One summer day, JW was digging around in a pile of burned trash he found way back in the woods behind his house. It wasn't the first pile he'd found and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. Sometimes they had cool stuff like glass coke bottles from 1950 or rusty keys he could add to his rusty key collection, and once he even found a pocket watch that still worked, so they were always worth checking out.
This particular pile was nestled in a ditch that ran alongside a dirt road nobody (save him) had been down in at least a year. In an effort to get a better lay of the land he was supposed to be protecting, JW had gone on many long walks like this. They took him through pastures and pig paths, down little dead-end roads lined with fallen-in houses and broken fences, and even into forgotten cemeteries. Plenty of places for strangeness to hide. It emboldened him that Deuteronomy hadn't felt the need to join him as a guide today. He thought maybe her faith in him was growing. Or maybe she was just too busy watching her shows.
JW steadied himself with a sturdy branch he'd picked up an hour ago and straddled the ditch. He used his long spindly fingers to sift through the ashes and junk like a raccoon fishing for crawdads. Sure enough, he found a couple of keys (why do people insist on burning keys around here?) and a miraculously unbroken mirror the size of a jelly jar lid.
Thunder rolled in the late summer sky. JW hadn't brought an umbrella on this particular excursion, so he considered his ramble complete. He slipped his trinkets into a shirt pocket and gave the ashes a last look. If he hadn't looked that last time, everything that came to pass could have been entirely avoided. He wouldn't have gotten a story out of it though, and well, you can decide if it was worth it.
But he did look and when he looked he saw a perfect circle shining in the shadow of a kudzu leaf. He snatched it and held the thing up to his good eye. When he turned it in his fingers, the afternoon sun glinted along its patinated curve.
It was a ring.
Nothing flashy, no precious stones to be found here, but it was tooled nicely with patterns of what looked like leaves or maybe feathers. It was heavy for its size and it looked like it just might fit him. JW preferred necklaces over rings, but how often do you find a perfectly good ring in a ditch? Maybe the girl at the antique shop would like it.
JW buffed the ring against his shirt and went to put it in his pocket but paused. Vanity whispered in his ear. Swayed, he pushed the ashy dirt out of the ring's center with his thumb and slid it on without another thought.
At that very same moment, a pitching sensation traveled up from the hollow of his stomach to the backs of his eyeballs. It wasn't an entirely alien sensation. Like anyone, JW occasionally forgot his medication and when that final half-life ran out, the symptoms seeped in. But he knew for a fact that he had taken it the previous night because Harmony had been on his ass about it. Alarming.
As he swayed on the spot, he stretched out an arm to catch himself against a nearby tree. However, no matter how far he leaned, he couldn't touch it. The fat orange sun streamed so harshly through the pines that it made his eyes water. Finally, despite his best efforts, JW fell over.
Scratchy needles, spongy moss, red clay. The textures and the smells of the forest floor were both comforting in their familiarity and annoying in their proximity. There was dirt in his mouth and his whole body felt like it was full of marching ants. As he lay on the ground listening to his ears ring, a dim idea rose to the surface of his thoughts.
Did I just get electrocuted?
It was going to storm. He was somewhat exposed to the sky because the forest hadn't completely reclaimed the old dirt road he'd been walking down. He'd just picked up a piece of metal. But he hadn't heard the explosion of lightning. He hadn't heard anything unusual at all. Weren't you supposed to go temporarily deaf after a lightning strike? The sounds of the forest still filled the air, amplified even.
"Ugh, what was that…"
The trilling of a house sparrow rang in his ears and all at once, that singular sound became the most important one because of the sudden, icy realization that it was coming from him.
"No! No no no!"
JW chirped in horror and beat his tiny wings against the ground, kicking up a cloud of dirt and pine needles. As soon as he had his feet under him, they crisscrossed and his spindly clawed toes got tangled in one another. He instantly tipped forward and caught himself on his wings. JW looked up. The trees that towered over him roared with life. The stormy breeze made them rock and sway and it sounded like the ocean. JW could even hear the beetles creeping in the decaying leaf litter around him. It was all too big!
