against the doorjamb. Her face was sad and her red lips pouted. She beckoned him closer. 'You want me to like you, don't you? Don't you want me to like you?'

He nodded. He'd never understand her. Was the war over, then? She bent forward and kissed him on the mouth.

'All right, then. Would you like one of my apples? A special apple all the way from Norway? Yes? Come on!'

She began to lead him in.

He pulled back.

'I'm not supposed to go in there.'

'Who said?'

'You said.'

She smiled and leaned down so close that her hair with its rich smoky scent brushed across his face and her red lips kissed his ear and whispered, so softly, 'Well now. If I said it, I can unsay it.'

She pulled back and smiled but there were red tears in her eyes now. She took him by the hand.

'Come, Falco.'

She took him deep inside.

## 9

It was funny when it happened. I guess I didn't mind it much.

BJORN HADN'T GONE HOME that lunchtime, even though he meant to. He got in his car and drove out from the mill to the road and stopped and flicked his turn signal to go to the right and home. But when the car pulled onto the road a few moments later, it turned not right but left. It drove up country, into the high woods. There it turned off the main road onto a logging trail and bumped and jostled up the rutted tracks. The tires dug at the clotted mud and splashed it on the sides.

Deep beneath the trees he parked the car. He got out and shut the door. He stood there in his suit and rain coat and looked at the pines that towered overhead. He let his head lean back and his nostrils widened and deepened and drew in the fresh rain-wet smells.

For a few minutes he stood there. His eyes were closed. Little by little his face let go. When he opened his eyes there was something new and peaceful in them. He took off his raincoat and his jacket and tie, he took off his shirt, undershirt, slacks, shoes, socks, underwear. He folded them up neatly and laid them on the back seat of the car.

He stood naked in the breeze. The breeze shook loose some raindrops from the high reaches of the pines and the drops spattered down on the car and on his face and his chest and back. He turned around and took it all in. Birds were singing on every side. He looked down at himself, pale and pink like a hairless hog in the wild. He slapped his belly where the fat was coming, not like the old days when he came here every day, before he bought the mill.

In the car trunk an old gym bag was shoved behind the spare tire. Inside the bag were rolled a heavy woolen shirt, frayed smooth, a knitted undershirt and drawers, and tough old jeans patched at the knee.

He put on the clothes. At the bottom of the bag he found a battered suede jacket and a wool cap. He put them on too and from deeper in the trunk he drew forth a stout logging axe and whetstone. The axe was guarded by a leather case over the axe-head and this too was battered and worn. Bjorn hefted the axe, slammed the trunk shut, and took off up a narrow trail. He strode swiftly with long, ground-eating steps, up and down the hills between the trees.

He came to a grove where several stumps stood in a ring, and the warm, low-falling sunlight slanted down into a hollow in between.

Bjorn walked about the hollow, looking at the trees. He flexed his arms and shoulders. He leaned on a stump and unsnapped the axe cover. He honed the blade while he squinted up at the trees, judging them, measuring them and sighting the angle of their lean.

He left the stump and walked up to one of the trees. He walked all the way around it, staring up at it. He stopped once or twice, looking at it, leaning his head and looking at the angle of the trunk and the bunches of its branches high above.

He finished circling the tree, shook his head, and went to another tree. He repeated the ritual. This one he walked around twice and nodded his head. He took the axe and addressed the trunk. Huge wood chips flew about his feet. He chopped a grinning mouth of wood from the trunk, then went to the other side and with half a dozen brutal strokes cut it through. The tree began to topple and half way down it snapped free of the trunk and crashed into the earth.

IN RAYN'S ROOM it was quiet and warm and still. The sea-sounds drifted through the lace curtains in a sleepy murmur. Falco stared at the salmon colored satin sheets, the expensive hosiery, the underthings draped over the back of the chair. Rayn went before him and drew him on.

'Don't gawk, silly boy, come on.'

Against the far corner, under a silk chemise and some pairs of lace briefs, peeked the black corners of the Trunk. The Trunk was heavy oak with painted panels and iron corners. It was as tall as he was.

She guided his hand to the latch.

'Go on – touch it.'

'It's heavy—'

Rayn's fingers slipped from his. Her hand lifted the lid.

'There. Doesn't it smell pretty? The fragrance is very rare, very expensive. My Mommie had it imported from Turkey. Careful!'

He held up his hand. Across two fingers a cut was bleeding.

'You must be careful what you touch, little sir, the lid is deadly sharp. Go on, you can look. Rayn says.'

He reached in and pulled out a green glass bottle.

'What's in here?'

'No, put that away, that's not for you. You want an apple. Go on, they're in that bag at the back, take any one you like.'

OUTSIDE ON THE other side of the house, a car drove down the gravel through the woods. The car parked under the wooden hanging sign with the painted gull's feather for White Quill. Mr Anders stepped out.

'Bjorn? Anybody home?' he called.

He walked up to the door. His shoes crunched on the gravel. He stepped onto the threshold and rang the bell.

FALCO DREW BACK out of the dark heady mystery of Rayn's Trunk.

'The doorbell—'

She shuddered with impatience. 'Oh, just a salesman, have your apple first.' She smiled and her warm hand pressed against his neck, bringing him closer.

He looked back inside. He stood on tiptoes and craned his neck over the lip of the chest. He glanced back up to her.

At the last second her face lost its smile. It crumpled up with hatred.

She took the lid of the chest with both hands and slammed it down with all her strength.

Bang!

THE SOUND OF the lid slamming home echoed in the room like a thunderclap. In its wake a dreamy, cool quiet followed. Rayn leaned back and closed her eyes and sighed. The voices were quiet. At last they were still. Then she felt something touch against her calf and she looked back down.

The body jerked and twitched between her legs. It went on twitching. She had to press down on it to make it stop.

'Shhh,' she whispered. 'Shhh.'

She watched with a look of intense satisfaction as she held her hands up to her face, sniffing at the blood dripping from her fingers.

OUTSIDE, MR ANDERS stepped back from the door out onto the drive and looked up at the house.

'Hey! Anybody home?'

The shout reached around the house and stole in through the lace curtains.

Rayn stiffened and Falco's body slipped down off her lap onto the floor, spouting blood.

Rayn pressed against the wall. Again the voice reached her and she knew it.

She shook her head and whispered, 'Go away, go away you damned busybody lawyer!'

Mr Anders walked around back of the house. He found Greta holding one of Falco's bird-women cutouts.

'Hello, Greta.'

'Hello.'

'Is Papa home? Or Mama?'

Rayn listened to their voices through the window where the cold air poured toward her. She reached out toward the body but her fingers wouldn't touch it now and she shrank against the wall.

'You smirking little brat, is this how you get your revenge?'

Greta shook her head. She showed the man the bird-woman.

He smiled. 'Yes, I see. Very good. Well, when Papa comes home, will you give him these? It's important.'

Greta took the papers and looked at them. Mr Anders patted her head, clicked his briefcase shut, and walked back around to his car.

He got into the car and drove away.

GRETA RAN AROUND the lawn. She flew the bird-woman in her hand the way she had seen Falco do it.

'Greta! Gooseling, where are you?'

Greta stopped. Her Mama's voice came calling again, a terrible croak failing to sound normal and bright:

'Greta! Come inside, now, will you please?'

Greta thought about that.

'Come in!'

'All right.'

She went up the porch steps and dropped the bird and papers outside the door.

Inside she found Falco sitting in the Morris chair for the Thanksgiving King. He held a spiced apple in his hand and he wore a red ribbon tied around his throat.

'Falco, can I have a bite of your apple?'

'Greta! Come into the kitchen, will you, goose?'

Greta went into the kitchen.

Her Mama was bent over the counter, slicing apples in a pie. She didn't look back.

'What's wrong, Gooseling?'

'Brother has an apple and I asked him for a piece, but he wouldn't answer me.'

'Oh?' Still Mama wouldn't look round. Still her voice sounded awful. 'Well now. I tell you what. Ask him again, and if he doesn't answer this time, if he doesn't answer... you just reach up and give his nose a great big pinch, that will show him. You'll see, it's a funny game. My brothers and I played it all the time.'

'Okay.'

Greta walked back into the great-room.

She walked closer and closer to Falco on the chair.

She stopped.

'Falco, give me some of your apple?'

But Falco still wouldn't answer. Greta grinned and gave his nose a great big pinch.

And Falco's head twisted all around on his neck and tumbled forward on the floor and rolled a little and stopped.

Greta froze. It was as if icicles grew up and down in her legs and her arms and into her heart.

Falco's head stared up at her from the floor.

