Such a Pretty Bird

Such a Pretty Bird

           Sasha’s little red heart, trapped in the cage of her bones, beat harder, faster as the Overseers arrived and spilled from their machines like black ink staining a once perfect page. She watched, waited, face and fingers pressed against the window as soldiers drained every ounce of color from the world.

           First, they stole the sun’s bright yellow. The Overseers shot harpoons into the sun and bled the light out, ounce by ounce. The yellow dripped into their maws. But when it touched their skin, they howled in pain.

They poached the sky with great flying machines. Machines with claws and teeth scraped away the blue, feasted on the color, until only gray remained. The white clouds unspooled, a thousand delicate threads devoured by the threshers. Their machines rumbled and sputtered; with every turn of a piston, they spat black tar and gray ash into the world.

           A rebel fighter shimmied down the fire escape and winked at Sasha. She froze, making herself small and quiet. The gray had invaded his skin, his eyes. He looked like cracked pavement.

           “I like your friend.” The rebel pointed to her stuffed animal. “Does he have a name?”

           “Bert.”

           “Do you still see the colors? Is that why you keep him?”

           Sasha nodded.

           “Do you like animals?” the rebel asked.

           She shrugged. Sasha had only seen real animals in picture books.

           “You’ll like my bird,” he said. “Watch for the colors.”

           She waved as the young man rattled down the rungs and snuck in behind enemy tanks.

           The rebel adorned himself in pieces of rubble and rubbed dust across his face and hands. Sasha wondered why he did so, wondered if the fighter had already forgotten that every molecule of his body was gray like the invaders. Soon, he seemed to disappear, camouflaged, except for his rifle. A lovely brown stock, ash or oak, recently oiled, judging by the woodgrain’s brightness.

           He moved slowly, concealed by the noise, by the chaos of the Overseers’ titanic machines smashing through buildings and crushing cars.

He held a bird. Small enough to fit in one palm.

           Not just any bird, a Gouldian Finch. A rainbow of colors adorned the feathers: purples, yellows, oranges, greens, and blues, and a hundred hues in between. The rebel pressed his Finch against the largest tank.

           One yellow feather broke off. The machine turned that same bright color, yellow as the sun had been a minute ago. The Overseers inside shrieked and clawed at their gray skin. They shattered and melted like candle wax as the Finch chirped.

           The yellow feather’s magic touch soon spread to other machines. But the Overseers turned on their own. A barrage of bullets and bombs crashed upon the rebel fighter, wave after wave, smoke upon flame.

           Sasha collapsed, knees pressed against cold floorboards. Sasha whimpered; she grabbed her stuffed hippo. Purple, fuzzy, soft against her cheek. “They won’t catch you, Bert.”

           Bert’s colors, bright purple, the same as a lilac, held fast for another minute. The Overseers unleashed a cloud of buzzers. Little, winged machines, swarming, scratching at the windows. The glass shattered at Sasha’s feet. She dropped Bert. Now, the buzzers feasted on the purple fabric, such an awful cacophony, the sound of their jaws and teeth gnawing.

           Sasha scrambled to her feet. She swatted at the buzzers. A tick too slow. Only one purple thread remained. She tied it around her finger. “We’ll get the rest of your color back,” she promised her stuffed hippo.

           Mama brought gray dresses in from the laundry room, the smell of smoke clinging to every fiber in the cotton.

           Sasha ran to her. She cried into Mama’s hip, felt the bones. Mama had lost weight over the Long Winter.

           They fell into their daily routine. Mama combed Sasha’s hair. Mama stuffed books into Sasha’s backpack.

           “Maybe they’ll have school today,” Mama said, forcing a smile. Her teeth had turned the color of an elephant’s skin when the Overseers first descended, and now they seemed sharper, more wolfish. “Let’s finish your homework.”

           Sasha had not been to school in months. She remembered the scrape of chalk across the blackboard, putting a hand over her chest, and singing the National Anthem. She liked breakfast the most, the syrup, the chocolate milk. Now, she pretended someone might check her homework, pretended life still made sense.

           “Mr. Doyle asked us to read about farming,” she said, even though that lesson came last fall, before the Overseers’ machines. “He said we should know how to plant and harvest.”

           In the kitchen, they sat quietly and ate their breakfast rations. Sasha pretended to read about corn, and Mama pretended to wash the dishes, as though the water rationing order was merely a suggestion.

