The Wind-Up Canary

I’m going up to the Hollow, I’ll be fine. I love you. Elisabeth flipped the phone closed, her father would get the text in the morning. It was almost midnight.

“Elisabeth, you don’t have to go right now. Stay, sleep. Head up in the morning,” her roommate pleaded. Their apartment seemed cramped the last few weeks. Amy’s boyfriend had moved in and he was always lurking somewhere, only leaving to go to work.

“It’s fine. I kinda need the fresh air, ya know? Clear my thoughts. Plus I think I need to winterize while I’m up there so an early start will help,” Elisabeth said. She threw on her wool jacket and picked up her hiking pack next to the couch.

“What if you fall off the mountain in the dark and break a leg? You won’t have reception, or a phone, to call me.”

“Psshhht, me fall?” Elisabeth smiled. She usually tripped and stumbled over air, unsure of her footing. “I’ll be fine, Amy. I have a flashlight… which I guess means I can’t trip on anything if it’s illuminated.”

“Fine, just be careful. I can’t pay rent on my own,” she said. Elisabeth tossed her phone on the couch and left the apartment. She walked down the sidewalk, cursing herself that she had forgotten her iPod on her desk, but she wasn’t turning around.

“At least I grabbed my sketch book,” she whispered, stepping onto the wet street, glancing behind out of instinct. Large, old growth oak trees swayed, almost breathing with every step of her scuffed and worn boots. The rounded yellow lights of the street lamps and white columned brick buildings of Hartlin College seemed so romantic that Elisabeth just needed to escape. The afternoon rain left a clear and fresh scent in the air, but the smell of burnt leaves filled her nostrils.

The wind picked up, blowing and turning and gasping around her ears. She pulled her dark hair up into a loose, messy bun and straightened and smoothed her bangs with her fingers. The thin crescent moon glistened on the wet asphalt like a smear of silver. She pulled her jacket tighter around her waist. Her jeans and flannel kept her warm but didn’t insulate her skin from the sharp gusts. Elisabeth flipped her oversized hood over her head and fastened the large buttons.

The only sounds were the scuffing along of her boots and some rodent in the woods scourging for food. Suddenly, she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye. Letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, she looked for a sign of movement. An old woman trudged toward her with bony hands and loose gray skin. The lady’s overcoat was large and much too heavy for her bony old body. The dust just seemed to rest on her, as it would on a piece of neglected furniture. She had to have been only seventy or so, but the condition she was in and the lighting of the full moon made her look twice that.

And she was coming toward Elisabeth, with a neediness in her eyes matched only with her voice, "Don't wander too far, you'll get hurt.”

“Um, thanks. You should probably go home, it’s late.” What was an old lady doing all the way up here in the first place? Away from town and on the far side of the college, no one lived in this area and only a couple stray students bothered to come up the hill near this trailhead.

"Don't wander too far, you'll get hurt,” her voice went up in pitch at the end. Almost taunting.

Elisabeth began quickening her pace to put some distance between herself and the vagabond. She entered the mouth of the trail and glanced behind her, but the old woman had turned around and wandered off.

The ground became softer with each step. Elisabeth could feel twigs and stones beneath her feet. Trees and underbrush began filling in as she moved further up the trail. When she finally slowed down and looked around, she was in a clearing of countless ash trees. The tops swaying in the wind.

Roots of a nearby tree were making her climb treacherous in the slim light. She pulled off her backpack, rummaged around for a moment until she felt the cold steel flashlight and pulled it out. The dim flashlight only helped a little, but now she could see where the roots were. For a moment, she thought she saw a flash—like a reflection of metal—in the tangle of roots.

Using a small stick, she poked around in the tree litter around the roots to find what was shining. A burst of yellow took her by surprise. The light from the flashlight seemed to make the canary glow. The little yellow bird seemed tossed aside and discarded where it lay. She couldn’t bear to see it like that and reached down to pick it up. With the broken bird in her hands and the flashlight under her arm she looked over the bird. Perhaps it was still alive, just injured, she imagined. Although that wouldn’t be any easier.

A small silver metal crank stuck out of the belly of the canary, a lot like the one on the bottom of her jewelry box as a kid, the one with the pink plastic ballerina. At the sight of it Elisabeth almost threw up. She moved the bird around in her hand to make sure it was real and not a realistic toy. On one of its wings held dried blood. How could someone do this to an animal?