He turned his attention back on himself. Feathers. Brown and cream feathers covered him from head to tail. He couldn't see his beak, but he knew that it was there. He could hear it clacking as he cussed.
"God damn it, I do not need this today!" It came out as a pissy little song for nobody, but JW knew what he was saying so that was all that really mattered to him in that moment. This was so stupid. This was going to be a whole thing. He was going to miss Breaking Bad.
JW extended a wing and gave his primaries as much of a contemptuous frown as a beak could manage. Slowly he fanned the feathers out and held them up to see the sun glowing through them, the shafts standing out in sharp relief. He had wings. Like anyone, JW had occasional daydreams about being a bird and flying high above all his troubles, but now that he was a bird in the flesh, he felt as though he'd jinxed himself somehow. Something about a monkey's paw.
Fear and indignance battled within him. What was going to happen to him now? Was he stuck like this forever? Why did he get turned into a sparrow instead of something majestic like a red-tailed hawk or at least something a little bigger like a crow?
And how?
The shape of the struck-by-lightning thought remained in his mind; he simply changed the words around, the ring remaining the culprit. Magic or some shit. A curse. Maybe the ring had the answer.
JW took a step and fell again. Up on his wings, he spread his legs for balance. He seesawed for a moment before, at last, he stood upright. Walking like a person was not going to work. He had a thought. He hopped. A perfect little hop propelled him forward and he found it easy to do another and another.
"Hopping it is…" JW muttered.
He hopped in a frantic circle in search of the ring, scratching at the pine needles and poking his beak under leaves. It could be anywhere! He worried that it had simply disappeared with his clothes. He wasn't going to think about his clothes. Or that he was technically naked now. Did it count as naked? You could be naked as a jaybird, but he was naked as a sparrow, and he had seen birds more naked than himself. Nope. No, he wouldn't think about it. It wasn't that he was bashful, he just had more pressing matters.
Just when he was ready to give up, JW caught a glimmer in the corner of one eye. He turned his whole head to one side and tipped forward to follow the light.
There!
The ring shimmered smugly to itself as it encircled one of JW's skinny, scaly legs. Somehow it was smaller than before, almost like it had been made just for a sparrow to wear. He kicked his foot but the ring only spun. He hooked the claws of his other foot over the ring's edge and tried to pull it off that way, but his only reward was tipping over again.
"Ugh. Shit…" JW huffed. He sat with his feet tucked beneath him, closed his eyes, and thought.
Okay, so…the best line of action would be to find Deuteronomy. Maybe she knows something about cursed rings.
JW stood and kept thinking. If she doesn't, The Old Man's book might have an answer. He looked up. The sky was the color of an overripe nectarine. He couldn't see it, but he knew the purple edge of night was waiting just beyond the horizon and that night would be full of hungry mouths.
JW wished house sparrows weren't capable of feeling dread.
"It'll be fine." JW told himself. "It's fine. I've had worse! Much worse!" He forced a laugh. "This is…this is just a Tuesday for me!"
JW looked up and down the road. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't entirely sure which way he'd come from. Everything looked so different from down here. Brambles and clumps of grass surrounded him like trees. There had been burnt garbage on both sides of the road too.
A vantage point. If he could just see, he could pick a direction to go in.
JW hopped toward some dead bushes and quietly appreciated that he was so light. Hopping was easy. The temptation to try and learn how to fly was strong, but JW didn't have time to do all the crashing beak-first into the ground that it would no doubt take.
The lowest branch on the bush bobbed overhead, tugged by the breeze that the coming storm was riding in on. He spread his wings and hopped straight up. Out of reflex, he outstretched his wings as though he still had hands. His feathers brushed uselessly against the branch and he fell. When he landed, JW focused on being angry and not on his lack of fingers. He couldn't think about that or he wouldn't get around to accomplishing anything.
JW peered into the heart of the bush where the twigs joined together. He hopped over and turned so that he could side-step his way onto the branch at its very lowest point. Then, he siddled along its length inch by inch until he was perched on the very tip of the branch. It didn't bend under JW's weight even a little.
He teetered his tail for balance and looked around from his new vantage point. Everything was mostly the same because he was only two feet off the ground.
This would not do.
