Forever to Rosenheit
By Anna K. Young
October 15, 2022
October 15, 2022
I were cursed 'bout as early as I can remember.
Of course, I doesn’t remember round my birth or nothin’. I think maybe my momma were a bird, or mayhaps a fish o’ some kind. Something small and insignificant, cuz that’s how I always be feelin’.
The first city I remember be Rosenheit, and I figure ‘twill be the last I remember too. I just can’t seem to get away from her, even though the people here be thinkin’ I’m some kind of wicked demon or the like. Maybe they be right. I don’t know. All’s I know is that I been around a long time, and even though I constantly be changing, the city, she always stay the same.
#
They calls me a shifter, or sometimes a shapechanger, or about a gazillion other things around the world. A dirty shifter, they says. Not human. The beastly type.
One day as a muddy street mutt, I snatches a newspaper out of a scrawny newsboy’s pretty hand and bolt off down the cobbles. The boy screams and throws rocks, but not too many hit me. I runs into the nearest woods, hauling ass for miles and miles while my slobbery dog drool flings off me like’n to wet, white threads. My yellow nails clickety-clack on the rocks, so it’s a cryin’ shame when I gets to the woodsy area and the dirt muffles the sound.
My doggy eyes don’t much understand the squiggles on the page, but the instinct takes over and I stretch into a human form. The howlin’ in my throat melds into a gratin’ scream as I change. Hurts a bit, it does. All naked, I should be shiverin’ but I don’t much feel the damp cold mist anyway. I put the paper up to my eyes and get to readin’.
I does like the opinions on page four. The Rosenheit fella’s name be Gregor Haldorf. He has right smart bits about the grubby urchins and risin’ taxes and how Rosenheit’s all gone to shit because we ain’t got enough fancy motorcars or trees or whatever it be that week.
His columns, they make me laugh. The world’s been shit all along, but he be thinkin’ Rosenheit is the worst of it. It might be. I don’t know. It seems nothin’ much has changed to me, so it’s probably always been shit.
Today, how-all, his column brings the dog growl back into my throat. “Shifters,” he writes, “shifters are the cause of trouble in Rosenheit. Can’t be trusted, not a single one. They’ll change before your eyes and you can’t never trust them. They’re liars and stealers and they can get away with it, they can, what with their shifty faces and the like.”
At first I’m all kinds of angry, and I turn back into that filthy dog so I can tear up the paper right proper. I’m so angry I bites my own tongue, and the blood and drool and little bits of paper fly all about. Then I calm down and gets all sober, and I don’t so much as whimper when I turn myself back human. Mr. Haldorf, he doesn’t understand. All people are liars and cheats, not just us shifter types. At least not me. He says it like that’s all we’re born to do, but that can’t be all, can it?
#
I flits about as a pretty songbird for a bit to clear my head, then drop back and become human. The body feels all lumpy and strange, and though I know I’m handsome I can’t help but sneer at myself in every window. Sometimes I thinks I’d be better off stickin’ as a critter, like, a right plump otter or tricky snake or somethin’, but I always gets restless.
Bein’ a shifter, it’s like bein’ homesick for a place you never lived. I keep changin’ and changin’ but every time I tries to settle down, I gets this itch and I can’t stay put. Longest I remember goin’ was three months or such as a wicked little scorpion ‘round the desert someways. Fancied myself a gatekeeper like those in Gilgamesh, I did. I sure liked bitin’ and snippin’ and stingin’, and layin’ about on the sand in the sun, but I did get bored eventually. Some of them nomadic types seen me shift into a eagle right quick, and as I flew away I couldn’t tell if they was shoutin’ curses or blessings. Just saw them wavin’ their arms a lot, I did.
#
Come across a tavern, and figure it’s as good as anything.
The lass don’t take long to notice me. “Come around here often, pops?”
I shake my head, little wisps of black hair swingin’ round my eyes.
The lass looks me up n’ down and seems to decide she likes somethin’. “Come, sit. Poor bloke like you, I bet you be needin’ a drink.”
