Chapter 4: The Changelings

Puck: And jealous Oberon would have the child

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild

But she perforce withholds the loved boy,

Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy

--William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

As mentioned, in the period between her sixth and seventh birthdays, Grace figured out that other humans could not understood the language of birds. No single, dramatic incident prompted this realization. More like a collection of tiny clues building over time. Like finding out you were color-blind in reverse. Instead, everyone else in the world was missing a section of the rainbow.

The truth lay in how adults—whether neighbors or total strangers—reacted in seeing her chatting away with birds on the street. Rocky Ashcroft, the trumpet player living directly below her family’s apartment, would say “What an active imagination that one has!” with a laugh equal parts gravel and broken glass.

“Active imagination” was a phrase Grace commonly overheard when she was just trying to go about her business, the next most common being “Playing pretend.” Eventually, Grace figured out both phrases were nicer ways to say “lie.” When she cried to Mrs. Tatters about how badly this accusation upset her, the mother crow assured her this was always the way of things.

“It’s what makes humans such easy marks,” Ol’ Hoary added. Baring one exception, the language of birds remained the best-kept secret on Earth. Neither Grace, nor the Murder, nor any other bird, knew why that exception just had to be her. While possible before she came along, birds rarely made efforts to communicate between different species. Crows mostly spoke to crows, ducks mostly spoke to ducks, pigeons mostly spoke about themselves. But they did so in groups of other pigeons.

Like some humans Grace observed, birds decided to keep with their own kind, which seemed a terrible waste. Consider what fun they could have if they cooperated, instead of just fighting. While the speech of birds sounded identical to Grace, Ol’ Hoary insisted each race had a unique dialect. Even the same species spread over distant territory had accents clearly marking them “local” or “foreign.”

Except for close family, local birds typically distrusted outsiders. Skirmishes between the family of the hidden hollow and other Murders occurred weekly until Grace set them straight. Etiquette lessons her mother and Grandmam drilled into her actually turned out to be useful for settling disputes. The girl could communicate clearly with any bird, but never controlled or coerced them into agreeing with her. She never tried to see if she could, either. Even with geese. If reasoning failed, the pranks corvids could dream up usually kept them in line till winter.

Grace had a growing dread, however, that leaving her post might destabilize the entire avian community. In the time since Jackanapes, Offal, and Ragamuffin hatched, nothing like the conflict with Chiaroscuro had occurred. The struggle between the phoenix and metal bird were in a different class entirely.

“Ow, you’re pulling my pinions, Dear Lady!” Bennu wiggled on the bed while Grace struggled to put his broken wing in a splint.

“Sorry,” Grace mumbled, “but quit squirming.” As the daughter of a nurse, she had picked up some basic knowledge of medicine. Nothing complicated. She never had to do anything as dramatic as setting a broken arm, so did not know whether it was much different from setting a broken wing. She scavenged what materials she could from the first-aid kit her mother stashed beneath the bathroom sink and tried her best.

Scooting from the foot of her bed, Grace gave her handiwork a once-over. Though Bennu continued fidgeting, under the bandages, his wing remained in place. It seemed they had not been too late in realizing the injury was much more serious than a sprain. The girl nodded. “Okay, looks good. But just to be safe, I think it’d help if I could compare your body type to another bird. Maybe one from a field guide! With diagrams showing how skeletons fit together.”

“Alas, I can’t tell you which mortal bird I’ve most features in common with.” Contorting his thin neck, Bennu inspected his wing. “Perhaps a more permanent cast once we figure that out?”

“Sure. I’ll ask my dad to take me to the library.” Grace knew her father would be off of work that weekend.

***

Whatever other adults might say about Grace’s “active imagination,” Grandmam was always willing to hear about the highs and lows of her friendship with the birds. What is more, the old woman herself believed plenty things most adults considered the stuff of myths. Before bedtime, she frequently told Grace abouts places and creatures that would have seemed impossible before she met a firebird and demon.

