Ornithophobia

There’s a flock that passes over our town once in a while, swooping low on silent wings - birds no one I’ve spoken to can give a more specific name. They are, at least, distinctly avian: small as sparrows, dark as ravens. Glossy as an oil slick, but if you can see that for yourself, you’re probably too close.

            They don’t come often, not even once a year. So when they do appear, people tend to stop for a second in the middle of the sidewalk and stare up at the birds in their dancing flight. We all do it, from what I’ve seen – locals and newcomers alike. Sometimes you just want to watch for a second, so you can carry the image with you after the birds have passed by. And then, if you’re like most people - if you’re not Laura - you keep moving and go on with your day.

            The birds came for my sister the fall I turned sixteen, so she must have been fourteen or so. We were friendly at the time, but not close. It wasn’t like there’d been a fight or a moment I could point to and say, that’s when I stopped understanding her. No, there was just a day when I noticed it had been a while since we’d walked anywhere farther than school together, and I didn’t know her friends’ names. High school was alright for me - not without the particular loneliness of adolescence, but I settled into it quickly. But I had the vague sense that Laura, walking the same halls, was somewhere else entirely.

There was a hill at the edge of our backyard, a low rise separating the house from an old and unkempt stand of trees. I went there sometimes when I wanted quiet. Laura climbed the hill often, so it was there that I looked first when I was sent to call her in for dinner on a chilly gray evening.

I stepped outside and there were the birds, the whole lovely, ink-black swarm of them, weaving labyrinthine patterns against the pearly sky. There was my sister, standing at the top of the hill with her head tipped back to watch them.

            She was too far away to hear the door open and shut, and I didn’t call out to her, just started walking slowly toward the base of the hill. There was a peace to the moment that felt rare and precious, and I didn’t want to break it until I had to.

            One of the birds dropped lower suddenly, almost on top of Laura, sweeping by so close that the feathers of one wingtip fluttered against her cheek. I heard her laugh, startled and delighted, and she stretched out her arms to the circling birds as if she could call them down. And they came to her all in a rush, lighting on her hands and shoulders, wreathing her head with dark wings.

            I was awed at first, and then chilled. The birds had become a mass of darting bodies and beating wings, with Laura standing so still in the eye of the storm. The look on her face was one of wonder and unearthly calm. It was a look I recognized, but not on my sister - it belonged to figures in stone or stained glass. She wasn’t afraid, and that scared me so much.

I cried out to her and she didn’t answer. I started to run towards the hill.

Though the distance between us was shrinking, Laura seemed untouchable behind a shifting screen of gleaming blue-black feathers and talons that I thought must cut at an intruder like barbed wire. She stood serene, with her arms outstretched and the bleached-pale strands of her hair whipping in the wind, as those birds clutched at her, digging tiny claws into her clothes and her skin.

            They lifted her off the ground. You don’t believe me and I don’t blame you, but I saw all those little wings beat faster, frantic, furious, and I saw Laura’s feet leave the dirt. I saw that they were going to carry my sister away and leave nothing but crushed weeds to mark where she had stood.

            I reached the top of the hill and ran at her as the flock strained to lift her towards the dimming clouds. I threw my arms around her waist, and for a moment I could feel the birds still tugging her upwards. But they couldn’t carry us both, or they wouldn’t; I don’t know.

            The flock let go of Laura all at once and spiraled up away from us in a brief cacophony of harsh cries.

Laura stumbled when her boots hit the ground, nearly knocking us both off-balance, and then at last she met my eyes. The pinprick marks where the birds had clung to her were starting to bleed, and my own hands were stinging. There was horror in her face, and I thought for a second - I wanted to think - that we were together in this, at least. That we were both afraid of where those things might have taken her.

Instead she stepped backward and said, in a shaking voice, “I could have flown.”

***

Ella Vilozny grew up in a coastal city in California, retelling her favorite fairy tales and myths to anyone who would listen. She is now a college student and a writer of fantasy and science fiction.