THE RAIN REMEMBERS WHAT THE SKY FORGETS

FRAN WILDE

The following documents have been uncovered by the Bromley Independent with regards to recent events at the local cemetery: the unofficial statements of Mr. Cyril Harris, city councilman; the recently discovered journals of Miss Celia Smith; letters from Dr. Morgan Teale, vicar; and Mrs. Elaine Ventri, deceased.

Confidential account of Mr. Cyril Harris, to the Bromley City Council regarding Saturday, April 14, 1900:

On the Sunday her father passed away, a wicker basket was delivered to Celia Smith’s hat shop containing five dead birds. I know this to be true, because I carried the basket myself down the hill from Dr. Ventri’s house.

You may well wonder why the author of Bromley’s first anti-plumage legislation would bear such tidings, especially to Miss Smith. I was, as you all know, Dr. Martin Ventri’s ornithological research assistant and I remain Mrs. Elaine Ventri’s nephew. The latter is, of course, why I was carrying the basket.

The full account of what happened that day and the next day at the funeral depends on who is doing the telling. The vicar and many townspeople of Bromley have their versions of events. I, as a dedicated, although amateur, scientist, will do my best to provide only the facts of the matter. Please bear in mind that while I have a gentleman’s education, I am not schooled in certain matters of the occult, so you might also want to check with the vicar, or with Celia Smith herself, if you can catch her.

“She said you would know what to do,” I told Miss Smith as I set the basket down in a bright square of sunlight cast by her shop window. There were crisp new spring hats on the shelves—the young woman did wonderful work, despite everything—and the shop rug showed wear. I focused on these details to avoid thinking too much about the fate of the birds I carried, or meeting Celia Smith’s dark eyes for too long.

Celia, upon seeing me, had pressed three fingers of her gloved right hand to her lips in alarm, as she always did. I could smell the sour residue of milliner’s adhesive from where I stood—it made me woozy. The sight of the birds—five in total, necks broken—stopped her mid-stride.

She did not speak, because she knew who sent the basket. My aunt and uncle were Miss Smith’s guardians, as Dr. Ventri had been before they married. She was his, in all but name. The latter is a fact everyone in Bromley knows, but neither the Ventris nor Miss Smith would admit.

Brushing a pinfeather from my jacket, I took the thick, black-banded card from my pocket and handed it to her. “She said to say that there are more at the house, if you need them. And that once you do this, you can collect your inheritance.”

I admit my cheeks burned at being the one to have to convey the news this way, but the rest of the Ventri servants had given notice that morning. And the vicar had refused the task.

A moan started low in Miss Smith’s throat as she took the envelope in her left hand. She pressed those three fingers harder against her lips, as if to keep the sound in. An unfortunate injury, that. Early in her childhood, and long before my aunt joined the Ventri household, an incident with a broken window had left Celia missing two fingers. She was as wing-clipped as Ventri’s birds. I heard that at the time of the incident, she’d screamed so loudly it shattered all the windows on the second floor of the grand townhouse. She’d kept virtually silent since, except for the occasional song.

I have spent the past ten years assessing the communications of exotic birds in Dr. Ventri’s collection, and I have known Celia for all that time. I was and remain confident that she was horrified at the news, at the basket, and with me for bringing both. But I could give her no comfort, without raising eyebrows. I gave her my condolences. I didn’t linger.

It is well known in Bromley that Smith’s Millinery refused to support the requests for plumage that many women of society currently demand atop their heads, and it is also known that the Harris-Ventri Act would in future protect exotic birds from being rendered extinct by fashion such as this. I enjoin you to continue to support the bill, especially in light of everything that has come to pass.

From the diary of Celia Smith, discovered in her hat shop, and dated April 14:

It is true, then. He is gone. I feel I composed myself well in company, as I had promised Mr. and Mrs. Ventri long ago. But inside, a storm has broken. Wind blows. Rain falls.

Mr. Harris, luckily, took no notice when he brought the basket. I’d begun to shake, but he had already turned to pull the shop door open. Outside, the sky was blue, the sun was gold.

“Sorry for your loss,” he’d said.