One story in particular haunted Grace’s mind, about a creature called a “changeling.” What made the tale stand out was instead of knights and princesses living so long ago they must rightly be dead now, Grandmam spoke about changelings as if they still existed. That she knew about them personally. Not second, third, or eighth-hand. Times that she told this story were rare. Only on especially stormy night, when crackled lightning heralded brass bands of thunder. Covering noise was important, because it deafened any beings that might try eavesdropping.

“I was born the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.” That was how Grandmam always started this particular story. Grace would perk up in bed, directing all attention to where she rocked in a chair mostly made of splinters. “Least, that’s what I was always told. This was more impressive than it sounds now. We had no vaccines; no medicinal treatments people today take for granted. Doctors didn’t even bother washing their hands!

“If you managed to be born, there was no guarantee you’d live past your first year.” If thunder tried interrupting the story now, Grandmam paid it no mind. However loud the storm orchestra became, she never needed to raise her voice to be heard. She pressed on, rocking and whispering. “Not sure if I resembled my father, since he wasn’t around and picture-taking wasn’t so common then. But I never much looked like my mother or six sisters. The girls teased me about that when our mother wasn’t around, they’d say…”

Here Grandmam always halted a moment. “I wasn’t theirs at all. When their real baby sister was born, she was so beautiful that an ugly, misbegotten fairy became jealous. So, the fairy snuck in at midnight, when everyone was asleep (how anyone would know the specific time of night if they were asleep, they never bothered explaining) and claimed the baby for her own.” At this point in the narrative, Grandmam’s rocking chair would stop cold.

“But so the family wouldn’t go looking for the missing child, she left behind a…a replacement. Deep underground, where the fairies had been driven by humans with their war-makings, she plucked a spare old creature lying around. The ugliest, most pathetic fay was left in the baby’s crib because it wouldn’t be missed. My sisters said that ugly, pathetic creature,” she looked at the wall instead of facing Grace, “was me. They and their mother were stuck caring for me because my true family didn’t love me enough to keep me around.”

“They sound like awful sisters,” Grace invariably failed to keep from interjecting. She never had sisters of her own. But even so, she decided if she did, they should never be so cruel.

“Oh yes,” Grandmam finally turned to face her. Sometimes—but not always—she smiled. The splintery rocking chair resumed moving back-and-forth. “But now I’m here, surrounded by my family, and they’re all dead spinsters in a potter’s field.” She laughed, like she just heard the funniest joke in the world.

“At the time, I refused to accept the story. It was just something invented to bully me. But growing older, when I’d dance barefoot on the green hills of Tara, I overheard stories eerily similar to what I’d been told. Some from as far as Europe’s mainland. Some folks would rather believe their children were stolen and would never be seen again than have to seriously admit they were related to an oaf.”

“What’s an oaf?” Grace once asked.

“‘Oaf’ means ‘elf.’ That’s just another name fairies go by. They’re called all kinds of different names, depending on the country.”

“You say fairies are called elves, not that they were called them.” At this point, Grace would usually wring the corners of her bedsheets between her fingers. Partly from fear, but also partly from excitement. “Does that mean they’re still around?”

“I imagine they’re wherever children go unwanted. Abandoned or misunderstood. Seen as deformed, strange, even just a tiny bit different.”

“Okay.” The excited part of Grace always won out. She thought up new questions every time she heard the story. “When fairies take babies, do they always raise them as their own?”

“I don’t know, Gracie,” Grandmam admitted. “If I really was a fairy at one point, I can’t recall exact details of my life underground. I couldn’t possibly know what happened to the child I was supposedly switched for. I figure after going through that much effort, at least some fairies would try raising the infants. But since they’re said to live so long, their natural-born children must be spaced apart by hundreds of years. A long enough gap to forget how to properly care for a baby.”

“You mean the stolen babies died underground?” Grace was back to wringing her hands. A bit of fear remained.

“Probably no worse odds than on the surface among humans. I never would have thought it at the time, but my childhood was lucky compared to some ‘oafs,’ who were stabbed with knives or beaten with red-hot irons. Plenty of parents willing go to horrible lengths of torture trying to get the children they want, instead of who’s already there in front of them. With guardians like that, any human infant would be better off underground, in a land full of jewels and precious metals.”