JW glanced sidelong at a nearby pine tree and wondered if he could climb straight up the trunk like a woodpecker. He spread his wings and prepared a measured hop, but was interrupted by the sound of crunching leaves.
A four-beat gait meandered its way through the underbrush. JW whirled around and nearly toppled off the branch. A few quick flaps steadied him. Then, he held still and listened, stretching his neck as much as he could.
Crunch. Crash. Crunch.
The footfalls came closer and JW could just barely see a brown and black shape moving between the trees. His heart swelled with hope. It must be Deuteronomy out looking for him! She seemed to have a sixth sense for trouble and boy was he in it.
"Oh, thank God!" JW sighed with relief.
Sure, she'd probably make fun of him, but he could ride her back to the house and then they could sort this all out!
JW spread his wings and flutter-flopped to the ground. Chest pounding, he darted after her through the brush.
"Deuteronomy!" JW yelled. "Deuteronomy I'm over here!" Cheep cheep chee-terr cheep!
He skittered over the dead leaves and twigs, pausing only long enough to flap upward in place to get a better bead on her. A pointed ear here. A tail there. It was impossible to see all of Deuteronomy at once and she was picking up speed. JW, to his dismay, fell behind. Even if he was small and quick, her legs were longer and the terrain was an unforgiving expanse for a little bird—full of hills, valleys, and root wells.
"Wait! Wait!" JW chirped as loudly as he could. His own voice bounced back to him in a mocking cacophony.
Then he couldn't hear her pawsteps any longer.
JW stopped in the shadow of an old birch stump. He propped himself up on his wings and panted. JW knew he was being plenty loud enough. She must not have been able to understand his chattering.
He found himself feeling surprised. He'd just assumed that Deuteronomy was in tune with everything in Hawksaw country. She was the wolf in the attic. She was the weird side of the woods. And she couldn't even understand Sparrow?
JW suddenly wondered if any of the other birds would understand him. Or if he would understand them. Birdsong had been filtering down from the boughs, but he hadn't really been paying attention to much of it on account of his predicament.
It was worth a try
"Hey! Hello? Anybody up there?" JW twittered. He waited. "I need help! Help!"
To his surprise, a shape fell from the treetops. It darted around the nearest tree and landed on the single twig sticking out of the stump with effortless grace. It was another house sparrow! The bird looked at him with one eye at a time.
"You don't look like a baby," it said thoughtfully, more to itself than to JW.
JW let his beak hang open.
"Now you look a little like a baby," the sparrow amended.
"I am not a baby…" JW said slowly as he struggled to keep a grip on his temper. He knew that trying to explain curses to a bird was going to be a huge waste of time, so he got right to the point. "Have you seen a house nearby? A two-story house with a fence?"
The sparrow tilted its head and after a moment of debate, it hopped down off the stump and approached him. It blinked at JW's cursed ring as the sinking sun made it sparkle.
"It shines," said the sparrow in a whisper.
JW felt his attention slipping from getting home to talking to a real actual bird that could understand him. He was maybe the only person alive to have had this experience. What could he tell the scientists and the poets about what birds think?
Focus!
"Uh, yeah, but the house. You now, a house? A, uh, people nests? Do you know what people is?"
Th other bird considered this before stretching its neck out and pecking his ankle.
"OW!" JW hopped away. The sparrow followed and pecked him a second time, drawing out a single round bead of blood. "Stop! You're not helping!"
"It shines! It shines!" The sparrow cheered and bit him on the toe—hard.
In a barrage of scolding notes, JW buffeted the other bird with his wings until it flew back up onto the stump. It turned and looked down at him with red on its black bill, its expression unreadable.
With his feathers furiously fluffed out, JW spread his wings and screamed, "What the fuck was that for?"
"Oh well." The sparrow sighed and looked around. Then, it became very still.
"You fucking bit me!" JW yelled. "It's not a hard question! Have you seen a house or not?" When the bird didn't have a reply for him, JW opened his beak to keep yelling, but his new friend abruptly took off.
He stared after it, furious, hopeless, nervous.
