The Birdcat
Y1Z
“We’ve been in the tunnels a long time, Cat. Don’t you think it’s been a long time? I’m not saying I don’t like it down here, not at all, it’s very interesting, but I do miss seeing the light of the sun.
“That sun in the other world didn’t count. That wasn’t our sun, so it didn’t feel warm, not really warm, you know what I mean? Maybe in different worlds we don’t match up, particle wise. Our little ions and quarks and muons and what have you, they can’t fox trot with the nuclear stuff of another planet. If that’s what these other worlds are. Do you think that’s it? Or maybe they’re parallel, you know what I mean? Alternate realities.”
Bird chattered, birdlike, and the tunnels echoed. Time, time, time. Here, here, here. Miss, miss, miss. Count, count, count.
Cat’s pores tightened, her eyes narrowed, the corners of her mouth curved downwards. The skin of her scalp and ears tightened unpleasantly. She didn’t answer.
Bird’s proximity, just behind and to her left, made her hair stand on end. It wasn’t always the case; after all, Bird was her best friend; but why couldn’t he shut up, why couldn’t he walk without each step clicking on the rock floor? The noise echoing back grated on her nerves. Her normal pace was leisurely, with time to look around, a but now, rather than snap at Bird, she walked faster, taking pleasure in the concentration it required, and hoped Bird would calm the fuck down.
a The bare rock underfoot magnified even Cat’s smooth, controlled footfalls. Whispers came back from distant forks and hidden rooms, fissures that traveled to the surface of where-worlds. She could imagine a the rind overhead of her own, layers of ancient forest and lake bottom, dirt held fast by roots, tall grasses rolling in waves like a soft ocean. There would be clouds, fat with ideas of rain. Beyond it all a limitless blue sky, with a sun that was just right, perfect, the only sun anyone could ever imagine or wish for.
The underworld had doors to worlds of all kinds, days of distant eras, but finding your own time and place—Cat wondered again if it were possible, or if the underworld took you where it wished, with its own hidden plans. a
There were no clouds in the actual tunnels of the underworld. No grasses. No rain. Lava flowed in glowing streams, demons picnicked on the banks. The green snake was always just ahead, the tip of his tail disappearing past a curve in the wall, insinuating a direction.
“And I really think we should find a place to stop and sit for a minute, Cat, my feet are killing me. I sure would like to stretch out, you never feel like you can down here, always something to stop you, a low roof, a pillar, I’m sure I’m covered in bruises. Don’t you think it’s time we took a break? Let’s look for a world to sit down in for a while.” Bird’s tone was bright but Cat could hear the edge. He was probably hungry, which he could never bear for very long, and tired, and like a three year old would soon burst into tears. Bird was Bird, thin-skinned, sensitive to everything and everyone. a
“All right, Tweet, let’s look.” Cat waited for Bird to catch up. All she really needed was a wild run alone following scents and sights, free to move at her own pace. Just long and far enough to get lonely and wish Bird were there to talk to. This thought made her soften enough to feel her own hunger and weariness. When he reached where she stood waiting Cat was genuinely glad to feel his warm closeness. a
“Thanks Kitty,” Bird said, a little breathless from trotting to catch up. They leaned together, a foreheads touching, eyes closed. Two hearts beating fast, Cat thought.
Y2Z
I wonder if Cat notices that it’s getting colder.
Bird rolled and shrugged his shoulders, squeezed them up and dropped them down. He’d been hunched like an old man, as if that would keep him warmer. All it really did, besides making his muscles cramp up, was cast an aura of nervousness and oppression around him that he didn’t like. He stretched his chest, tilted his head back and forth. The fresh angle of view revealed a corner of light at the top of the wall to his left. Ah! He turned to see where it came from. The green snake was just disappearing around a curve. Of course.
“Cat!” Bird said, pointing after the long, bright snake at the empty tunnel floor. He changed his aim to the patch of light. “Cat!”
“I see it,” said Cat. “Maybe!” She let the word hang, smiling half to herself.
Not just any world, Cat, don’t worry, Bird thought, trotting ahead. At the next turn of the tunnel all he saw was more tunnel, but a streak of light skipped down it’s length, and he thought he could hear water. Then he could smell it, and the streak of light changed from a thin line to a wide band. Was that the spicy smell of earth and decaying wood?
A world with woods and water was no guarantee of food or comfort. Could be, not necessarily though, a good place, could be home, probably not, but it was, he thought, a possibility.
“Doesn’t that smell good, Kitty?” he said, smiling back at her.