“But if humans aren’t fooled by the replacement changelings, and call them ‘oafs’ while treating them terribly, why would fairies bother leaving them at all? Seems like a bad way to trick anyone.” Grace had learned much better ways from her Murder.

“Hmmm,” Grandmam leaned back in her splintery old rocking chair with only a stained quilt for cover. She clicked her tongue, to show she was mulling over a response. “Well, near as I can figure, fairies don’t exactly ‘steal’ things so much as they ‘swap.’ Some legends say out-and-out theft is against what laws they choose to follow. So, if you take something like a baby, you must leave something—anything—in return. Like I said, births are rare in Fairyland, but while elves never died of old age, they can wind up so senile they can’t rightly take care of themselves. You know, babies and the elderly have much in common.”

“How so,” Grace asked. The grip on her blanket often went slack by this point. Her focus lay in soaking up every word.

“Both babies and old folks are small, wrinkly, often bald, possess little idea where they are or what’s going on, speak in ways that doesn’t make sense to anyone else, and shamelessly soil themselves.”

Grace involuntarily stuck out her tongue. “But you aren’t any of those things, Grandmam.”

“Give me time, I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun. For me, at least. But before I send you off to sleep, I want to explain there’s a reason I tell this story. If what my six sisters said all those decades ago was true, there’s fairy in my bloodline, which means it’s also in you. As you go through life, I hope you remember that bond, even when you meet folks who fail to understand you.”

“Does that mean dad’s also like these changelings?” Grace once suggested. “Or fairies, or oafs?”

Grandmam snorted at the mere suggestion. “Oh no! Somehow, it skipped his generation.”

On reflection, this was the first time Grace remembered hearing there might be something beyond her usual world of books, porridge, trees, and birds. She could not decide whether these fairies would be more like Bennu or Mr. Aitvaras. Perhaps there were things in-between those extremes in the space the phoenix referred to as “Astral.”

Grace was just returning the first-aid kit to its place under the sink when the apartment door slammed open and shut. She could hear three adult voices, one being their next-door neighbor.

“I’m tellin’ you, Desdemona, that girl requires regular church attendance!” The neighbor’s full name was Saba Grundy, but she hated anyone using her first name. The thin-faced woman insisted on being known solely by her husband’s surname, always with “Mrs.” rigidly affixed in front. Like Grandmam, she had been born in a different country. Which country, exactly, no adults ever managed to specify. It might not even exist anymore.

Grace’s mother sighed. “She goes at least once a week, Mrs. Grundy. I make sure of it.”

Peeking from the hall, Grace could see her mother still wore her nurse’s uniform. Usually, after her shifts ended at a small, overcrowded hospital, she would ride home with Grace’s father.

“Nah, not enough for this one! Need to get out all the jumbies.”

“Jumbie” was a word Grace took to mean “demon.” Mrs. Grundy mentioned them constantly. Even from the hall, the girl easily overheard her shouting. The woman’s spitting range only traveled slightly less far.

Grace considered returning to her room, where Grandmam was taking a nap. Bennu promised the splint she made would go just as unseen as the phoenix himself, rather than appearing to float in the air. Instead, the girl peeped around the corner to see her mother collapse onto a couch.

“I’ll admit my daughter’s a bit…”

“Unorthodox, I think, is the best word, Dezzie,” said Grace’s father. He continued to stand while yanking off his tie. His jacket already lay crumpled on the carpet.

“Yes, thank you, Daniel. She’s unorthodox, but I don’t see how any of that concerns talk about spooks and spirits.”

“I’m no snooper,” continued Mrs. Grundy.

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Grace’s father snorted. Identical to the sound Grandmam made when laughing off the notion he might be a changeling.

“…But, out the kindness of my heart, I’m concerned for all around me.” Mrs. Grundy sounded like she had an extra helping of smug at brunch. “And it’s un-natural for a child to go wandering in their own head, instead of playing games with the other children.”

Grace could never muster any sort of excitement for sports. What’s the big deal about getting a ball past a net or over a hoop? she would think. And all the rules which seemed so arbitrary—nothing like the perfectly understandable routines she maintained in her schedule. Sports were mechanical, unthinking. Plus, even if you cared about winning a game, in sports, no victory was ever permanent. They had to keep playing forever. Nothing like the emotional satisfaction from pranking a particularly obnoxious duck.

