“Yes,” the girl said. “A ballerina. See?” And she twirled on one toe, arms extended like wings.
The egg woman felt her heart sink—a heavy stone in a dark, murky pool.
Seeing things I got no right to see, knowing things I never heard of. She shook her head. What other tricks was that girl up to?
When they opened the chicken coop, they saw Midge lying on her side on the packed earth floor, her upper eye muddy and opaque, and gazing at nothing.
“No, no,” the child cried. She ran to the far side and skidded to her knees. She paused and held her hands outward as though blessing the bird, great tears streaking down her cheeks and falling onto the chicken’s beautiful feathers like rain. She scooped Midge into her arms.
“No, Sparrow,” Marla said. “It’s too dirty. You’ll need another bath. And how many baths can one girl have, really?”
But the girl didn’t listen. She buried her face in the stiff breast of the dead hen and couldn’t speak for sobbing. Marla sighed.
“There, there, child,” Marla said. “Things live and then they die. There’s no use in crying over what can’t be helped.”
The girl wailed louder. She sprang to her feet, clutched her dead chicken, and ran from the coop in a rage. The dogs followed her, as always. They never liked to have the child out of their sight.
Marla shook her head. She let the child go. She swept the coop and fed the chickens and fixed the wobbly bits on the fence, and stripped and squatted on the ground to urinate at the four corners as a deterrent for foxes and stoats. When she was finished, she walked around to the far side of the house and saw the dogs watching the girl as she played with the hen.
The hen!
It was, as before, fat and hale and shining. A princess among hens.
“My Midge,” the girl sang. “My Midge, my Midge, my Midge.”
The once-dead hen clucked and preened. It was a thing of beauty. It loved the girl. Of course it did. Everything loved the girl. Marla snatched Sparrow around her waist and hauled her, screaming, inside.
She fed the girl, bathed the girl, and distracted the girl. She told her stories. She looked out the window to make sure Midge was gone. But Midge wasn’t gone. And what’s more, there was Midge and an identical Midge strutting through the grass, looking for tasty bugs to catch. Marla closed the curtains and convinced the girl to play in the basement.
By lunch there were five Midges in the yard. Two of them had laid eggs—fat and speckled and gorgeous, nestled in the grass. Marla locked the door.
By supper there were fifteen (though there would have been seventeen—a hawk made off with one and another made a fine supper for a passing feral cat).
Marla sighed, and let the girl outside.
“My Midge,” the girl sang happily as she frolicked among the flock of identical chickens. “My Midge, my Midge, my Midge.” And she kissed each one on its ruby wattle and was, by all reckoning, the happiest girl alive.
Marla sighed. Fine, she thought.
That night, Marla told the Sparrow the story of the magic children. And the Boro comet—the source of all this nonsense. She told her how frightened the nation’s mothers were each time the Boro comet appeared in the sky. She told of the children born with the magic marks. Of the soldiers who took those children away. Of what happened to them.
She told her about the day the junk man found her.
She told her about the Minister. He was old, that Minister. And yet, young. Maintained by magic. Hungry for magic. So hungry. How he lived alone in that strange fortress stretching up to the sky.
She even told her about her own dear baby. Marked. Taken. Lost forever.
(Red flowers, red flowers, red, red, red.)
The girl listened for a long time, her large brown eyes sober and serious, a thin slick of tears at the bottom edge.
“Does my junk man know?” the girl asked gravely. “For real, I mean. Does my papa know he is not my papa? It seems like he might not know.”
“I know what you mean, love,” Marla said. “Your papa lives in a world of his own making. He was there, though, and he knows. But you are wrong in your thinking. It isn’t blood that makes a papa, a papa. Love does that. Simon’s love for you is limitless. Your papa is more papa to you than most can claim.” There was a note of bitterness in her mouth. Her own father had turned her out, years ago, when her teenage waist began to swell, and did not welcome her back when the soldiers took her baby away (though he was happy to relieve her of the hefty payment—and she didn’t argue. She didn’t want it anyway. Blood money, she said). He later died in a brawl, and Marla never mourned him. “Your papa is what he is, and he is doing as fine a job as he can, and he loves you so very much. More than you will ever know.” And, for the first time, Marla knew it was true. What’s more, she could feel it too.
“Me too,” the girl said.
“Not everyone can see you, my darling,” Marla said. “But I don’t know how long that will last. And you are not safe. And you need to be safe. Your papa needs you to be safe.” She closed her eyes and closed her fingers around the girl’s soft, pliable hands. “I need you to be safe.”
And so, as the sun went down, and in the quiet of the loft, surrounded by quilts and candles and safe arms and hushed voices, the girl and her Marla began to make a plan.
The army of blue speckled hens—nearly a hundred of them now—stood guard on the fence, their bright black eyes beading into the night.
21. Now.
The butterfly takes notice of the