Which loss is Harris sorry for? The birds? Or the man whose funeral Mrs. Ventri has announced with a note requesting that I make her a monstrous hat? For the whole few minutes of his visit, I kept my fingers tight to my mouth.

As the shop door closed, I tasted iron from where the edge of my teeth met my inner lip.

I long ago promised to restrain myself. Remain calm. Not sing so. Attempt to be an embellishment to the family. All this, in return for Dr. Ventri’s patronage, and—indeed—this shop. But now? Now the person who demanded that promise is dead. And I am free to mourn him.

When Mr. Harris departed, I lifted my fingers from my mouth, expecting the kind of scream that had gotten me banned from his house once I was old enough to care for myself.

I was not just expecting, but hoping for it. Needing it.

If the stories of my childhood were true, the small shop should have shook with my sound. But my mouth opened wide and nothing emerged. I was left, silent, alone in my shop with a basket of dead birds.

Note from Vicar Teale, undated.

Her guardian, dead. His widow intent on a fashionable mourning hat in a day’s time. These do not seem to me a recipe for any respectable decisions on the part of someone like Celia Smith. It is not surprising that she disrupted ceremony and taste before disappearing. The hysteria of the witnesses at the cemetery has contributed to a questionable parish mythology, but one that bears no true supernatural involvement. The girl caused a ruckus and fled. That is all.

From the diary of Celia Smith, continued, April 14:

Mrs. Ventri wants a new hat by tomorrow afternoon. Decorated with birds. The only kind of hat I have ever refused to make. And Dr. Ventri is beyond the ability to intercede.

I should be screaming. Why can’t I scream?

The banded envelope softened in my grasp. The basket, left by Mr. Harris in the sun, started to steam. The lettering on the window cast an arc of shadows—smith’s millinery—over the darkened birds’ bodies. I used my foot to push the basket across the rug, away from the light and heat. I pulled the window’s thick drapes as well, and locked the door. Just in time too. Church was letting out and I heard the town clack past in their Sunday shoes. Any one of them would be shocked to see dead birds in Smith’s Millinery.

That Mr. Harris had brought them here was equally shocking. Which is why, I am certain, he came while the town—the rest of the town—was in church.

With the shop locked, I bent to the damage: A small, glossy ibis was the first bird I lifted from its wicker nest. The soft brown and red body with its bottle-green wings had been dyed black.

The snowy egret came out next, gleaming white feathers turned coal.

The weight of them in my arms equaled two pounds of sorrow. Dr. Ventri would have been outraged. His prize birds. But Dr. Ventri had been ill for some time, and Mr. Harris has little spine with regards to his aunt’s wishes, now that the great man is gone.

My favorite childhood memories are accompanied by the rustle of wings. In my dreams. In the shelter of Dr. Ventri’s aviary. The ibis with its clatter. The egret’s nettled song. Sharp beaks nipping my hair for nests. Gathering eggshells after chicks hatched. The echoes of birdsong in the townhouse when they got loose. How silent it must be up there now.

Three more birds came from the basket—Ventri’s favorites—songbirds once blue and pink. A Carolina parakeet—so rare now—its colors hidden in shadow. They might have merely been asleep, save for the block of ice they’d rested on. Five birds. And more at the house, in case I needed them.

I took the birds to the back room, to my workbench. I’d been building on a bonnet for Mrs. Eugenia Bly, an enormous brim with wired crepe rosettes. She, and a few other ladies of Bromley, followed Mrs. Ventri’s lead and bought my hats, but most still shopped in the city, and came home bearing aigrettes, grebes, marabou, and even jeweled hummingbirds. I needed Mrs. Bly’s payment to cover supplies and candles, and her commission waited, nearly finished, on a stand.

The ibis and egret feathers made soft, forbidden sounds as I set them down beneath the bonnet. With the shop dimmed considerably by the curtains—it was dark enough to seem in mourning too—a single gas lamp teased the fitting room’s mirrors with glints of light. I sang to myself, alone, out of anyone’s hearing:

I will drape the mirrors.

I will stop the clock.I will mourn when I am finished.