“I do sometimes worry why my daughter doesn’t have any friends,” Grace’s mother admitted.

This, of course, was inaccurate. A more accurate statement would be “My daughter doesn’t have any human friends.” As with her cousin Perdita, Grace tried acting polite in the company of people her own age. But socialization can only go so far when the subjects they seemed to obsess over and the matters that interested her never appeared to overlap.

Sure, winter had its cutting winds and too much ice, but it also meant a vacation from those bullying geese. Spring rained a lot, putting a damper on most sports, but how could anyone fail to appreciate the beauty of the hatching season? Most of the girl’s peers ignored birds, but a few were horrible, and tried torturing the poor creatures. Grace normally hated fighting, but if she came across such crimes, she did anything to put a stop to it. Yet somehow, she always wound up in trouble for it, even though keeping animals from suffering was obviously the right thing to do.

But her mother continued: “I’m sure she’ll get some once she goes to school.” She sounded not just tired, but defeated. Grace’s father came to rest his hands on her shoulders.

“Ha, that’s another thing!” Mrs. Grundy gloated. “Shouldn’t a girl that age be in school already? Doesn’t she appreciate the value of education? No, I doubt it. Such an ill disposition might begin with truancy, but will naturally develop into drugs, delinquency, and life in a house of ill repute!”

Adults who did not even know Grace loved to throw out accusations like that, meting out punishments when they could over things they never bothered to understand. Just another reason why she did not want to attend school. She had the understanding it involved being stuck in a very small room with twenty, even thirty other children, with only a single adult trying to teach letters and numbers.

Grace could just as easily learn that at home, so what was the point of abandoning her friends for the day? It felt more natural to continue her education with Mrs. Tatters and the Murder. Outdoors, with a focus on practical subjects, like lockpicking or the best way to avoid being cursed by the Morrigan.

“I, for one, am not concerned, Saba.” While his back was to her, Grace could all but hear her father rolling his eyes. “So what if she spends her free time feeding pigeons or what-not? That’s a pretty big leap to being a criminal. My daughter learns at exactly the right pace for her, and I doubt you were as literate at that age…if you weren’t born decrepit.”

“In our family, we hide nothing from each other,” added Grace’s mother. “But we also value privacy. Might I lead you to inspect the other side of our front door?”

Grace saw her mother rise from the couch, and heard a door open and slam. But it was if these sounds were from across the whole building, not just the room. Guilt twisted so badly in her stomach she forgot to sneak back into her bedroom. Even when the sound of her father kicking off his shoes came from around the corner.

Grace’s father all but ran into her. That alone could not entirely explain the shocked look on his face. “Oh Jaysus, did you hear all that?”

She could only nod.

“Look,” Grace’s father rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead, “ignore whatever you heard in there. Don’t let that…hag, Saba make you feel bad.”

Grace did feel bad, but not because she cared what Mrs. Grundy thought. No matter the reason, she hated keeping secrets from her family, even as she understood they would not believe anything about Bennu or Mr. Aitvaras. Grandmam, maybe. But when surprised, the old woman could turn quite frail. She became weak at entirely unexpected times, like the evening Grace had to light the Jack O’ Lanterns alone.

“Er…look, baby,” continued Grace’s father, “how about we get out of the house? We can go anywhere—do anything you want.”

Grace knew exactly what she wanted to do. While her father’s beetle-black car zipped down the street, she kept a lookout for any men with fire instead of eyes. In the weeks following her Halloween confrontation with Mr. Aitvaras, neither she nor her corvid friends had seen any sign of the demon.

She used the sudden chill weather to explain why she was spending so much time indoors. Her mother insisted that nightmares allegedly brought on by Grandmam’s dark stories were to blame for her new timidity. Yet, when Grace had spent most of her time at the park, she was criticized for acting too wild. Unwinnable situations like that cropped up far too frequently among humans.

The car ride gave Grace much more time to dwell on her thoughts than she wanted right now. An eternity of seconds. Eventually, though, traffic cleared and they came to a part of the city she had never visited before. Her father explained before exiting his side that this was the largest public library in town. It was made of white marble, with humongous statues in the front.