IN THE KITCHEN Rayn stabbed three vents in the pie.

'Mama! Mama!'

'Yes, darling?'

Rayn wiped her hands and went out into the great-room.

Greta tackled Rayn's apron and buried her face in it.

'Goose, what's the matter?'

'I did what you said – and his head – his head—'

'Well, never mind that, what are we going to do when Papa gets home?'

'Falco – I didn't mean it – I didn't—'

'That won't matter to the police, Greta. If they find out, do you know what they'll do? They'll lock you up in a dark jail cell for the rest of your life.'

'No... Please, Mama...'

'Well now. Maybe I have an idea.'

Mama pulled the body off the chair and started to drag it across the floor.

'Greta, get the head, will you dear?'

IN THE HIGH WOODS, Bjorn buried the axe blade in the fallen trunk and paused. His face was bathed in sweat. He took off the jacket and wiped his shirt sleeve across his brow and eyes. Down the slope behind the hollow he found a stream and he leaned out on a rock in the shallows on his belly. He ducked his face under and drank like an animal, so that when he lifted his head back out his beard and hair hung from his head streaming water, and he shook his head so the water flew, and he roared with laughter.

He hiked back to the hollow, sized up another tree, and attacked it. Midway through he stripped his shirt and undershirt, and his naked upper torso gleamed with sweat, bristling with short reddish hair all over his shoulders chest and arms.

He chopped down nine trees that day. When at last night fell he had to give over and lay back against the car, holding the axe before him in trembling arms, gasping, spitting cotton, sweat pouring down his chest.

THE SAME DARKNESS fell on White Quill, and the horror rested for a spell. Greta sat in the front window-seat. She swung her legs and clutched her stuffed dinosaur Boney tight against her tummy.

Her Mama had bathed her and washed out her hair. She had sprinkled perfume over her. She had combed out her hair and tied it with ribbons, and dressed her in her prettiest dress with clean underwear and brand-new white socks and her shiny shoes. But under the perfume Greta still smelled the smell of Falco's blood.

She wrung her hands and leaned down to kiss Boney.

But her eyes never left the window. She stared out the window, and her legs kicked faster, faster. At last the lights shone through the trees.

'Mama, Papa's here!'

'All right, goose, I'm coming. Go to table and take your place.'

Greta jumped down and ran to the dining table. She climbed into her chair with Boney in her lap.

She started swinging her legs again.

Papa entered and dropped his case on the chair by the back door. He looked funny. He wasn't wearing his clothes like always. Instead he wore clothes like one of the men from his work. And his hair was bristly and ragged and wild.

'Darling, I'm home!' His voice boomed in the hall and Greta jumped.

Mama gave him a drink just like always. Greta squirmed in her chair and kicked her legs.

'Huh! What's that smell?'

'Oh, new cleansers. "Mighty powerful – as seen on TV!" Come eat, I made something special, and Greta helped.' Mama giggled.

'Did Arne come by? He said he'd drop off some papers.'

'Your lawyer? I didn't see him.'

She went into the kitchen. Papa sat down and tucked in his napkin.

'Greta, are you crying? What happened? Isn't Falco eating tonight?'

Mama emerged from the kitchen with the soup-vat. Something scratched at the back door and Greta snapped her head round at it.

'Oh, it's Tang-Tang. Goose, be a dear and let him in.'

Greta climbed down out of her chair and went to the back door. Tang-Tang came in with the cardboard bird-woman in his jaws. Behind him the papers fluttered in the wind. Greta watched them fly.

Behind her she heard Mama say,

'The truth is, Falco is spending the night at a friend's house. You don't mind?'

'No, of course not. I didn't know he had any friends. He'll be back for Thanksgiving, won't he?'

Greta walked back to the table. Mama was holding out the ladle with a pot-holder under it to catch any drippings, and Papa was leaning over it to taste the soup.

'Well now, I would hope so. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without our little sir, would it?'

Greta climbed back into her chair. She stared at Papa, and his face bending in above the ladle, and his lips sipping the soup.

Greta was staring with all her eyes. Her mouth was hanging open. She couldn't believe it. Mama smiled at her and winked.

Papa leaned back and cleared his throat. It came out like a growl.

'Oh!' he said. 'My that's tasty!'

His beard sprouted out all shaggy and wild. It covered his chest down to the table. Mama filled his bowl and he hunched forward over it. His face hung over the bowl and the steam and savor from the soup, the horrible soup, wavered before his eyes and left little droplets on his huge rough eyebrows. His hair hung down his brow and covered the rest of his head, only at the sides in back the tufts of his ears popped up, brown and quivering. He brought the soup spoon up before his lips and opened his mouth wide, like a barrel filled with great jagged teeth. Greta could see deep into his mouth all the way to the back, where fleshy folds, red and raw, trembled greedily. Then the hairy lips swallowed the end of the spoon and the mouth vanished behind the beard. The big paw tugged on the little spoon-handle. The unseen mouth tugged back and the bristles flexed. When the bowl of the spoon broke free, it made sucking sounds like when Greta pulled her bootie out of some mud that wouldn't let go.

'Ahhhh.' The huge thing growled in satisfaction. Then the shoulders bunched and the paw came down again, and another brimming spoonful went into the cavernous mouth.

'More, give me more!' His fingers, dirty and rough with long nails like claws, tore hunks out of the bread and stuffed them into his mouth. His spoon scraped the bottom of his bowl and he held it up for more. He burped, _burrr-aowp!_ and sniffed and snuffed over the soup. He set down the bowl again and started shoving spoonfuls into his mouth.

'Like it?' asked Mama.

'Delicious, extraordinary! Can I have a larger bowl? I'm ravenous tonight.'

'Of course.'

Rayn started filling him a huge bowl.

'I hear the ham-bones, didn't you strain it yet? Well, Tang-Tang, you'll have a treat tonight too!'

Greta looked away. But she still heard her Papa say in his big happy voice, 'Umf! I'm still hungry, Rayn, may I have another bowl?'

'Darling, you can eat all the soup yourself, Greta and I don't mind, it will mean more room for pie for us.'

'You can have the pie, but this soup is mine, I simply must eat it all!'

Greta looked back.

Papa had grown more monstrous. He growled and tore his bread apart. At last he lifted the huge bowl above his face and poured the soup into his dark gaping maw, and the soup streamed like blood down his beard. He shook the glasses and the table. He wiped his beard with his sleeve, belched again and laughed, loudly, for no reason. From under the table Tang-Tang growled. The thing in Papa's chair banged its paws on the table and growled back even louder, until Tang-Tang whimpered and curled up under Greta's chair. Bjorn barked a laugh, reached deep into his bowl and scattered the bones under the table.

Greta watched Tang-Tang stretch out his neck toward them. She slid down and pushed the dog's muzzle back.

She put Boney in her chair and gathered up the bones.

Above the table she heard Papa say, 'Is that all? What a meal! I'm stuffed, just stuffed.'

Greta squeezed out from under the table.

'Greta! Gooseling! Where are you off to?'

But Greta ran across the room. The back door loomed in front of her and she opened it and dashed out.

SHE FELL TO her knees beneath the Juniper Tree. She laid the napkin open. A little pile bones huddled in it, and that was all that was left of Falco.

The Juniper Tree stood against the dark sky. From its branches came the song of a bird.

'I'm sorry, Falco. But I'll put you back. I'll put you back with your mother.'

She scratched a hole by the grave. She wiped her nose, leaving dirt-tracks. Her party dress was getting dirty too.

She pushed the bones in the napkin into the hole and filled it in with dirt. All the while she whispered his name.

'Falco, Falco, Falco...'

THAT NIGHT AS always the Juniper Tree stood guard between the Beak and White Quill.

The dinner table was strewn with plates and vessels of food and the great-room was empty. There was a pale flash through the window and far-off thunder from outside. A pallid shape moved from behind the Morris chair. Tang-Tang lumbered to the picture window and stood looking out, wagging his tail.

The lightning burned on Tang-Tang's face at the window. He bared his teeth and growled.

The rain poured on the muddy patch, and a stream of muddy water flowed out of the grave, with dark threads of something mixed in it. It was blood, and the stream ran past the juniper roots and out over a notch down the stone face of the cliff.

Up in her room Greta lay in her crib, crying in the dark. Lightning flashed. She couldn't sleep. Then she slept but woke up from a dream.

She climbed out of her crib, out the door, down the stairs and out the door.

She toddled across the lawn in the rain to the Juniper Tree. She stood looking up at it. She was trying to remember the dream she had before she woke up. Then she found a tiny black birdie in the branch. His wing was caught.

