Osprey

I had fled to the bay for safety but the storm caught me there and killed me. My last experience was the waves sinking their cold molars into my plumage. They tossed and tousled me as the storm raged, and, when my breath and the breath of the gods had ceased, they smoothed my feathers back to perfection in the darkness. The tide left my body on a beach on the west side of the bay.

     I had died with thrice bad luck: dishonourable retreat, disorienting circumstances, and far from the open ocean. My Three Days of Grace began at dawn.

     I had several admirers that first day. Just after sunrise a golden dog bounded over to me. He had a goofy gait, his hind legs not quite sure the direction of his front legs. He sniffed along my left wing and my face as an old man hobbled down the steps of the seawall.

     “Thor!” the man called, “get outta there.” He shooed Thor away, gave my body a cursory glance, and moved on.

     This was the blueprint for the next three interactions. The fifth beach stroller stopped and crouched beside me. Her mother examined me from a distance.

     “It's beautiful,” said the croucher, whose name was Noemi. She had a slight build and was in her twenties. Her eyes and her hat were green. Underneath her black hair was cut haphazardly short. Her facial features blended from sharp to smooth in all the right ways and places to make a human handsome, but there was something a bit off about them: the angles skewed, perhaps, and the curves slightly too voluptious. Because of this and her habit of staring at people's noses as they talked and taking a very long time to answer, she was generally considered unsettling. To complement her unsettling of people, she didn't much like them.

     “Is it an eagle?” her mother asked.

     “It's an osprey.”

     Her mother edged closer. “I think it's an eagle—a young one.”

     “No,” Noemi continued, frustration creeping into her voice. “The only eagles on this coast are bald and golden.”

     “Exactly: a young bald eagle. That's sad.”

     “There's far too much white. A young bald eagle is all brown-black. There was one in the nest on Cedar Street this fall.”

     “I don't know.... Look at its feet.”

     “Mum—it's an osprey.”

     “Let's google it.”

     “Fine.”

     Noemi slid from the sand a small stick that wouldn't leave splinters in her hands. She called one of the dogs to her and threw the stick. They moved on.

Noemi returned that evening after the clouds had rolled across the bay and inland, clutching a thermos in one hand. It contained Alba Andina Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. A smooth driftwood log lay a few feet to my left and on this she sat.

     "Hello, osprey," she said.

     Hello, Noemi, I wanted to reply.

     "The wind's died," she remarked.

     The wind is waiting.

     She was looking up at the stars now, at Orion's Belt and the Big Dipper and Sirius. To the north the city and the ski hills lit the sky and shrouded the stars. She imagined the world a thousand years before, when there was negligible light pollution, and on a clear night the heavens shone unadulterated. Countless stars illuminated her mind's eye; she felt a sense of peace and wonder and comfort. A tear trickled down her face and the illusion fled.

     She wrenched her gaze from above to view below: the cement wall and road dissolved, the rows of cabins grew into pines and oaks and willows. The beach curved up to meet the forest seamless. Noemi drank a little more and breathed short and shallow to keep herself from crying.

     "Here, osprey--for your companionship." She poured wine on my breast and walked away.

My pleasure.

On the second day she brought her painting supplies. When she found the place where I had lain empty, the breath caught in her throat and she trembled and then she walked on. My body sprawled two hundred yards to the south, near the tip of the bay. She had only brought blacks and whites and browns, which suited my former seat fine but I now lay on small rocks.

     After a time spent considering and staring from my body to the rocks to her canvas to her paints, she began. First, a background of browns and black dabbled sand flowed over her canvas. She then trekked back to the cabin to retrieve the blues and yellows and reds she needed for the rocks. She painted the rocks carefully, recrafting their wholeness and their brokenness, their individuality and their community. The last rock, blue-black with streakings of silver and red, took her an hour. She had painted them on the edges of the canvas, leaving a circle of sand for my body to rest on.

     After lunch she returned, although the food sat in her stomach and her fear weighed upon her. Her fear was an ominous, nameless, and haunting thing, but she conquered it and made the first bold black stroke of my wing. From there, it was simple. She reformed my figure in oils, remade me a sleek midnight sea traversed by a fleet of sails. I was brought to new life by her alchemy. As the sun set over the ocean, beyond the hills and the islands, she packed up and left.

     Thank you.

That night the tide stole upon me like a lover. It caressed my down and encompassed me within itself and transported me towards my home.

     Please, I wished, take me with you. Guide me to your currents. Let us drift together to the open ocean.

     It left me on the lip of the bay.