JW didn't know what he'd expected. Animals weren't usually in the business of helping each other out. When they were, it ended up on the news as five-o-clock's heartwarming story. He tipped forward to look at his injury. There was only the one droplet of blood. He guessed his legs didn't have that much blood in them to begin with. His toe throbbed.
Something disturbed the leaf litter, the faintest crackle. JW couldn't roll his eyes in his skull to look that far to the side, so he followed the animal impulse to turn his whole head. There, peeking around the stump, was a big yellow eye so close that the rest of the fox was almost too big to fully see. JW froze.
What if the creature he'd been following hadn't been Deuteronomy? The fox could have looked brown in the forest's shadows. What if he'd just rang the dinner bell and placed himself on the middle of a plate with a very very small apple in his mouth? The cartoon image drifted across the backs of JW's eyes and the irony made him see red.
Incensed, JW hurled himself at the fox's face. The fox yapped in surprise and wrenched its head backward with JW dangling from its eyelid by his beak. He was flung back and forth with great alarm, but held on tight. A black paw knocked him to the ground. JW landed on his back and chattered swears unknown to both man and bird. The fox scrunched up and craned its neck, but its huge black ears remained cupped forward. Its wet nose twitched as it crept closer. The whiskers pushed themselves forward. He felt them brush his legs.
"You think you're the one who gets to kill me?" JW flipped right side up and stabbed his beak into the very tip of the fox's nose. "Take a number!"
The fox squeaked and with something like a pirouette, it leapt backward. When it landed a few paces away, the fox looked around wondering if anyone else was seeing this. Since when did dinner fight back? JW advanced.
"Get outta here!" He slashed at the fox's front legs with his tiny talons. His claws swished through open air as the fox continued to back away. JW followed, chattering, flapping, and generally making a huge fuss.
The fox permitted this chasing game, utterly transfixed by this bold flightless bird, until a roll of thunder tugged at its attention. It paused their dance and turned its ears. The wind swept down into the hollow place they shared and blew its fur backwards. As the fox weighed playing with this new exciting toy against getting caught out in the rain, JW's novelty faded. A yellow eye fixed itself on him before a set of jaws snapped together just inches from his small body.
JW stopped his assault and chirped in fright. He scrambled backward and the fox followed him without a hint of that leeway it had been giving him before. Despite how it may have helped him in the past, JW accepted that his attitude was no longer serving him in this situation. Humbled, he high-tailed it.
He told himself it never did anybody any good to look behind them, especially if they might get eaten, so JW stared dead ahead as he ran and focused on finding anything he could to put between himself and the fox. Unfortunately, the way things are, the longer you run, the stronger the temptation to look becomes. JW was only mortal, so eventually he did end up peeking and he instantly regretted it.
The fox was following him at such a casual pace that it even stopped to sniff a wild violet.
Part of JW's whole deal was that he had gone missing in 1974 due to supernatural circumstances only to turn back up in 2007, unchanged. In doing so, he entirely missed the heyday of horror films featuring slow, relentless slashers like Friday the 13th or Halloween. Therefore, he could not make that comparison. I can though. The fox was following him like Jason.
It found and flushed him from every bush and bramble JW hid in with its keen ears and nose. Even a patch of thistles didn't deter it. His escape turned into an uphill climb as he ran for the edge of the gully the fox had chased him into. With every step the ground grew steeper. Sandy red clay crumbled away under his feet.
Up, came the desperate thought. The underbrush couldn't save him. He had to go up, away from danger. The trees. The sky. It was the only way. It dominated his inner monologue. Up, up, up!
JW flapped. A few inches of lift. A glimpse of level ground. Then he was eating dirt and threatening to roll backward into the fox's waiting jaws. He dug his beak into the ground to stop himself and got dirt in his nostrils. JW coughed and tried again, this time with a running start. He stole another glance behind him to see that the fox was only a few feet away. It was crouching and preparing to pounce.
Thunder rolled and suddenly the wind came hissing through the gully. It shook the trees and bushes and just as JW took another fluttering jump toward safety, it scooped him right up into the air. The fox jumped. Teeth snapped just behind his tail feathers.
The sky and ground strobed across JW's vision as he tumbled upward.