Greta freed his wing and soothed his feathers.

'There, Falco,' she said. 'That's better.'

She turned and went back to bed.

## 10

Where did I go? What happened there? I can't tell you much.

NOW YOU MUST remember back to Falco and to the last moments of his life.

When Rayn opened her Trunk and let him peek inside, for a moment, he had a taste of paradise.

He leaned against the side of the Trunk and dangled his head over the edge. It kind of scratched his throat but he didn't even notice. He stretched his neck forward and thrust his head inside.

Inside the Trunk were Rayn's most secret private things. Things made out of silk and lace, and old books from faraway lands, and little balls of scents and herbs, and chocolates and candies and the spiced dry apples that were her favorite, the things he never got to taste. His head was buzzing with the smells all rising up together like smoke from a fire where a hundred different woods are burning. He saw things in there he only dreamed about, and other things he never even guessed. It was like a flower opening up and breathing out its smells and he was like a bee buzzing around.

Then darkness filled it. What happened next came so fast he could hardly keep track of it all. It came in tiny glimpses. First the darkness filled the trunk. Then he started to turn his head to see what was up. He could remember Rayn's face all crumpled up with hate and a rush of air on the back of his neck and the creak of the hinges of the Trunk. He had a glimpse of the black triangle of the lid coming down.

Then pain splashed over the dark in white and red. It was like it was blinding him and shouting in his ears. It was the worst pain he ever felt.

Then it was gone.

He didn't know what happened next, it wasn't all that clear. He couldn't see anything. He could hear a sort of whisper or moan like a low wind in the branches, it rose and fell. It was kind of like people talking downstairs and he knew they were saying something only he couldn't make out any of the words or the voices too good. There was a funny taste in his mouth, in the back of his throat if he had had a throat, which he didn't – he didn't think. It was like when you get a nosebleed and the blood drips down the back of your throat and starts drying up there, kind of like that. He felt a little cold.

For a while he must've hung around his body where it was, where Rayn and Greta dragged it. They must've dragged it into the hall and down the stairs _bump bump bump,_ only it didn't hurt him. He thought she took him in the kitchen. She took off all his clothes but he didn't know what happened to them. Her hands were all over his body, touching and feeling. She never even let him sit in her lap before.

He got a headache when she took the hammer to his head. She had to beat on it a long time until the bones were in bits as small as she wanted.

After that there was the fire under the soup-vat and the fog got warm. It turned into smoke full of the smell of her spices and herbs, all the good things that only Rayn knew about. He kind of floated up higher. It was like he was spreading out like mist when the sun comes up.

He heard something back there. He was leaving and going away. There was a light far off in the dark, it wasn't any ordinary kind of light because he still couldn't see anything, only he had a sense of it like he could feel where it was coming from. He went toward it. He was leaving and going away. Then he heard something back there.

It was his Mother's Song.

Dinner must have been over then. His dad had eaten him and cleaned up his bowl with the bread and licked up the last drop of gravy. Greta must have gathered his bone-bits in her napkin and taken them outside. That's where he heard his Mother's Song, outside in the yard under the Juniper Tree. If Greta hadn't taken his bone-bits out there he never would've heard the song.

She was singing it. His Mother, that is, Ariela, his dad's little witch.

'Falco, Falco, veni, veni qua...'

She was singing it and calling him and he had to come back. If he had had eyes he would've been crying. Every part of him scrunched up.

'Mom? Mom?'

'Falco, caro, veni.'

He felt something. It was like her hand took his hand. Her hand was warm and soft and small. It was so tender. It was everything he never had before. She took his hand and drew him on.

They were outside the house somewhere. The buzzing that he heard was like the sound of the waves under the cliff. She must have pulled him closer to where she was in the ground under the marker beneath the Juniper Tree.

The Juniper Tree was there all right.

For the first time he was aware of him, really aware. He always had the feeling like the Juniper Tree was more than just a tree. There was always something bigger, kind of like a ghost or shadow hanging over the branches. Now he heard his voice.

'Hello, Falco,' it said.

The voice was deep and old. Some gruff but strong.

'Hello,' he answered. Then, 'No, Mom, don't—'

Her hand was letting go. He tried to grip harder because he didn't want to let her go. It was like trying to grab onto a breeze.

'Falco, go with the Juniper Tree, he will help you now. Falco, te adoro. Ti ricordi, Falco. Sventola, Falco, sventola.'

Her voice drifted off. She went back under the roots of the Juniper Tree and left him. He tried to follow but he couldn't get past the big ball of roots just under the ground.

He was alone again.

This time it was worse. When she left him before he was only a baby and he didn't know anything. He thought he could remember that, and it wasn't as tough as this, but maybe he only thought he could remember, maybe all he knew was what the Juniper Tree told him.

For a while he was just hanging there, half in the ground and half out, nowhere really, in darkness without eyes to see. Then he started to hear the Tree's voice again. He was whispering and muttering in his raspy deep voice. It went on a long time. It was like he was telling out an old poem that didn't have an end.

The Juniper Tree told him everything then. He told him about the King Bear and his little witch, and the stone bowl with the apple and the snow. He told him when Giorgio came and how his Mother wanted him so much, she went through all that pain to bring him into the world.

He told him about when his Mother died because she was so happy. He told him about how his dad almost died because he was so sad. He told him all about Rayn and the voices that talked in her head and practically screamed her ears out when she slammed the lid of her Trunk down and cut off his head.

The Juniper Tree went on mumbling and grumbling and telling him everything. All night long he listened. He grew up that night. He learned a lot about Rayn and his Dad but he learned a lot more about him, about Falco. Before that night was over he could look back on Falco and what he'd been like, and he knew now he was somebody else. Falco was him and he wasn't, not any more. Or maybe he should say he wasn't Falco.

Something else happened in the night. He grew back together again.

Only he was different now.

The last thing he remembered, the Juniper Tree changed his song. The old tree-voice got a little softer and started singing Ariela's Song, with new words to sing with it. The Juniper Tree sang the words over and over and he sang with the Tree, half asleep, until he knew the words backward and forward.

The song was still in his head when he woke up.

He stretched and cocked his head. His shoulders felt different. His head, legs, everything felt different.

He opened his eyes and looked out through the juniper branches. He watched the mists creep back from the house in the light before dawn.

The house sat quietly in the calm early hour. The early dawn was gray and misty. The sky quivered and the wind off the water held its breath. Even the waves were small and slow. It was as though the world was waiting for something to take place.

From his branch in the Juniper Tree the black bird raised his head and scrawed.

## 11

People usually act sorry when somebody dies, but they never mean it.

THE SOUND of the black bird's croak woke Greta. She climbed out of her crib and waded through the toys and dolls that filled her room. She stood in the door and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

Across the hall her Mama's door was shut. Most mornings Greta wouldn't even blink before she'd push the door open and climb into bed with Mama and pull on her hair and ask for breakfast, and usually Papa would be in there too, and Tang-Tang of course, whining to go out.

But this morning Greta shied away from her Mama's door. She was afraid of her Mama after yesterday.

Then she saw the door to the Locked Room hung partway open.

The door to the Locked Room was never open. Greta had never even seen inside the Locked Room. Sometimes she had nightmares about it from the things her Mama had told her.

She dragged along a dinosaur skeleton into the hall. She went up to the Locked Room and peered inside.

In the gray light the room looked like an ordinary room. There was a big bed and next to it a rocking chair. Somebody was hunched over in the rocking chair but he wasn't moving.

Greta poked her head in a little farther. The thing in the rocking chair looked like her Papa. It didn't look like the monster that had eaten all the soup the night before. She wondered if her Papa had been hiding up in the Locked Room last night, because he was afraid of the monster too. All at once she felt so lonely that she went into the Locked Room and stared up at the shape in the rocking chair.

It did look like Papa. He sat in the rocking chair staring at the empty bed. His big hands lay on the chair arms. His back bent forward and his head hung down. His eyes looked tired and empty and sad.

Greta tugged on his sleeve.

'Papa? Papa. Wake up.'

The thing stirred. He turned his head a little. His eyes blinked. 'Uh... what?'

'Take me someplace?'

He seemed to think this over. 'Where do you want to go?'

'Far away.'

'All right... Yes. Let's get Mama and go to Tall Pines to the cabin. You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

Greta looked down and pulled on the cord to the dinosaur. She shook her head. 'No. Not Mama. Only me.'

Bjorn reached down and lifted Greta up and set her in his lap. He smoothed her hair. Greta shifted around and looked into his face. His eyes were big and soft.