Then I looked at the letter. Mrs. Ventri’s beautiful handwriting paced the page in black ink.

It pleased my husband that you took to millinery so well, and that I wore your hats in public. So much so, he asked that I wear one to his funeral. I wish to pay tribute to him in the grandest way possible, with the birds he loved so much . . .

Reading those words, next to the ibis, the egret, the songbirds, I felt ill. The smell of the dye grew overwhelming. But I continued.

. . . adorning one of your hats, done in proper shades of mourning. Plan to deliver it tomorrow, and make one for yourself—the songbirds are for you—and we will discuss what he left you.

What has he left me? Ventri had provided the shop, but refused my request to use his name on it. Instead, he’d been promoting the new millinery bill, before he sickened. That was more than enough.

How can I accommodate the widow? Widow. What a terrible word. My shop has few supplies suitable for working with birds, and Mrs. Ventri knows it.

Account of Mr. Cyril Harris, regarding Saturday, April 14:

The aviary gates had long since been closed to Celia, and all but the front room of the townhouse as well, but she’d heard from friends—including myself—that the household rang with birdsong until Dr. Ventri passed away.

Ventri’s collection—ten precious and rare birds at last count, gathered on his adventures across the world—was my life’s work. I studied all of them. The songbirds, the ibis, the egret, the cormorants, the peacock. I admit to studying Celia a bit as well, but from a respectful distance.

To comfort her as she healed from her injury, Ventri told me he had often taken her from her room near the servants’ quarters, up in the eaves, to the aviary. He’d told her stories of his adventures at sea, finding birds all over the world. He may have embellished the shipwreck. And how she’d hatched from an egg. How her mother used to sing like a bird. But Celia had believed the towering man. Had wanted so much to impress him.

When Ventri captured his heiress-wife, the girl had tried her best. My aunt, after being carried over the threshold, had startled at feathers strewn through the hall. She had winced at the sound of a young voice singing welcome. She had, perhaps, envisioned Celia an ornament she could wear, a public display of her grace and forbearance. But Celia struggled to comply.

I had observed Miss Smith, as I’d said, especially when Dr. Ventri had gone exploring. She hummed strange songs to herself as she searched in drawers and closets for eggshell shards. She’d tried to learn to sing. She’d climbed out on the widow’s walk when Ventri was adventuring; local birds had occasionally joined her on the rooftop.

The new Mrs. Ventri had the floors swept and tried to teach the strange girl drawing-room propriety, but Celia preferred the aviary, the rooftops. Refused to have her thick black hair brushed smooth. Stubbornly declared herself not meant for society. They fought often, until Celia was sent away to study, at the vicar’s suggestion.

They had Celia learn millinery—a proper trade. Ventri even found a shop in a nice part of town—though not as nice as his own part of town. Filled it with silk and velvet, crepe, and wire.

“But no birds,” Celia had vowed. “None,” Ventri agreed. He’d added that to my list of tasks: writing the case for the millinery bill, even as the rest of the fashionable world emptied the islands and forests of plumes, wings, and beaks. We had kept this work from my aunt.

For her clients, Celia fronted bold navy domes with glamorous stripes. She decorated tricorns and mini top hats with flowers, butterflies, watered silk. But no birds.

Note from Vicar Teale, undated.

You ask if the widow, who had worn what Celia designed for years, could not have gathered feathers from the aviary floor and sent a box of those for her mourning hat. I agree that she could have spared the birds, but mourning does strange things to people. It transforms them. And perhaps she was a bit weary of the birds’ mess.

Proposed text of the Harris-Ventri Act, before the City of Bromley:

In this, the turn of both the year and the century, we, the citizens of Bromley, in the fair state of ____________, propose a motion to preserve bird populations worldwide: a penalty for the selling of or possession for sale of plumage, skin, or any part of an exotic bird, with exceptions declared to include research, live displays, and feathers that can be obtained without harming the animal.

Letter from Mrs. Elaine Ventri, discovered in the hat shop:

Please see my sketch, I wish no alterations to the design. Birds, entire and whole, rising from a broad brim, as if taking one last flight. The sky will remember him.