I can’t resist. She’s a right treat, she is, pretty dark skin and hazel eyes and fingernails smooth and shined as mother o’ pearl. I reckon she’d look smart as a bobcat, maybe, or a alligator with its snappy jaws. I peers into her mouth every time she throw her head back and laugh, jus’ lookin’ for teensy sharp biters. But her teeth stay squared and straight.
She gaze at me as the scruffy old bartender brings us pints. She waggles a finger at my clothes. “And what kind o’ man might you be, wi’ a getup like that?”
I pulled these rags off a dead man in the first alley on the outskirts o’ town. He looked right silly, he did, purple vest n’ puffed-up pants. Might’ve been a actor, like, or a travelin’ circus bloke. Gods only know how he ended up dead with all them clothes, and a few coin in pocket to boot, but I ain’t complainin’.
“Performer,” I says at last, and the lass giggles.
“You any good?” she asks, leanin’ in close so I can smell somethin’ funny on her. Smells smoky, like. Smells sharp.
I leans in, too. “Not always,” I says, turnin’ away all tease-like. “The playmasters, they been givin’ me too many parts to play.”
She don’t giggle this time, jus’ reach out and turn my face toward her.
I’m all set for the long run, I am — been a while since I been tongue-wrestlin’ with anyone. But she stops right quick. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” I say. I hear a birdy chirp manglin’ wi’ the hurt in my human voice, and I thinks, not now, don’t fly away yet.
She touches her lips all worried. “Blood,” she says, “I tasted blood.”
Oh. Haw haw. I laughs. “Bit me tongue earlier, I did. Got all kinds o’ worked up over somethin’ in the weekly.”
“Oh, that’s all?" She smiles shy, embarrassed. “What was it what got you upset?”
I stand and grabs her hand. Our skin matches almost perfect, it does. Can’t remember if it did earlier, but I don’t care much. “’Twere somethin’ silly, I’m sure,” I says, leadin’ her to the scabby tavern owner and then up the stairs.
#
The upstairs room ain’t nothin’ special, but I been roamin’ the streets a few days now as that mangy mutt. Feels royal, it does. Creaky wood floors and a fluffy bed wi’ the wobbly headboard leant right up against the cracked plasterboard wall. I grin thinkin’ bout all the noise we’ll make. Gonna sound like a right stampede down at the bar.
Magnolia, though, she try to close the door as quiet as possible. When I learnt her name were Magnolia, I thought, that’s a right snug fit. Out east, they be thinkin’ the magnolia be the perfect symbol of womanly-ness, beauty and sweetness and whatnot. And now I be thinkin’ them folk were right all along.
Funny ’nuff, I were a woman for a while livin’ out east there. Thought I was a right magnolia myself, I did, but the folk in town, they got to thinkin’ my feet were too big and my height too tall. I fixed it in private, I did, but them folks were quick and come about callin’ me huli jing, warnin’ everyone in shoutin’ distance I weren’t to be trusted. Callin’ me dangerous, a tricky fox spirit, even though my last form were a orange-speckly carp. Didn’t help when I tried to ’splain myself. Ended up leavin’ soon after.
Magnolia, though, she don’t seem so quick. I already made me jus’ a wee bit taller, I did, after she say she be likin’ real tall lads. She tease me, too, pokin’ fun at my rough callus-y hands when I start runnin’ them over her. I want her to be happy as possible, so gradual as I can I smooth out them cracks and dryness ‘til my hands be soft as a elephant pup’s nose.
She stop again right before the goin’ gets good. “Just give me a moment,” she say. “I need a minute in the powder room.”
Her hips sway ever so nice as she walk away. I thinks to myself, next time I’m human I might try lookin’ like her. Not in Rosenheit, though. ’Twill have to be far off, else someone notices she got a twin sudden-like and come after me.
I lay all contented on the goosey-down comforter ’til she come out the powder room. Then I sit up — somethin’ be different, I’m sure, about her, but I can’t say what exactly.
