The Fledglings
Three blue jays, newly minted from their eggs, took flight over a quiet Indiana suburbia. They took in the houses, stamped like honeycombs, and darted under the cool shadows of buildings and skeletal trees. The virus took hold of them slowly, rooting in while they were still wet yolks. And then all at once, their wings seized, fingernail hearts palpitating.
They fell.
Like a triplet note, each hit the ground in a front yard with overgrown grass and a lone birch tree that needed deep pruning.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Take heart; they felt nothing.
Their legs stood erect as flagpoles, alerting anyone who might look out their front window. The fledglings’ bodies were still in the process of organ failure, but there was one thing left within them, in the base ingredients of their blood, worth saving.
The Mother
Mavis brewed coffee, bleary-eyed and aiming to melt into the kitchen sink, when she looked out the circular window and saw the three fledgling blue jays dead in her front lawn. Their wings were out, as if frozen mid-flight, their feet like matchsticks. Blue feathers stood stark against her sunburnt grass and the gray sky.
Mavis sighed and searched for her phone.
The Sonos arrived quicker than an ambulance. The gaudy silver-painted van screeched to a halt on her curb. Mavis double-tied the strap of her robe around her waist, clutched the collar, and met a Sono at her front door.
“Thank you for calling Amplexum,” the Sono said. They wore hoods with a black veil in front of them, disguising their faces, sort of like the executioners of old. They did important work, the Sonos, but their occupation was no longer as glorified.
Mavis shrugged. “It’s the law.”
The Sono copied her movement, shoulders rising. “We appreciate archiving what we can.”
The Sono turned back to view the lawn, making a hand motion to the other Sonos unloading equipment. “We’ll be quick. We advise you not to watch.”
Mavis nodded again, curly brown hair from her messy bun falling limp into her face. She imagined she looked terrible to the Sono, with bags under her eyes, chapped lips, and a reddened nose from crying until sunrise. Yet she couldn’t see the face behind the Sono’s veil.
Mavis closed her front door and went back to the kitchen sink. She poured herself a cup of coffee, added too much cream, and gulped it all down while it was still hot. It withered the skin of her throat but woke her up. Good enough.
She would watch. Amplexum warned everyone to turn away, after people complained and animal rights groups threatened to sue.
Mavis poured another cup–more cream–and resumed her spot at the window.
There were two Sonos. Each held a large syringe about the size of a forearm. From what Mavis read in the newspaper, the contraption was built from a special type of glass, mixed with quartz, which made the syringe opaque with a slight sparkle. The quartz was supposed to hold the contents until it was brought to one of the Amplexum Arks sprinkled throughout the country.
Each Sono bent over a fledgling and inserted the large cylindrical needle into the tiny bird’s throat. The tall grass–mowing was fast becoming obsolete, useless–obscured whether there was any blood or if any of the fledglings might be alive. It didn’t matter; if a bird was found felled, the law was to report it.
Soon, the syringes filled. Even from a distance, the substance was silvery, mixed with drops of blood. It shimmered in the quartz glass. Mavis knew, from her reading, that if the syringe broke, and the contents released, it would evaporate into a breath of airy, musical notes. It would echo clear and loud around her suburban property, and some of her reclusive neighbors might open their windows, pause their lives, to listen.
That rarely happened. Any Sono who broke a syringe made the news and was terminated from Amplexum’s payroll. The melody was too important. Birds began dying off in droves years before, but their calls could be harvested. Some genius at Amplexum had figured out a way to suck it out of them and keep it safe.
Hmm, Mavis thought. People used to call her a genius. She hated the term. Felt it should be capsuled in a metal box and buried or sent off into space.
Mavis thought she saw one of the fledgling’s wings jerk as a needle was removed. She couldn’t be sure. She rubbed her eyes. Emptied coffee down her throat.
There were a variety of blue jay callings, since they didn’t really have their own, but the most notable was the “whisper song” that Mavis heard so much as a child. An amalgamation of clicks, chirps, and other noises blue jays archive in their bodies. Mavis’s parents met during a birdwatching tour in South Africa. Her mother was a neurosurgeon, her ma a librarian, and they both loved to watch birds. They built a website for themselves and everything.
Mavis knew blue jays could also mimic hawks, so there was a combo special in sucking out their song and sending it to an Ark.