She was walking at her usual ambling pace, looking up at a row of sleeping bats. “It does, my Tweet.”
Y3Z
“Who the hell is that?” The red demon gnawed the last bits of flesh off a charred bone. Little flares leapt up off the streams of lava, sizzled, and then died back into the red glow.
The blue demon was madly in love with the red demon. He leaned on his elbow and watched her gnaw, using only one eye at a time, switching off, as though he couldn’t decide which eye had the better angle of view. A long night of drinking had left him the worse for wear; the red demon’s movements, the flares of fire, left trails of confusing after-images.
The blue demon rummaged through his memory banks. He had seen the two strangers climb down a ladder from the upper world, and then catch a ride with a couple of turkey vultures. He was in the form of a small bat at the time, so as to do some random eavesdropping, but he caught only a few words before he got bored and moved on.
“Cat and Bird. They’re looking for midnight.” The sound of his own voice was painful.
The red demon broke the bone and sucked out the marrow, tossed the pieces in the flow. “Midnight? Everybody knows where midnight is. Same place it always is.”
“To a demon, yes. To Cat and Bird, midnight is a different story.” The blue demon rubbed his head with his knuckles. It wasn’t enough, so he started rapping on his skull, first with only one hand, then two, then all three.
Y4Z
“I know they could care less about us, seeing as we don’t taste good and can’t fight, but those demons make me nervous.” Bird whispered, with an exaggerated glance toward the pair of demons slumped at the next picnic table.
Cat laughed. It was true that when they first visited the demons were intimidating as hell, with their leather jackets and their motorcycle boots, their superior strength and magic powers. The facts were other than they appeared. Some of the demons were even extraordinarily kind. They told vulgar jokes, licked their fingers after they ate, and looked mean and strong, but they were so old and knew so many things that there was no creature in any world they couldn’t have a decent conversation with.
The streak of light in the tunnel had turned out to be the twin suns of a hall big enough to hold a mountain, a river, and two banks of picnicking demons, laughing, drinking, eating, roughhousing, flirting, and passing out. The sound of water and the smell of spicy woods were only decorations.
Y5Z
The green demon saw them peering in at the door. “You folks hungry?” He said. “Step in here and pull up a chair.”
Bird was confused by that, since there weren’t any chairs to be had, just benches of various sorts pulled up to long tables, most of them occupied by fearsome demons. What else could it be but a picnic, Bird thought, and he felt his strangeness.
He tried to catch Cat’s eye, gesture an exit, but she was gaga, eyes large and aglow at the sight of the river of lava. The green demon had his arm around Cat’s shoulder and now he caught Bird under his other arm. He led them inside the great room, where sounds of feasting replaced the sound of rushing water, and the smells of sugar and sizzling meat replaced the smells of earth and grasses and decaying leaves, saps and scent lures of flowers aching for pollen. Bird felt a terrible sense of loss. It wasn’t just the loss of what had turned out to be an illusion that was so painful, it was how it had linked up to so much else that he missed.
Now he was confronted with a scene of warm togetherness that he responded to automatically with jealousy. Bird had never actually had much time with his family before it broke apart, and even then he had been aware that they were not a welcome sight. That didn’t stop him from imagining what it might feel like to be part of a family that was in turn nestled in the fold of a larger community. How would it feel to belong, to never doubt your right to be a part of things?
He didn’t like this feeling of resentment that so powerfully took hold, but had to acknowledge its truth. He and Cat were happy to be a pair of misfits, going their own way, but there was still a part of Bird that longed for comfort and safety. Cat, he imagined, would have looked down her nose at him if she knew how much he relied on her to be his sun and moon, mother and father, his sister, as well as his lover.
The demon’s warm weight on his shoulders felt a lot like love, and Bird found the courage to speak up, before it was too late, and he and Cat were into something too big to escape.
Y6Z
“Excuse me, but we don’t know how to act at a picnic in the underworld,” Bird said. He looked anxious. His eyes were slitted with trying not to see too clearly what was going on.
Cat, cool as a cucumber, felt embarrassed for him. She smiled at the demon to let him know that Bird was cool too, just shy and innocent.
“It really isn’t a question of behaving in any particular way,” the green demon said, “all you do is eat and enjoy yourself.” Cat nodded as he spoke, as if she’d attended many a picnic in the underworld. She had not, but she liked to think she would have, if she’d known the option was there.
The green demon took them around to a long table covered with dishes of delicious food. There were platters of charred meat, bowls of indecipherable greens, roasted onions, bright dishes of grilled peppers and squash, and every kind of cake, pie, and ice-cream.