But when she’s all near my face again n’ we’re doin’ the two-lip samba, I realizes it. Her nose be smaller, true as tripe, n’ her hair I thinks is shorter. Her sweet eyes what I thought was hazel be instead a deep gray. Little red ’round the iris, they are, almost as if she been cryin’. Maybe from shame, I thinks, or mayhaps ’twere her changin’ nose what made her eyes water…
I nudge her back all gentle so we can talk. “Somethin’ different wi’ you, ’tis.”
“Freshened up, I did,” she say with a crooked grin, rubbin’ at one o’ her eyes as she does. She start leanin’ close again. “Put on perfume. You likes it?”
“Not that, it isn’t,” I says, pushin’ her slowly back again. “It be your eyes. Your hair. Your nose.”
I doesn’t want to hope for too much. In all my years I hasn’t met but a few other shifter types, n’ most of them was long ago. Never once in Rosenheit, neither. Never been welcome ’round here, nigh, even when ’twere nothin’ but some deerhide tents nearabouts the river. Even before Haldorf gone and called all o’ us criminals in the papers. Thought he were right silly earlier this week, I did, since I never met a single shifter ’round here n’ figured they all moved on long ago, with it bein’ all hostile and the like. Folk been thinkin’ us bad luck since the oldest legends and probably even before. But here, now…
I reckon I been starin’ at the lass too long and hawklike, for she burst into tears. “Please,” she gasp, clutching my jaunty purple vest like a handkerchief n’ sobbin’ right into it. “Don’t go tellin’ no one. There be hunters out there, true, huntin’ down types like me.”
“It’s okay,” I says, but she be long past consolation.
“So stupid o’ me,” she say with a hiccup, “revealin’ myself like that. Thought I’d win your fancy if I just changed but a few wee things. I go on bein’ so daft sometimes!”
“Magnolia…”
“A right fool, I be, and here now I put you in danger, too—”
“Magnolia,” I says, louder now, and she stop babblin’ for but a minute. I takes a deep breath, hardly able to hold down the feelin’ bubblin’ in my chest. “I won’t be tradin’ you over to no hunters. See…” I stretch out my hand, like, n’ change it ’twixt a paw and a set o’ talons and a fin o’ sorts before settlin’ back on a hand. Bite my tongue right where I did earlier, tryin’ to hold back the pain, but I don’t care none. “See,” I says to Magnolia, “your secrets be safe with me.”
Her tears quiver still on her long eyelashes, but I sees the relief pourin’ over her like a waterfall, a stream o’ peace. Her shoulders relax, but tense up quick again. This time, how-all, there’s a right saucy look stealin’ over her face to replace the burden. “All my secrets?” she say. She push me back, now, so I tips onto my back on the goosey-down blanket and she be all I can see.
“All o’ them, like,” I says, before her mouth start takin’ the words right out o’ mine.
#
I wake up once in the night wi’ Magnolia curled next to me, fine and beautiful, n’ I wonder why she went n’ bothered changin’ her nose and hair up in the first place, bein’ lovely as a northern sunrise anyhow.
I wake up a second time, n’ she be kneelin’ right over me like she were after our talk. The oil lamp o’er the bed be flickerin’. “Love,” I says, n’ right quick she’s got a pistol ’twixt my eyes.
“Hope they can tell you’s a shifter after you’re dead,” she says, and fires.
I reckon instinct kicked in ’fore she did, bein’ that I’m alive still to remember it all. Constricted myself in a nip, I did, so fast I felt I might choke. Shrunk down wee small, and there Magnolia be wi’ the gun n’ a fierce look on her lamp-lit face. Her head twist fast, back n’ forth, n’ finally she spot me n’ aim the gun again.
I take to the air, hearin’ my own little parchment-paper wings flutterin’ as I fly fast as can be toward the door. Then BANG! BANG! as Magnolia keeps a-firin’ at me. Madness, it be, shootin’ at a fruit fly, n’ I hears her screech wi’ rage when I slips under the door n’ out.
I sees little bits o’ brown rubber on the sink o’ the ladies’ powder room as I buzz in, bits o’ black hair on the floor. A pair o’ tiny glass domes painted hazel ’roundabouts the center of each, bright n’ dead false eyes that stare n’ accuse as I escape through a drafty plank o’ wood — a peepin’ hole, I reckon — into a alley n’ back into the streets o’ Rosenheit.
