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And the Birds Came Down

Nora McDonald

    There was a loud squawking overhead and the circle of women who had been sitting with their eyes closed and heads bowed all looked up.
    “What’s that?” said one, the nervous tinge to her voice making her drop the small stone in her hand.
    “It’s the birds,” said a matter-of-fact voice from the other side of the circle. “They often come down.”
    Jay turned to Carlotta and whispered.
    “It’s pitch black outside! Where did all those birds come from? That’s creepy!”
    The squawking of what sounded like a sack of seagulls shaken loose could clearly be heard above their heads.
    “Do you think she did it?” said Jay, looking at the woman sitting some small distance apart from the others huddled close in the circle.
    “You’ll be telling me next she has the power to invoke spirits,” laughed Carlotta, for the first time in weeks.
    “Well, you did feel something pressing down on your shoulders when you held that crystal” said Jay.
    “And you heard music when you held the other one,” retorted Carlotta.
    “And she was holding the same ones!” gasped Jay.
    Carlotta looked at her friend and thought how gullible she was.
     “Sure she has power. Power to influence our imagination! Don’t you see? We imagined it all! And as for those birds?”
    Carlotta raised her eyes to the heavy pattering that was going on above her head.
    “That woman might go under the heading of spiritual healer but nobody can bring down birds!”
    Jay lifted her eyes to the ceiling.
     Carlotta was annoying her. She’d tried her best to cheer her up by bringing her to the spiritual healing group and all she’d done was criticise it from the moment she’d walked in. Jay could feel her usually placid temper rising.
    “There’s no need to be so negative!” she said and she should have stopped there, but the words seemed to slither out of her mouth. “Just because the dog has died!”
    The dog has died! A cold, cutting clause. How many times during the last few weeks had Carlotta repeated that clause? She knew what Jay thought. The dog has died. Get another dog. One dog was the same as another, wasn’t it? A head. Four legs. A tail.
    That’s what they all thought. Those that had never had a dog. That’s what she had thought. Once upon a time. Twelve, long years ago. A lifetime. How wrong she was!
    Her life had changed from the moment that small animal had run excitedly through.
    And she’d resented it! Oh, how she’d resented it!
    She hadn’t wanted a dog. It was her daughter Ruth who had wanted it, with passionate pleas to which Carlotta had given in. The dog moved in. Ruth moved out. And Carlotta was left with the dog.
    “It’ll be company for you!” Ruth had said, as she packed her case that last day before moving out.
    Company! She’d had years of company! She’d slid into the pattern of so many of her comtemporaries. Companion. Children. Cosy. Comfortable. Confining. And sometimes she’d resented that. Sometimes she had wanted to cut loose. To feel free. Free to pursue. Pursue her dreams. And for the first time in years she was.
    And she felt dead. Like the dog.
    It always got you in the end, she thought. Death. You could eat healthily. Exercise. Abstain from vices. But in the end it got you another way. Like the dog.
    Spirits. There were no spirits. There was only suffering and death. And the end.
    Like that poor animal.
    She thought of that final morning. The sputum and the diarrhoea covering the carpet and the exhausted animal lying in it. She remembered sitting with the dog wrapped in a blanket on her knee at the vet’s and the small head cuddling into her chest. And a tear came to her eye.
    A head. Four legs. And a tail. That’s what they’d cremated.
    But that’s not what she was.
    “I think I’ll go home now,” she said.
    Jay looked at her in dismay.
    “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean———————.”
    She couldn’t finish the sentence.
    “It’s all right. I just need space to myself. I don’t think it was such a good idea coming here. Though I appreciate you asking me. I know you were only trying to cheer me up!”
    The two friends didn’t speak all the way back in the car. Jay dropped Carlotta back at her apartment and watched as Carlotta turned and gave her a distant wave.
    Carlotta inserted the key in the latch and opened the door. Silence. She crossed the floor to the kitchen and opened the door carefully, aware it was silly to do so. There was no small nose peering round the door. No welcome jump at her weak knee. No basket to trip over as she made herself a cup of coffee. Just a silent, empty kitchen. She sat down on the sofa. There was no one trying to climb up at her face and knock her coffee cup out of her hand. She turned on the television and flicked channels to a programme about dogs. There was no barking so she couldn’t hear the television. She switched it off and a terrible feeling of depression descended on her. It had happened before but this time there was no comforting presence to sense it, come lick her nose and make it all right. She was free. So why did she feel so bad?
    The solemn silence was broken by a loud click from the kitchen. Carlotta hurried through wondering what had caused it. There was nothing to be seen. She wasn’t perturbed. It had happened before. A movement of the building she thought. New apartments often did that.