'I haven't been much of a father to you kids, have I?'

He buried her in his huge arms and Greta nestled there as if she were sitting inside a cave.

'All right, Greta. I'll take you away to Tall Pines. We'll have a holiday together, only you, only me.'

She climbed up his shirt and shyly kissed his beard. 'Yes, Papa. Good Papa.'

In the kitchen Papa found a basket and they filled it with goodies. 'We'll eat on the way,' said Papa, and Greta nodded. She couldn't say more than a mumble with a muffin in her mouth.

The sneaked out the front door on tiptoes. Papa lifted her up and fastened her in the car seat. Then he started the motor and pulled back from the house.

Just before the woods got in the way Greta saw the Juniper Tree with the black birdie sitting in its branches. The birdie was a lot bigger than in her dream last night.

'It's a magic bird,' she decided.

Then her Papa took the car out on the road and they drove away.

THE SOUND of the tires on the gravel echoed all around the house. It stole through the lace curtains and into Rayn's dreams, casting a pall upon them and waking her.

The sky was bright outside the window. The newborn sun was just gleaming through the trees, slanting sunbeams across the walls. Rayn stretched luxuriously. She felt better this morning than she had in ages. The voices were quite still and her rest had been undisturbed by any other sleepers all night long, for Money Bags had never come in, and she had put Tang-Tang out in his kennel.

She rose and slid the silk wrapper down across her nude body and went to the window. The light poured over her body in the open wrapper and she looked at herself in the mirror, admiring her flat firm belly. Always she had known deep in her heart that her beauty was her weapon and her only defense, and it comforted her to know she still held onto it. No one would have dreamed she had had a child.

She put on her diamond necklace, that extravagance, that proof of her power and skill. She began to sing a little song, only a nonsense thing she heard a long time ago when she was little and her Mommie still lived and loved her.

She drew the sash of the wrapper and went across to Greta's room.

'Gooseling! Time to get up, sleepy-heart!'

She opened the door.

'Greta? Little goose?'

The room and the crib were empty.

Rayn picked up the blanket from the crib.

In the hallway she saw that the door to the dead woman's room was open. She stood in the doorway looking in. Money Bags must have come in here in the night but he wasn't here now and the bed lay undisturbed.

Tang-Tang came up and rubbed against her flank. She stroked his head and frowned, deep in thought.

'Hello, puppy. Who let you in?'

She went downstairs into an empty house. She opened the back door.

'Greta!' she called.

But nobody answered and nobody was home. Looking out the front she saw the car was gone. The kitchen was a bit of a mess with jars and napkins and spoons on the counter.

On the mantel over the fireplace she found a note:

Dear Rayn,  
Greta and I have gone to Tall Pines for the day.  
B.

Rayn crumpled the note and threw it on the fire grate. She felt a breeze come in through the open door and shivered. She started laying a fire in the hearth. She lit it with a long match and watched the papers curl up in black flames and she breathed in the smoke. She was just beginning to feel calm again when the outside light happened to glint in through the window and she looked that way.

On a branch of the Juniper Tree sat a large bird, as big as a hawk or buzzard. The bird spread his black wings, showing green and gold iridescence.

Even with the flames crackling and the heat licking her body, Rayn felt a chill stab into her bones.

LATER THAT MORNING, far from the sea, Greta and Papa drove to the end of the dirt road flanked with pines to the cabin made of logs. Papa parked and Greta undid the straps to the car seat all by herself and jumped down. She turned about and danced a little. It always smelled so pretty here. She got her dinosaur and Papa got the basket and the juice jug and they went up the steps under the sign.

'What does it say, Papa?' she asked.

'It says where we are. It says Tall Pines.'

'Good, we're here then.'

Papa laughed and pushed open the door.

They ate the rest of breakfast until Greta could eat no more. Then her Papa asked her if she wanted to go see and she nodded and he swung her up onto his shoulders horsey-style and made her laugh.

She pulled his hair and said, 'Gid-ap,' and he neighed like a horsey and started walking up the trail behind the cabin.

For a long time her Papa walked up the trail, and the tall trees marched down on both sides, until at last the trees fell aside and they climbed up into the clouds on the top of the hill.

'This is Watch Hill,' said Papa. He pointed. 'There, can you see the Falcon's Head Rock there? And over that way is the Lost Hollow. Do you remember last time when we went camping in there, and sure enough we got lost?'

'Yes, Papa, I remember, Tang-Tang saved us!'

He went on pointing and naming all the sights but Greta lost count. She looked up overhead. The clouds hung so close Greta was sure that if she stood up on Papa's shoulders and stretched, she would be able to tickle their tummies. But there was something odd about the clouds so she said, 'Papa, let me down.'

Papa set her down on the heather on Watch Hill. He lay down with a stone under his head and his cap shading his eyes. When Greta tried to show him the wildflowers she had picked, he was snoring softly like a bumblebee.

BACK IN WHITE QUILL Rayn took a long bath and scented herself and put on a costly dress and made herself up. It was only a workday and a long one at that but she felt she had to dress to kill today and anyway it took her mind off what she had seen and helped to quell the beating of her heart.

Then she went down to the kitchen, strapped on her apron, cleared the boards and set to work.

This year she meant to make Thanksgiving Feast her finest and final accomplishment in this place. She would stuff Money Bags's belly and set him at ease and play nice to him in bed all weekend and keep his mind off the brat and where he had gone. Then on Monday she would pack up and take Greta and Tang-Tang to a hotel and tell her lawyer, the fat sweating older man, to start divorce proceedings. And she would get as far away from this hellhole as she could.

The thought of going away made her feel light and easy. She had stayed here too long anyway and she had never meant to stay anywhere for more than a year or so. But then the foolish Money Bags had proposed, him with his big mill and timberland and the fat bank accounts her sweating lawyer assured her were in good standing and free of debt. So what could she do but accept and plan on sticking around a second year. Then Gooseling came, the little dear, and Rayn's figure needed some work, and it had almost been bearable, almost a relief, not to be thinking and scheming all the time and on the lookout for the next one, the up and coming Money Bags. But now the little warning voice was saying almost all the time, _Get out, get out_ and she knew she couldn't bear to spend one more night in this place than she had to.

Well that was easy to do. Greta was almost big enough for school and Rayn's figure was perfect again, even a little better than before, a little softer and more voluptuous, she thought, all the better to do what it had to do.

She got out all the food and started working on the sweet potatoes. They would be the first dish she prepared.

'Yes, what a feast for you, Mr Money Bags! But I promise you, it won't taste as good as what I fed you last night!'

After a moment she said, 'I was right to do it. Little Goose needs taking care of. Money Bags was going to leave her high and dry. Everything to go to that horrid little boy? Not right. Not right at all.'

She felt content in the empty house – her house, hers – alone with Tang-Tang. Tang-Tang looked questioningly at her, as if unsure who she was.

'Well if that's your attitude, puppy, you can go back outside and do whatever you like,' she said.

But when she slid the glass door shut behind him she happened to glance up, and there was the Juniper Tree and the great black bird was still perched in it.

And she couldn't look away no matter how she tried. She just went on staring at the black bird, and he stared back at her.

Then the black bird lifted his head.

And he began to sing.

He sang what he had learned:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

Something clutched at Rayn's throat and she was choking. She staggered back from the glass. Darkness wove before her eyes. She could hardly see. She sprawled back on the sofa, her hair across her eyes.

She lay there for awhile, gasping for breath.

AND HIGH ATOP Watch Hill Greta heard the black bird's song and it filled her with dread. She looked where Papa was sleeping, but he didn't wake up and he didn't seem troubled. His mouth turned up in a little smile and some of the sadness went out of the lines in his face.

Greta looked out over the world. The bird's song had seemed to come from far away. But at the same time it seemed so near.

Greta and Rayn heard the black bird's song, but they heard only birdsong, they didn't know the words. Greta almost caught the words the first time, but not even Greta knew the words right off.

_A BIRD I BECAME..._ The black bird looked down at himself. He found that it was true. He had wings and not arms and talons not feet, and his body was covered with black feathers that shone with tints of gold and green.

He hopped to the end of the branch. He was filled with longing as though he had just woken up from the best sleep of his life.

'Can I fly?' he wondered.

He shook out his wings, leaped off the branch, and flew.

What was flying like? It went beyond words. It was like laughing in air. He soared up high, beating the wind beneath his wings. He soared above the Juniper Tree and the Beak and the house and the trees. He saw the sun high in the east.

