The Last One Read Free

birds.
    The ember bird’s song sounds one final time, distantly, and then the ensemble is weaker for its absence. My thirst returns, so strong. I can feel the pinch of dehydration behind my temples. I grasp my nearly empty Nalgene, feel its lightness and the fabric of the crusty blue bandana tied around its lid loop. I know my body can last several days without water, but I can’t bear the dryness of my mouth. I take a careful sip, then run my tongue over my lips to catch lingering moisture. I taste blood. I raise my hand; the base of my thumb comes back smeared with red. Seeing this, I feel the crack in my chapped upper lip. I don’t know how long it’s been there.
    Water is my priority. I’ve been walking for hours, I think. My shadow is much longer now than when I left the shop. I’ve passed a few houses, but no more stores and nothing marked with blue. I can still smell the prop.

    As I walk I try to step on my shadow knees. It’s impossible but also a distraction. Such a distraction that I don’t notice the mailbox until I’ve nearly passed it. It’s shaped like a trout, the house number fashioned with wooden scales of all colors. Beside the mailbox is the mouth of a long driveway, which twists away through white oaks and the occasional birch tree. I can’t see the house that must exist at the driveway’s end.
    I don’t want to go. I haven’t entered a house since a handful of sky-blue balloons led me to a cabin that was blue inside, so much blue. Dusky light and a teddy bear, watching.
    I can’t do it.
    You need water. They won’t use the same trick twice.
    I start up the driveway. Each step comes heavy and my foot keeps catching. My shadow is at my right, scaling and leaping from wooded trunks as I pass, as nimble as I am awkward.
    Soon I see a monstrous Tudor in dire need of a new coat of its off-white paint. The house slumps into an overgrown lawn, the kind of building that as a child I would have play-believed was haunted. A red SUV is parked outside, blocking my view of the front door. After so long on my feet the SUV seems an otherworldly entity. They said no driving and it’s not blue, but it’s here and maybe that means something. I walk slowly toward the SUV, and by extension the house. Maybe they’ve placed a case of water in the back of the vehicle. Then I won’t have to go inside. The SUV is splattered with dried mud, the splashed pattern insisting on the substance’s former liquidity. Even dry, it’s not dirt but mud. It looks like an inkblot test, but I can’t see any images.
    Chip chip chip, I hear. Chippy chip.
    My ember bird is back. I cock my head to judge the bird’s direction and in doing so notice another sound: the gentle burble of running water. Relief engulfs me; I don’t have to go inside. The mailbox was meant only to lead me to the stream. I should have heard it on my own, but I’m so tired, so thirsty. I needed the bird to bring my focus back from sight to sound. I turn around and follow the sound of flowing water. The bird calls again and I mouth Thank you. My split lip stings.

    As I backtrack to find the brook, I think of my mother. She too would think I was meant to find the mailbox, but to her the guiding hand wouldn’t be a producer’s. I imagine her sitting in her living room, enfolded in a haze of cigarette smoke. I imagine her watching, interpreting my every success as affirmation and my every disappointment as a lesson. Co-opting my experiences as her own, as she has always done. Because I wouldn’t exist without her, and for her that’s always been enough.
    I think too of my father, next door at the bakery, charming tourists with free samples and country wit while he tries to forget his tobacco-scented wife of thirty-one years. I wonder if he too watches me.
    Then I see the brook, a measly, exquisite thing just east of the driveway. My attention snaps to and my insides rock with relief. I long to cup my hands and bring the cold wet to my lips. Instead,