The Strange Bird (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.

Test

Shall I set you free? she queried. And in a way, she meant to set the world within them free, too.

world below looked so very old and so very worn, and only when she climbed to the right altitude could she pretend that it was beautiful.

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

In the lab, so many of the scientists had said “forgive me” or “I am so sorry” before doing something irrevocable to the animals in their cages. 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.

All of this fell away, and, in the end, there was only the head of the fox on the wall, staring benevolent down on her, shining with that blue, unfading, eternal light, that beatific agony, and the compass that still lived within her and pulsed in secret and had hidden itself from the Magician. It pulsed known to her alone and she could not scratch the itch, and yet the compass by its distraction, its presence, let her know she was still alive. Transformed from compass in her mind to a beacon, calling out to the southeast, to a place remote, communicating that she could not come there, but the southeast must come to her.

The Strange Bird loathed his touch. What he gave her in awareness he took away a hundred times over in how she had no say in the matter.

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

The island was weakness, too,

Twinge of panic in the Strange Bird, fought the impulse to flap her wings there on her perch. Feared both that she would be able to and that being able to would unhinge her, drive her mad, and she would never return to that perch, or any perch. But float up into the sky and into the night until there was no scrap of her left.

Finally, there came the days when she gave up so much of herself, when she relaxed into nothing so perfectly that the comfort was too painful.

They could track her, but not help her, and she did not care that they could not help her. No one could help her, but it was enough that they could track her.

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 spoke to the Strange Bird more and more, not knowing that the Strange Bird betrayed her now just by living.

and she could see birds in flight frozen in that image, birds that she envied, for they had been captured at the exact moment when they would never have to obey anything but the air, the wind.

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. Time could not fix that.

If you could have seen me as the dark wings did, the Strange Bird thought.

“What was it made to do before the Magician?” Wick shrugged. “Only guesses. There could be more than one reason. But before the Magician got hold of her, this bird was a kind of … dispersal system for genetic material. It would have been reseeding the world as it flew. Microscopic organisms.”

Their minds were the same as before, but quicksilver, darting.

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. And the beautiful bird broke into song and although it was not a song any bird would recognize, the Strange Bird could understand it and whatever remained of Sanji inside of her recognized it and responded, and the two birds sang one to the other, the dead communicating to the dead in that intimate language.