Where the Bird Sings Best Read Free

She’s already devouring the mother. The daughter is next.” They poured salt and vinegar over the child’s head and baptized her with a name that would shock and disgust Death: Fiera Seca. Then they put her in a basket, swaddling her in clusters of grapes, and carried her off to a secret place the father could never know, to hide her from the Enemy. Fiera Seca had to live as a prisoner in a barn until she was thirteen, when her menstruation began. When childhood came to an end, the danger disappeared. Death was looking for a girl, not a woman. Fiera Seca was led home by one of the old gossips. As she walked along the streets, the terrified townspeople closed doors and windows. To scare off Death, in case she discovered the child’s hiding place, they’d taught Fiera Seca to make horrible faces, one after another. Her face, like a soft mask, passed from one ugliness to another. If you looked at her for more than ten seconds, your head would ache.
    When Fiera Seca entered the room, which was simultaneously kitchen, dining room, and bedroom, Teresa ran out to the garden along with the dogs, which began to howl, and the cats, which began to hiss. Fiera Seca was all alone. She heard footsteps. It had to be Death! Out of her hiding place she felt more vulnerable than ever. Besides contorting her face, she’d also begun to deform her body. She bowed her legs, twisted her spine, and made her hands look like claws. She drooled and foamed at the mouth, tinting that wretched mess with blood she sucked from her gums. The door opened with an insect-like screech. Abraham saw a monster, a kind of giant spider, but he did not run because he was covered with bees. To Fiera Seca, the buzzing of that dark mass seemed like the song of the Black Lady.
    There they stood, face to face, sweating in terror. Perhaps the only beings that understood the situation were the bees. They began to fly in a circle that became larger and larger until it surrounded father and daughter. Within that living cordon, the girl saw the most beautiful man she could have imagined. In the depth of his green eyes, she found an ocean of goodness. That sublime spirit became a world where, if she could make herself small, she would have wanted to live. Little by little, she stopped making faces and stretched out her body, revealing herself as she was—a beautiful woman. Abraham realized that all the others, those who died giving birth, had been nothing more than sketches of the thing that, without knowing it, he’d sought forever: standing erect before him, like a tremendous miracle, his own soul was calling him. They submerged one into the other, they spoke words of love to each other, they wept, laughed, sang, and fell into the bed. The bees formed a curtain that separated them from the world, and there they remained, two bodies transformed into a single bonfire, not thinking of the consequences.
    Teresa felt superfluous. Her father and sister disappeared forever, transformed into lovers. She put what little she had in a sack and went to live with her aunts. Two years later, she received news from her sister, a letter:
     
Forgive me, Teresa, for having forgotten you all this time. Dad is dead. You are the only one who knew our secret. I hope you’ll understand. It was stronger than we were, a passion we couldn’t control. No one in the neighborhood dared to imagine anything like that. Whenever I went out to shop, I made my faces and contortions so that no one would speak to me. My father, my lover, only showed himself covered with bees. Our real bodies were a miracle we only enjoyed in the intimacy of the house. To ward off spies, Abraham taught the insects to rest on the roof and exterior walls of the house until they covered it with a thick quilt. We made love inside a gigantic honeycomb, drunk on pleasure, unable to stop, again and again, wishing we could fuse and become one single being. That insatiable quest, that impossible dissolution; mixed in with the