Bird and Cat took their blue fire-glazed plates and moved down the line. The green demon kept pace, picking up an olive here, an onion there, and encouraged them to pile their dishes high with sliced tongue and red velvet cake.
“What beautiful plates,” Cat said, giving Bird a look that meant, this is how you behave, you silly thing. “The blue glaze over the red clay, it’s lovely.”
“Oh, you like that?” The green demon said. “That’s the clay from these very banks. You may have noticed the underworld is virtually nothing but red rock, red stones, red pebbles, red sand, and red clay. There is very little decay here to provide for other colors.”
Bird cleared his throat. The green demon and Cat waited patiently for him to speak. Bird cut yet another slice of cake for himself and slid it on his plate, watching carefully to make sure he didn’t make a mess of anything, yet also admiring the look of pink frosting next to green frosting. “How interesting,” he said, placing the server back on the plate. It was ruddy gold, a heavy, ornate spatula with decorations of spiraling, curling smoke, and, noticing this, Bird felt excitedly inspired to speak. “And what a lovely piece this is.”
Cat, he saw, was puzzled. Bird felt disoriented himself with the layers of meaning he had accidently piled up, along with the food. Was it the red clay he found interesting? Or was it the contrasting colors of frosting? Was it the ornate spatula that he thought was lovely, or the slab of cake he had just heaved onto his plate? He wasn’t sure.
The green demon smiled hugely, revealing a set of large, yellowish teeth that leaned every which way, like tombstones in an ancient cemetery. “Oh, thank you! I made it myself, you know, just this morning, when I heard the two of you were coming. I’m glad you like it.”
Bird had been holding his breath, frozen in place, although he had not known it until the green demon’s gratitude washed over him and he felt himself freed from his invisible prison.
“You knew we were coming?” Cat said, apparently caught off guard.
“Word got around. You’ve got a long road ahead of you, or maybe I should say you’ve got a long series of roads, tunnels, air currents, rivers and streams. So I thought you may as well stop here with us for a meal and gather your strength,” the green demon said.
Cat wanted to ask more, but their towers of food were piled so high they were in danger of toppling. While she and Bird carefully balanced their plates, the green demon led the way to a picnic table just a few feet from the river.
He sat down with them, the corners of his eyes radiating lines of good cheer. He sat energetically, Bird thought, back straight, arms bent in ready angles, head cocked with impending lively conversation. His brown hair curled off of his head in dynamic waves, like spirals of smoke.
Cat couldn’t keep her eyes off a handsome demon who was standing at the very edge of the river of lava. He was completely covered in soft-looking iridescent feathers.
Bird being Bird, he could barely enjoy his cake and meat, feeling conspicuously not a demon, unwanted, etc., so the green demon put his arm around Bird’s shoulders and gave him a big warm hug. Bird burst into loud, wrenching sobs and buried his face in the demon’s shoulder, who patted his back with his big, warm hands and said soothing words.
Y7Z
I loved those demons. They were nice to me. They were warm. They burned off the bullshit and left just me. They didn’t want me to be anything other than what I was. All the tar that got on me, they burned it off. The bad thoughts became ashes. All the pain all through my body, the heartache, the loneliness, the fear, they cleaned with their colorful fires.
I was alone in the world. How else was I going to stay alive? Who else was there to comfort me?
Y8Z
Bird did not feel at all well. Too much grease and sugar, eaten while fearful. It wasn’t the demons that frightened him, but Cat, the way she looked away, not meeting his eyes, embarrassed by him. Bird stuffed his mouth full of cake and pork chops and masticated grimly. Once he looked up, and was startled to meet the green demon’s kind eyes. Then the food sat in his mouth, bulky and dry. His eyes stung, his nose ran, the plate of food blurred.
Bird knew from experience that he could eat half-rotten food without a problem as long as he felt free and happy, but if his guts were knotted up with worry then nothing he ate would sit right, as much as he wished for the consolation of food.
Y9Z
“You were wrong about those two.” The red demon squeezed the blue demon’s head, side to side, front to back, over and over. “It’s not midnight they’re looking for. I knew that sounded stupid. It’s the meaning of midnight. That’s what they’re after.”
The blue demon groaned with pleasure and pain. He inhaled the smell of the red demon’s warm skin. “The – meaning – uoh – of – midnight?” He gasped between squeezes.
“It’s about time! Undiscovered meanings are genuine treasure. Shit, I’d do it if there weren’t so much else to rise to.”
