Chapter 7: Bones of birds

(Soundgarden)

Eleven years ago

Blaire’s child was born in the morning. His cries fluttered in the air like a thousand little butterflies. His birth was hard. Everything went wrong. He was born too early, too small and severely fragile. It took only an hour for her to realize that he was completely unprepared for life and she was completely unprepared for him. On top of that, he wasn’t ready for the burden she planned to place upon his bony shoulders. He was beautiful and melodious, a stealer of hearts, for sure, but he was not a rock on which you could build a future.

Their boy was more like his father, Luka, than her. How foolish to think he could be their savior. He couldn’t even save himself. He could hardly breathe, for fuck’s sake. She cuddled him in her arms, singing the lullabies that her mother and grandmother used. She fed him from her breast, caressing his soft cheek with careful fingers. She rocked him on the carpet in front of the fire in their living room. She bathed him as gently as she could. He hated being naked, and hated water most of all.

She coddled the boy. Her boy. The child she didn’t want crawled into her heart and made a home there. She welcomed him with a love greater than any she ever bestowed on another living thing, including his father. She pour heart and soul and body into the task of caring for him, of keeping him alive. Sometimes, in the darkest moments of the night, she stood next to his basinet with her palm in front of his face just to be sure he was still breathing.

She cherished every moment with him. From his first breath, she knew that time wasn’t their friend. It’s never been on her side, to tell you the truth. But while the child lived, she was going to build a home on him, despite the foreboding coldness in his flesh. The sight of his feeble little body brought back memories of long walks with Red King, her grandfather. On these walks he would teach her about nature. The names of plants and what they were good for. The power of animals. He’d tell her about potions that could cure common colds, broken hearts, or nightmares. Sometimes they’d pick plants to replenish his pharmacy, as he called it. But mostly he taught her about the reality of life and death.

“Nothing lives forever, Bear,” he’d say. “Even continents are eroded by the waves. Life is about the cycle of birth and death. And in between these two events, there are a million changes taking place in a day. A million little deaths.”

She learned about fauna and flora quickly. About cycles of the seasons. About how each season impacted the world. He showed her that each season contained both strong points and weaknesses. Spring for joyful new growth. Summer for luxurious abundance. Fall for conserving resources, banking the feast of Summer. Winter to rest and heal.

Impressed by her progress, he said Blaire would excel in the art of Dark Magic, if she put her mind towards it. Others in the family learned the basics, but never really showed more interest. She was his protégé, the one who would take over the family business once he was ready to retire. Everyone knew it, and nobody contested his decision.

When they found bird cadavers, he’d ask Blaire to pick up the carcasses cautiously and place it in his handkerchief. Her small fingers always shook, lifting the delicate, hollow bones. They are precious in potions concerning dreams, or sleep, or hope. Wild bird’s bone were more potent than caged birds; natural death made them more powerful than killed birds.

At home they’d pluck the feathers, and she’d wash those, laying them carefully on a dry towel, then combing them with the pads of her fingers until every little thread was neatly in place. He would boil the bodies in a small steel pot over the fire in his workroom until the flesh and bone separated. Sometimes he’ll let her fish out the bones with a fork, placing them in an old steel wire strainer that he begged off of Grandma Sophie.

“Careful, Bear,” he’d warn. “This isn’t a battle. Use a delicate touch.”

He knew better. She never had a delicate touch; nothing about Blaire was soft or careful. That is why mother named her for war. Blaire means battlefield. She lived up to the name, always fighting or burning. Sometimes both at once. From first breath to last. The Red King warned this fighting spirit would forever stand between her and other people, especially those she loves.

“If you don’t want to be alone, learn to temper your steel. Know when to fight and when to flee. Maybe even surrender from time-to-time. We are the Snake Clan, Blaire, but even the strongest and most poisonous of snakes sometimes slither away from a fight.”

Even though Luka was from the Bull Tribe, he was mostly Bird because his mother was from the Bird Clan. If only he took more after the Russian Bull side of his father’s family, it would have been better. Bulls are strong. Birds are weak. Birds didn’t stay to fight; they flew away. The Red King knew that between them, it would never work. She needed someone with equal strength, a man that could take a stand with or against her, whichever she needed in the moment. Luka, despite being from the Bull Tribe, was not strong enough to match her.

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“The dove will not survive,” Red King said the night she introduced them. They were the two people Blaire loved most in the world, and yet so completely different.

He was right, of course. The dove didn’t fit the snake. He shrunk beneath her intensity. In the beginning they were bright-eyed fools. He insisted he loved her passion. Her desire to meet life head-on intrigued him. But three years later, passion became poison and desire for life was a destructive fire. Their marriage was sick and ablaze. Everything about her was dangerous and chaotic. He was the poster person of peaceful control. They were a match made in hell. Damned to fail.