#
I don’t think ’twere fair o’ me, sayin’ my old dead momma were a fish or bird or somethin’. Animals like that isn’t insignificant. I just be sayin’ that ’cause I myself feelin’ low.
Birds got they beautiful feathers, long and short and downy and sharp and glimmerin’ just as fine as the scales o’ the fish. Bird’s isn’t so set on betrayin’ they own kind, nor neither is fish. Had plenty o’ fish chase me down, try to eat me, but it weren’t ever personal, it weren’t. Same on birds. Only one kind ever do that sort o’ thing.
I spent time as a whippoorwill once. Speckly thing wi’ big dark eyes, I was, n’ I spent my days flittin’ over the leafy treetops callin’ whip-poor-will! over and over and over, near a thousand times straight. Tryin’ to get on with a female, I suppose I was. Heard folk on the ground earlier callin’ me a god o’ the night, and I reckon it went straight to my wee little head.
I were struttin’ about in front o’ one such lass, a right plump birdy wi’ her necklace o’ white feathers strung about her throat. Prettiest whippoorwill in the forest, she were. I try puffin’ out my throat, and all sudden she gone lookin’ real scared and swoops off. Felt right silly, I did, and were about to go after when I sees a dash of yellow like motorcar headlights — didn’t know about motorcars then, like, but I does now — and hear a wicked screech and oh! An angry slash o’ pain where my wing met my tiny speckled breast. I feels myself bein’ carried off and screams, but it don’t make much noise over the matin’ calls everywhere and I think, All this time, n’ this’ll be my end, will it? and I stretches my spotty neck far as I can and bite that hungry owl hard ’round the top o’ his foot and he drops me and I fall and fall and fall, screamin’ and cryin’ and now I think this really will be the end.
I’m right quick, sometimes, or maybe jus’ a victim to instinct as always I been. Without a thought I feels myself shrinkin’ up, everything constrictin’ ’til I feel I might choke to death but it settles and I hit the ground, bounce off a leaf safe as can be ’cause now I gots the armor of a ant, I do. Still feel a mighty pain ’round my front wiggler on the right.
My buggy mind wants me to find a colony, a pile o’ ants to keep my safe, but I know well enough to stay put through the night. In the morn I hears voices, human ones, and quick-like I shifts and now I can understand what they be sayin’. I knows every language, I does, moth and tiger and even all the different human ones, and I s’pose for that I should be grateful ’cause ‘twouldn’t be much use speakin’ earthworm to a hairy yak or likewise.
The pair o’ young men find me all sprawled on the leaves, long black hair splayed behind my head and right arm all twisted and bent. They help me up and tries not to stare since I’m a right lovely lady, wi’ nothin’ sprucin’ up my form but for the whippoorwill feather in my hair. They doesn’t call me huli jing — they calls me Whippoorwill, or their word for it, ’cause I tells them that be my name — and they takes me back to their village. They fixes up my arm over a few weeks and one day I hears one o’ the young men who found me talkin’ about marriage and soon after, I sees the monarch butterflies migratin’ north o’erhead and I joins them, all easy and free.
I thinks about them folks a lot. Fixed me up right, they did, and never asked no questions nor prodded me for answers. Jus’ set my twisted arm and fell in love. ’Twas a nice change, after bein’ seen as a god or a wicked spirit by most everyone. Or keepin’ myself a secret. All them outcomes is equally wrong, and equally lonely. But these folk jus’ saw me as pretty Whippoorwill n’ did what was right for her.
Capable o’ such compassion, I thinks, yet soaring o’er Rosenheit once again I thinks the compassion is matched only in cruelty. Or mayhaps I just be feelin’ sorry for myself.
I don’t think it were fair of me to call birds and fish insignificant, anyhow.
Of course, I doesn’t remember round my birth or nothin’. I think maybe my momma were a bird, or mayhaps a fish o’ some kind. Something small and insignificant, cuz that’s how I always be feelin’.