Grace felt thrilled to see the place’s interior, but just as she tried to get out of the car, her father stopped her. “Uh, it’s okay, Gracie. You already explained the type of book you want. Stay in the car. Relax.”

“Why, dad?”

“Well…it’s not a safe part of town.”

Grace glanced around. Everything seemed much nicer than back home. The streets were clean, bushes were trimmed, and no trashbins overflowed. Hardly dangerous. She went along with her father’s request, anyway. The doors remained locked, but she left her window open a crack for air.

Her father strided straight to the library doors without incident. Grace sighed and prepared to wait some more. That preparation would eat up some of time she would otherwise be stuck waiting through. Thankful distraction came in the form of some pigeons bragging to one another by a lamppost.

“I was a wartime spymaster,” bragged an especially bloated bird identified as Major Avis. On his breast he wore some bits of tin foil and candy wrappers as medals. “The number of dangerous missions I served ’cross the sea set a world record.”

“Ah, you haven’t been further than the port,” dismissed another pigeon. “Much less another continent!”

“I won’t have insubordination, grunt. It sets a perilous precedent. Rival spies wait everywhere. Take, for example, the human girl lurking in that car.”

Grace had to turn her head at this. “If you don’t want spies, Major Avis, you pigeons shouldn’t coo so loudly!” She grinned to see the whole flock jump in surprise.

“Erhm, wise council.” Major Avis tried sounding authoritative, but his still-quaking body undercut this. “You must be a military woman yourself.”

“No, but my dad was in the Air Force. My uncle too, but he was sent to a different country. He’s not around anymore, since he died. Dad was just here, though.”

“Wonderful.” Major Avis appeared to have stopped listening soon after Grace mentioned the Air Force. “Perchance your father and I served in the same regiment! How I’d love to compare battle scars!”

“Well, he’ll be out of the library… eventually. You can ask him then. But he probably won’t understand you.”

“Don’t underestimate your old man’s abilities. A proper trained service-creature can crack the toughest codes.”

Pigeons blathered on while Grace anxiously glanced at the library entrance. From the shadow of a marble sphinx sauntered a tabby cat, who ambled in their direction. Grace liked cats fine, but knew what dangers they could present to birdkind.

Grace tried warning Major Avis and the other pigeons with words, but since they were not listening, she was forced to physically step out of the car to shoo them away.

“It’s not safe! Get out of here!” She waved her arms till one pigeon finally noticed the cat bearing down on them. In a flash, Major Avis and the rest safely scattered to parts unknown. Grace must have made more of a racket than she intended, because a police officer came up behind her.

“Hey girl, why are you making such a spectacle? This is a nice neighborhood. No place you’d be from.”

“Um,” Grace glanced to where the tabby had been walking. The cat had vanished in broad daylight.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Who are you anyway?” The officer pulled out his baton and waved it around. “Surely you know it’s rude not to answer your elders?”

Grace automatically thought of Mr. Aitvaras and looked to check the officer’s eyes. She relaxed to see they were a normal brown color. This seemed to make the cop angrier.

Whatever might have happened next was interrupted when Grace’s father exited the library and rapidly crossed the distance between. He held a huge book under one arm. “Who the h…wait, is that Finn? Little Finagle Murphy?”

Grace edged away from the distracted officer, circling to her father’s side.

“Danny Grey? From school?” the officer’s tone shifted from angry to incredulous.

Grace’s father nodded.

“You know, nobody’s called me ‘Little’ for ages.”

Grace’s father looked down at the officer in his blue uniform. “Can’t imagine why not.” He put the hand not gripping the book on Grace’s shoulder. “How’s your mam?”

“Wha’—you mean mom? Yeah, she’s great except the diabetes. Can’t catch up right now, though. I’ve got work to do.”

“Oh? Good to see my tax dollars are going to harassing harmless little girls…who were specifically told to wait in the car.” While these last words were naturally directed at Grace, her father’s attention remained on the officer.

“That’s not…” the cop started, but then his voice became a murmur. “Look, you’re only second generation, so there’s lots of things you don’t understand ’bout different people in this city.”