Over the trees and over the hills he flew. He followed the road for awhile, as fast as the little cars that scuttled along, bound by the trees, way down there. He left them behind and crossed the wild woods. Something glinted through the branches, he wheeled head over tail-feathers and looped back round to it. The river shone under him, and he followed it up to where it narrowed and roared and his dad's mill sat.

He opened his wings and let the wind carry him down until he perched on top of the sign over the gate of Hansen Lumber.

Nine cars were in the lot. Two cars he knew, they belonged to Mr Anders and Mary-Louise. Six were pickup trucks and they belonged to the foremen of the mill. One was a very shiny new car and it belonged to Mr Hodgekiss the banker.

Mary-Louise's car had boxes tied on top, for she had only stopped in to say good-bye on her way east to go to her sister's. Mr Anders was standing beside her with his briefcase. The foremen stood in a knot halfway to the sawmill, smoking and chewing and spitting and glaring at Mr Hodgekiss. Mr Hodgekiss held a sheaf of papers in his hand.

The black bird knew they were waiting for Bjorn Hansen. Mr Hodgekiss came because the loans on the company were due, and he wanted his money or he wanted the mill. The foremen came to see what plans Mr Hodgekiss had for the mill – they didn't know that Mr Hodgekiss had no plans for the mill at all, because he meant to shut it down and turn it into a riverfront development. Mr Anders came in case Bjorn needed him, and Mary-Louise came hoping to see Bjorn one last time.

Bjorn hadn't come. But the black bird had.

And when he saw them gathered there waiting, the black bird wanted to tell them somehow that a Hansen had come after all. His Mother's Song filled his heart, and he sang it again:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

And Greta squirmed and Rayn shook, but Bjorn smiled asleep on top of Watch Hill.

And in the mill yard they stood stock still and listened to that song, the saddest and loveliest bird-song they ever heard. They only heard a bird-song, they didn't have a clue what it meant. But it haunted them, and they looked about until they saw the black bird perched atop the sign.

Mr Hodgekiss had a look of joy on his face. He had to hear more.

'Please, bird, won't you sing your song again for me?' he asked.

The black bird was silent. He didn't sing for nothing.

'Please, bird, if you sing your song again, I'll give you these papers, they mean nothing to me now.' And Mr Hodgekiss held up the loan papers and the bonds.

Then the black bird bobbed his head and spread his wings and sang the song once more:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

And Greta shuddered and Rayn shrieked, but Bjorn smiled in his sleep on the top of Watch Hill.

Mr Hodgekiss gave the bird his papers. The black bird stretched down his right claw, and the papers shrank into a gold band above the talon. It was crazy and unreal, in fact it was impossible. But the people in the mill yard didn't think twice about it, any more than you might think about the impossible, crazy things that take place in your dreams.

Mary-Louise had tears in her eyes. She called to the black bird and said, 'Black bird, won't you sing your song once more, for me?'

The black bird was silent. He didn't sing for nothing.

'Please, black bird, if you sing your song again, I'll give you this bracelet with three true hearts.'

The black bird bobbed his head, and spreading his wings he sang once more:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

And Greta groaned, and Rayn clutched at her fiery red hair, but Bjorn smiled in his sleep on top of Watch Hill.

Mary-Louise gave the bracelet with three true hearts to the black bird. He stretched down his left claw, and the bracelet shrank into a green band above his talon. And the people in the mill yard didn't think twice about that either.

Now the foremen felt their hearts eased by the hearing of that forlorn mournful song, that so fitted what they were feeling, losing their jobs and their livelihoods. It seemed to them the black bird sang for them and them alone, and they called to him and said, 'Sing us your song again, black bird, won't you?'

The black bird was silent. He didn't sing for nothing.

'Please sing us your song again, if you do we'll give you this new sawblade, we won't be needing it now.'

The black bird bobbed his head and sang for them once more the lovely, haunting song:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

And the foremen were moved in their hearts when they heard the song sung just for them, and it seemed to lighten their troubles and waft them away. Willingly they gave the black bird their new sawblade. The black bird ducked his head, and the sawblade shrank into a red band around his throat. And that seemed the most natural thing in the world to the foremen.

So the black bird sang the song again. And Rayn swore and shattered her face in the mirror, and Greta leapt up and cried, 'No, no!' And she ran away down the hill.

But Bjorn smiled and snored in his sleep, and his eye winked open, and he saw dim and far away Greta flashing down into the woods and away.

HE SAT UP on the top of Watch Hill, alone.

'Greta!' he called. 'Greta, come back!'

He started down after her.

Greta ran through the trees. The roots tripped her and she fell. Something big was chasing her and the song filled her head, for she had almost heard the words this last time, and the words were bad words, sad and ugly and burning with hate. They filled her with fear so she didn't want to know what they said, but she couldn't help it. It was like a puzzle that had to be solved.

And then the big dark thing was right behind her coming fast. It reached for her with big arms and scooped her up. She screamed and kicked and beat at it, but it only held her, and spoke softly to her,

'Hush, Greta, it's all right, everything is fine, what happened, did you have a bad dream?'

And the shadow lifted and she saw it was her Papa. Then she hugged his neck and buried her face in his beard and cried.

'Don't let them take me and lock me away, Papa. Promise you won't!'

'Greta, what is it? What are you saying?'

She pulled back. She shut her mouth and pursed her lips. She had said too much already.

'Greta, where did Falco go?'

She shook her head so hard she could feel her hair bounce around her face. 'I don't know. He went away.'

'He isn't at his friend's house, is he? He's still back at the house, isn't he? Is he locked up somewhere?'

'Uh-uh.'

'Greta, where is your brother? What happened to him?'

'No! No!'

She twisted in his arms but he held her fast. Something splashed against her cheek. It was starting to rain. The clouds scowled down at her, blaming her, hating her for it.

'I didn't kill him! I didn't! It was an accident!'

'Greta! Falco's dead?'

'I – I killed him, I killed Falco! Don't let them lock me up, Papa. I touched his nose, only a little touch, and his head, his head—'

'Greta, shush. You're not to blame and nobody will lock you up. You didn't kill him. Your Mama and I did that.'

Greta was struck still by the thought.

'The birdie,' she said, 'the birdie in the Juniper Tree—'

'Come on,' said Papa. His face was stern as he settled Greta in his arms and started back down the path.

The light was failing under the dark clouds and the rain was heavier. The trees closed in around them like black walls.

'Poor Falco,' said Papa. 'Poor kid!'

He tramped down through the woods with Greta in his arms, while the black bird flew back to White Quill on the Beak. By the time he alit in the branches of the Juniper Tree the rain had started falling there as well.

The black bird moved into the shelter of the heavy branches.

By the time Bjorn and Greta reached the cabin the rain was pouring down and the dirt road was a river of mud, so there was no going back for them tonight. They went inside the cabin and Bjorn made a fire while Greta changed into her old clothes in the dresser. Bjorn toweled her hair and then he changed too, and they sat before the fire gazing deep into it, each thinking his own sad thoughts.

Greta felt better now. She missed Falco more than ever, but Papa told her again they wouldn't lock her in jail so it was all right. She looked at Papa's face in the firelight. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, his chest heaved and he sighed out loud.

Greta stroked his hand and leaned against him.

'Poor Papa,' she said.

Bjorn didn't answer her. He didn't even hear her. He was sunk deep in his own thoughts, bitter and grievous.

LATE THE NIGHT before, long after the dinner of the wonderful soup, Bjorn had prowled the house alone with all the lights out. Rayn had a headache and on such nights Bjorn knew to let her sleep alone. Usually he slept on the sofa in the great-room on such nights. But last night he couldn't sleep at all. Something was gnawing at him and he didn't know what. He dug out a bottle of _aqua vite_ and drank it in burning gulps and as softly as he could he climbed up the narrow twisting attic stairs and stared at his son's cot.

It was a wretched place but the boy never complained so Bjorn supposed it was good enough for him. The boy never showed any pride or strength. Deep in his heart Bjorn had to admit he was ashamed of the kid and always had been. He knew the boy would never amount to much of a man. Why, he wondered, had he given him Tall Pines? Falco would never be able to hold it, much less use it to provide for a family. And yet, and yet he had his mother's wild fey look about his eyes and nose. The boy was all Bjorn had left of Ariela, Ari the little sparrow-witch.

The window to the little cell was open, and water from the fog dripped onto a tin pie plate.

Bjorn went to shut it. For a moment he felt his disappointment in Falco rise again. How many times had Rayn warned the boy about shutting his window? But when he set his hands on the casement to shut it he saw the bird-casts on the roof outside. He remembered how much Falco loved feeding the birds. The birds needed fresh water to drink, Bjorn thought. And he might as well start being nice to Falco now, and for once Rayn could drop dead. So he left the window open and backed out of the room.