Journal of Celia Smith, continued April 14:

The sky forgets everything. The rain washes it all away and carries its memories to the sea. She is wrong about this, about everything.

I’ve done everything they asked. How can the widow demand this? Especially given the upcoming vote? Dr. Ventri’s final wish was, I’d thought, to stop the depletion of the species, as others across the States and in Europe had attempted, most recently with the Lacey Act. It could not possibly have been this hat, could it?

If I make the hat, and Mrs. Ventri wears it, the vote will certainly fail.

That’s it! The solution is Ventri’s legacy. I will speak to her at once. I have to try.

Note from Vicar Teale, continued:

I did see Celia Smith leaving her shop—she had a small residence at the back—in a dark gray cloak and practical cloche. She was heading up to the Ventri residence with a covered basket the day before the funeral. I was readying a grand service and did not pay her much mind.

Journal of Celia Smith, April 14, continued:

I miscalculated. Gravely.

The basket grew heavy in my arms as I crossed the Belgian block by the riverside market. The shortest route between my shop and the Ventri house takes me past the mercantile, and while I did need supplies, I had neither time, nor money, to stop.

I’d piled crepe and velvet over the top of the wicker nest. That kept away the looks of passersby.

“Milliner Smith,” the vicar’s legendary frown bent even deeper when he saw me. He’d christened me with a name Dr. Ventri had selected when none more suitable was available, but he never pressed me to return to church, unlike Mrs. Ventri.

He seemed about ready to inquire after the basket, so I waved at Eugenia Bly, standing by the Mercantile’s bibs and bobs, as if the young woman had greeted me first.

Mrs. Bly waved back from behind squares of fabric and piles of feathers marked for quick sale. “Did you hear? The Ventri-Harris Act is going to make your hats all the rage, Miss Smith!”

My throat tightened; hope rose and sank simultaneously. If she knew what I held.

“And quite a few people very upset indeed,” Mrs. Bly continued, her hand trailing across a soft heron plume. “By next week, if the bill passes, any milliner caught with rare birds will be fined enough to shut them down.”

She handed me a section torn from the Independent. The headline ran “Don’t Ruffle Our Feathers!”

Mrs. Bly’s words, which would have made me hum with joy a day before, and the newspaper made the basket feel even heavier.

Mrs. Ventri’s demand could ruin everything.

The woman looked confused. “Aren’t you happy, Celia?”

The vicar smiled kindly at me for once, saying, “Let her be.”

I hurried on my way, until the cobblestone streets smoothed to smaller and better-joined blocks. The green widened until there was space enough to stroll without cart mud splatter. Now that I was on the straight away to the house, I noticed how gentlemen’s Gainsborough hats tilted to the right this year, and which ladies had brought out bright colors for spring—light blues, creams, yellows, and peaches. But at the crepe-draped gates of the Ventri property, the colors disappeared.

I sped toward the townhouse stairs, the basket feeling lighter as I grew even more certain that the solution was protecting the Ventri name. Even if she was doing this deliberately, for whatever purpose, I would convince Mrs. Ventri to honor her husband with a bird-free design. Before I knew it, I stood at the front stairs leading up to Ventri’s townhouse and leaned against the curved balustrade. A gray and black wreath made of dyed magnolia leaves and more feathers decorated the broad black door I’d once peeked out of when the servants weren’t looking.

A black velvet ribbon stifled the brass knocker.

I can barely write that detail. He is truly gone.

I set the basket on the landing and raised my gloved hand to the knocker.

Mr. Harris opened the door just as I resolved to drop the bound brass handle. “She says you must go around.”

I’d made deliveries to the townhouse many times, but I didn’t protest. For Harris to be answering the door was unusual. I waited by the sallyport for someone to open the gate, making plans. I would talk to the widow, then ask Mr. Harris’ help to bury the poor birds in the aviary.

When he did come—and he was quick—he looked at the basket, then sucked his teeth. “You should do what the lady asks. She likes things her way. And she is in mourning.”

I wanted to say, “And I am not?” but I held my tongue.

