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Authors: Ananda Braxton-Smith
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shook my head.
‘No, he wasn’t,’ said Pa and he seemed done-in of a sudden. ‘He wasn’t always like that.’
He turned his back and pretended to be sleeping again, and I knew enough this time to let him pretend.
Chapter Seven
Angelbird
FROM THE TIME PA BROUGHT BOSON home tucked whittering in his winter cloak, nothing had been any good. I was the first to see he was changed. We lay in the bed we’d shared since being born, and night after night I’d watch my brother not sleep. He gave up on blinking and I made myself grit-eyed trying to catch him doing so. His eyes were like tunnels with a person at each end; a shrinking person, fading and waving.
By spring he was walking the nights. Walking the yard, walking the mires. Sometimes something lit on me in my sleep, and I’d wake to find him sitting on the bed watching me.
‘Fermion,’ he’d say as soon as he saw my eyelids move, and then he’d go on saying it until I sat up and faced him. ‘
Fermion, Fermion, Fermion
—’
‘What?’ I’d ask. ‘
What? What? What?’
One night he said, ‘Fer, I had a dream’.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘I dreamed I was just pretending to be a turfcutter’s son. I lived in a stolchy, stinking place and the birds there were all rageful. They were roosting all over, and everywhere I went they were screaming at me to stop it.
Stop it
.’ He tapped his brow over and over with his forefinger and dwindled to a mutter.
‘Stop what?’ I asked him.
‘Stop pretending,’ he said like I should know. ‘Stop pretending not to know.’
‘Know what?’
‘What I know,’ he whispered.
I told him it was only a dream. I told him he’d eaten too much and it was boiling his brain. I told him he was just maudlin again from growing up. He didn’t even blink.
He climbed into my parent’s bed, covered as much of himself as he could manage in Moo’s hair, and he lay there trembling all night. I watched him curve into Moo, displacing Gilpin who just rolled over them both and lay spread out across Pa. Through it all they stayed sleeping. I learned to sleep alone.
By fall he had sickened to a twig with knothole eyes.
It was the end of Moo and me together at home.
It was up the cut for me.
My mother darned Boson’s old hose for me, and she stitched me a calf-hide cloak just like Pa’s. It came to my feet and still dragged its tails behind as I went about the hearth. Moo and me didn’t know then that this was to be my life, so we made fun of my turnout as I thumped about being a boy, demanding grub and pretending to know everything. On my first day she bound my feet in rags so thick I couldn’t feel the earth under them. I kept falling and had to unwrap them before I even reached the skybog.
Pa said not to fret, the clay would be our shoes. He was right.
I learned to work the cut sleet-skinned in the panting cold when to breathe is to send out icelings. I worked through the swoony heat, and even the earthshakes that brought clods raining down on us and had us on our backs in the pit. My feet rotted in the standing water and sometimes there were toads but I just kept working.
Pa was so proud that I could work like that. He crowed about me at home. Soon he was bragging to Lily Fell and the Craigs and the rest. Saying as how he didn’t know what he’d do up there without me.
I couldn’t tell him my arms ached and shivered all night, and I was sick of it. Or that the smell of our own peaty hearth made me feel fluxy. I couldn’t tell him I sweated whole nights away glooming about the next day, and rode clarty nightmares of toads and adders until morning. I just couldn’t tell him.
He was so proud.
Moo was so eased.
I was the one they could trust.
It took a year for my brother to fade entirely, and for the stranger to take his place. By the following winter Boson took to meeting with his council of birds every day.
Each morning he was out at the willows bargaining with the hedge-wrens, and every twilight, out on
‘No, he wasn’t,’ said Pa and he seemed done-in of a sudden. ‘He wasn’t always like that.’
He turned his back and pretended to be sleeping again, and I knew enough this time to let him pretend.
Chapter Seven
Angelbird
FROM THE TIME PA BROUGHT BOSON home tucked whittering in his winter cloak, nothing had been any good. I was the first to see he was changed. We lay in the bed we’d shared since being born, and night after night I’d watch my brother not sleep. He gave up on blinking and I made myself grit-eyed trying to catch him doing so. His eyes were like tunnels with a person at each end; a shrinking person, fading and waving.
By spring he was walking the nights. Walking the yard, walking the mires. Sometimes something lit on me in my sleep, and I’d wake to find him sitting on the bed watching me.
‘Fermion,’ he’d say as soon as he saw my eyelids move, and then he’d go on saying it until I sat up and faced him. ‘
Fermion, Fermion, Fermion
—’
‘What?’ I’d ask. ‘
What? What? What?’
One night he said, ‘Fer, I had a dream’.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘I dreamed I was just pretending to be a turfcutter’s son. I lived in a stolchy, stinking place and the birds there were all rageful. They were roosting all over, and everywhere I went they were screaming at me to stop it.
Stop it
.’ He tapped his brow over and over with his forefinger and dwindled to a mutter.
‘Stop what?’ I asked him.
‘Stop pretending,’ he said like I should know. ‘Stop pretending not to know.’
‘Know what?’
‘What I know,’ he whispered.
I told him it was only a dream. I told him he’d eaten too much and it was boiling his brain. I told him he was just maudlin again from growing up. He didn’t even blink.
He climbed into my parent’s bed, covered as much of himself as he could manage in Moo’s hair, and he lay there trembling all night. I watched him curve into Moo, displacing Gilpin who just rolled over them both and lay spread out across Pa. Through it all they stayed sleeping. I learned to sleep alone.
By fall he had sickened to a twig with knothole eyes.
It was the end of Moo and me together at home.
It was up the cut for me.
My mother darned Boson’s old hose for me, and she stitched me a calf-hide cloak just like Pa’s. It came to my feet and still dragged its tails behind as I went about the hearth. Moo and me didn’t know then that this was to be my life, so we made fun of my turnout as I thumped about being a boy, demanding grub and pretending to know everything. On my first day she bound my feet in rags so thick I couldn’t feel the earth under them. I kept falling and had to unwrap them before I even reached the skybog.
Pa said not to fret, the clay would be our shoes. He was right.
I learned to work the cut sleet-skinned in the panting cold when to breathe is to send out icelings. I worked through the swoony heat, and even the earthshakes that brought clods raining down on us and had us on our backs in the pit. My feet rotted in the standing water and sometimes there were toads but I just kept working.
Pa was so proud that I could work like that. He crowed about me at home. Soon he was bragging to Lily Fell and the Craigs and the rest. Saying as how he didn’t know what he’d do up there without me.
I couldn’t tell him my arms ached and shivered all night, and I was sick of it. Or that the smell of our own peaty hearth made me feel fluxy. I couldn’t tell him I sweated whole nights away glooming about the next day, and rode clarty nightmares of toads and adders until morning. I just couldn’t tell him.
He was so proud.
Moo was so eased.
I was the one they could trust.
It took a year for my brother to fade entirely, and for the stranger to take his place. By the following winter Boson took to meeting with his council of birds every day.
Each morning he was out at the willows bargaining with the hedge-wrens, and every twilight, out on
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