Once the Sonos filled the syringes, they went back to the van and stowed them. Soon the fledglings were dried husks. Without their calls, their bodies seem to implode on itself. There was a quick squeal of sound, almost imperceptible if one didn’t listen for it, and then the skin shriveled. The blood dried. Mavis knew come the next morning, the rest—the worms, the ants, the desperate raccoons—would have their due.
The Sonos did not alert Mavis they were done. They simply huddled the syringes into a bin, then carried the bin to the van and drove away. One of them, perhaps the one that spoke to her, waved from the passenger seat. Mavis raised her hand, curling her fingers as if to catch the wave in her palm.
It was just as well. The baby upstairs began to squawk.
The Sono
Beneath the veil was a man. Beneath the man was a shit-ton of anxiety.
He could not afford to quit Amplexum’s payroll; the money was good, and he was too buried in debt that collected too much interest. He could’ve bought a big house for him and his dogs, with a yard like the one they had just left. But he was tied down by the strings of his viscera, paying off the hospital bills mailed to him from down south, always accompanied by a severe, short note from his grandmother. Every other paycheck went to those hospital bills.
The anxiety was from twelve-hour shifts sucking the melodies out of birds. Melodies, notes, beautiful arias that he would never be able to listen to himself. It was a tragic love story, in a way.
The Sono beside him drove the van, and with each sharp turn, he heard the bin holding the syringes slide along the van floor. It was a secure bin, though he wasn’t sure why Amplexum didn’t build something more stable into the van, rather than just foam-filled bins. Why not a strapped contraption, or a drawer bolted to the floor of the vehicle? The man had ideas. In his heyday, he could take divoted blocks and build exact replicas of any ship or vehicle he saw on television. He’d erect small scale skyscrapers out of metal and bolts.
He’d wanted to be an architect. He’d wanted to nest spaces within spaces. Walls within walls. But it would have the opposite effect as a prison. It would be a place of holding. Like being hugged by ceilings and doors. The walls would not be barriers. They would be arms, beckoning.
He used to have such ideas.
But Amplexum paid the bills, or at least a fraction of them. He’d send off another payment after work before he microwaved the same goddamn noodles and put a dollop of imitation butter with the spice packet to give it an air of luxury.
As they entered the Ark complex, the driving Sono flashed their clearance card so they could park in the offloading dock. They backed the van in, and the man’s task was to get the bin and bring it to be checked in.
Another Sono, also veiled, waited at a podium before a thick door leading into the Ark. The man had never entered. His job was the syringe, the van, and the handoff.
The man handed them the bin and the paperwork. The Sono turned so they could place the bin on a table near the door to inspect the syringes.
“Three, you said?” the Sono asked.
“As was reported.”
“There are two syringes.”
“What?” the man asked. Beneath the veil was a man. Sweat beaded down his back. He used to not sweat so much, but now it was like he couldn’t stop. He woke up in sweat. He went to bed in a sweat. It didn’t smell bad; it was sweet and cloying. His dogs liked to lick all around his face, sniff his hair. He hoped the dog sitter stopped by to take them on a walk. He hoped the dogs missed him because they were the only living things that did.
“There are two syringes, but the paperwork says three.” The Sono shut the bin sharply and returned it to the man.
“If you want to keep your job,” they said. “I suggest you find a way to make the paperwork and syringes match. You’ll have to go back first thing tomorrow. A murder of crows have been reported felled across Hopewell. Make sure you find all of them.”
The man turned back to the parked van, where the other two Sonos on his team waited. One threw up their hands in a “what’s the holdup?” gesture. The man didn’t know them, didn’t know if they were even the same people he always worked with. He wondered if they depended on this job the same way he did.
Beneath the man was a veil.
Beneath the veil was a need.
The Mother, Part II
Later, the baby came off Mavis’s breast with blood on her face. This happens sometimes. Her daughter’s yanking and sucking caused her chapped nipples to bleed. It mixed with the milk and her baby looked like a feral beast.
Mavis had to laugh. Otherwise, she’d cry.
Her baby found her laugh addictive, and Mavis giggled and cooed along with her. She set her daughter in the glider in the living room and grabbed a dishcloth from a drawer to wipe up the blood and milk dripping down her chest to her abdomen. Her belly button never popped back in after pregnancy and sat atop a mound of loose flesh like a berry on top of an under-baked cake. She wiped her skin, smearing blood. Then she righted herself and tightened her robe again.