This was the third and final Day of Grace. I needed to traverse the labyrinth of islands to the south; I needed to get to my final place of rest before the next sunrise. I called to the tide as it ran away and begged it to return that night and carry me off.

     The sun rose pink and orange and misted. Noemi came soon after, wearing purple gardening gloves with grey padded palms. I felt her vicious intent and, for the first time, I feared her. She tied the smallest and wildest of the dogs to a log and let the others roam as she examined my fallen body like a surgeon.

     "Why have you not been eaten?" she asked. “Why are you untouched? Why are you still so perfect, osprey?”

     She grasped my longest pinion feather on my left wing and pulled.

     Stop! I wanted—needed—to cry out. Don't, Noemi! I must stay whole.

     My feather held firm. If I had had human breath I would have sighed, or laughed. I knew every feather of my body. I knew the weight and how to maneuver each in any wind; I knew which ones were healthy and I knew if there were weaknesses. She wasn't done. The wing had stretched out and the wind lifted it up on display. After a long moment Noemi eased it back to the sand and then, methodically, pulled on the next feather, and the next, testing. None gave way to her. She tested the other wing with the same result. After a quick fit of frustration that consisted of heavy breathing and a bug-eyed glare, she attacked my tail.

     Please. The wind was my voice, nipping her. She bundled deeper into her jacket. No, Noemi, no.

There was a feather on the left of my tail that was frayed. It was inconsequential in life and would have fallen out within a few days, but the rules of pergatory were different. She pulled, was thwarted, pulled, was thwarted, pulled... and my Grace was broken.

     She took her ragged treasure home and left me to the flies and the crows. I did not expect her to return: she had played her miserable part.

Noemi returned that evening, alone. Why did she seek my company? I had no choice but to accept hers, though I did so bitterly. Did she know what she had done? No, of course not. How had she touched me, sullied me so when others could not?

     She chased off the ravens and built a small fire nearby. She had brought three items. The feather was in her grasp; she twirled it, staring from it to the flames and back. Her thermos was with her, this time bearing a wine from Italy. Lastly, wrapped in brown paper, was her painting. What was her role? Was she the trickster: stealing my old salvation after creating me anew?

     No, her next act revealed her. She was the destroyer. The brown paper caught immediately and the whole contraption was ablaze within seconds. She had placed that apparition of my lost magnificence on the fire so gently. The oils bubbled and crackled and made a light so intense she had to turn away.

     Murderer. Demon.

That fourth night I begged the tide once more to take me home, though I knew I was lost. I had been caught between this world and another. There was no escape. I simply preferred the kissing nibbles of fish to the raking of crows and the shit of seagulls. I wanted to fade with some small dignity.

     The winds were my friends, once. The tide and I, we were strangers and it had other business. It approached me but did not touch, its probing fingers teasing. It knew my journey was over.

     After I mourned I drifted from my body, now a hive of maggots, to a beach that flowed into willows and pines. Countless stars illuminated an ocean that was perfectly still.

     I was not alone. A young girl with long black hair and staring green eyes watched me.

     Hello, Noemi, I said. My voice was the wind and it encompassed her and she heard me.

     “Hello,” she replied. “You're an angel.”

     I looked down at my body, tall and muscled and sexless. My hands were smooth and sharp, like her face. I stretched my wings and found them black bespeckled with white. Yes, I said.

     She took my hand and we walked along the beach. Though there was no wind but for my voice, the trees swayed. The water remained still. Cranes stood in the tidepools, ducks floated along and made no ripples. We walked along until we crested the bay and faced south. The islands disintegrated and we looked out into the endless ocean.

     I need my feather back.

     “I don't have it,” the girl replied, fidgeting.

     You do.

     It was in her hand the next instant. She glared at it guiltily. It was my turn to play a role I knew perfectly, though I couldn't remember learning it.

     “Here,” she said, trying to give it to me.

     Put it in the water, I told her.

     She did so. It floated there, the frayed feather that broke my grace. When she stood back it grew, white becoming brown, into a rowboat.

     Thank you. I knelt in the sand and put my long arms around her. She began crying; I held her for a long, long moment until she was through and my shoulder glistened. I stood and said again, Thank you, Noemi. Be wise.

     The rowboat, instead of rocking, eased more deeply into the water with my weight. I sat and faced her and bent my great wings forward until I could grasp one in each hand. They transformed into black and white oars, beautifully carved with feathers. I rowed once and knew that that was all I needed, so I shipped the oars in front of me and waited. Noemi and I watched one another as I drifted onwards until the she merged with the land and I with the ocean.

The next evening Noemi returned to the beach with her thermos. All that was left of the osprey was feathers and bones and beak.