“I think I know plenty about people already, Little Finagle. Doubt I’d need lessons from a runny-nosed kid I probably whooped a million times.” Without looking down, Grace’s father unlocked his side of the beetle-black car, heaving the book onto the dashboard.

“C’mon, Dan.” The officer looked on as Grace’s father steered her to the other car door. “Wait, what’s your relationship to this girl?”

“She’s my daughter.” Daniel’s voice was neutral, but his face set in a grimace.

The officer glanced between the two of them several times. “Um, yeah, I can see it,” he stopped to clear his throat. “In the eyes…Right, sorry to bother you, miss.” He half-nodded, half-bowed to Grace, and shuffled in the opposite direction.

The long car ride home, Grace’s father did not say much. He simply glared at the road ahead, lips drawn in a thin line. Suddenly, while waiting for a red light to turn green, he pounded his fist on the dashboard.

Grace started from her seat. Her eyes went wide. The large book she eventually managed to shift into her lap also shook.

Noticing this, her father turned his frown to a passable impression of a smile. “So, baby, this the kind of book you wanted?”

She put on her own smile and nodded. “I think so, yes.”

Because Grace’s mother criticized the stories Grandmam normally told, that evening the old woman read the girl a book called “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” that had sat unread on the shelf for a very long time.

“…and when the three bears caught that rude, lazy thief with her sticky porridge fingers, they tore the terrible little girl apart! Yes, that’s what they did. You must believe, because it’s written here.” Grandmam gestured to the tome, but did not let Grace get close enough to check the words on the leather-bound volume which smelled like nothing so much as the general concept of “stale.”

“Then the bears divided her meat into three equal parts. The dad, who liked it hot, right? Well, he naturally took the warmest bits. He chewed Goldilock’s skin for an appetizer, then pulled out her steaming intestines, and drank some blood up like beer. The mam, she liked things a bit cooler, so she sucked the marrow from the brat’s bones, nice and moist and sweet since the criminal had never done honest work in her life. Then she munched on those bright blue eyes. Squish, squish, squish. They tasted like jelly. Yum.

“And finally, baby bear, who always took the middle road, split Goldilock’s corpse down the spine. He pulled out her lungs (which butchers call ‘lights’) and bit a chunk from the right, then an equal hunk from the left. You could swear those lungs still held the would-be thief’s screams of agony. Once each of the three bears had taken their fair, equal portion, they settled down to hibernate. And that was the wonderful end of that awful little girl.”

“Is there a moral to this story, Grandmam?” Grace gently leaned into Bennu. Little leftover space existed on the bed they now shared, but the phoenix’s feathers were softer than most anything, and the dry warmth he never ceased to produce warded off the winter crisp now creeping through the rest of city.

“Why of course there’s a moral to this story, Grace, and a good one at that: nobody ever said justice was clean!”

“And is evil always punished…or does it win sometimes?” Grace had no idea why the question popped into her head. But now it seemed like the most important thing to know.

“I…I don’t. Goodnight, Gracie.” Grandmam turned out the light. In Bennu’s faint glow, Grace could just make out her moving from her splintery chair into her own bed.

Grace wished she had given a clear answer, one way or the other. She turned to Bennu, expecting him to know something more about good and evil, but he was in a rare untalkative mood. At least the ever-wakeful phoenix could watch over them as they slept.

Next morning, the first time Grace had to herself, she poured over a bird encyclopedia large enough she could barely hold it in the span of her hands. She marveled at the different types of birds in the world, pondering whether she could communicate with all of them. Luckily, her father found a book with plenty of pictures. She eventually identified a phoenix as best resembling a heron, though Bennu also had some traits in common with cranes. Accompanying the text and life photos were diagrams mapping their internal organs and skeletons.

Since her parents worked, and knowing Grandmam would be out on errands, Grace invited the Murder. While crows had never visited her apartment before, Chiaroscuro infrequently came to pass along gossip he thought might interest Bennu.

Taking directions from the old raven, Mrs. Tatters brought her children along. The siblings needed little encouragement to come, as for a good long while they had been confined to their hollow. Sightings of Mr. Aitvaras were worryingly nonexistent. He could be anywhere.