    Though she knew if the dog was there its ears would have gone up, it would have jumped down on the floor and gazed into space as though it were seeing something. Ruth had noticed it on one of her visits back home.
    “What’s she looking at?” she had said.
    Carlotta had brushed it off remembering what Jay had once said to her when she’d mentioned it to her.
    “Dogs see angels, you know.”
    “Christ, Jay, don’t tell me you believe dogs see spirits!” Carlotta had scoffed.
    Her friend had always believed in such things, Carlotta knew. But she, Carlotta knew better.
    There were no such things as spirits. When you were dead, you were dead. Final. Finito.
    That’s why you had to make the most of living.
    It was the next day she decided. She couldn’t stay in the apartment for a moment longer. She had to get away. The apartment was empty. Dead. While she stayed here she was too. She had to go somewhere there was life. After all she was free now. She didn’t have to organise a kennel. She didn’t have the depression of hearing a crying dog being taken there. She didn’t need to feel guilty about putting the dog in such a place. And she didn’t have the depression of seeing a thin, stressed, barked out and exhausted dog returning from there. Even though it had been a good kennels. Besides which she’d been through a lot. She, herself was exhausted. She needed a break. That’s why she booked the holiday to Cyprus on the internet that morning.
    “You’re going where?” Jay said on the telephone that morning.
    “Cyprus,” Carlotta said, wondering why she had to justify it to Jay.
    “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? It’s so far away.”
    The closer it got to the day Carlotta wasn’t sure. Why the hell had she booked it? Jay was right. It was so far away. But there was no going back now. Or she would lose all her money.
    “You’ll be all right when you get there,” said Jay. “I didn’t mean to put you off!”
    But Carlotta wasn’t so sure. She packed up reluctantly, aware only there was no need to sneakily pack, so the dog wouldn’t know she was going away, any longer.
    She arrived at the hotel late, and though tired, unpacked her clothes and hung them in the wardrobe before falling into an exhausted sleep. She slept fitfully, as she’d done ever since the dog had died, waking every few hours to put on the light and study, through sleep-laden eyes, the hands of the clock. The final time the room was light and she rose, pulled back the curtain and surveyed the streaming sunlight outside.
    This was what she needed. She had breakfast in the hotel dining room, changed into her shorts and top, packed her beach bag and headed in the direction of the nearest beach. The morning was barely awake and the sea struggled to send a wave to the shore. One swimmer disturbed its slumber with slight ripples but the sea didn’t seem to mind. Carlotta camped herself on one of the sun-beds and started pulling stuff from her bag just before the beach attendant appeared. Once she’d paid him and he’d disappeared once more, she settled herself on the sun-bed to lay back.
    It’s beautiful, she thought.
    There was no one on the other sun-beds. The beach was deserted. She had the whole place to herself.
    If there were a heaven, it would be like this, she thought.
    But there was no heaven. There was only this beach. One lone swimmer. And her.
    She’d been right to come. She’d needed to put distance between her and death.
    And now she had. She was finally free.
    Free of what and to do what she wasn’t sure. But at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. It would come to her. She had no doubt. The heavy heat made her eyelids half-shut. She looked at the sunlight striking the water. A strange thought occurred to her. She’d never noticed it before but it almost seemed as if the spirits of a thousand souls were dancing delightedly on the surface of the water till they hit the shore and were grounded.
    Now you’re becoming poetic. You sound like Jay, she thought, as a small bird appeared at the foot of her sun-bed, followed by another landing on the one in front of her. All at once she was aware of a gathering of small birds all around her.
    She never knew what made her lift her head and turn round to look at the beach. The beach that had previously been deserted. No longer. The beach was covered in birds. Hundreds of birds. Small ones. Big ones. All walking about confused as if they had been summoned by some unseen hand but were unsure why.
    Like me, thought Carlotta. But now I know. I was wrong. Jay was right. There are spirits. Everywhere. Animals can sense them. And I did too. For a second. And someone or something sensed it. Even if only for a second.
    She didn’t know if she had the power to invoke spirits or the spirits had power to invoke something in her. It didn’t seem to matter somehow. She knew, just like she’d known the first time that little dog had crossed her threshold, that she’d never be the same again. Like the dog had known when it had lain down in the garden to die the day before it did. She’d been wrong. There was such a thing as spirit. Death wasn’t the end. The dog knew. And the birds knew.
    That’s why they’d come down.

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