We walked through the sallyport to the end of the dark, arched tunnel that ran between the street and the courtyard. The weight of the entire house hung over our heads and the tunnel sounded as I imagined the ocean might. Somewhere above, I’d once run through the attic rooms, singing a made-up tune to rag dolls I was rapidly outgrowing. Mrs. Ventri once caught me at a song and stopped me. “Enough of that,” she’d said.

I’d reeled at the sting in her words. “My mother sang.”

She shook her head. “I do not like the noise. Promise me you’ll try to be quiet?”

And I had promised, but not always executed it perfectly. Once, I’d shattered a pitcher with a yell.

When we reached the end of the sallyport, I saw the aviary, dismantled. The wire cages and the arched frame of the building were strewn about the garden like broken hat frames.

There were no birds in sight. Not even local ones.

My fingers pressed against my lips, hard. Oh, the sounds I wanted to make.

Mr. Harris caught me looking. “First thing yesterday, in her grief. All the staff quit.”

And he stayed? Disbelieving tears pricked my eyes. Don’t scream, don’t cry, Celia.

“I am packing to leave, myself,” he said. “Once the bill has passed.”

And if it doesn’t? I wondered.

We climbed the wooden back stairs and Mr. Harris opened the door to the kitchen. Inside, all the clocks read 4:23, and not one ticked. The day wasn’t much past noon. Now I knew when Ventri had died. I feel grateful for even that much. I turned toward the flower-decked receiving room, which had already begun to gain a layered smell. Roses and rot.

Mr. Harris shook his head sadly as he blocked my way. “Close family only. Lady’s orders.”

What makes one family in this house? A name? Obedience? There is no close family, besides Harris and Mrs. Ventri.

Mrs. Ventri sat in the parlor, each fold of her black watered silk gown sharp as a beak. This room smelled of scented candles, and underneath that, more sickness.

When I presented myself, the widow rose slowly and accepted my curtsey with a nod. “You have a question about the commission?” she asked. Her voice was quiet. The words crackled. Up close, she looked as faded as paper flowers after a summer’s wear.

I handed her the pamphlet. I heard Mr. Harris cough behind me. Then he whispered, making his voice as soft as he could. “They’re naming it after him.”

The widow’s veiled features now drew dark lines: taut mouth, knitted brows. I hoped for understanding.

“And you as well, Harris, I see,” the widow began, her voice thick with emotion. “The birds in that basket remind me so much of him.” She looked up from beneath her veil and her eyes shimmered. “All I ask is for you to do as I wish. That is all I’ve ever asked.”

I forced myself silent. Instead of sounds from the aviary, I heard a bird land heavy on the roof.

“He wanted us to be a family, did you know that? I tried to make you respectable, despite everything. Your questionable origin. Your appearance. But you would never do as I asked.” The widow drew a dark kerchief from her small, beaded reticule. “And now you are not doing it again. There are consequences. There will always be consequences.”

The fluttering sound grew louder. I put my free hand to my heart, felt it pounding against my fingers.

Family. I had wanted that, but not enough to behave, or stop singing, or to be a proper accompaniment for Mrs. Ventri. I wanted to say, “I loved him too,” but no words came.

The widow stood, her gown rustling softly. “Do you know what happens when you become a widow, dear? Sadness, and loss, yes. And the sound of a cage opening. I paid a dear price for Ventri’s adventures,” she said. “My family’s money used for his ‘birding’ trips. His expensive maps. His assistant. His attempts to find his way back to that harpy in the Mediterranean. All the feathers, everywhere. And you. So much gossip that I had to rise above. Don’t you see? This is the simplest request.” Her voice rose to a high pitch. “And yet I ask this one thing, and here you are, with objections.”

I said before that I had miscalculated. In that moment, I saw my world come apart like the aviary. The act would fail. And Mrs. Ventri wanted it to.

But we were not finished. The widow held up a black gloved hand.

“I will give you one final chance, as your landlord. If you wish to remain in this town, you will make me this hat. And add more birds. Mr. Harris! Get the other birds.”

Final. The word, spoken; the air filled with the sound of it, so much that I almost forgot what had come before. Harpy. A harpy was someone with a nettle tongue, or a bird with a woman’s head, other things too. Dr. Ventri had said my mother sang like a bird. That I had hatched in the attic. I’d thought they were stories. Were they stories? I’d willed them to be so.