With one hand, Elisabeth pulled a thin white handkerchief from one of the pockets of her backpack. She wrapped up the small bird, and put it back in the pocket. She would bury the bird in the morning, poor thing. She slung her pack over her shoulder without a sound and grabbed her flashlight before moving up the trail. Climbing up the slope, she returned to her thoughts.

First her mom went missing, then there was the drama with her ex-boyfriend, her dad shutting himself off over the last year, and now the weirdness of that old woman and this poor bird. Her emotions escalated as she rose up the mountain.

With the cabin in sight, Elisabeth felt relieved she had a place where she could let everything go and forget. The cabin had a tin A-frame roof, cedar siding, and large glass paned windows. A wooden barrel with rusting metal straps sat at the downspout of the gutter, collecting water for the garden. In the moonlight, she could see the planters on the porch, their flowers dried and dead.

As she got to the cabin door and reached for the metal handle, she heard a rustling to the east and flashed back to the little family of rabbits she and her mother found when she was a little girl. Getting far enough away from her problems meant no electricity, but Elisabeth was happy for the trade off. It was simpler.

She removed her pack and hung it by the front door, removing her leather bound sketch book and a zippo lighter. She lit the kerosene lamp. The yellow glow lit up the main room of the cabin in a faint light. Elisabeth walked to the couch and began taking off her boots. Her cold fingers trembled as she pulled at the buckles and kicked them off. She pulled off her socks and tried to remember if the room had ever changed.

The bookshelves were crammed with books, mismatched furniture defined the living spaces in the open room, and flea market rugs covered the wooden floor in the most trafficked areas. Family photos lined the shelves above the windows, her mom documented Elisabeth’s childhood in black and white.

Tin cookware and dried herbs hung above the wood stove. Ceramic lavender plates and bowls were neatly stacked on open shelves, matching mugs on the shelf above. Elisabeth sat back on the couch and flipped through the pages of her sketchbook. It was much easier to draw after she had time to clear her head during the hike. She turned to a random page, nothing was in chronological order anyway and put her pen to the page. Her fingers began to scribble until a symbol scratched itself out. She never knew what they meant but she always felt the urge to draw them. The pen fell into its place next to the spine after she dated the page.

After a few hours of sleep the sound of birds chirping filled the space around her. She woke with a start. Her heart pounded and her thoughts flew to the little canary she found in the woods. Could it still be alive, chirping and wanting out of her pack? She threw the blankets off and bolted out of her room, tripping over the rug in the living room. She took the little white package out and set it on the kitchen table. The limp bird was still dead.

Elisabeth stepped over to the deep sink and washed her hands with what little soap was left. She loaded a few logs into the stove and some old newspaper into the hearth. The newspaper lit quickly, she stoked and prodded the fire until the logs were burning. She reached up and grabbed a tin pot and put a few inches of water in to boil. The well set deep in the mountain brought up a generous flow of clear water. She grabbed the container of old fashioned oats and the small laminated bag of granola she had brought up a few weeks back.

With a mug she fished out a cupful of warm water and washed her face before pouring in enough oats for breakfast. She dressed the oatmeal with some granola after the oats absorbed all the water. Elisabeth would have to take care of the bird soon, but decided to enjoy her breakfast warm before heading out into the woods. She untied her hair and turned a quick braid and quickly ran her fingers through her bangs, making sure they weren’t too crazy.

She sat on the couch and looked around the cabin. She was disappointed that she would probably never spend time here with her father again. After the car wreck and her mother went missing, he could barely look at Elisabeth without being reminded of her mother. She couldn't imagine him coming to a place where the memories of her oozed from the wood like sap.

Elisabeth could remember mending the rip in the quilt behind her with her mom after tearing it in a pillow fight. There were countless splinters her father had skillfully fished out of her feet from the hand-planed wood planks that made up the floor. Her father taught her to fish and trap in the stream and woods outside. Her mom gathered berries and herbs to dry, teaching Elisabeth which ones were poisonous. They spent countless summers and a few winter vacations in the cabin. Now, Elisabeth was the only one from the family who visited.

She decided that she would need to wash and board up the windows while she was at the cabin. Winter would come soon and she wasn’t sure when she would be able to come again. They kept the shutters in the shed outside and had hinges to pin them to on the outside. A full afternoon’s work at the most, she could leave the shutters open while she stayed and shut them before she headed down the mountain at the end of the week.

First the bird. Elisabeth sighed and set her bowl in the sink before changing into her favorite dark blue sweater and pulling her boots back on. She gingerly picked up the small yellow bird wrapped in the handkerchief and carried it in her open palm, taking care not to crush it. She lifted her bag from the hook and slung it over her shoulders. A hike to the top of the mountain and back would take most of the morning.