She looked out the kitchen sink window one more time and saw three pairs of twiggy feet of the fledglings raised amongst the burnt grass. And a glinting. A sparkle reflecting the harsh sunlight.
Mavis turned to the baby, who cooed at the ceiling, her large eyes fascinated by patterns Mavis found mundane. She wished to bottle her daughter’s awe.
Mavis opened the front door, plodding on socked feet through the lawn. The grass itched her heels, tickled the bones of her ankles and calves. It was hot, and she was sweating by the time she came upon it.
It. She knew what it was when she saw the glint, but part of her thought it impossible. A syringe, left by the Sonos, filled with blood and melody.
She should call the Sonos.
It was the law, after all.
It was the right thing to do.
She knelt in the grass, her skin starting to bake in the heat. A drop of sweat fell from her nose, onto glass, and slid off. A plastic cap covered the needle. Mavis touched the cylinder, and the opaque glass felt smooth, the veins of metal throughout gleamed, polished to a shine. It felt exactly as Mavis imagined, seeing the syringe on the news and then put to use in her own yard. A magnificent tool. She cradled it to her chest with one hand and pushed herself off the ground with the other. The front of her robe hung open like a hangnail, blood still smeared on her skin. She imagined, if the neighbors gazed upon her now, she’d look like a murderer.
Mavis could hear her baby cooing within the house. She strode back, shut the door behind her with her foot, stopped, then turned and locked the door.
The Sonos were not stupid. Their inventory was sacred. But Mavis could blame it on a stranger. Yes. She would tell them there was a couple walking in their neighborhood, scavengers—dumpster-divers had become quite common of late—and they saw the syringe, took it, and fled. It happened before, she remembered from the news. The Sonos conducted a thorough search until the syringe was found. It was empty, the stopper gone.
“Such a tragedy,” the news anchor had said. “It’s as if we lost a symphony.”
Mavis went to the kitchen and opened the first drawer she came upon, where all her heating pads and oven mitts tucked together. She lifted the top mitt and gently laid the syringe underneath.
“This is wrong,” she said and closed the drawer.
Her daughter cooed in response, unintelligible and full of drool. Mavis translated it into something meaningful:
You’re saving a small joy. No one can blame you.
Mavis nodded at her daughter, feeling better.
As the baby napped, Mavis called her best friend, Tony. She wondered for a brief moment whether venting over the phone might be recorded (probably) but still, Tony was the one person she could speak to with total honesty. Freedom. She could be angry about the most minute and unnecessary details and Tony accepted those, nurturing her away from the precipice. A person outside the dam.
“So what are you going to do with it?” Tony asked. They had not flinched as Mavis recounted the story, or at least, Mavis couldn’t sense any hesitation over the phone. Tony was never one to balk at extremes. Rather, they lived for it. Had gone sky-diving, even made treks to the Arks, deep in the government-protected wilderness. Although, they never said what happened when they got to the Ark.
Mavis cleared her throat. “I’m not even sure why I took it.”
“Sure you do,” Tony said. “You’ve been cooped up for 20 weeks, Mav. The season is too hot for walks. You’re tired. You’re lonely. Now you have to watch those goth bastards take from your own yard.”
“Well, it’s the law—”
“It’s your home,” Tony said. “We are blades of grass drying out in this fucking heat. What’s a little tune for your soul? They won’t miss it.”
Mavis nodded into her phone. Tony’s voice was always a rock, ever since they were kids. Even while transitioning, Tony was the steady one while Mavis fretted and doted on them. Tony taught her to do a swan dive off the diving board, how to jump rope. Tony was her rope. Tethered to the outside world.
“My question stands,” Tony said. “What are you going to do with it?”
The Traveler, At the Ark
Months Earlier
Tony hiked the pack higher on their shoulders. Their legs burned, and the protein bar they ate an hour ago sat like a lump of coal in their stomach. Soon they would be there and see the Ark for themself.
They were with a smaller group of travelers, some might call dark tourists, though nobody was sure where sneaking up on Ark property stood in regard to tourism. The Arks were anything but dilapidated, and they weren’t cast in secrecy. The news channels often showed pictures and drone flyovers of the Arks, but never inside it. The Arks were spires staked in numerous parts of the country, with public plans to expand throughout North America and overseas.
Tony likened the Arks to tombstones: a marking, often with mysteries as to what lies beneath or within.
The guide for the group, a man shaped preternaturally like the number 8 and who went by Virgil (Tony thought the alias was a bit heavy-handed), claimed seeing the Ark up close, in person without the “walls” of television or photography getting in the way, was a spiritual experience.