He’d expected his wife to wear my designs, and me to make them for her. Bound us together, a family of sorts, but not of our choosing.

And then he’d gone to sea, searching. Had taken sick while searching.

I heard the sound of wings. A large bird called out.

The widow shook me back to attention. “With Ventri gone, you will do what I ask, or you will be run out of town, with nothing to your name and a name worth nothing. I will tell them all what you are. So. Choose.”

I felt a rush of air all around and my cheeks grew hot. I took deep breaths until my anger settled and the air quieted. I could make no objection. I had lived my whole life under these rules, as had she. I needed what the widow could give her.

From the Independent, letters to the editor, Friday, April 13:

Don’t Ruffle Bromley’s Feathers! Plumed hats are a rare joy in these times. How can a scientist, a councilman, a philanthropist, all good servants of this city, force those we love to do without even a modicum of beauty, and instead endure forgettable attire? Men who value their wives and daughters must vote no.

Account of Mr. Cyril Harris, regarding Saturday, April 14, continued:

After I’d gathered the remaining birds for my aunt, I watched them from the kitchen. My aunt, threatening. Celia, silent, except for an errant note of grief when she shifted the basket to her other hip.

I came to her rescue, and my aunt’s, lifting the basket. “This way, Miss Smith.” I hustled her through the silent kitchens. Rushed her out the back door, lifting a crate into my own hands. And helped her carry both down the hill.

“Make the hat, before she adds more birds. I will come to pick it up tomorrow. What is one hat, if it brings some peace?” I begged. Women’s fashion is not like war. There are no lasting consequences. She would trust my words: I’d come to the household with my aunt, but I’d loved the birds. Dr. Ventri had collected them for their jeweled colors, their bright voices. He’d often let them fly about the house.

I knew my aunt must have hated being unable to control them. But I knew they were beautiful.

As we walked, shadows passed overhead. Local birds, escorting us home. Or looking hungrily at the delicacies in the basket. The town hosted several large local hawks.

Journal of Celia Smith, April 14, continued:

I am trapped. It grows dark in my shop, and not just from the hour.

On my workshop shelf are two books: Bottomley and Burke’s: A Complete Course in the Art of Millinery, and Anna Ben Yusuf’s, The Art of Millinery. Their spines are broken from hard use, trying to become what everyone wants me to be. They are no good to me now.

Everyone at the funeral will see the hats I’ve been commanded to make; everyone will talk about the milliner who trailed rumors behind her like a ribbon, who’d ultimately turned against her principles. My hands ache from working the pliers and the fabric.

The bonnet’s rosettes pulled away easily, and I shirred the last of the black watered silk around the hat’s crown. I’ve prepared a stronger frame for the widow’s design, using the green wire, bending it with pliers. I wish the widow herself were as flexible.

Five birds in that basket. Four more in the crate Harris brought. Egret and ibis and shame.

My eyes itch. The strong burlap edging I’m using to wrap the frame blurs and warps. I admit that I hummed to calm myself.

I hadn’t stopped to pick up supplies, like the heavy number 24 black milliner’s thread I need—but I’ve located several number five needles, extra long to reach difficult spaces, in a drawer.

Instead of thread, I will pluck my own hair as the birds used to do. I hope it will be enough.

It will be a long night, and tomorrow a longer day. I will eat a slice of bread with butter and sit back down to work.

Account of Mr. Cyril Harris, regarding Saturday, April 14, continued:

I am ashamed to say that I watched Miss Smith through the curtains of her workroom window late into the night and early morning. She’d opened it before opening the adhesive jar, and the window had a clear view of the workbench, while being shadowed enough by the eaves that I could remain hidden.

Whether it was the candle guttering or the strain, her fingers seemed to shake as she glued the egret’s breast and beak down, curved its neck along the hat’s low crown, and hid its legs behind a crepe bow. She wept and hummed more as she threaded a long needle with black thread. She prepared to stitch the first wing into place and my heart pounded.