As his ascent reached its zenith, JW was able to twist in the air so that his body faced the same way his head did. He snapped out his wings and held them as straight as he could. To his amazement, he sailed up and over the lip of the gully, and continued gliding.
The dread that had dominated JW's hammering heart in the face of the fox was now shot through with cracks of electric blue exhilaration. He was experiencing true flight! He flapped. He rose. The world shimmered before him, alive with light and insects. Despite himself, he laughed.
JW flew directly into the window of a 1992 Airstream camper.
Thunder crashed. He couldn't tell if it had been seconds or hours since the impact. When JW opened his eyes, the sky was dark and the first raindrops were now falling. He was laying in a puddle of yellow light that poured from the camper's windows. Chatter from the TV inside drowned out the crickets.
JW pushed himself up onto his wings and winced. Oh, my head.
If he'd had teeth, he was sure that they would have all been rattled clear out of his skull. Slowly he stood and shook out his feathers. He flexed his tail, his wings, turned his neck from one side to the other. Nothing broken. A miracle. Still, stars danced in the corners of his eyes.
The sensation of free flying, of gliding along on his own two wings, still intoxicated him. He wished he could feel better about wishing he could practice more. To truly fly up and away over the trees as high as he pleased was a dream. A dream technically within his reach. If he survived the night, perhaps he could try again before heading home. It would only be for a little while…
"Stupid!" He scolded himself for getting distracted.
JW couldn't risk allowing himself to stop thinking about becoming human again a soon as possible. What if that was part of the ring's curse? What if he ended up forgetting he was ever human? Didn't that happen in fairytales? People fell under curses and got spirited away into the woods never to be heard from again.
JW's feathers clumped together as the rain's gentle patter became a hiss. He hopped underneath the Airstream and huddled there in the darkness as tiny rivers formed around his feet. For lack of anything better to do, JW peered around at what he could see in the light from the camper's windows.
A clearing encircled the Airstream and the old white truck parked next to it. Tire tracks, slowly filling with water, crisscrossed the clearing. Colorful garden decorations lined a foot-worn path that led from the camper door out into the night. There were plastic flamingos, sunflowers that turned in the stormy breeze, ceramic frogs, bird baths, and globes lit from within by solar power. A couple of weather-beaten lawn chairs sat beneath the fold-out canopy where multiple sets of wind chimes sang to themselves.
JW wondered how the truck had even gotten all the way out here with the camper in tow. It was a phenomenon he'd noticed more and more in the Hawksaw woods—the trees seeming to grow up around things much faster than they should. He'd found old vehicles and even house foundations out in the sticks surrounded by ancient trees on all sides. Or maybe, JW thought wearily, he was just bad at telling how old trees were. The thunder made his head pound.
He squinted at the what he could see of the treeline in search of a road he could follow back to civilization when the sun returned. She had to get food and supplies somehow. There, at the edge of the camper's light, were two shining eyes. JW held his breath.
Lightning washed the clearing white as the fox emerged from the darkness, its fur streaked with rain. It lifted its nose and smelled for him. Then, a second pair of eyes appeared and a second fox of unknown association joined it. The two foxes touched noses and closed the gap between the woods and the camper at a quick clip. They started pacing back and forth across the little yard without an ounce of fear, neither from the blaring television or the whirling pinwheels. The camper had been here as long as they'd both been alive.
Heart thumping, JW looked up into the Airstream's undercarriage. There were dozens of narrow gaps for a bird just his size to hide in, but judging by how long the thing had been sitting here, anything could be hiding in the crevices. There was an old overgrown truck behind his grandfather's house and he'd always warned JW to stay away from it because snakes lived in it. Here in the shadows, everything looked like a coiled snake.
As the foxes came closer, JW could hear them gekkering to one another in their shrill, wavering voices. He couldn't understand them the way he understood the wild sparrow. Made sense, he supposed. He knew they were talking about him though. JW wondered they would brave this rain just to find one sparrow and then he thought, well, an easy meal was an easy meal.
JW hopped as silently as he could to the lee of the front passenger-side wheel. If he could keep it between them long enough, maybe they'd get bored. It was a hair thin hope that grew only thinner when he saw how much ground two foxes could cover at once. They nosed around all the decorations. One hopped up onto a lawn chair for a better view. The other paced at the tail end of the camper where the reservoir sat.