The first city I remember be Rosenheit, and I figure ‘twill be the last I remember too. I just can’t seem to get away from her, even though the people here be thinkin’ I’m some kind of wicked demon or the like. Maybe they be right. I don’t know. All’s I know is that I been around a long time, and even though I constantly be changing, the city, she always stay the same.
#
They calls me a shifter, or sometimes a shapechanger, or about a gazillion other things around the world. A dirty shifter, they says. Not human. The beastly type.
One day as a muddy street mutt, I snatches a newspaper out of a scrawny newsboy’s pretty hand and bolt off down the cobbles. The boy screams and throws rocks, but not too many hit me. I runs into the nearest woods, hauling ass for miles and miles while my slobbery dog drool flings off me like’n to wet, white threads. My yellow nails clickety-clack on the rocks, so it’s a cryin’ shame when I gets to the woodsy area and the dirt muffles the sound.
My doggy eyes don’t much understand the squiggles on the page, but the instinct takes over and I stretch into a human form. The howlin’ in my throat melds into a gratin’ scream as I change. Hurts a bit, it does. All naked, I should be shiverin’ but I don’t much feel the damp cold mist anyway. I put the paper up to my eyes and get to readin’.
I does like the opinions on page four. The Rosenheit fella’s name be Gregor Haldorf. He has right smart bits about the grubby urchins and risin’ taxes and how Rosenheit’s all gone to shit because we ain’t got enough fancy motorcars or trees or whatever it be that week.
His columns, they make me laugh. The world’s been shit all along, but he be thinkin’ Rosenheit is the worst of it. It might be. I don’t know. It seems nothin’ much has changed to me, so it’s probably always been shit.
Today, how-all, his column brings the dog growl back into my throat. “Shifters,” he writes, “shifters are the cause of trouble in Rosenheit. Can’t be trusted, not a single one. They’ll change before your eyes and you can’t never trust them. They’re liars and stealers and they can get away with it, they can, what with their shifty faces and the like.”
At first I’m all kinds of angry, and I turn back into that filthy dog so I can tear up the paper right proper. I’m so angry I bites my own tongue, and the blood and drool and little bits of paper fly all about. Then I calm down and gets all sober, and I don’t so much as whimper when I turn myself back human. Mr. Haldorf, he doesn’t understand. All people are liars and cheats, not just us shifter types. At least not me. He says it like that’s all we’re born to do, but that can’t be all, can it?
#
I flits about as a pretty songbird for a bit to clear my head, then drop back and become human. The body feels all lumpy and strange, and though I know I’m handsome I can’t help but sneer at myself in every window. Sometimes I thinks I’d be better off stickin’ as a critter, like, a right plump otter or tricky snake or somethin’, but I always gets restless.
Bein’ a shifter, it’s like bein’ homesick for a place you never lived. I keep changin’ and changin’ but every time I tries to settle down, I gets this itch and I can’t stay put. Longest I remember goin’ was three months or such as a wicked little scorpion ‘round the desert someways. Fancied myself a gatekeeper like those in Gilgamesh, I did. I sure liked bitin’ and snippin’ and stingin’, and layin’ about on the sand in the sun, but I did get bored eventually. Some of them nomadic types seen me shift into a eagle right quick, and as I flew away I couldn’t tell if they was shoutin’ curses or blessings. Just saw them wavin’ their arms a lot, I did.
#
Come across a tavern, and figure it’s as good as anything.
The lass don’t take long to notice me. “Come around here often, pops?”
I shake my head, little wisps of black hair swingin’ round my eyes.
The lass looks me up n’ down and seems to decide she likes somethin’. “Come, sit. Poor bloke like you, I bet you be needin’ a drink.”
I can’t resist. She’s a right treat, she is, pretty dark skin and hazel eyes and fingernails smooth and shined as mother o’ pearl. I reckon she’d look smart as a bobcat, maybe, or a alligator with its snappy jaws. I peers into her mouth every time she throw her head back and laugh, jus’ lookin’ for teensy sharp biters. But her teeth stay squared and straight.
