The Strange Bird: A Borne Story (Borne, #1.5)

by Jeff VanderMeer

Everything added to her and everything taken away had led to that moment and from her perch she had radiated love for every animal she could not help, with nothing left over for any human being. Not even in the parts of her that were human.

To glide above, to go where she wished without fear because she was too high up. To reduce humans again to the size she preferred: distant ghosts trudging and winking out to reappear again, looped and unimportant.

he could only leave everything there on the page, it could not live within him. She had no such outlet, and everything lived within her every moment, but she did not envy the Old Man his typing.

That she was beautiful, and therefore good.

If she could not have control, then she would reach out and take comfort in everything that existed beyond the borders of her self.

Human beings had such strange ideas about gratitude. When it should be given. When it should be withheld. Should she be grateful for being imprisoned? What should she feel now? She sang out the question that was its own answer.

As she rose she could feel the name Isadora falling away from her, and she was just and always and forever the Strange Bird, who had no need of a name, not in the way human beings liked to name things.

Because they felt they had the right. Because the situation was extreme and the world was dying. So they had gone on doing the same things that had destroyed the world, to save it.

But by then, whenever this was, the Strange Bird did not want to live, or did not know she could live, and that was the same thing in the end.

That if they could not have a fierce joy in their struggle, then they were not truly free but governed by fear and doubt.

She was just a surface. She was never the bird striking the glass but only the windowpane, and she could no longer even see herself.

The first dreamless night. The first night of full sleep that she could remember, without interruption or panic. Such an ordinary thing, and yet such a mercy.

Yet what did it matter. For what are bodies? Where do they end and where do they begin? And why must they be constant? Why must they be strong? So much was leaving her, but of the winnowing, the Strange Bird sang for joy. She sang for joy. Not because she had not suffered or been reduced. But because she was finally free and the world could not be saved, but nor would it be destroyed.