Reunion with their phoenix friend became more than a little raucous. Grace entreated the Murder not to make more messes.

“This is where you live?” asked Ragamuffin. “It’s so big!”

“Yes,” Grace answered, “it’s my room, but I share it with my Grandmam.”

Ragamuffin’s black eyes bulged. “What, you’re saying there’s more to this place?”

Grace was more interested in sharing how she might fix Bennu. “I think I know how to make a real cast now.”

Bennu inspected the guidebook for himself. “You really suppose I resemble these herons? I mean, they don’t even have rainbow tails.”

Albumen, Waif, Offal, and Ragamuffin gathered around the open book. Dusky rested on the bedroom’s open windowsill, with Jackanapes hyperactively darting in-and-out.

Mrs. Tatters explained the absence of her husband and Chiaroscuro by saying they went searching for the banshee that had cryptically directed the raven to their sanctuary. “The boys don’t expect an audience with the Morrigan, or anything. But we figure a death spirit might know something of the misfortunes happening in Nephelokokkygia. I’m still perplexed by the comment about that ‘Where the cuckoo bird lives and plays’ line.”

“You can’t know how much I appreciate your efforts.” Bennu actually sounded weepy. “You’ve all taken part of the responsibility that was once my sole burden. Grace most of all.” The phoenix had eventually realized she disliked his fancy nicknames for her.

“Fine,” Waif said with a grunt. The big crow fidgeted uncomfortably. “But someone has to bring this up: what if Bennu’s wing won’t heal no matter what Grace tries?”

“Hm, I suppose we could just hack off the betraying limb.” Dusky spoke in a casual drawl.

“Ideally that should be a last resort,” cautioned Albumen.

“Yeah,” Offal added, “a meat cleaver would work, I guess. You have one in your kitchen, Grace?”

“You just want to see if there’s anything to eat,” Ragamuffin pointedly pointed out.

“What’s wrong with that?” Offal whined in response. “I’m a growing fledgling.”

“I’d really rather not suffer mutilation,” Bennu himself chimed in. “That would only extend the delay in tracking down that scientist named Henry.” The gold scroll and container were currently stashed under Grace’s bed.

“Have you thought more on where this man might be?” asked Mrs. Tatters.

“Yes, but nowhere any of you could reach on your own. The top of a mountain made of glass; a city sunk to the ocean floor. Ugh, I just need my wing back!”

“What about your resurrection ritual?” asked Ragamuffin.

“Though I’d prefer that to a cleaver, such a path presents its own dangers. Phoenixes only perform it every five hundred years, on a specific day. My next date is decades into the future. If performed early, I would almost certainly lose some memories. I might not even remember Nephelokokkygia, much less needing to save it!” Bennu made a sound like a salad of honks, groans, and strangles.

“So, say you had to perform the ritual early,” Mrs. Tatter’s voice soothed, “are there materials you’d need to complete it?”

After a couple chokes, Bennu answered “Only a few items. One is cinnamon.”

“Which we have.” Offal sounded excited. “Right in Grace’s kitchen! Let’s go look…”

“I wasn’t finished.” Even at the worst times, Bennu always sounded optimistic. The fact he was not now made the others tremble. “We’ll also need the incense myrrh.”

“Myrrh,” Grace spoke the word to herself. She heard it before, but had forgotten where. “Is it hard to find?”

Bennu nodded his long, thin neck. His crest and tail drooped. “Oh, very much. In some places, its worth as much as gold.”

“So, we won’t be able to buy it, then.” Grace had to keep herself from cursing.

“Just steal it.” Jackanapes darted back through the window, nearly knocking Dusky off.

“Hey!” Dusky complained, “I can’t even find a decent place to sunbathe.”

“It’s funny you say that,” Bennu’s half-hearted laugh expired, “Because once I have cinnamon and myrrh, the only other ingredient is the sun. I build this kind of nest called a pyre, and reflecting sunlight off my mirrored crest and tail, set myself ablaze. My body must be entirely consumed, so it can turn into an egg. Once I’ve hatched again, my body will be good as new, wing included. But without memories, who am I? Can I even be considered the same creature?”