Slowly Luka picked up new habits. Toxic habits. He stayed out late at night, and often came home drunk. Sometimes one of her nephews or uncles dragged him inside. Gossip circulated about the trouble in their marriage, but Red King addressed this early. He always hated gossip and never allowed it to continue within the family. It was the worst kind of corruption, especially within a close-knit clan like theirs.

“Gossip is the worst poison in the world,” he’d tell her. “It defiles all that is healthy and wholesome in a neighborhood. As a leader, you need to kill that as soon as it surfaces.”

Then, despite the Red King’s warning, Blaire opened her womb. Stopped taking the potion Red King taught her to prevent babies from forming because she believed a child would resurrect her to Luka’s relationship. Or at least tether them to each other forever. She told herself a woman should do whatever it takes to hold onto her man. And of course, she never walked away from a fight. She wasn’t about to give up on her marriage. She wasn’t going to let him walk away from their marriage without a fight. She would give him what he wanted, even if it was a betrayal of everything she wanted. Or not wanted. He wanted children and dropped accusations about them not leaving a living legacy, as he called it.

“You can’t just change your mind on something this important,” she told him one night during yet another argument.

“I thought you’d grow into it,” he answered.

“This isn’t something a person grows into, Luka,” she spat back at him. “And you agreed before that you don’t want one either. Insisting that I have one now is unreasonable.”

She was furious at his change of mind. They agreed to never have children. Ever. They swore it on their mother’s graves, for fuck’s sake. Was nothing sacred to him? Not even the promises he made? Not even his mother’s grave? In the end, when there was no solid ground to stand on, she fought back the only way she could think of.

What a bloody fool she was. In the beginning, she thought it would have worked if only the child wasn’t a bird too. If he wasn’t as thin and hollow as a bird’s bones. Delicately weak. Heart-breakingly beautiful. The pressure of his mother’s dream of a perfect family crushed onto him. He broke like fine china, like an expensive Waterford crystal vase hitting a marble floor. A million sharp pieces bursting everywhere. There was nothing she could do to save her precious Gavin, her dear child. And there was nothing she could do to keep Luka at her side.

No child can bear the burden of their parent’s failing marriage. She learned this too late. A baby isn’t strong enough for such a heavy task. Four long months her little Gavin fought. There was a bit of snake in him, after all, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Every time Blaire touched him, she knew. He was cold. Always so cold. Cold as the mountain air. Cold as the deceased, which she helped the Red King wash and prepare for burial rituals.

Funerals were one of their more lucrative business avenues. Red King’s pharmacy was the highest earning portion of the Snake Clan businesses. There was also the fruit orchards, and vegetable farm, livestock pens producing eggs and milk, as well as meat. The place which Red King built in the middle of the desert, hidden safely in a valley, was an oasis. It was the Snake Clan’s stronghold, a true homestead that sustained life and provided work and resources for the family.

She named her son Gavin. A family name to be proud of. A Scottish name from her own people. It meant White Hawk, to honor his bird heritage. Luka was extremely happy with the name, agreeing that it fit their son perfectly. She never believed that he was proud of what they created. He didn’t inform his own family of the pregnancy or birth. Their delicate, sickly son would not impress his Bull family. Neither would the Bird name, which was in honor of Luka’s mother’s people. Blaire didn’t care about this because Luka’s guilt kept him close to home.

The baby drowned, the doctors explained when her boy’s soul finally flew away to be with his Bird ancestors. The boy’s lungs filled with blood and he simply drowned. She lost his song. Then everything became cold. Her hands. Her heart. Her husband. Her home. Her entire world. Blaire became numb. Dead.

She didn’t cry. Not even once. Sure, she wanted to. Needed to. Oh, how she longed to cry for him, but his cold infected her, freezing all the tears, locking them deep inside of her soul. No, she couldn’t cry for him, ever. Neither for herself. Less so for Luka.

She sat next to his grave, screaming for hours while longing for the sweet release of tears. Longing for Luka’s touch. Longing for his comfort. She called his name out to the sky, but he didn’t come. Not once. Never spoke a soft word about their child. On the rare occasions when they were in the same room, he stared at her with such hate it made her womb ache. Every word she said fell to the floor like dead moths before it could reach his heart.

Luka didn’t touch her anymore. He said she was a cold-hearted bitch. It was just another nail in the coffin of their marriage. Another brick in the rising wall between them. At night, when she turned her face homeward, hoping to see a glimmer of the old warmth, her dead boy’s face smiled from those walls, an accusing grin of shame and guilt.

Sometimes it sang a lullaby; more often a lament.