The Harris-Ventri Act would help birds thrive again. Thousands of them. If it passed. And if it didn’t? There would be more scenes like this.

The girl seemed as if each stitch was too much to bear. I imagined that I felt the pain of the needle too. Her patron had loved the birds so. As had she. Her mother had sung like a bird. And the widow, my aunt, had ensured she had no options.

Celia began to sing wordlessly to the egret under her breath as she sewed. Very softly at first, her voice cracking. I heard the rustle of wings in the eaves of her shop. Birds, shifting and waking. I imagined the egret flying from her hands. Beating against the shop windows, trying to escape.

The egret’s clouded eyes held me accountable for each stab and pull.

“I would take your place,” Celia sang. The windowpane creaked. She worked faster, knowing I would return in the morning for the hat.

She set the first wing at an angle that looked like it was taking off, then pinned the other wing in place. Returned to the basket.

She lifted the ibis and repeated her task. Singing again. I felt her music sweep over me this time, catching me up as if it were thread, and I a bird.

I understood then how each note shaped her shame, her heartbreak. She let it spill even after the candle went out. She sang her grief and sorrow, verses tumbling into shrieks until there was a great crack at the front window. I saw later that the pane had split across the word “Smith.”

After that, she kept quiet again.

When she was finished, she took down a display hatbox, lifted the hat into it, and nested tissue paper around the inside. She closed the lid and left it on the work table.

Outside the window, caught up in the final notes of her song, I ignored the rustling of the hatbox. Packages settled, didn’t they.

The workroom floor was strewn with stray feathers, wire, fabric, and thread. Celia’s hands bore cuts and flecks of blood that might have been her own. She sat on the cot at the rear of her workshop, her back to me, as she massaged her aching hands. Her shoulders shook with the horror of what she’d made. Beside her rested the crate that had held the last four of Mrs. Ventri’s birds. She kicked at it, angry. It shifted heavily.

Not empty yet.

She turned to look.

Knowing what she’d find, I watched Celia pull away the slip of ice and paper I’d packed around the last birds—the cormorants. I couldn’t catch the peacock.

Below a thin piece of wood, she found more feathers—three of them, and three unopened letters. A flurry of stamps on each, canceled in a strange language. A blurred sketch. Maps of the Mediterranean. A news clipping about a shipwreck. Another about Ventri being rescued at sea. He’d told me a bit of that story.

I stared through the window at a pencil sketch of a rocky shoreline. Someone had written “The sea remembers what the land forgets,” on the page. I tried to imagine what hid in the shadows of the rocks, in the depths of the water.

Celia shook the crate again. Something crunched at the bottom of the box. Four shards of a shell, pale on the inside, speckled outside. Celia held the pieces.

She whispered to them. “I knew, didn’t I? I didn’t want to know, but I knew.” By my own calculations, the egg must have been very large. Like an emu, or an ostrich. She lifted the three feathers, a dusty, faded brown, although I imagined they’d once been yellow, like songbirds’ wings.

She began to sing again, and I heard wings overhead.

She tipped the crate over. On the bottom, in thin, painstaking capital letters, as if written by a bird, the Ventri townhouse was addressed, but not the man. The date on the stamp was the year of Celia’s birth. I’d known, of course. But Ventri had forbidden me to speak of it to anyone, and my aunt had threatened to destroy the crate more than once.

His legacy. Her inheritance. More than she’d hoped, and less, I suppose. I have no regrets to this day that I’d slipped the crate to her without my aunt seeing me do it. She would find out soon enough, of course.

Celia knelt once more by the basket. The songbirds and the Carolina cardinal nestled beak-to-beak atop the last of the ice.

She put her own practical cloche on the worktable and swept the scraps aside.

The next morning, Celia left the shop unlocked, with the keys inside. I came around to retrieve the widow’s hat just in time to see her gray cloak swinging behind her as she walked toward the cemetery. Upon her own cloche rested the songbirds, the cardinal, and the three feathers from the crate. All were dyed a proper shade for mourning, and concealed with crepe and braid, as if she did not want good birds to be left behind. A dense veil hid her face.

Overhead, several local birds circled. The biggest I’ve ever seen.