Y10Z
That demon covered in feathers—what a specimen! Remarkable. It was impossible to look away. Every path the eye traveled in search of escape only led back. Yet why deprive herself of the pleasure of such beauty?
A direct stare would not have been wise. Cat looked through her hair, bent over her plate of pie and greens, forking them up, barely noticing the fibrous, tart slime of the greens, the silky, lumpy sweetness of the pie. She had an ear out for Bird, she thought, although at that moment Bird to her was a fuzzy shape across the table, a nagging thought, a scratchy shirt tag.
She was astonished when Bird suddenly flung himself on the green demon, with big gulping sobs and intermittent wails. a
“You’re all right, Bird,” the demon said. We’ll clean you up good if you like. Would you like that?”
Y11 Z
What I know about demons is nearly as little as I know about human beings, so I try to keep an open mind.
Y12 Z
Cat pulled her attention reluctantly from the softly feathered demon to Bird, who was weeping like a child into the green demon’s shoulder. Bird’s tears shone on the demon’s worn leather jacket, rivulets followed folds, dripped off chains. They looked blue in the lights flaring up from the lava. Someone must have thrown some copper in for the pretty colors.
Y13 Z
When we first came here, we didn’t know how hard it would be to find our way back out. We weren’t thinking caution, we were thinking, what’s this? What’s that? What’s over there?
We didn’t know what we were dealing with. We didn’t know there was more than one world. World isn’t the right word, but it’s close enough. Not separate, really, or unconnected, but just a tinge off-register. And once you’ve shifted from one to the other, by accident, you can only wait for another chance event to get back to your own.
Y14 Z
"Uh, Cat, this doesn't look right. This isn't where we came in." Bird looked hard at the stones in the wall, the vines hanging over the door. Sun crept in through the many layers for a green glow.
Totally unlike the door they came in, which for one thing was made of wood that was damp, and stuck in the frame. Bird had to shove the bottom while Cat turned the knob and pushed on top. When the door finally gave they both tumbled in to land on dirt that smelled like it had been in the dark a long, long time. Bird skinned his knee and ripped his pants, and Cat's hip was bruised, and they were both festooned with cobwebs and little dry corpses.
It was a door in a stone wall, which was odd, because it was one of those walls that holds up the side of a hill when someone cuts a road through it. Usually there's nothing behind them but dirt.
"So why is there a door here, Bird? Do you think the dead bodies get up at night and go out for a walk?" The wall held up a cemetery begun when the road was a single dirt track. It's lovely hills and tall thoughtful trees now butted up against a steady flow of cart traffic, on one side, and a service alley, on the other. Near the alley was a small brick building meant to hold bodies in the winter until the ground thawed. The cemetery's groundskeeper always had her crew dig some extra holes in the fall, but you never knew for sure how many you'd need. Cat and Bird favored the cemetery for late night jaunts, the rolling hills so quiet and lonely in the darkness. The towering pines and oaks and lindens moved slowly in the wind. Cat and Bird ambled across the slightly weedy grass, among toppled old gravestones engraved with praying hands and weeping willows, blessed virgins, lambs, and angels. Here and there something glowed in the moonlight, a plastic flower, crushed and grimed, a ribbon, a tiny flag. It was damp, just this side of mist, which pushed the smells of earth, bark, and, for some reason, anise, to the limits of odor amplification.
"Think of all those bones," said Bird, who wished he hadn't. The thought of bodies reduced to calcium and leather was making him sad. So many end points of lives collected under the ground, so many stories lost, so many hopes unfruited. He thought of them as little bundles, bodies curled up like infants in the womb, though he knew they were all laid out in wood coffins.
Why so tidy? He wondered. Rows and ranks. "They're just bones." Cat said. "Good for the soil. Why do you think these trees are so big and this grass is so green?"
"I suppose the boxes rot before the bones, huh?" Bird said. What if the bones themselves grew? Bone orchards. Gardens grown by moonlight. He hoped Cat couldn't see him shiver. He didn't want to have to explain how he had managed to scare himself again with his imagination.
Cat would have shivered with a thrill. Fear was a tonic, so to speak, for a creature who thrived on jolts of adrenalin to get her through the day. It was a relationship of nearly perfect symmetry. Cat fed off Bird's nerves, and Bird let her siphon off the worst of his nightmares.
Wonderful reverberating paradoxes sustained the system. Cat ran from the horrible empty eternity of boredom and alienation. Bird generously gave away the fire that would have connected him to finity, that dangerous zone of actual existence. Cat loved the edge just before irretrievable disaster. Bird loved to let her walk it.
