Sundial

by Catriona Ward

On one level I know it’s symbolic or whatever, but another, deeper part of me understands that there are no fireflies in California because every so often Falcon burns them all out of existence.

I never throw anything in, at Sacrifice. There’s nothing I want to change.

It’s possible to feel the horror of something and to accept it all at the same time. How else could we cope with being alive?

The house is talking to itself in small sounds, the way houses do when no one’s up.

I wanted to thoroughly cover my old self with the veneer of normality, like plating a statue in gold.

It’s impossible that those people downstairs are the Falcon and Mia who loomed so tall over my childhood. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe this is all some kind of elaborate trick, or government experiment.

Sundial has found me. I should have known it would.

I don’t know how I can tell she’s preparing to spring. Something changes in her eyes, her gait, her stance. I know it with old instinct, the ancient exchange between hunter and hunted.

We have come all the way around the dial, because this is how it ends, too. Us, together.

Two Callies; one living, one dead.

I THINK OF them sometimes; those dogs, wandering year after year through the wild, looking for a dead woman.

Even so, every time I come here I leave meat all along the perimeter. I don’t know if it’s an offering or appeasement. The meat is always gone within an hour or so. I don’t watch out to see what takes it—if any of the dogs still live, they’ve earned their privacy.

Will I be forced to dig it up one distant day while my daughter stands by muttering about liars and pyres?

hummingbird hovers over the honeysuckle posy, dipping its beak into the pale trumpet of the blossom.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep Sundial—it’s steeped in my family’s blood. But that’s why I can never give it up.

“Hey, shall we go count the stars from your window, sweetheart? I need to see something beautiful.”

The last thing I see before I close my eyes is Mom, kneeling in the moonlight, bone raised high above her head with both hands.

None of this seems strange to them. I’ve taught these descendants of the Sundial pack that they’ll be fed by me, here at the boundary fence.

I came to realize, after Sundial was published, that many people think I invented Mia and Falcon’s dog experiments. Rightly, it provokes a strong, visceral reaction in readers. But what is writing for, if not to shine a light on who we are and what we’re capable of? Even if, as a species, we human beings don’t always come across well in the telling.