Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology
Ellen Datlow
Introduction
ELLEN DATLOW
Birds are usually loved for their beauty and their song. They symbolize freedom, eternal life, the soul. Owls denote wisdom. Blackbirds are good omens. Bluebirds can bring happiness. Crows are otherworldly and can be symbolic of ancestral souls. The dove symbolizes peace, purity, innocence. The pigeon (although a cousin to the dove) is given a bad rap. The hawk and falcon are hunters of weaker birds.
There’s definitely a dark side to the avian, which is not surprising considering that they’re currently believed to have evolved from dinosaurs. Birds of prey sometimes kill other birds (the shrike), destroy other birds’ eggs (blue jays), and even have been known to kill small animals (the kea sometimes eats live lambs). And who isn’t disgusted by birds that eat the dead—vultures awaiting their next meal as the lifeblood flows from the dying. One of our greatest fears is of being eaten by vultures before we’re quite dead.
Is it any wonder that with so many interpretations of the avian, the contributors herein are eager to be transformed or influenced by them? Included in Black Feathers are those obsessed with birds of one type or another. Do they want to become birds or just take on some of the “power” of birds? The presence or absence of birds portends the future. A grieving widow takes comfort in her majestic winged neighbors, who enable her to cope with a predatory relative. An isolated society of women relies on a bird to tell their fortunes. A silent young girl and her pet bird might be the only hope a detective has of tracking down a serial killer in a tourist town. A chatty parrot makes illegal deals with the dying. A troubled man lives in isolation with only one friend for company—a jackdaw.
In each of these fictions, you will encounter the dark resonance between the human and the avian. You see in yourself the savagery of a predator, the shrewd stalking of a hunter, and you are lured by birds that speak human language, that make beautiful music, that cypher numbers, and that seem to have a moral center. You wade into this feathered nightmare and brave the horror of death, trading your safety and sanity for that which we all seek—the promise of flight.
O Terrible Bird
SANDRA KASTURI
Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?
—James Elroy Flecker,
“Gates of Damascus”
Have we met before, O Terrible Bird?
You, the child of a thousand pecks, descendant of lizards, your wings a flash of destruction against the sun.
I know you—your soul of black
feathers, each a caress of the razor.
The curve of your beak rending
the livers of poets and gods.
Tell me, O Terrible Bird,
when you and your brethren
swooped down in a thundercloud—
was it you that took them?
I imagine the dark V’s of your shadows sailing over the grass, sailing
over my children’s faces
as they looked up to squint at you.
Was it you? Are they limp in your claws?
Or worse: nestled smiling under
your terrible down, their small faces tucked contented into your thieving breast?
O Terrible Bird! I heard the silence, that stillness before the dark rush from that sunny, traitorous sky, heard the stifled cries. I heard.
I saw the deserted lawn, saw
that one small slipper still rolling in the grass where it had fallen from your awful clutch.
But you have mistaken me, O Bird.
Can you not hear? I am the silence and the piping and I am coming.
And it is I—I who am terrible.
The Obscure Bird
NICHOLAS ROYLE
The obscure bird clamour’d the live-long night.
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth
It was late. Gwen spent ten minutes helping Andrew tidy up the kitchen and then put her arms out for a hug and said she was going up to bed.
“I won’t be long,” Andrew said as he released her with a kiss.
Gwen smiled.
“Of course not,” she said.
It was a ritual. She knew it would be at least an hour, probably two, maybe more, before he joined her.
Outside, an owl hooted.
Andrew’s eyes were dark behind the round lenses of his glasses, unfathomable.
He turned to the sink as she walked towards the door to the hall, where she stopped and looked back at him. With his hands resting on the edge of the basin he appeared to be staring out of the window into the garden, which was cloaked in darkness. She watched him for a moment before turning to go.
Gwen lay in bed thinking about Andrew, worrying. She remembered one night earlier in the week when she had got up to go to the bathroom. Andrew’s side of the bed had been empty, cold. She had presumed him to be in his study, or downstairs, but when she had chanced to look out the bathroom window she had seen him standing in the middle of the lawn, his pale, round face upturned, staring at the mature trees at the end of the garden. As she lay in bed she remembered thinking that the right thing to do would be to go down and speak to him, perhaps gently guide him back into the house as you would a sleepwalker, but she had done neither. She had returned to bed instead and fallen back to sleep. When Gwen had woken in the morning, Andrew had been beside her as normal.
She heard him climbing the stairs and reached for the switch to turn off her bedside light. Lying in the darkness, she heard his carefully weighted footsteps approach their bedroom door, stop for a moment and then continue past. She heard him stop outside the baby’s room, where he would be listening for the sound of Henry’s breathing, and then continue on down the landing to his own study at the rear of the house. She heard the door click shut and imagined him sitting at his desk, raising the lid of the laptop and then staring alternately at the screen and out of the window. She had stood at his open door one night, watching him divert his attention from one to the other and back again, until he had caught sight of her reflection in the window and spun around on his chair, blushing. She had allowed her eyes to drop to his computer screen, but instead of the lurid insult of pornography she had seen nothing more unsavoury than the boxy iconography common to social networking sites.
“You know, you really should get more sleep,” Gwen murmured in the morning as Andrew brought her a cup of tea.
“I know, but . . . you know,” he said.
“What?”
“The professorship thing. I might not get it anyway, but I certainly won’t if I don’t get these papers done.”
“Mmm.”
In the bathroom, Duffy the cat lay on her back on the bath mat. Legs extended at either end of her glossy black body, she looked like a giant skate egg case. Gwen tickled her tummy and Duffy’s head darted forward to nibble at her wrist.
Gwen checked in the baby’s room and then went downstairs. A floorboard creaked as she entered the kitchen. Andrew had paused in the act of emptying the dishwasher and was staring out of the window at the garden. She went up behind him and threaded her arms under his and held him tightly around the chest, resting her chin on his shoulder.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Gwen said.
Andrew’s head swivelled around on his neck.
“About Henry,” she said, pulling back.
“Oh,” he said. “No. I know.”
They disengaged and Gwen watched Andrew’s back as he continued to empty the dishwasher. His shoulders were tense, hunched up. When he had finished, he closed the door of the machine with a quiet snap.
“It’s all going to go, you know. All that,” he said, looking out of the window again. “Not our trees, obviously, but everything beyond, in the old railway cutting.”
He turned to look at her. She didn’t know what to say.
“I mean, I know it’s a good thing,” he continued, “extending the tram system, or at least I thought it would be, but now I’m not so sure. Not now that I think of the ecological cost. All those trees. Countless nesting sites.”
She looked at him without speaking for a moment before saying, “I’ve got to go to work.”