Note from Vicar Teale, regarding Sunday, April 15:

My focus that day, as you might imagine, was on the widow herself. But I did note Miss Smith, keeping to the back of the queue. I heard the town gossips fluttering as they streamed through the gates, in a flood of gray.

“Splendid hat,” Miss Smith’s neighbor said, nudging her. “Not like the monstrosity the widow’s wearing.”

I did not hear Miss Smith respond, but her neighbor spoke too loudly. “It’s huge. And whole birds? Almost flying? The milliner she used must have gone quite insane making that.”

I imagine Miss Smith’s face burned scarlet beneath her veil, with both anger and pride, possibly.

By the time Celia Smith made it into the cemetery proper, the widow had taken her place beside the grave. I stood, welcoming the latecomers. Due to the weather, I’d trimmed my sermon short: forgiveness, distant shores. I kept one eye on the clouds, which moved fast. By the time the songs began, the crowd was nearly in shadow.

We sang “In the Sweet By and By,” and Miss Smith kept silent. We sang “Down by the River,” and she did not sing. She wouldn’t have wanted to disobey her family’s wishes on that day. Until the last verse of “White Wings,” her father’s favorite. It was then she found herself swept up in the words, the music. She sang along, unaware, and her neighbors looked alarmed at the intensity of her voice. I began to worry for the church windows.

Rain struck the descending casket. When the widow cast her fistful of dirt, I felt a flutter at my temple. A headache; understandable in such circumstances. But no, it was a small wren. Overhead more birds wheeled.

When the hymn was done, the press of bodies around us and the birds overhead made the air feel too hot. Too large.

My spine prickled, my headache swirled, and wind pulled at my cloak. At Miss Smith’s clothing too.

Wind fluttered the ibis wing on Mrs. Ventri’s hat. The widow flinched, and I hurried to calm her. The hat shifted. More rain fell. Black dye began to run down the widow’s cheek.

The widow put a muddy hand to the brim, but the funeral crowd gasped as the egret, now turning white in the rain, appeared to shake one wing free.

These things sometimes happen during storms, I am told.

Account of Mr. Cyril Harris, regarding Monday, April 15:

The grave was flooding and everyone but my aunt, the vicar, Miss Smith, and I had taken shelter by the church when the ibis lifted its long beak and colorful head, and tried to shake itself loose from the hat. The egret moved again, tipping and dragging the bonnet forward.

The crowd pointed and shrieked. The four cormorants tilted their beaks toward the sky.

The hat slid and shifted, but did not fall to the ground. It rose into the air, and my aunt’s wig went with it.

Celia cried out as the birds rose; she sang from behind her black veil, her words strange and loud.

She sang and clasped the two feathers tight in her hand where her fingers might once have been. She sang and the birds in her hat shifted in time with the rhythm of her words. They revealed themselves and began to sing too. The widow stared at her. Even the vicar stared at her, then shouted in fear. Began to back away, his hands held up as if to say “stop!”

An enormous shape dove through the rain, singing with the voice of a woman, and the three songbirds, stripped of their dye, rose to the sky, carrying Celia’s veil away. Celia’s hands fletched gold and blue, her head bore plumage that shone gold against the storm.

The widow shouted, “Catch her! Catch it!”

But Celia was already gone. A gyre of birds flew bright and lively in the rain. The gold one, larger than the others, trailing a long streamer of black crepe.

I did not see where they went, as my aunt had collapsed by her husband’s grave.

The Bromley Independent, editorial:

As we all know, the Ventri-Harris bill passed unanimously. We at the editorial desk wonder if the state will reconsider the validity of the bill, given our discoveries. Meantime, Mr. Cyril Harris has begun to rebuild the Ventri aviary. Sometimes, when he is away collecting specimens, the citizens of Bromley claim that they hear singing from the townhouse roof.

Author’s note: In the early 1900s, the plumage fashion battles were in full swing, with Audubon societies formed to protect endangered birds, and hundreds taking pledges to wear only sustainable feathers. States and municipalities attempted to pass, or successfully passed, numerous local laws, until the Migratory Bird Act passed nationally in 1918.