The sisters flew wingtips apart. They understood how to catch the coasting parts of the air, the eddies of wind. They knew from long experience how to rest upon a breeze. While I, new come to flying in my cumbersome body, pumped my wings more than I needed to. My arms grew tired. My thighs, stretched out behind me, grew tired. My eyes straining against the blowing winds grew tired as well.
And still we flew, until I began to spiral down and the crones came on either side of me, to help with a soft landing.
What might a watcher have seen? Crows mobbing a hawk, I expect. But that was not what was going on. They guided me to a meadow, leaving me to catch my breath, there beneath the safety of a towering pine. Then they flew off, coming back with food and water, entering the meadow in their human shapes. And I, with barely enough energy to eat, though they made me, sitting on either side and putting the food in my hands.
“You ain’t aerio-dynamite yet,” said Blanche.
“Aerodynamic,” corrected Shawnique.
“That, too.”
They both laughed while I sipped at the water, munched the berries, and ate the small, hard apples they gave me.
Then Shawnique drew a flask from her skirts. My, that dress had pockets!
“Just a small sip, Mabel,” she said. “We got a long road ahead.”
“A sky road,” added Blanche, who seemed to have a talent for the obvious.
“We can’t count on your sister or her Jack having a bottle of the good stuff.” Shawnique licked her lips.
“She means a single malt,” explained Blanche, though that explained nothing. “An Islay. Peatier the better.”
“I like my whiskey neat and my men the same way.”
I nodded as if I understood a word of what they were saying, then took the proffered sip. The drink was body temperature and mellow-tasting, until it hit my throat and then it burned down to my belly where it sat, like a little furnace, warming me up.
“Look at the color in this girl’s cheeks,” said Blanche. “She’s on fire! She’s a hot one! Mabel—are you able?”
Shawnique took the flask from me. “She’s about as able as she’s gonna get. Now you take a sip, sister, and so will I, and then it’s liftoff time.”
“How much farther?” I asked. “Are we almost there?”
“Not for a while yet,” said Shawnique.
“Plenty more miles to go,” added Blanche.
“So we gotta keep movin’. We gotta get there before the shit really hits the fan,” Shawnique said. She began crooning the Hi-de-ho again.
Blanche chimed in.
And then me.
They stood, Shawnique depositing the flask back in her pocket with nary an extra movement, and then before I quite understood it, they were in the air.
Suddenly, my arms and legs felt renewed. Though I wondered silently about that shit and that fan. Sounded awkward at best, messy at worst. Would I ever understand humans?
I leaped into the air, arms windmilling till I was caught by a gust and lifted farther up.
“Coming, sisters!” I cried. Even to my own ears, it sounded like the hawk’s scream, “Kreee-aaah.”
“Listen to her now!” cawed Blanche. “She’s got it!” And she raced ahead of me into the dark.
* * *
IT TOOK US ANOTHER DAY, with frequent stops, plus sips of the energizing brew, to get within one state and two counties away. I did not even ask what a state or county was. They sounded vast.
But my flying had improved until I was almost as good as the crones. They even took to complimenting me, though in an offhanded way.
Shawnique said, “We’re making you an honorary crone, Mabel.”
And Blanche said, “Pretty good for a white chick.”
“Peep! Peep! Peep!” I made the sounds of a chick at her.
That made them howl with laughter, and they called me “chicken hawk,” which was the first really funny thing either of them had said. Or at least that I understood.
Flying would have been fun if we could have done most of it by day. If we were not in a hurry to get to Milwaukee. But Shawnique warned we had to do most of our flying by night or in the times between dusk and the true dawn.
“Hard to disguise us completely in the light of day, Mabel,” she said. “There are some human folk with farsight.”
“And scopes,” added Blanche darkly.
I already understood about the scopes. Humans with farsight—now that surprised me.
* * *
WE GOT TO METEORA’S HOUSE just as the sun was rising, settled down as birds in the garden furrows and then slowly stood up in human form. To this day, I am not sure how the sisters knew which street was which. And when I fly by myself, I have to come down often just to walk the streets in my human form till I find where I am going. I have learned to read maps.
But once in the furrows, I began to shiver. There was something dirty—something horribly evil—polluting the ground. As my human form overtook my feathered body, I let out a huge sigh.
Is it the arum? I wondered. But there was too much of the smell and it was everywhere.
“Whoooo-eee,” said Blanche. “That is some odorama. Something stinks to high heaven, sister.”
“I was thinking the other direction myself,” Shawnique said. She flicked away some of the dirt from her skirts.
“Arum,” I said, sniffing.
Shawnique added thoughtfully, “And nightshade, manglewort . . .”
“And mandrake,” said Blanche, wrinkling her nose dramatically.
Now the sun was full on us.
“But something else.” I didn’t want to say what I feared the most.
“Blood spilled in anger, in terror,” said Shawnique. How could she say it so dispassionately? But then, she did not know Meteora and the others.
“And some spilled in shame.” Blanche looked down at her hands, which were wrangling together.
“So it’s begun.” Shawnique reached over and untangled her sister’s fingers.
“Then we better find them and get them out of here.” I kept my voice steady.