The tall grass parted as one fox stuck its head under the rear bumper. JW wondered if the small wound on his leg made their hunt even easier. He hated that wild sparrow. He'd never had beef with a bird before, but he swore if he lived long enough to see it again, he'd have his revenge. It was something to hold onto and keep him calm. Being angry was so much more tolerable than being scared.
The other fox walked right past the wheel JW hid behind. He heard it stop. He cursed his heart for beating so loud. Fresh mud squelched under the fox's paws as it turned around. JW let out a quiet breath and under the cover of thunder, he hopped to the other wheel.
It was a risky move. He was now on the outside of the camper and back in the rain. His feathers became soaked in an instant. JW watched with his heart in his throat as the fox sniffed right where he'd been sitting.
There was a tug on his tail.
JW chirped and wheeled around to find the a fox right behind him. In the span of five seconds, it had moved from its previous position without making a sound. The fox split its jaws in a grin that chilled JW more deeply than the rain did.
The noise alerted the other fox and instantly the two of them cornered him against the drivers-side wheel. Wasting no time, one brought a paw down on top of him, pressing JW face-first into the mud. The mud clogged his beak and made it almost impossible to breathe. The fox grabbed his tail in its teeth and yanked out two long feathers. At the same time, the other fox let out a ratcheting squeal and wrapped its jaws around the first fox's snout. It let JW go to squeal right back. The two foxes reared up and planted their front paws on each other's shoulders, mouths battling, gargling away.
JW lifted his head and watched through bleary eyes as the two orange titans fight over who got to eat him. He didn't think that, after everything he'd been through and overcome, this was how it would end. But here he was. His gaze drifted beyond the foxes to the swaying trees, to the soggy flag waving from the pole fixed to the side of the camper, to the cracked window allowing a thin stream of cigarette smoke to escape into the night…
The window!
JW's small body became electric with hope. He pushed himself upright and without sparing the foxes so much as a glance, he fluttered upward. The water made him heavier, but he pumped his soaked wings as hard as he could. Up, up, inch by inch, he flew onto the storage box that straddled the hitch. The movement drew the fox's attention and at once they were on JW's tail.
The first leaned its front paws against the storage and started hopping in place, preparing for a bigger jump. Its back paws slid in the mud. The second fox crouched down and sprang right over top of the first, landing on the container and nearly skidding into JW and knocking him off.
JW felt the wind from its teeth clacking together in his face. His body wanted to freeze, but he was flapping again. Blood rang in his ears as the window gap came closer and closer. Flying straight up was like swimming through concrete. If he didn't make it, if he stopped flapping for even a second, it would be all over. There would be no one left to watch over Hawksaw.
His beak collided with the window's rim. The stars lingering at the corners of his vision burst into full view. JW could feel his wet feathers slapping against the glass as his twiggy feet grasped for the metal edge. The foxes yipped. The smell of menthol cigarettes overwhelmed him. He chattered and flailed and felt one wing slip through the gap. He twisted and pushed and wrenched his fragile body until suddenly—he was in! There was no ledge.
JW tumbled straight into a cup of cold coffee.
The bitter drink bubbled out of his nostrils as JW coughed and fought his way upright. He liked coffee, but as a bird, the stuff was harsh on his tongue. Whoever made it hardly used any creamer. Once he was sure he wasn't drowning, JW grew still and looked around to see exactly what he'd gotten himself into.
The Airstream was well-lit with a combination of overhead and colored Christmas lights. Every square inch was covered in NASCAR memorabilia from clocks to curtains to plates to posters to calendars (all from different years) and not to mention model cars both in and out of their packaging. Stacks of books and magazines and journals crowded the flat surfaces along with crockery and collectable mugs. There were also jars of things like screws and acorns and feathers and what looked like teeth glittering in the corners.
A woman entered his field of vision.
The faded Earnhardt shirt that swallowed her tiny frame was peppered with burn holes. Her matching pajama pants were in much the same shape. Fuzzy car-shaped house shoes covered her feet and she carried a menthol in a death grip between two crooked fingers. Her hair was buzzed close to her head, black peppered with gray. A life of smoking had lined her face, but her watery blue eyes twinkled as she approached the counter.