Elisabeth set out on the trail above the cabin. She hadn’t taken this path in the last year, it was her favorite trail but something didn’t seem right about hiking it until now. Elisabeth tried to imagine where her family would be if she hadn’t called her mom crying, asking to be picked up. Tears welled up and she shook her head. She knew she had a habit of blaming herself for everything, but it never stopped the thoughts from occurring.

The trail was choked with red and amber leaves, the rhythmic crunching beneath Elisabeth’s boots filled the otherwise still forest. She paused on the path to bend back a few overgrown branches. Her father had started loaning out the cabin to local hunters in exchange for trail maintenance. They did a good job for the most part, but it seemed they had forgotten the trail to the top of the mountain.

Elisabeth picked up a dry branch from the underbrush for a walking stick and continued on her trail. She could hear squirrels quarreling in the treetops above, and a light breeze whistled through the empty branches and sparse pine trees. The dark and wet rock face at her side was steep and gave her chills as she imagined falling from the top. Her braver friends would try to rock climb to the top, it was certainly a shorter way up, but this space had never been anything she had wanted to share. She wasn’t sure how long the mountain had been passed through her family, she also couldn’t name any extended family.

If she had dreaded this hike before, it was certainly helping her come to terms with her reality now. Alone, without a mother to talk to, without a father that would look at her, and without a boyfriend to make her happy. Elisabeth slugged off her pack and filled her two canteens from the trickle at the far edge of the rock face. She finished her climb with a shortcut up some roots to the clearing above. The light felt golden and fresh. There were enough bare branches and a few clinging leaves above to mottle the late morning sunlight. She crunched her way to the opposite side of the clearing and traced her initials on the dying birch tree.

She sat down on a log and reached back to her side pocket to fish out the small white linen package with the yellow bird. Her heart sank, imagining the suffering someone caused the poor thing. She carefully removed the white handkerchief and a small yellow feather clung to the handkerchief as she stuffed it back in the pack. She held the limp bird in one hand, cupping her other above. I brought you here more for me, I needed this.

As she walked over to a fresh patch of earth to dig a hole, she thought she should try to remove the crank from the bird. She knelt in the leaves and realized that the crank resembled a small metal leaf, curving to one side. The crank would not budge as she pulled but she noticed a little give as it turned.

She was hoping it was a trick in the dim, mottled light, but Elisabeth was pretty sure that the little yellow bird twitched in her hand as the crank moved. Curious, she continued to turn the crank until it would no longer move and at that moment the bird awakened. The metal crank fell out in her hand and it’s sharp beak drove into her forearm and she instinctively tossed the little bird on the ground. Blood trickled down her arm.

Unfazed by it’s apparent death and rebirth, the canary tilted it’s head and hopped in a circle. It fluttered to the log and picked at a few bugs. “What. The fuck. Just. Happened?” Elisabeth breathed. She scrambled up off the forest floor and slowly walked toward the bird, hoping not to frighten it. The canary looked at her, chittered and tilted its small head for a split second and slowly flew to a nearby branch, glancing back at Elisabeth after it landed.

She slipped the metal leaf in her pocket, grabbed her pack, and followed the bird as it flew from limb to limb across the clearing and down the opposite side of the mountain. She dodged seedling trees, brush, and ruts in the ground while trying to keep her balance on the steep hill. When the distance between the two increased, the bird would pause and impatiently chitter until Elisabeth was closer, as if to hurry her along. Finally, the bird fluttered to a small limestone square as high as Elisabeth’s hip.

Elisabeth stepped into the clearing, she didn’t think she had ever been in this part of the woods before. In fact, she knew she hadn’t. The limestone ruins around her was something she didn’t think that she could forget. As she turned in a circle tracing the perimeter of the ruins around her, she saw that she was standing in the center of a stone circle. She could just make out a pattern of sporadic white pebbles the size of her hand spiraling toward her.

The blood from her forearm began dripping from her hand to the leaf litter below. The air turned thick and Elisabeth’s head slowly spun to the limestone block the canary was perched on. Elisabeth felt like a cold jar of molasses had been tipped over and trapped her. She fell to her knees. The metal leaf warmed in her pocket. Breath escaped her lungs. The canary was chirping on it’s pedestal but the sound was distorted and echoed as if she were underwater.

Night fell around her, replacing the sunny morning and deciduous forest with the dim light of a full moon. Shady blues and greens filled Elisabeth’s eyes. She inhaled a lung full of moist pine air before she fell to the ground.