One of the hanging cut-out bird-women brushed his face. He stopped it with his hand. He took another swig of _aqua vite_. Then he left. But he closed the door behind him to keep the cold air from invading the rest of the house.

He staggered down the attic steps, hitting the banister, making too damn much noise. He paused in the hall outside the locked door to Ariela's room. He fumbled in his pocket and drew out the key and slipped it in the lock.

He entered the close, quiet room. He took a drink and looked around.

The room was tidy and gray and dead. The bed had the same duvet as it had eight years ago, or was it nine already?

On the little table before the window the stone bowl stood with the paring knife inside.

Bjorn walked around the bed. He touched the rocking chair and let it roll back and forth.

On the night stand was Ariela's book of fairy tales. Beside the book was the nursing bottle. Bjorn unscrewed it and sniffed. A last hint of the sweet-milk filled his senses.

He stood at his wife's dressing table and gazed on the mirror where long ago Ariela had kissed it and left the imprint of her mark in lipstick. After all these years the smile of her lips remained.

He pressed his lips against the lipstick mark on the mirror, smearing it.

Then and there he swore to himself, now that his career as a lumber tycoon was ended, that he would be kinder to his children, Falco most of all. He swore it to Ariela's ghost in the musty room. He would make it up to the kid for all the pain in the past.

But that had been when he expected to have Thanksgiving Feast with Falco. That was when he still believed Falco was alive.

Now he knew better. Now it was too late. He shook his head and stared into the fire and groaned.

GRETA WATCHED her Papa. She sat apart from him and hugged her dinosaur skeleton. And then she heard the black bird's song again.

Greta heard the black bird's song even through the rain and the cabin walls. And now at last she knew every word it sang. She knew what the black bird was and she knew what it knew and what it would do.

She stared with horror at her Papa. He just sat there staring at the fire. It was as if he was deaf, or dreaming, or dead. She backed away from him until her shoulders wedged in between the dresser and the wall and she couldn't get any farther away. She huddled in the corner out of the light and shook her head and moaned. But still she heard the black bird's song.

'No, birdie, please, don't do it,' she moaned.

But it was too late now.

For the rain fell heavy on White Quill too. Day had failed and the lights were on and the black bird glared at the redheaded woman through the kitchen window. He gripped the branch with his talons, with one gold band and one green band. He bobbed his head with the red band about his throat. And he sang his song as a challenge to her and a threat:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

## 12

I guess deep down I always knew what it would come to.

WHEN SHE HEARD that song again Rayn felt as though something beat against her head and her knees buckled and gave out from under her. She fell on the floor shrieking and screaming and swearing.

After awhile she managed to get back control over her arms and legs. She reached up to the counter and hauled herself up, leaning against it, her hair in her eyes, her mouth gaping.

She looked out the window streaked with rain. The yard light shone on the wet grass and the Juniper Tree and the black bird perched in it.

The black bird lifted his head and glared back at her.

Across the distance, Rayn and the black bird took the measure of each other.

'That bird! That cursed bird again—!'

She clung to the counter. Her head hurt. Her hair was burning. She remembered, after awhile, to breathe. She sucked down air and it hurt. She shuddered, looking at the black bird. And it lifted its sharp beak and sang the song again, again, again.

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head

Rayn slouched around the counter island. All the way the evil black eyes of the bird followed her. She pushed herself apart from the counter and leaned against the cabinets. She reached over and made sure each window was fastened as tight as it could be.

She leaned against the wall and managed one step at a time to drag herself out around the great-room. She locked each window. She locked the glass doors. She even pulled the damper in the fireplace down almost all the way so some smoke spilled out into the room.

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread

She turned the switch and killed lights. Now the great-room was dark save for the flickering from the fire and the yard light shining through the windows. She leaned back and regained her breath. Then she went into the hall. She leaned against tables and walls and doors. She locked down every window and turned off every light. At the front door she found Tang-Tang scratching and whimpering and the sight filled her with rage.

'Stupid useless beast! Go outside and do some good! Kill that bird!'

She opened the door and quickly shoved Tang-Tang out. She slammed the door and locked it and bolted it.

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea

She crept upstairs. Greta's room was shut and she switched off the light and closed the door to it. The dead woman's room was dark and close and Rayn pulled the door to until it stuck.

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree

In her own room the windows were slightly open and she slammed them shut and locked them. That shut away the last sounds from outside and she couldn't hear the black bird singing anymore.

She felt better then. Almost at peace.

She fell into her chair before the dressing table and took a good look at herself. Heavens she was a fright with her hair all which way, flour on her apron and dress along with smears of butter and fat and seasoning. She brushed out her hair and redid her face. She put on a golden bracelet and changed her rings. She took off the engagement and wedding rings Money Bags had put on her with a smug little smile as though he were turning the key on handcuffs, chaining her to him. Well she thought there was no reason to keep her chains anymore and if he asked about them, in the couple of days before she left him for good, she could say she took them off in cooking.

Now she felt much better when all that was done. She stood up quite steady and walked across her room. She switched off the lights and closed the door and went downstairs again.

In the kitchen only the oven light was on and the yard light shining in the windows but her eyes by now were grown used to darkness and she could see quite well. She squinted and looked out to the bird in the Juniper Tree.

'Come to me now, black bird,' she said, 'if you can. Every door is bolted and every window locked, and fire goes up the chimney. There's nowhere you can come in by. I am safe here and you can sit out in the rain and die. So sit out in your tree, little bird, and sing your damned head off! It won't bother me, not one little bit.'

She laughed. She felt good again. She was in command again.

The potatoes and beet casserole were done, and she took them out of the oven and set them cooling beside the pies and onions and salad and all the other dishes she had made ready that day. She went over her lists in her mind and was satisfied that all was ready and done but for the turkey itself. And that she finished stuffing and tied up and covered in a great big roasting dish, and put into the oven. She set the temperature and the oven timer. Early in the morning the turkey would be hot and brown and ready for carving, and then they would take their Thanksgiving Feast.

'I'm only sorry you didn't go into the oven alongside Tom Turkey, birdie,' she said and shook her basting spoon at the window.

But the black bird was gone.

The Juniper Tree stood empty.

For a long time Rayn stood against the window staring out. The darkness and the rain and wind made things hard to make out clearly. And the branches deep in the tree were so dark, wasn't that a gleam on feathers there? No. No, she was sure now. The black bird wasn't there anymore. It had gone someplace else. Where, though?

And she had the sudden, horrible thought: Yes, I locked all the doors, I locked all the windows down here and upstairs but what about the attic?

Then the breath caught in her throat and everything went very still and she could hear the clock ticking in the great-room and every drop of water that fell upon the roof and windows. And it seemed to her that she could hear, faint and far away coming from up there, a little sound. _Thump, thump_ , it went. _Thump, thump_.

A sight struck her. She beheld it as though it stood just before her in a bright, harsh light: The window to the brat's room hanging open to the rain.

How many times had she told the brat to keep his window shut? But he never listened, he never obeyed. She hadn't bothered to go up there today since the brat was gone, gone forever, gone for good, and she never needed to worry about him again.

She crept back up the stairs. She stood in the hall with all the closed doors looking back at her, blocking her escape. She opened the door to her room, that one at least. Never had she so longed to crawl back into her room, curl up naked under her silk sheets, and sleep, sleep and dream about her Mommie.

But the narrow twisting attic stairs pulled at her and she couldn't look away from them for long. The darkness seemed to gather and grow up those steps. In the hall a little light from the yard stole in through her back window, and a sliver of light shone under Greta's door from her nightlight. But up those attic steps was utter blackness, invisible and unknown.

She went to the bottom of those steps. She couldn't help it. The song went ringing in her head and gave her no peace. She wasn't sure if the bird was singing it somewhere or whether it went on only in her brain where it ached and burned so.

She lingered at the foot of the steps looking up.

She kicked off her slippers and stood in her bare stockings. Her legs were trembling and weak. She clung to the banister.

Tenderly, one step at a time, she crawled on hands and knees up the attic stair.

She was as quiet as she could be. Her skin was on fire as though fire-ants were biting and stinging her all over. Her arms were shaking and drops of sweat rolled down her brow and nose and dripped across her eyes.

She poked her head above the topmost step. She peered about at the black cavern of the attic with the rafters bowing overhead like the inner ribs of some great whale. At the far end of the attic a small window in the back gable let in glimmerings of light from the yard below. Outside the wind blew up and the frame of the house creaked.