"Now where the did you come from, little baby?" Her voice was rough and kind. She reached over JW and pulled the window closed with a creak and a click.
The sheer scale of her made his heart race. The fox had been one thing, but the little woman was a true giant in comparison. It was hard to look at all of her at once. JW's attention was torn between watching her face to read her expression and watching her hands to prepare to skitter away. The idea that she might put him back outside took up a large portion of he thoughts. His eyes darted around the room in search of nooks he could squeeze into.
She grabbed a hand towel from the counter and reached for him. JW chirped and flapped and splattered coffee everywhere. He managed to wriggle out of the coffee cup and onto the counter where he left a perfect trail of tracks as he ran for the edge. She was faster. Her fingers were nimble and she scooped him up without squeezing him in the slightest. For her kindness, JW bit the shit out of her thumb. She hissed through her teeth but did not crush or throw him.
He was gently pressed against the towel. She tugged his wings away from his body,splayed them flat, and dabbed away the rain and coffee. Slowly, but surely, he felt himself becoming dryer. JW stopped struggling. If she was going through the trouble of drying him off, it was unlikely she was going to throw him back outside. At least not right away.
"I wondered what all that squalling was about," she told him. "God love it…" Once he was mostly clean, she twisted the towel up into a nest and let him sit in it.
JW sat. He sat and listened to his heart and the race blaring from the analog TV sitting on the fold-out kitchen table. It was the kind with the built in VCR. Closing his eyes, JW tried to calm down. Was he truly safe? What if she kept him over night but then tossed him back out into the woods in the morning? He couldn't let that happen.
There was a chance he had to take.
"Hey, uh, thanks for that, but do you got a minute?" Chirp chirp chirp. The woman looked up from fixing herself a fresh cup of bird-free coffee—Folgers in a big red Dale mug.
"Oh, you're a big talker," she cooed. "Tell me all about it."
JW wished he could frown. He stood from the nest and tottered onto the counter. There, he stuck out one leg. The cursed ring glimmered under the colored light.
The woman licked her lips and leaned in closer. Humming, she reached out to gently pinch the ring between two weathered fingers. Her nails were yellowed and thick. JW struggled for balance and fanned out his remaining tail feathers. He held his breath as he waited for her verdict.
"Can't see shit," she said at last. She whisked away to the back of the camper and ducked under a fleece blanket she'd hung up as a curtain to separate her bedroom and living room. After throwing her covers around for a minute, she bustled back over to him wearing a pair of glasses that magnified her eyes eight fold. Once again she held out a hand to inspect the ring on JW's skinny leg and he let her.
"I see…mm-mm, silver's not your color." She clucked her tongue. "You sit tight."
JW was left alone again, or as alone as he could be in the cramped Airstream. His mysterious savior pulled out several oblong plastic shoe boxes from the cabinets that hung along one side of the space. She pried them open one at a time and dug through them, muttering to herself. JW hopped from side to side on the counter and craned his neck to try and see around her.
When she turned back around, she held a pair of flush cutters in her right hand. JW knew in his adult human man brain that she, no doubt, aimed to cut the band off him, but the dumb animal fear that was taking up so much space suggested she was going to cut his leg plumb off.
She didn't give him time to make a decision about it. With one hand she caught him up before he could fly at the walls. He found himself thankful, even as his heart pounded away against her gentle fingers. She held him close to her face and stood under the circular ceiling light. Carefully, carefully, she wedged one jaw of the cutters under the ring.
Then, she squeezed. It took some effort to pinch through the enchanted silver. When the cutters' jaws snapped together, JW shuddered. At once he was hit with a fear that this might not work. He wasn't sure if he could stand it. So many realities swirled in his mind. The ring could fall off and nothing could happen. He would be a bird forever. Either tossed back into the wilderness or (here JW cursed his imagination) kept as a pet until he grew old and died. How long did sparrows live? The ring was rotated and the jaws were set again.
One final squeeze and the two halves of the ring fell to the threadbare carpet.
