The Constable opened the lid of the box again. Grunted. Closed it.
“Yes,” the Inquisitor said. “Yes, yes, yes.” A pause. “Of course I’ll hold.”
The Constable nearly jumped out of his skin. He opened the box. Closed it with a smack. Shook his head.
“Yes,” the Inquisitor said, “I understand the Minister is very upset. And for good reason. Imagine that woman! Giving birth to a dead baby. And a magic baby, of all things. It is an insult that cannot be borne. But there is still a question of the corpse itself.” Pause. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
The Constable leaped from his chair and started pacing the room. He shot a glance at the box on the desk. Gave a sidelong glance at the Inquisitor on the phone. Slid his eyes back to the box.
“Is there a problem?” the Inquisitor said.
The Constable shook his head. “Nope,” he said. A grimace. “No, I don’t believe so.”
It took three days for the Inquisitor to get an answer. Three days, the dead baby lay in that box. The Constable didn’t sleep a wink. He normally slept on a cot in the back corner of his office. But instead of sleeping, he spent the last three days sitting straight up, his back against the wall, his knees bent under his chin. Staring.
And he heard it.
And he heard it again.
He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his mouth, shook his head. “Stop being an idiot,” he told himself. Still, he did not sleep. Still, he kept watch.
Finally, the Inquisitor received an answer. Not a particularly good answer, but an answer all the same.
“Come now,” the Inquisitor said. “You will accompany me so you may co-sign the form.”
The two men, along with the phalanx of soldiers, walked to the rubbish heap.
There it is again!
Don’t they hear it?
When they reached the entrance to the heap at the edge of town, the Inquisitor gave the Constable a hard look. “Well,” he said, “go on.”
“Go on what?” the Constable said.
There! Why doesn’t anyone notice?
“Throw the trash on the heap.”
“What?” the Constable sputtered. He clutched the box to his chest. “That’s a horrible thing.”
“No,” the Inquisitor said. “That is our order. There were nineteen magic children born. They have no names. They do not exist. They live only for the Minister. This one—the twentieth—is a dud. So. The trash heap, then.” The Inquisitor was a short man, but he drew himself up, attempted an imperious expression. He pointed to the heap with one, long finger. “Honestly, where do you think the rest of them end up? It’s not like there’s a graveyard for magic children. It would rile people up. Think it through, man.”
The Constable thought he might be sick.
“But,” the Inquistor added, “not the box. Cardboard is expensive.”
“It’s been fouled,” the Constable said. And it had. The tiny body had already started to leak.
“No matter. It’s still usable. Go on now.”
The Constable walked slowly out onto the heap, his heart like a boulder in his chest. He knelt down, and scooped the baby out of the box. It would be unrecognizable soon. The flesh would corrupt and loosen and fall; the sinews would be picked away and the bones would bleach until they shone.
The child never was. And that was that.
But as the Constable walked away, holding the reeking box as far away from his body as he could, he heard it again.
A child’s voice. He couldn’t tell where it came from—the air, the birds, the drizzling sky, or the trash under his feet—but the sound was unmistakable. The gurgling voice of a little baby.
And it was laughing.
11. Now.
Marla doesn’t hear from the junk man or his daughter for weeks after the bird incident.
No one mentions what happened at church that day. They talk about the weather. They talk about the increased hours at the factory. They talk about grandbabies and funerals and whether they should plant corn or soybeans this year.
All the while, in the silent spaces between neighbor and neighbor—the bird, the bird, the bird. It rings and spins and ricochets between mouth and mouth, heart and heart, eye and eye, though all in silence. A storm is mentioned—the bird! A wedding is announced—the bird! A potluck is planned—the bird, the bird, the bird! That foul-tempered cancer-bird haunts darkened corners and hidden alleys and littered streets. It is everywhere, and it is silent. No one mentions the bird. Everyone thinks about the bird.
But, bird or no bird, one thing is for sure: Martina Strange is healed. Healed. For the first time in her life she breathes and breathes without hack or hesitation or wheeze. Her cheeks are pink, her eyes bright, and, perhaps most weirdly, her seven missing teeth have suddenly re-erupted in her mouth—straight and white and shining. She walks back and forth between her hovel of a house to her job as a charge-packer at the munitions factory with a gravity of bearing, an integrated sense of deep joy. She walks like a prophet, a sage, a queen.
Marla the egg woman doesn’t know what to make of it. And she worries.
Because under her feet she can feel it.
A buzz.
A rumble.
Getting bigger every day.
“My Sparrow, my Sparrow, my Sparrow,” she whispers. “What are you planning?”
Except her heart does not say, what are you planning? Her heart says, don’t leave me.
And it does not say my Sparrow. Her heart says, my child.
12. Then.
There was a time, so long ago the Minister could hardly remember it, that he was a boy. A child. There was a memory that he treasured above all others, of standing with his mother in a field and looking up at the stars.
There, his mother said, a planet.
And there, she pointed high above, the largest of all known stars.
And there, she tracked her finger across the sky, a bit of magic. If you can find where it