“There are details the cameras cannot catch,” he said before they started the hike. He spoke with his hands, gesturing like a priest. “The Arks were built for this very reason. Follow me, and you will see beyond the government and media glamour.”
Tony thought he was a jackass. But hey, it was the most affordable tour they could find and kept in line with their packed schedule. Tony worked cybersecurity and risk assessment for a small software firm. They liked to keep the companies they worked for small, moving around every few years. Multiple degrees in computer science, mathematics, plus a few minors in languages helped.
Suffice to say Tony had a knack for finding patterns. And they especially liked breaking them.
But the Ark was a pattern they couldn’t put a finger on. It was a side project, one that they didn’t tell Mavis about, because they knew she’d worry, and she had enough to worry about with her little one.
Tony thought about the last picture they saw of the baby before turning off their phone before the hike—a requirement Virgil was militant about. He took their phones and put them in a foil-lined plastic bag that he kept in his own pack.
Mavis’s daughter was her mini-me, already reminding them of Mavis when they were growing up. They could tell Mavis was out of her element, lost in the postpartum fog. Tony tried to pull her out of it whenever they could.
“Babies aren’t supposed to sleep through the night immediately, Mav.”
“But I heard that—”
“You are doing great, Mav. Mothering is hard shit. It’s not supposed to come naturally. It’s a journey. My parents told me they’d alternate holding me for hours a night for the first three months.”
“I saw this one influencer post these pictures, though—she looked so peaceful in bed, nursing her twins. Her breasts were plump and unscratched. Fuck, her areolas were perfect circles, Tony. She looked beautiful, like she was enjoying every second of it, and I don’t. Something must be wrong with me.”
“I told you to stop following those accounts.”
“But Tony …” Mavis began to sob.
After this trip, Tony would go to Mavis. It was overdue. They were a coward for waiting this long. They would go there, and take Mavis in their arms, and they would cry together. Because the world was shit. It was in a constant state of betrayal, and everyone was either a part of that betrayal or in mourning because of it. Tony and Mavis would get drunk on wine, unplug from the news and doom scrolling, and take turns holding the baby in the night. Tony would sing songs from their childhood. Rough anthems and ballads of righteousness.
Tony would see the brightness in Mavis’s eyes again.
Something winked at them and they had to hold their arm over their eyes to see their feet without tripping on a rock. A person in the group gasped. Another behind Tony started swearing, or was it praying? They came out of a clearing through a path in the crippled forest, and the Ark stretched up before the group as suddenly as a cliff. Tony wondered how it could sneak up on all of them like that. Virgil had used the word glamour, and Tony thought him an idiot who’d read too many conspiracy theories and fairy tales. But the word did, in fact, work.
“Behold,” Virgil said, holding out his hands.
Tony was about to snort, but something caught their eye. As they came up to a fence of barbed wire, Tony saw that the Ark’s gleaming shell was not as smooth as they thought. All the pictures, all the videos, showed the Ark from a certain distance. No, this Ark’s outer material was not wholly smooth metal. The sun bounced off it, yes, but there were grooves. Bumps and criss-crossed signs. A language? Tony couldn’t recognize it.
“Fuck me,” someone said behind them. “Is that what I think it is?”
Virgil nodded solemnly, crossing his arms. “It’s one thing I cannot bring myself to tell, and whenever I did, no one believed me. A small detail, isn’t it? Could be scratches from afar. But no, travelers. It is not.”
“Human bones?” Another asked.
Virgil laughed. “I’m dramatic but not that dramatic. My sister is an ornithologist for New Russia’s prime minister. They are copying this design. Bird bones.”
“But they only harvest the songs,” Tony said, raising their hand out of habit, then lowering it awkwardly. “The Sonos are only ever seen harvesting songs. Where do the bones come from?”
Virgil shrugged. “Some say they’re designed to look like bones. They could be cloned.”
Made no fucking sense, Tony thought. All hearsay. An untested hypothesis. Drama indeed, they thought.
The group fell into muttering and brainstorming, and Virgil seemed to relish it. He made his own suggestions (the idea of cloning jazzed him) and pointed to his favorite parts on the Ark. Tony, meanwhile, took a step back from the group, clutching the straps of their backpack. A factor was missing in all this, they thought. It was like UFO searching in Roswell, where instead of finding aliens, they’d had a great time at a local bar, danced naked on someone’s trailer under a night sky of endless stars, and slept with the bar’s owner. They’d left Roswell feeling satisfied in all ways except for the reason they traveled there in the first place.
