Bird Read Free

different with the twelfth-year stone there, in a way that made me proud. Outside the circle and down a ways, where the soil got thicker and loamy, was a row of saplings that grew from seeds that I planted last summer and sat with when it rained. On the other side of the circle lay an area of upturned earth.
    The middle of the circle was empty.
    The sun crept up and over the hills to the east. I paused at the circle, slipped off my shoes, and stepped inside. The dirt was loose and cool and whispered against my feet. I faced the rising sun and lifted my arms, as if I were drawing that ball of fire up from the earth and into the sky. There I was, encircled by rocks, at the center of the universe. And everything—from the dried-up riverbed to the limestone cliff outcroppings on the other side, even the glowing sky—watched me.
    I closed my eyes as I stood in the circle, my back muscles relaxing, my arms stretched out, settling into their openness. I didn’t know how long I stood there, but I listened to everything I could, to the mice rustling through the leaves, to the bending grasses, to the hollowness of the air over the cliff.
    The sounds of home.
    After a good, long while I stepped out of the ring of stones, my body lighter. I scanned the ground, as usual, looking for pebbles. I had to go a little farther from the circle, as I had found all the nearby pebbles a long time ago. I rummaged by the base of some grasses until I had five in my hand. Then I went over to a little crevice in the boulder, grabbed the thick, short stick I’d stashed there, and kneeled down in the area just outside the circle, in the upturned dirt where I’d buried the others.
    I made five holes, wrapped my fingers around the first pebble, and held it close to my mouth. “My birthday was horrible yesterday,” I breathed into it, and my throat tightened as I spoke the words aloud. “It always is.” Then I put the pebble in the hole and covered it up, patting the dirt lightly.
    I took the second one, the pinkish one. “I want more,” I whispered to it. I paused. It wasn’t like a “I’m shopping and want to buy things” more, but something else. I couldn’t figure out the words I wanted to say after that, so I just put the pebble in the ground.
    I had buried quite a few pebbles for ponies. Well, ponies and scratch-n-sniff stickers and fireworks. That’s what I’d first wanted when I started digging like this. Every time I put a pebble in the ground, something in me released, like the earth was holding my question or worry or secret and giving it an all-around hug. The earth could hold as many pebbles as I wanted to give it, and thinking about that felt so good that I buried pebbles every time I came. Couldn’t stop if I tried.
    I know people would call me crazy if they found out that I come to this cliff. I know that my parents would be angry and disappointed and afraid. But even though I’ve tried to stay away, this place calls me back as if it has a voice of its own.
    Something is here.
    Dad thinks the cliff is haunted by duppies. Maybe Bird’s duppy is here instead of in heaven, where it belongs. But after coming here for four whole years, I think there are just some things no one is able to explain, not even Dad or Mom or mayors or priests. They think they know, but they don’t.
    I held the third stone in my hand. “There is this boy named John,” I whispered. “I’ve never seen him around before—”
    I paused. The hairs on my neck stood on end, in a wrongness kind of way.
    Something awful was happening. Something really, really bad.
    I didn’t think about what it could be. I jumped to my feet and sped down the footpath, toward home.
    I found Grandpa in the living room, slumped over on the floor, the TV blaring out some game show. Dad and Mom had gone by now, Mom to her part-time clerical job in Caledonia’s town hall, Dad to sell