It seemed quiet otherwise. Had she only imagined it? No – there it was again! _Thump, thump_. Louder now. Where? There. It came from the brat's room just as she had feared.

Rayn crawled closer to the door to the tiny room. The door was closed. No, the wind blew up and the door moved. It pulled in as though by an unseen hand, then it came back out again and tapped against the jamb. _Thump_ , it sounded against the jamb, and again. _Thump_.

She reached forth and touched the door with her fingertips, just her nails really, manicured and polished and painted fire-red at such expense at the best salon in the city. She inched the door open, baring the tiny room.

There was the iron bed and the dirty washstand and the walls pasted over with pictures of birds, and the cardboard bits he had cut in the shape of birds and pasted models' faces over their heads like sirens or harpies swinging from bent hangers over the bed. Beyond the bed the narrow window opened in the narrow wall no wider than her arm. The window hung wide open.

She crawled into the room. The floor was filthy with dust and mud dropped off his dirty little sneakers. It stank of little boy. His sneakers, his dirty underwear and underpants lay before her and she couldn't help but touch them and crawl through them. Rayn had always hated the smell of boys. Girls always smelled good but boys smelled rotten and sour because they never bathed and were always rooting in filth.

She reached the wall. She couldn't bring herself to touch the bed, the dead brat's disgusting bed. She worked herself up the wall until she could stretch up her arms and clutch the rain-slick sill. She pulled herself up and clung there looking out.

The back yard glowed dull green under the lights. The lights shone across the faces of the trees in the woods on both sides but beyond the Juniper Tree where the land gave way to the sea there was only blackness and rain. The rain blew in her face and stole her nerves away. Quick now she thought and reached up to shut the window and the black bird filled the window from out of nowhere it rushed in. It scrawed at her and its claws raked her face and its great wings beat against her head and she fell back and hit her head _bump_ on the floor and passed out.

She came around some time later.

In the night and rain there was no way for her to tell how much time had passed. Maybe it had been an hour or maybe only moments.

For a while she was unsure where she was. She lay there against a hard floor and let her eyes wander about. She saw the bird pictures and harpies and she remembered. She started to rise and stopped.

The black bird perched on the iron foot of the bed. It was preening itself but when she stirred it stopped and glared at her.

She let her eyes linger on the long cruel talons curled about the iron bar.

She crawled slowly out of the room. The bird watched but did not move. She kicked against the door and wished she could pull it to but that proved beyond her courage. She slid backwards down the steps, bump bump bumping down. Dust and dirt covered her dress her arms and feet and legs. She had never been so filthy in her life. When this was all over, she promised herself she would draw one of her fire-baths with the water just as hot as she could get it. She would lie in the tub and burn and burn.

And all the time the Voices in her head were croaking Kill it Kill it Kill it Kill...

Somehow she made it into her room.

She shut the door behind her. The bird hadn't followed and she felt almost safe again. She got up and with shaking hands dusted herself off but it only smeared the dust and dirt around.

She rifled through her things in her Mommie's Trunk, still spattered with brown bloodstains. Where was it, she wondered, where did it go? Did he take it, the little dirty sneak? No. There. There it was. She reached deep into her Mommie's Trunk and her fingers grasped it with a loving secret caress. The green bottle lay inside her palm. She fetched it up and kissed it.

Upstairs in the attic room the black bird stopped preening at the sound of the Trunk slamming shut. The bird lit down and pecked at the crumbs on the floor then hopped awkwardly to the door and out to the head of the steps, flapping and leaping to the banister. He flew down into the lower hall and Rayn appeared with a broom in her hand. She swung the broom and the bird ducked under it but the force of the breeze pushed him down on the floor. He leaped up and Rayn swung the broom again in a big round wheeling blow and the broom slammed into Ariela's shut door and knocked it open. But the broom in passing batted against the black bird's wings and he fell down the stairs flapping and tumbling to the ground floor.

Down came Rayn rushing with the broom. The black bird hopped aside into the great-room just ahead of the broom-head that smashed a painting off the hallway wall. The bird flew about the great-room but the ceiling was too low for flight and too low to escape the broom in the redheaded woman's hands. The broom leapt about the room. It knocked down lamps and ash trays and books and magazines, little glass curios and paper weights and framed pictures from the walls.

Rayn was screaming and charging. The bird couldn't get away but so far he had dodged or slipped by the blows and was not badly hurt. Outside the White Dog howled and barked and followed them from window to window as the black bird fled from the broom. And the White Dog's eyes burned like red fire, and the redheaded woman's eyes shone red like the dog's, like little torches in the dark.

The black bird made it back into the hall. He flew upstairs and Rayn leapt up after him. She chased him into the hall and into the dead woman's room. There she paused in the doorway and flung her hair back from her eyes.

The black bird fluttered about the room where Falco had never gone since he had been a baby in his crib. This was the room Falco had longed for and dreamed about all his life. The black bird flew around and around the room but the windows were all locked. At last it alit on the back of the rocking chair. There it perched and stared at the redheaded woman.

Rayn swung the broom. She managed to catch the bird just as he rose from the chair and knocked him against the wall.

The bird fluttered awkwardly. He was hurt now.

She struck again and knocked him down. He landed in a corner on the floor by the bed. One of his wings was twisted and bent.

Rayn lifted the broom deliberately.

The black bird hopped back but he hit the wall and there was no more room behind him.

She slammed the broom down and just missed him as he scuttled under the bed.

The redheaded woman raked the hair out of her eyes and got down on her knees. She stooped down with her face close to the floorboards and peered beneath the bed.

From the dark under the bed the bird could see her eyes burning as she craned her head back and forth.

She stabbed the broom under the bed and the bird barely hopped out of the way.

She swept the broom handle back again. The broom head rushed up toward the bird. BANG! it slammed against the back leg of the bed just short of him and he tumbled out at the foot of the bed. She tried to pull out the broom. The bird hopped out onto the rug beside the rocking chair.

She swung again and hit the bird square across his back and knocked him out through the door into the hall.

The bird hopped about on the hall floor. She came after him but the broom racked against the sides of the dead woman's door and held her up and in that moment the black bird flew up the attic stairs.

She burst from the dead woman's room and climbed the steps waving the broom ahead of her, fending off any possible attack the bird might make out of the darkness. She slipped and fell but clawed her way to the top step just in time to see the bird hop and drag himself into the dead boy's room.

She leapt up and shouldered the narrow door aside. She swept up the broom and caught the bird another hit but the strings to the harpies tangled about the broom. She swept them aside along with the broom and tore down the mobiles, wires and cardboard alike.

The black bird fluttered toward the wall. The open window beckoned and the freedom of the night. But the horrible burning red eyes were coming, the red hair glowing in the dark. He only reached the window when the broom went _swoosh!_ behind him and hit him hard and knocked him forward even as in the room behind the broom handle went _thwack!_ and _thang!_ against the wall and iron bars of the bed.

He fluttered down to the porch. His right wing wouldn't flap. It was broken or almost. He couldn't fly right or stay aloft, only twirl and float down.

He heard banging from inside the house upstairs.

He bent down his head under his wing in the rain slanting in under the porch roof. The rain was lighter now but that wouldn't help him. He couldn't fly anymore.

All of a sudden the White Dog jumped up on the porch. It growled. Foaming slaver dripped from its great jaws. It pounced but the bird clawed at it with his talons and felt the White Dog's face catch and tear. The White Dog howled and yelped and ran off.

The black bird hopped down off the porch. In little halting hops it started across the yard.

The Juniper Tree seemed far away.

Lights blazed from the windows of the house. The redheaded woman was coming. She was coming. She would be out there soon.

He hopped in the wet slick grass. His broken wing trailed behind. He was almost at the Juniper Tree when the glass doors slid open and the redheaded woman stalked out on the terrace. He had to stop then and stare back.

The rain had almost stopped. He could see her very plainly and she could see him too. Her face hardened.

'That tree, that blasted, horrible, Juniper Tree!'

Her hair blazed as if on fire. She held the broom out away from her in one hand and in the other she held a small green bottle. She drenched the broom head with liquid from the bottle. The broom twigs caught fire and the terrace and porch came alive with the blaze.

The redheaded woman marched across the yard. She came on dead for the Juniper Tree.

The black bird hopped into the lower branches. The redheaded woman poked and thrust the burning broom at him. He hopped from branch to branch. All around him the branches lit up with the flames. The redheaded woman danced around the Juniper Tree. She stabbed the broom into the branches until the whole tree blazed up in flames. And then the black bird couldn't do anything but watch. There wasn't anyplace left for him to hop and he couldn't fly away.