This was similar. And there wasn’t even good sex. But what they realized later on was that you can’t wait for miracles to come to you. That’s not how it works. You have to dig deep. Tag them. Make them yours.
As Virgil and the rest of the group took pictures and chatted, Tony stared. It was the staring that did it. Letting their eyes go hazy even, dry and itchy. The sun winked off the Ark, and at that moment, Tony noticed something shift in the patterns of bones on the side. Movement. Tony was sure of it.
“Hey Virgil,” Tony asked, loud and above the muttering. They pointed up. “Is that normal?”
Virgil turned toward where Tony pointed, at a place on the Ark that reflected the sun. At first, Virgil shrugged, and other members of the group laughed and went on talking. But Virgil must’ve had someone ask about movement before, because like Tony, he waited. Stared. Waited. Stared some more. Finally, the sun hit the Ark just right again. And there was the movement, even more pronounced. A thatch of bones seemed to be pulling away from the wall of the Ark. Like bones stuck in a tar pit, trying to break free.
Tony noticed Virgil freeze, swearing under his breath.
“I’d heard …” Virgil said, shaking his head. “A few people here and there mentioned something, but I could never catch it.”
The bones pulled against the Ark, and a bit broke free and fell. Other bones attached themselves to each other, coalescing and knotting together.
Slowly, the group went quiet. A few turned back the way they’d come, picking up the pace into a near-run.
Tony stared, gulping air through their nostrils, as if the air wasn’t enough. In and out. In and out. breathing so sharp and fast, it was almost like a whistle. A tune.
The Mother, Part III
Mavis looked at the syringe in the drawer, nestled among the oven mitts. Her daughter had kept her up all night. Nothing worked. All of the books she’d bookmarked, all the advice from blogs she’d read, and the pediatrician’s recommendations jotted on sticky notes in the nursery … they all fell into a black hole. Her daughter had cried and cried, sucking on her breast until the sting of her chapped skin became numb. Cried and cried until Mavis cried along with her. It was only when the sun rose, blood orange light peeking through the blinds, that her daughter hiccupped against her breast and finally slept.
Mavis looked bleary-eyed at the syringe now. Her coffee was already cold, forgotten in the microwave. The house was overly quiet after a night of screams.
She would say, much later, that it was sleep deprivation that made her decision. And all listening to the story would nod along, nod at each other, knowingly. It made sense, didn’t it. Motherhood is so fucking hard. Tiring. Boring. But in the depths of her soul, behind her heavy milk-ridden breasts, it was more than that. It was the Sono who told her not to watch. It was Tony who asked what she was going to do with the opportunity given to her.
The syringe was in her hands, then. The needle bit into Mavis’s skin, and she pushed the sparkling liquid of song into her bloodstream.
The Sono, Part II
This was the house.
The Sono pulled the van over to the curb. He’d dropped off the other Sonos outside the Ark to be assigned to other groups for the day.
“I’ll fix this myself,” he told them.
The AC blew in his face, so cold that his cheeks and mouth felt stiff behind the fabric of the veil. The hay-burnt lawn seemed to reflect the orange of the setting sun, and dead plants swung from pot hooks on the front porch. All the curtains were drawn, each window covered by assorted shades of taupe. He tried to remember the woman who had answered the door. He didn’t remember much—it had been a long day—but he had remembered her eyes, glazed with lumps of skin puffed up around them. Tired. Exhausted, even.
He had told her not to watch, as was customary, according to the manuals.
It had all gone as planned, didn’t it? So how did he forget to grab all the syringes?
He must’ve been occupied with some thought. A memory perhaps; his memories of childhood had been heavy lately, as heavy as the tides surging toward land in the southern states. He remembered going swimming during the red tide at his grandmother’s house, sneaking off to the beach with his cousins despite his parents’ and grandparents’ warnings. They’d just gotten there. They were hungry for the water, for feeling the sun on their backs.
The beach had been empty, the shoreline bleeding red from the algae growing out of control. It would be the first of many red tides over the years, until it was all red tide. Everywhere.
They swam in it, playing monsters and heroes. His cousin, Ichika, draped thick strands of red algae over her arms, tucking them into her bikini straps, and chased them down the beach. How they’d laughed.