Shawnique came over and put her arms around me. Her skin was cool, from the flying, but so was mine. I inhaled her essence—pear blossom, rose petals, driftwood, musk, partly to be comforted, but also to help dissipate the smells of the befouled garden.
“Now, Mabel,” she said, holding her hand up. “You gotta be wary. They may be dead people in there. Even your sweet sister. So be prepared. This . . .” She gestured to the garden. “This is a bad sign.” Shaking her head, she added, “Blanche and I better go in first.”
“Not me!” Blanche backed away, holding up both her hands. “You know I don’t like dead folks. Fight and run, that’s my motto. Fight and run!”
I kissed Shawnique on her cheek, and it was surprisingly soft. “She is my sister, Shawnique. If she is gone, I want to make sure she looks all right before anyone else sees her. Tidy her. Hold her. I want . . .” My voice began to break up.
“You’re right, honey,” she said. “I’d do the same for mine.”
“I’m not dead over here,” Blanche said, waving her right hand.
“Not yet,” snapped Shawnique. “But you’d better shape up or you will be!”
I left them to squabble and was already walking toward the house, but I thought how much they sounded like Meteora and me. Sisters!
The door was closed, but not locked, so I went in. Remembering the description from Meteora’s letters, I took the stairs two at a time. My heart was hammering in fear and anticipation.
Meteora’s door stood wide open, which was a surprise. And when I went in, even more surprising was what was inside. On the table were the remains of a meal for two people, as if they had—a day or two ago—suddenly run off and left everything to molder. Two mugs, still half full of cold tea, porcelain plates on which the remains of eggs had congealed, a candlestick with the burned-down candle wax dried and hard.
A dove was sleeping on the table, leaning against an empty bottle of wine.
Where had the dove come from? And then I saw the open window. On the sill were a variety of small items, some of Meteora’s “precious things.” She was such a jackdaw.
But of my sister and the boy and the girl and the Jack there was no sign.
I sighed heavily and turned, just as the dove shook itself and woke. It flew to my shoulder and plucked a single hair from my head.
“Stop that,” I yelled.
“Listen,” the dove said in its cooing voice. “I have one message and one message only.”
“Tell me. Is it good news or bad?”
“Listen,” the dove said again. “I have one message and one message only.”
“For green’s sake . . .”
“Listen,” the dove said again. “I have one message and one message only.”
I knew then that all I could do was listen. The dove would deliver its message and go. And lucky it was that I was the one for whom the message was meant.
“Sister, we have fled the bananachs,” the dove said. “We have gone to stay with Jack’s Aunt Vinnie, an Old One, at Sixth Street and Elm, by the Bridge of Trees. The dove will show you the way.” The dove finished and shivered three times, then sat still on my shoulder. I lifted it down with gentle hands, cradling it carefully before getting us both downstairs on shaking legs.
The sisters were gone.
I looked around the garden, circled the house three times widdershins, and was about to try again when a well-dressed young woman stuck her head out of a window on the first floor.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Her voice was sharp and frightened at the same time.
Of a sudden, I remembered there were other tenants in the house. “My sister . . . Sophia . . .” I stumbled on the name. “Old woman. Upstairs room?”
“Ah, haven’t seen her in a couple of days,” she said. “Haven’t seen any of them. Now get outta here before I call the cops.”
Then she truly did withdraw, slamming the window down hard.
“Thank you,” I called out, but she did not answer.
So I walked over to the garden, wondering where the sisters had gone, but afraid to call out. The pink and gray paving stones were set out in a mazed pattern. Perhaps there would be more clues here. Just as I was about to walk the maze, the crones came out of another house, looking flustered.
Shawnique raised her right hand to stop me. “Don’t go in there,” she said. “Trouble. Trou-ble. I smelled it, and it’s nasty stuff.”
“Something’s been marking its place,” added Blanche. “Pee everywhere. And black turds big as oranges.”
“They are not here,” I said, holding the dove in both hands to show them. “My sister nor her friends. The dove had a message. We are to follow and . . .”
“Well, girl, why didn’t you say that right off,” Shawnique scolded. “Time wasted is time gone. Let’s get into those furrows and turn back into birds.”
“But there are folks in the house. On the bottom floor. Looking out of windows.”
“Can’t be helped. We shouldn’t be changing into feathers in the day either.”
“We calls this Needs Must,” added Blanche.
“How many folk in that house?” Shawnique asked, talking right over her sister.
“One. Maybe two.”
“Hell’s bunions.” Shawnique laughed. “Even if they see us, they’ll never believe their eyes. Not enough of them to confab. Let’s go.”
Quickly, we went to the farthest part of the garden, as far from the rank musk of the wicked plants as we could manage, then lay down. Shawnique was at the very end of the furrow. Blanche lay head to foot with her. And I put myself beneath Blanche’s feet.
“Hi-de-hi-de-ho . . .” Shawnique began and Blanche and I joined in.
On the fifth or sixth iteration, I began to change. I could feel my bones reshaping, my hair turning to feathers, my nose elongating into a beak. At the last moment, I remembered to let the dove go or it would have been held in the talons of a hawk and probably die of fear.
The dove flew straight out of the furrow and in seconds, two crows flew after it. And I, wings reaching out to feather the air, came last out of the dirt. But it did not take me long to catch up, and we remarked the dove’s flight, following it closely into the blue and lightening air.