She gaze at me as the scruffy old bartender brings us pints. She waggles a finger at my clothes. “And what kind o’ man might you be, wi’ a getup like that?”
I pulled these rags off a dead man in the first alley on the outskirts o’ town. He looked right silly, he did, purple vest n’ puffed-up pants. Might’ve been a actor, like, or a travelin’ circus bloke. Gods only know how he ended up dead with all them clothes, and a few coin in pocket to boot, but I ain’t complainin’.
“Performer,” I says at last, and the lass giggles.
“You any good?” she asks, leanin’ in close so I can smell somethin’ funny on her. Smells smoky, like. Smells sharp.
I leans in, too. “Not always,” I says, turnin’ away all tease-like. “The playmasters, they been givin’ me too many parts to play.”
She don’t giggle this time, jus’ reach out and turn my face toward her.
I’m all set for the long run, I am — been a while since I been tongue-wrestlin’ with anyone. But she stops right quick. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” I say. I hear a birdy chirp manglin’ wi’ the hurt in my human voice, and I thinks, not now, don’t fly away yet.
She touches her lips all worried. “Blood,” she says, “I tasted blood.”
Oh. Haw haw. I laughs. “Bit me tongue earlier, I did. Got all kinds o’ worked up over somethin’ in the weekly.”
“Oh, that’s all?" She smiles shy, embarrassed. “What was it what got you upset?”
I stand and grabs her hand. Our skin matches almost perfect, it does. Can’t remember if it did earlier, but I don’t care much. “’Twere somethin’ silly, I’m sure,” I says, leadin’ her to the scabby tavern owner and then up the stairs.
#
The upstairs room ain’t nothin’ special, but I been roamin’ the streets a few days now as that mangy mutt. Feels royal, it does. Creaky wood floors and a fluffy bed wi’ the wobbly headboard leant right up against the cracked plasterboard wall. I grin thinkin’ bout all the noise we’ll make. Gonna sound like a right stampede down at the bar.
Magnolia, though, she try to close the door as quiet as possible. When I learnt her name were Magnolia, I thought, that’s a right snug fit. Out east, they be thinkin’ the magnolia be the perfect symbol of womanly-ness, beauty and sweetness and whatnot. And now I be thinkin’ them folk were right all along.
Funny ’nuff, I were a woman for a while livin’ out east there. Thought I was a right magnolia myself, I did, but the folk in town, they got to thinkin’ my feet were too big and my height too tall. I fixed it in private, I did, but them folks were quick and come about callin’ me huli jing, warnin’ everyone in shoutin’ distance I weren’t to be trusted. Callin’ me dangerous, a tricky fox spirit, even though my last form were a orange-speckly carp. Didn’t help when I tried to ’splain myself. Ended up leavin’ soon after.
Magnolia, though, she don’t seem so quick. I already made me jus’ a wee bit taller, I did, after she say she be likin’ real tall lads. She tease me, too, pokin’ fun at my rough callus-y hands when I start runnin’ them over her. I want her to be happy as possible, so gradual as I can I smooth out them cracks and dryness ‘til my hands be soft as a elephant pup’s nose.
She stop again right before the goin’ gets good. “Just give me a moment,” she say. “I need a minute in the powder room.”
Her hips sway ever so nice as she walk away. I thinks to myself, next time I’m human I might try lookin’ like her. Not in Rosenheit, though. ’Twill have to be far off, else someone notices she got a twin sudden-like and come after me.
I lay all contented on the goosey-down comforter ’til she come out the powder room. Then I sit up — somethin’ be different, I’m sure, about her, but I can’t say what exactly.
But when she’s all near my face again n’ we’re doin’ the two-lip samba, I realizes it. Her nose be smaller, true as tripe, n’ her hair I thinks is shorter. Her sweet eyes what I thought was hazel be instead a deep gray. Little red ’round the iris, they are, almost as if she been cryin’. Maybe from shame, I thinks, or mayhaps ’twere her changin’ nose what made her eyes water…
I nudge her back all gentle so we can talk. “Somethin’ different wi’ you, ’tis.”