She thrust at him again. He saw her through a shower of sparks and flames. The Juniper Tree was burning in crackles and smoke. Its age-old wood, hard and dry and waxy with resin, burned bright and fearsome hot. It seemed like one big torch now, like a beacon on the headland shining out to sea.

Again the redheaded woman thrust at the bird and the fiery broom bore down on him but he fell past it and raked his talons across her face before he rammed into the ground.

High above him the redheaded woman stumbled backward. Her arms and the broom flailed. Her high heels caught on the grass and she fell back onto the landing of the wooden stairs. Her hips slammed against the outside rail.

And the bird shook his head, and the red band around his throat jumped off and a brand new sawblade dropped between the landing and the cliff rocks, cutting as it fell.

The whole staircase shuddered and creaked. The unfastened bolt at the Red Step pulled up and out and the staircase went groaning outward, sagging, buckling over the waves. Boards cracked and groaned and for a moment it hung there, unsure whether it wanted to come back to the cliff again and bear the boots and shoes pounding up and down it, or whether it would rather just give way sliding and sighing down into the arms of the rocks and the water waiting so patiently and so faithfully for so long.

Rayn froze. Her eyes were big and dark in the shadow of her hair under the burning broom. She bent a little as though she was about to leap back onto the grass. But the black bird huddled there staring at her and she balked in her movement.

At that the stairs sagged out farther and the weight turned to hang all upon the four bolts that tied the landing to the stones at the top.

These bolts were bigger than the others, but they had not been forged to hold such a weight as the whole stairs. The first one just above the first step bent under the strain. It bent and broke and planks twisted and buckled down at the bottom of the steps.

The next bolt on the landing snapped and then there were two, and only two, the last two.

The redheaded woman cried out and stared at them.

The White Dog came back from the kennel at her cry. The White Dog's face was a bloody mess. One eye was closed over with blood and pus. With the other eye the White Dog watched his mistress on the landing. He danced at the edge of the firelight, whining, caught between longing and fear. The White Dog didn't even glance at the black bird where he lay helpless in the grass.

Very slowly and with care the redheaded woman lowered her blazing broom.

The burning Juniper Tree cast its beacon over the bluff but under the lip of the grass and planks the bolts driven into the stone lay in shadow beyond seeing. The redheaded woman edged the broom closer until its flames reached through the gaps between the planks and glinted off the old bolts. Many times they had been painted over but even so they were rusting through the paint, eaten at by the years of fog and spray, full of salt and acid.

The black bird could see the third bolt bending. The nut was slowly stripping its threads and slipping off. It squeaked like a little mouse. The redheaded woman dropped the broom over the rail behind her and it twirled down until the sea ate it and snuffed out its fire.

The last two bolts fell into darkness, unseeable.

'Puppy, don't!' she cried but the White Dog heard the fear in her voice and leapt to her. The added weight wrenched the third bolt free and the fourth bolt, the last bolt, snapped with a BANG! and the stairs leaned far out on their under-trusses like a drunken clown on stilts in the circus leaning far off balance, only the clown always manages to swing back and catch his balance.

The stairs did not.

The boards tore loose from the bolts that kept them together and the rotting planks shattered into dust and crashed into a pile, drowning out the last screams from the redheaded woman. Then a great wave smashed over the rocks.

The foam and froth licked up the cliff face almost to the top. Spray sprinkled over the black bird's feathers. For a moment the great wave clung to the cliff and wouldn't go back. For a moment everything held steady, almost at peace.

But the rage and fury was bursting still inside it and there would be no peace. When the wave swept back out it tore all the bits of boards and planks and railing along with it far away into the sea where the redheaded woman couldn't hurt anybody else ever again.

ATOP THE BEAK the black bird watched the wave go out. The foam and froth dimmed as they fled, and the ground went black as well. Everything was dimming.

'Juniper Tree, what's happening?' he asked.

He couldn't feel the wind or the wet on his wings anymore. His talons clawed and gripped but there was nothing for them to clutch.

'Juniper Tree, what's happening to me?'

But the old tree didn't answer him. The fire must have burned the tree to the ground by now. The Juniper Tree wasn't there anymore. But where was there, and where was he? It didn't seem like he was anywhere. He couldn't see anything, he couldn't smell anything, he couldn't touch anything, he couldn't hear anything. He couldn't even hear his own voice though he cried and scrawed. At least he think he cried. He couldn't feel that he was doing anything at all. He couldn't feel his wings anymore not even the hurt one. He couldn't feel his feathers.

All he could do was sing his Mother's Song one last time. Even though nobody could hear it, not even himself:

The Rain stole my Mother

She cut off my head,

The Bear took my Father

He ate me with bread,

The Goose, little Sister

Dropped my bones near the Sea,

A Bird I became by the Juniper Tree.

And that was the end of him.

## 13

Sometimes I wonder what kind of thing I am.

NOW SOMETHING new came about. Something new was happening to the black bird, which had been Falco before his stepmother murdered him.

He could hear a rough sound from far away. It was almost lost in the emptiness. And he listened for that sound with everything he could. The sound got closer, clearer. It seemed like he knew that sound. Then he did.

It was the sound of tires crunching over the gravel driveway.

He heard the sound of the motor of the car, too. The tires stopped crunching and the motor switched off. Two car doors opened and shut and there were footsteps in the gravel. One step was heavy and hasty and the other was light and slow.

The steps sounded on the front porch. He heard the front door open and close. Voices came from inside the house but they were too far for him to make out what they said.

Then he heard the glass doors slide open. The two pairs of steps crossed the terrace and walked onto the grass.

The little steps dragged the big steps along. Then the big steps stumbled and stopped.

'Look, Papa,' said a little girl's voice.

And a man's deep voice answered, 'No...'

He knew the voices somehow. He knew those two.

He opened his eyes and looked at them. But they were strangers. He didn't know them after all.

He turned his head and looked up at the sky. The sky was so big and terrible and far away. But it threatened to fall down on him, on the house and on the Beak. His head rolled farther back. And then he saw something dark in between him and the sky, something comforting and strong.

It was the Juniper Tree. He looked at it.

It was as big and broad as ever. Not a branch was burned, not even singed. But he couldn't feel it any more, the thing that lived inside the Juniper Tree, the thing that spoke to him and watched over him since forever. It was only a tree, an old dry tree on a cliff looking out over the water.

He looked back to the house and saw Dad and Greta standing there.

They looked on him with empty faces. It was clear that they didn't know what to say. He didn't either.

It was Bjorn and Greta and Falco. Yes it was Falco all right and he wasn't any ghost.

'Falco,' Bjorn whispered. He stared at his son standing under the Juniper Tree. 'But you're dead. Aren't you?'

Falco pointed down to the water beyond the cliff.

'No. She is.'

Far out to sea, something was washing in the waves. It looked like a woman in a sea-green dress, face down in the foam. Her arm twisted out and a trail of blood trickled in her wake. The carcass of a white dog washed alongside her.

His father watched with horror in his eyes.

'Rayn... You killed her.'

'Poor Mama!' Greta said.

He shook his head. 'She only got what she deserved.'

'Falco,' Greta sighed.

He lifted his foot and took a step forward. The grass under his foot felt cool and springy and weird. No. It was the foot that felt weird. It was flat and squishy and soft, not like talons at all.

He held up his right hand and gave Dad the note and the bonds from Mr Hodgekiss. His dad stared at them.

He held up his left hand and gave Greta the bracelet from Mary-Louise. Greta smiled at it.

Inside the house the oven bell went off. Thanksgiving Feast was ready.

'Ah, what is that smell,' asked Dad.

Greta sniffed. 'Yummy.'

'I feel better than I have in years,' said Dad. 'Come inside, Falco. Come and sit in the chair for the Thanksgiving King. It's what your Mother would have wanted.' His eyes were bright with tears.

'It's your chair,' said Greta. She was beaming. Her smile reminded him of Giorgio.

He took them by the hands. 'Yes,' he said.

They went in and ate.

## Afterword

So I got my family back, and we all lived happily together. Greta grew up beautiful and gentle and kind. I made sure she married a good man. My Dad worked in the mill until the day he died and I buried him under the Juniper Tree by my Mother, his real wife. After that I got rid of the mill and closed the house. I live in Tall Pines with the birds now, far away from men.

I think about Rayn sometimes. I'll never forget that day. Sometimes at night I have dreams and I'm a bird again and I can fly. But when I wake up I know it isn't true.

## Θ

© 2007 by asotir

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