The seagulls had shrieked ungodly above them.
Later, his grandmother would scream at them, her Japanese rapid and shrill. She would blame him and his other cousins for Ichika’s rash, the way her breathing hitched, fluids leaking from her mouth and nostrils, viscous and red.
He would never go to a beach again. He’d move inland, to this Indiana town, and suck songs from birds.
The front door to the house opened.
The woman stood there, in a robe that he now remembered her wearing the last time he saw her. He saw stains of milk and something else on the worn fabric. Was it blood?
The sun set behind his van, so he could not make out the woman’s face from the shadows of the porch.
The Sono gripped the steering wheel as he stared. She seemed to wait for him, and when he realized this, he knew that she had, in fact, taken the remaining syringe. That it was in that house, and he would have to go in and retrieve it.
Something about that terrified him.
He checked the veil he wore; it was still there. It brushed against his skin. Good, a barrier at least, for whatever was to come.
He turned off the van, and already the heat of the day seeped in, turning his windows foggy as he opened the door.
The Traveler, Part II
Tony had asked what Mavis was going to do with the syringe. They’d wanted to be the supportive shoulder, but they’d also been coming down from an amazing bout of sex with their partner, Zoe. Their limbs were heavy, well-fucked. They were happy in love. They were content.
But after getting off the phone with Mavis, Tony felt off.
Zoe had turned over in her sleep, nuzzling their shoulder. Tony leaned into her, seeking her smell and warmth. They’d never told Zoe about the Ark, what they saw. They didn’t want to add a wrinkle to Zoe’s face. She’d been through enough. They had found each other while volunteering in what was left of Florida after the latest hurricane. They fell into each other, their traumas entwining and forming a shield. No, they could not tell Zoe about the Ark. Not yet.
But why didn’t they tell Mavis, now that she had a syringe of melody? The liquid was harvested for some type of resurrection. Tony could still barely process what they’d seen. Maybe Mavis should turn it in, call the local Sono number, and have them come and retrieve it. Mavis was right: it would have been the right thing to do.
But Tony told her it was an opportunity. At that moment, they’d felt strongly about it. Their heart was full, the memories of the Ark faded and jaded, and they wanted so bad to wash Mavis with the essence of their satisfaction.
Tony had always been bad at reading the room.
A day later, and still Tony felt as if there was a sliver under their fingernail. Something was off. Mavis, their dearest friend, was an impressionable person. Gullible even, ever since childhood and she’d done whatever Tony had dared.
Tony cut vegetables as Zoe heated up a wok on the stove.
“You’ve been quiet today,” Zoe said.
Tony looked up. “Have I? Sorry.”
“Want to talk about it?” Zoe asked, spinning the tray next to the stove to find the right oil she wanted. Zoe was good at this, digging up hurts that Tony didn’t want to talk about but needed to get off their chest.
“No,” Tony said, then held up the knife in thought. “Maybe. Yes. But let’s eat first. I’m starving.”
Their belly growled to echo their sentiment, and Zoe laughed. Nodded. She leaned back until the back of her shoulders hit Tony’s—their apartment was practically a crawlspace—and they both sighed against each other. Silence.
Tony returned to cutting vegetables, making sure to aim away from their own flesh. It would not do to lose a finger to a blade. They imagined a bone protruding from their index finger, where a fingernail should be, and shuddered. Swallowed down bile.
Ever since they saw the bones leave the side of the Ark, bend and reform, Tony could not bear the look of bones in any form, for food or otherwise. Zoe called it a phobia, but Tony had never fully explained why.
Bones should be immobile. Without life. The bird bones from the Ark … they flew.
“Remind me to call Mavis back.” Tony set the knife aside and scooped up the vegetables—a mix of celery, broccoli, and eggplant—and turned to stand next to Zoe. “I should've said more or asked more. She’s so tired. I don’t—I don’t think I did the right thing.”
Zoe hummed, nodded. She held up the wok for Tony to disperse the vegetables in it.
“You’ll find a way,” Zoe said. “You always do.”
The Mother & The Sono, The Finale
The Sono entered Mavis’s home in silence. Mavis pointed to the kitchen table, empty save for her pumping gear and a soiled onesie. The Sono sat, clasping hands together.
Blessedly, the baby was still asleep in the glider in the living room.
In addition to the air conditioning sighing through the vents, the only noise was the rocking of the glider and the occasional grunt from the baby.