“Freshened up, I did,” she say with a crooked grin, rubbin’ at one o’ her eyes as she does. She start leanin’ close again. “Put on perfume. You likes it?”
“Not that, it isn’t,” I says, pushin’ her slowly back again. “It be your eyes. Your hair. Your nose.”
I doesn’t want to hope for too much. In all my years I hasn’t met but a few other shifter types, n’ most of them was long ago. Never once in Rosenheit, neither. Never been welcome ’round here, nigh, even when ’twere nothin’ but some deerhide tents nearabouts the river. Even before Haldorf gone and called all o’ us criminals in the papers. Thought he were right silly earlier this week, I did, since I never met a single shifter ’round here n’ figured they all moved on long ago, with it bein’ all hostile and the like. Folk been thinkin’ us bad luck since the oldest legends and probably even before. But here, now…
I reckon I been starin’ at the lass too long and hawklike, for she burst into tears. “Please,” she gasp, clutching my jaunty purple vest like a handkerchief n’ sobbin’ right into it. “Don’t go tellin’ no one. There be hunters out there, true, huntin’ down types like me.”
“It’s okay,” I says, but she be long past consolation.
“So stupid o’ me,” she say with a hiccup, “revealin’ myself like that. Thought I’d win your fancy if I just changed but a few wee things. I go on bein’ so daft sometimes!”
“Magnolia…”
“A right fool, I be, and here now I put you in danger, too—”
“Magnolia,” I says, louder now, and she stop babblin’ for but a minute. I takes a deep breath, hardly able to hold down the feelin’ bubblin’ in my chest. “I won’t be tradin’ you over to no hunters. See…” I stretch out my hand, like, n’ change it ’twixt a paw and a set o’ talons and a fin o’ sorts before settlin’ back on a hand. Bite my tongue right where I did earlier, tryin’ to hold back the pain, but I don’t care none. “See,” I says to Magnolia, “your secrets be safe with me.”
Her tears quiver still on her long eyelashes, but I sees the relief pourin’ over her like a waterfall, a stream o’ peace. Her shoulders relax, but tense up quick again. This time, how-all, there’s a right saucy look stealin’ over her face to replace the burden. “All my secrets?” she say. She push me back, now, so I tips onto my back on the goosey-down blanket and she be all I can see.
“All o’ them, like,” I says, before her mouth start takin’ the words right out o’ mine.
#
I wake up once in the night wi’ Magnolia curled next to me, fine and beautiful, n’ I wonder why she went n’ bothered changin’ her nose and hair up in the first place, bein’ lovely as a northern sunrise anyhow.
I wake up a second time, n’ she be kneelin’ right over me like she were after our talk. The oil lamp o’er the bed be flickerin’. “Love,” I says, n’ right quick she’s got a pistol ’twixt my eyes.
“Hope they can tell you’s a shifter after you’re dead,” she says, and fires.
I reckon instinct kicked in ’fore she did, bein’ that I’m alive still to remember it all. Constricted myself in a nip, I did, so fast I felt I might choke. Shrunk down wee small, and there Magnolia be wi’ the gun n’ a fierce look on her lamp-lit face. Her head twist fast, back n’ forth, n’ finally she spot me n’ aim the gun again.
I take to the air, hearin’ my own little parchment-paper wings flutterin’ as I fly fast as can be toward the door. Then BANG! BANG! as Magnolia keeps a-firin’ at me. Madness, it be, shootin’ at a fruit fly, n’ I hears her screech wi’ rage when I slips under the door n’ out.
I sees little bits o’ brown rubber on the sink o’ the ladies’ powder room as I buzz in, bits o’ black hair on the floor. A pair o’ tiny glass domes painted hazel ’roundabouts the center of each, bright n’ dead false eyes that stare n’ accuse as I escape through a drafty plank o’ wood — a peepin’ hole, I reckon — into a alley n’ back into the streets o’ Rosenheit.
#
I don’t think ’twere fair o’ me, sayin’ my old dead momma were a fish or bird or somethin’. Animals like that isn’t insignificant. I just be sayin’ that ’cause I myself feelin’ low.
