It had grown a fragile pelt,
fine as suede and a bluish white, and its silvery hooves
were sharp and precise as a lamb’s. A cloud of
hair, the colour of whisky, had gathered over its head
by six, and it began to tap on the glass and mouth words
to me. I put my ear against it, but all I could hear
were bubbles.
I feared for that baby’s life by seven; it was
crushed by the bottle on all sides. I asked, by way
of dumb show, if it wanted me to break the bottle, and
it nodded. So, even though it’s a sin to break
glass, I broke it. The poor thing flinched with every
blow; on the third knock against the ground it shattered
and the baby was sprawled and gasping in a bright sea
of splinters. I picked it up and dried it on my cardigan,
flicking off as much broken glass as I could.
After that, we looked at each other for a long time,
almost embarrassed, whilst the baby’s wings dried
out and unbent in the air. The girls who worked the
tills at the Safeway’s were coming into work in
ones and twos by the time the baby tried to fly.
It couldn’t; the wings would heave at the air,
and it’d almost lift, but the chubby baby body
was just a tiny bit too heavy. I’ve seen it before
with swifts that end up grounded; they can swoop and
soar, but only when they’re helped into the wind.
So I picked it up, weighed it in my hand for a moment,
and threw it away as hard as I could.
That did
the trick. It spread its feathers and filled them
with sky. After a moment of fluttering it began
to glide, and finally it turned in the air and
flapped slowly away without looking back. I watched
it go, and finally gathered up my blankets and
started to tidy up my trolley. By ten I was off
on my rounds, and wanted to look in at the day
centre because Jo said that she’d get me
a new coat. It wasn’t until dusk that I
arrived back at my alcove.
When I did I was a bit surprised. All over the
step were a heap of blue things, so many that
I found myself getting to my knees before it,
amazed. There was a flower, a blue plastic one
like something plucked out a cheap straw hat.
There was a blue stripe ripped from a Tesco bag.
There was a broken string from a necklace with
four lapis beads still threaded on. There was
a glassy chunk smashed out from the blue light
on an ambulance, and a shred of blue cloth from
a nightshirt. On this last was a drying smear
of blood.
Demon Padrika Tarrant
Broken Things - a collection of short fiction
by Padrika Tarrant will be released in September
2007 by SALT Publishing. Full details click
here.