The Sono was used to more sound, had expected a bit of chaos in this house. Someone who stole a syringe should be trying to distract him, right? Should be talkative, showing off the baby, having the TV on. But there was nothing.
“There was a syringe missing from our cargo,” the Sono said. “I am here to retrieve it.”
Mavis nodded.
“Do you have it?” the Sono asked.
Mavis cocked her head, then shook it.
“It is not in your yard, so I can only assume someone picked it up,” the Sono said. There was a tightening in his chest. She had it, he knew she had it.
The baby rocked back and forth in the glider.
“Look,” the Sono said. “It is against the law to hold government property without express permission, especially if it is for an Ark. All syringes need to be sent to an Ark as soon as possible. We iterated this when we arrived here after your report.”
Mavis pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat across from him. She untied and retied the cord around her robe.
The puffiness around her eyes was still there, but the glazed look was gone. Her eyes, brown as wet wood, blazed bright and watery.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” the Sono asked.
Mavis nodded, brown curls falling over those blazing eyes.
Perhaps he needed backup. Someone else to explain it better than he could.
Mavis opened her mouth, closed it. Thought a moment. When she spoke, she made sure to carefully form her lips over each word, fighting temptation.
“I understand that—you need the syringe—but—I cannot give it you.”
Good, it came out better than she expected.
The Sono fidgeted in his seat, the tightness in his chest expanding to a feeling of emptiness. Hot and itching, like the way he felt after swimming in red tide.
Ichika had been so much worse.
“That is against the law,” the Sono said.
Mavis nodded. “Still—I don’t think—you’d want this—to get back to your superiors.”
“How do you know what I want?” the Sono bit back.
Mavis smiled. “We all—have needs.”
What the fuck did that mean, the Sono thought. Clearly this woman didn’t understand the ramifications.
He shook in his anger and frustration, his veil quivering. Mavis saw this, understood he must be boiling with emotions underneath. Best to make things undoubtedly clear.
She stood from the table and walked to the oven mitts drawer, retrieved the syringe. She’d cleaned it afterward, and the glass shined.
The Sono sighed audibly at the sight of the syringe, but when she turned fully to the Sono, holding up the syringe to the gray light peeking through the kitchen window, she saw him freeze.
“What?” the Sono asked. He stood. Sat again. “What did you do?”
Mavis walked to the kitchen table and set the syringe down on the old wood, next to the soiled onesie.
“There now,” she said. “You have—what you—came for.”
The Sono shook his head, veil thrashing. “No.”
He saw red. The Sono saw red, but it was a different hue. It was Ichika’s rash, a mutation of the red tides that had increased over the years. Bubbling and puss-ridden. He saw his grandmother’s face, his Obaachan, turned to him, veins pulsing in her forehead.
“What have you done?” she’d screamed.
“What have you done?” he asked the woman.
Mavis smiled. At that moment, the baby stirred, grunting and snuffling in the glider. Mavis walked to the living room, pressed a button to turn off the rocking, and lifted her daughter. She was rooting, searching for milk.
“My baby—she is so—hungry,” Mavis said.
She carried the infant to the table, cooed at it. Her eyes remained bright. So bright. So full of hope and joy.
You see, the syringe did not harm her. She thought it might. Mavis thought, as she injected the song into her body, that she might die. There was a moment of horror, of leaving her baby to a world of burnt lawns, red tides, crawling shorelines that edged closer and closer to her landlocked town.
But she felt nothing. A sting in her arm, of course, like after getting one of the countless vaccines she’s accumulated over the years. Otherwise, despite the width of the needle, there was little pain.
Instead, when her baby woke up screaming, something else had happened. Happened. Is happening.
The Sono watched as Mavis unwrapped her robe, presenting her breast to her daughter, who opened her mouth gleefully and sucked at the nipple. There was a spot of dried blood on the baby’s cheek from the previous night, but that was in the past now.
“Have you—ever—studied birds?” Mavis asked.
The Sono shook his head.
“My parents did,” she said. As the baby sucked, Mavis sat back in her chair, stretched her mouth. Opened and closed it without saying anything.
“Okay,” she said. “I think I can speak without halting—so much.”
The Sono said nothing.
“My parents loved birds,” Mavis said. “They met while—on a trip to—Kruger National Park in South Africa. Of course, most of Africa is ash now, but it didn’t used to be that way. They particularly liked the lilac-breasted roller. Its colors were—so vibrant.”