Birds got they beautiful feathers, long and short and downy and sharp and glimmerin’ just as fine as the scales o’ the fish. Bird’s isn’t so set on betrayin’ they own kind, nor neither is fish. Had plenty o’ fish chase me down, try to eat me, but it weren’t ever personal, it weren’t. Same on birds. Only one kind ever do that sort o’ thing.
I spent time as a whippoorwill once. Speckly thing wi’ big dark eyes, I was, n’ I spent my days flittin’ over the leafy treetops callin’ whip-poor-will! over and over and over, near a thousand times straight. Tryin’ to get on with a female, I suppose I was. Heard folk on the ground earlier callin’ me a god o’ the night, and I reckon it went straight to my wee little head.
I were struttin’ about in front o’ one such lass, a right plump birdy wi’ her necklace o’ white feathers strung about her throat. Prettiest whippoorwill in the forest, she were. I try puffin’ out my throat, and all sudden she gone lookin’ real scared and swoops off. Felt right silly, I did, and were about to go after when I sees a dash of yellow like motorcar headlights — didn’t know about motorcars then, like, but I does now — and hear a wicked screech and oh! An angry slash o’ pain where my wing met my tiny speckled breast. I feels myself bein’ carried off and screams, but it don’t make much noise over the matin’ calls everywhere and I think, All this time, n’ this’ll be my end, will it? and I stretches my spotty neck far as I can and bite that hungry owl hard ’round the top o’ his foot and he drops me and I fall and fall and fall, screamin’ and cryin’ and now I think this really will be the end.
I’m right quick, sometimes, or maybe jus’ a victim to instinct as always I been. Without a thought I feels myself shrinkin’ up, everything constrictin’ ’til I feel I might choke to death but it settles and I hit the ground, bounce off a leaf safe as can be ’cause now I gots the armor of a ant, I do. Still feel a mighty pain ’round my front wiggler on the right.
My buggy mind wants me to find a colony, a pile o’ ants to keep my safe, but I know well enough to stay put through the night. In the morn I hears voices, human ones, and quick-like I shifts and now I can understand what they be sayin’. I knows every language, I does, moth and tiger and even all the different human ones, and I s’pose for that I should be grateful ’cause ‘twouldn’t be much use speakin’ earthworm to a hairy yak or likewise.
The pair o’ young men find me all sprawled on the leaves, long black hair splayed behind my head and right arm all twisted and bent. They help me up and tries not to stare since I’m a right lovely lady, wi’ nothin’ sprucin’ up my form but for the whippoorwill feather in my hair. They doesn’t call me huli jing — they calls me Whippoorwill, or their word for it, ’cause I tells them that be my name — and they takes me back to their village. They fixes up my arm over a few weeks and one day I hears one o’ the young men who found me talkin’ about marriage and soon after, I sees the monarch butterflies migratin’ north o’erhead and I joins them, all easy and free.
I thinks about them folks a lot. Fixed me up right, they did, and never asked no questions nor prodded me for answers. Jus’ set my twisted arm and fell in love. ’Twas a nice change, after bein’ seen as a god or a wicked spirit by most everyone. Or keepin’ myself a secret. All them outcomes is equally wrong, and equally lonely. But these folk jus’ saw me as pretty Whippoorwill n’ did what was right for her.
Capable o’ such compassion, I thinks, yet soaring o’er Rosenheit once again I thinks the compassion is matched only in cruelty. Or mayhaps I just be feelin’ sorry for myself.
I don’t think it were fair of me to call birds and fish insignificant, anyhow.
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Anna K Young (she/her) is an emerging writer who specializes in speculative fiction and darkly humorous flash. Alongside a forthcoming novella with Running Wild Press, her fiction has been featured in Cutleaf Literary Journal and Mortal Mag in 2022. Her other work has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig’s online poetry journal and Crack the Spine’s The Year anthology. When not writing, reading, people-watching, or eavesdropping, Young enjoys playing guitar, exploring the local trails, and taking long naps on her living room futon. You can add her on Twitter @AKYwriter or check out her website at akyauthor.wordpress.com.
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