The Christmas lights streamed in JW's vision and the Airstream became even more cramped. The woman cried out in surprise as she was almost kneed in the face by a six foot nine human man. JW fell between the table and the counter in a tangle of limbs.
"Jesus Christ," panted JW. Expanding so rapidly had taken the breath out of him. He could feel the marching ants running up and down his fingers as he flexed them with joy. "It worked! I'm me!"
He was so delighted by the sound of his own voice that he started laughing. He laughed and then he cried a little. He rested his head back against the edge of the table and dragged a hand down his face. "I have had the shittiest day!"
"Well then…" said the woman. Her mouth drew into a flat line as she watched him with wary eyes.
With a sigh, JW wiped his face with one arm and then had the mind to look a little bashful about suddenly appearing. "Sorry. Thanks."
"Don't mention it," she said, lips tight. JW could easily see that he no longer charmed her. It had been one thing when a little bird flew in her window. Now there was a man. He could only imagine her disappointment. JW slowly got to his feet and had to stoop to avoid bumping his head on the ceiling.
"How'd you know what to do?" JW asked.
She averted her eyes. "Oh, you know…"
JW let her have her secrets. "Alright. Well, if there's anything I can do for you in return, let me know."
"There is somethin'." Her words rushed out before he could change his mind. She watched him more closely than the foxes did. To his surprise, she followed with a plea. "Don't…let nobody know I'm out here."
At first he was a little mystified, but then he thought a little more about the setup. About the isolated nature of her little property. About the way the woods behaved. This woman hadn't paid taxes in ten years and he wasn't about to rat her out.
JW gave her a tired, unguarded smile.
"I wouldn't dream of it." He shook his head for good measure and then, to let her know he was serious, he leaned down to cup one of her rough hands in both of his. He clasped it carefully the way she'd handled him when he was a fragile little bird and looked into her eyes. "Even if you hadn't just saved my life, it ain't nobody's business."
Finally, the tension slipped from the air and a small grin crinkled her eyes. She shook JW's hands. "Vidaya."
"JW."
"Well, JW, why don't you tell me about this shitty day you've had," said Vidaya.
"I would be more than glad to," said JW.
It came to pass that it was hard for JW to keep many secrets when he'd flown in Vidaya's window, so he told her about living in the house on the hill. He told her about Deuteronomy and his official unofficial job as Hawksaw's keeper. She ate up the story about Fevedream and laughed bitterly at Chief Bugle's antics. He hadn't changed in a decade apparently.
In return, she told him that she had been living in the woods alone since 1999. She had driven all the way to Hawksaw, Mississippi from Marfa, Texas. She told him about watching UFOs at night and how her grandmother had taught her to read the woods and to talk to them. With determination, Miracle Grow, and a little magic, she had been able to cultivate her private sanctuary.
Vidaya didn't know where the sparrow's ring had come from.
The TV's glow washed over them as they shared coffee and waited out the rain. The two halves sat between them on the little table. JW peered at them over his own Dale mug (this one shaped like the man's head) and wondered if the ring's magic was gone now.
"Do you think it'd work if you put it back together?" JW asked.
"Don't know," said Vidaya after a loud sip. She turned her head to suck on the fifth cigarette she'd lit since they started talking. "You won't catch me trying."
"Think about it," JW insisted. "If there was some way to make a— some kinda hinge. Some kinda clip. So that you could put it on and take it off…"
"You're in an awful hurry to be a sparrow again," she said with a thin, lifted brow.
JW bit back a sheepish smile. "I flew, you know. For a minute or two."
Vidaya puffed out a laugh. "Right into my window."
"I could practice!" His smile grew wry.
"And what if there's no witch to save you next time?" She squinted at him.
JW turned and looked through the camper window. He watched the wind chimes dance in the rain and thought about it. Was it really worth risking again? He honestly couldn't decide.
"You've got a town to look after," said Vidaya more gently.
"Guess you're right…" said JW, at last. He took another sip of coffee. "You know what? My ass still hurts from where I got my tail feathers yanked out."
Vidaya barked a laugh. "Oh no!"
"Oh, yes," said JW. "And it's the strangest thing…I've got the strongest hankering for worms."
THE END