“I don’t understand,” the Sono said. He still saw red, heard his Obaachan’s screams echoing in his ears, but Mavis’s voice was soothing. Her voice rose and fell, perfectly pitched. The screaming in the Sono’s head lessened, became shouting in the distance rather than in his face.
“Lilac-breasted rollers don’t have much of a song,” Mavis said. “They are stunning in color, but their song is—almost—a melodic ripping of paper.”
She snuggled her baby closer to her chest.
“My parents met over the lilac-breaster roller—but they fell in love—with the blue jay.”
The Sono felt himself swallow, bile and mucus large in his throat.
“Even still, blue jays are not—the most melodic birds,” Mavis said. “But they have—what orchidologists call—‘whisper songs.’”
“Whisper songs,” The Sono repeated.
“Yes,” Mavis said. “Whisper songs. We know them mostly for their loud jeer calls—but whisper songs are different.”
When Mavis said “jeer,” it was not a word, or even the phonetic sound of the word. The Sono jumped in his seat, rocking it back on its hind legs, as Mavis made the blue jay call.
Because it was a call.
The sound that emanated was the jeer of blue jays, as clear as the cloudless gray sky. Mavis’s mouth opened, and the call released. Her throat even trembled, muscles vibrating to frame it.
He imagined it, the Sono thought. Surely.
What have you done? his Obaachan screamed. Jeered.
“Whisper songs can last for two minutes—give or take,” Mavis continued. “Clicks, clucks, whirs, whines, and liquid notes—isn’t that lovely, liquid notes?”
“I don’t understand,” the Sono said.
The infant finished suckling, and in a swift moment, Mavis switched her to the other breast.
“My parents told me I was colicky,” Mavis said. “But I didn’t believe them. I only remember ever falling asleep—to one or the other singing to me. Now I can do the same.”
“Please,” the Sono said. “What have you done with the syringe’s contents?”
Mavis held up her index finger and made tsk sound. “You don’t strike me as someone foolish—not when you chose the livelihood of a Sono.”
“I just,” the Sono sobbed. “I wanted to bring something back.”
Something. Was he talking about the syringe specifically, Mavis wondered, or more? The way the Sono’s voice hitched at “back,” as if he would change the Earth’s axis if he could.
The infant finished her feed, finishing the second breast after only a few moments. Mavis smiled at her daughter. She had napped like an angel since Mavis injected herself with the song. Now, Mavis thought. Now I have the right tools.
Her baby looked up at Mavis with her big eyes, as brown as hers, full of wonder of life.
Her baby’s tiny lips—a perfect cupid’s bow–opened. Her tiny tongue moved.
Mavis, too, opened her mouth.
Her daughter clicked and whirred.
Mavis whirred back, following it up with liquid notes.
Then her child laughed. A quick hiccupping coo.
The Sono had had enough.
He kicked back the chair, standing. The clattering sound made both Mavis and her daughter jump. The baby fretted, began to cry.
“Wait,” Mavis said.
“I have to go,” the Sono said, gulping air. What to do? Who to tell? It was wrong; he had to report it. But another sob wrenched out of him. The fabric of his veil was too much, and he tugged it over his head, revealing his cheeks wet with tears. Eyes reddened and puffy from crying. Fuck, he thought. So beautiful. It was so beautiful.
“You see,” Mavis said. “You see—what can happen?”
She stood, swaying and back and forth, clicking and whispering to the baby. Nothing else had worked. But this did. This song did.
Jeer. Jeer. Whir. Whine. Chuck.
Then more songs came out of her, songs that didn’t even come from the fledgling, but that Mavis knew by heart because of her mothers.
What cheer! What cheer!
Sweet, I’m so sweet, sweet, sweet.
Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?
A meadowlark. A song sparrow. A bobolink. A crane. A puffin. An owl.
They all released from her throat and heart as calls. As songs. Whispering to her daughter until she nestled against her breasts.
The Sono sat on the floor and wept into his hands, clutching his face with his fingers.
Mavis’s phone rang. She always lost her cell phone in the house, buried under blankets, dirty clothes, and spit-up cloths. It echoed throughout the house, the default ringtone of her cellphone’s brand, years old at this point. Tony had always teased her about it, but Mavis liked the sound. And now it harmonized with her clicks and whirs. A synthesis of noise. Blessedly, her daughter closed her eyes, and slept.