           The gray bacon and gray eggs tasted like soap. Sasha struggled to swallow. The growling in her belly won out. She forced the meal down with a glass of gray juice. She vaguely recalled orange juice, the wondrous explosion of taste on her tongue, the bright color, the way it felt like drinking the sun. Gray juice tasted like nothing at all.

           Someone knocked on the door.

           Sasha and Mama straightened their hair, straightened their dresses, and straightened their spines.

           “The thread!” Mama shouted through gritted teeth.

           Sasha hid Bert’s last purple thread under her tongue.

           They expected an Overseer to enter the apartment and search nook and cranny for illegal colors, as the soldiers had done every other day since they invaded. Sasha’s heart did not flutter. She bit down on her fear and shoved the broken bones of it into the darkest corners of herself, knowing the feeling would arise later and take something she could not replace.

           A man crashed through the front door. He collapsed on the floor. His crimson blood shone brightly against the gray floor. “Help…me.”

           Mama grabbed Sasha’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Do not move,” Mama said.

Sasha recognized the rebel fighter, though he seemed beige now, as though being near the finch had brought some color back to his skin. She pulled away from Mama and raced to his side.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “They got Bert.”

The fighter reached into his jacket. He pulled out the tiniest cage. The Gouldian Finch fluttered behind those iron bars.

“Take him,” the rebel said. “His name is Prince, like the musician.”

“What’s a musician?” Sasha asked.

The rebel’s eyes darkened, like he had lost something ineffable. “When you say Prince, he will…” A cough rattled through the man. Blood coated his palm. “Someday, you’ll know music.”

     Mama froze. Still five steps from his body. “Do not touch him!”

      Sasha retreated. One step. Two. She hid behind the gray couch, where Papa used to read her stories. Her mouth ran dry, her throat tightened, until the air seemed to thin. She remembered the Overseer storming into the apartment and sticking their claws into Papa’s spine. She remembered the smell of smoke, the scrape of metal against bone.

         No one ever explained what Papa did wrong. What law did he break? He’d worn his gray jumpsuit every day to the mines. He’d sworn an oath to the Overseers, along with hundreds of others.

           “I…I can’t take the bird,” she said. “It’s illegal.”

           The rebel sobbed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. Tell my wife….” His blood turned gray as an Overseer stomped into the room.

           The creature wore human skin like a suit. The whirring of cogs and gears churned from somewhere inside the thing’s body.

           It hid behind a mask, with a long, sharp beak and black eyes, closer to a crow than a man.

           The Finch darted out the window. Gone before the Overseer saw it.

           Now, the creature hooked its claws into the rebel and drained him. The slurping noise sent a cold chill across Sasha’s skin.

           “Quarantine,” the Overseer said. It pointed a claw at Mama.

           Still, Sasha hid. She did not move. Most of her body, her hair, her teeth, her clothes, were gray. She blended into the furniture.

           Mama held her head up. She did not dare look back at her daughter. “Yes, sir. Where is the quarantine, sir?”

           The Overseer did not answer. The creature grabbed Mama by the hair and dragged her into the hall. Her boots scraped across the floor, and the shadows enveloped her.

           Sasha crept forward. She shook the rebel fighter. She pressed fingers against his neck. No pulse. His skin felt like ice. “How do I get Mama back? How!”

           She pounded her fists against the dead man as she sobbed, as years of anguish ripped through her lungs and throat.

           Something shiny fell out of his pocket. A whistle. Sasha blew into one end, then the other. No noise.

           The Finch returned, alighting on her shoulder.

           “No…” she sobbed. “Go away!”

           She found the tiny cage and locked the Finch inside. It chirped and bobbed, seemingly oblivious to the death of its master. Sasha envied the bird. It did not know the agony of grief, the gnaw of hunger. It did not know the Overseers fell out of the stars and upended the world.

           Sasha told herself Mama would only be in quarantine for a few days. The Overseers had no reason to eat her. Mama was perfectly gray.

           Sasha tucked herself into bed. She put the Finch on her nightstand and watched its colors slowly seep out and brighten the wallpaper and the lamp.

           She smothered the cage with a blanket. “Stop!”

           The bird chirped brightly.

           Still, the colors spread. Her Pokémon sheets came alive. Pikachu’s bright yellow and Mewtwo’s soft pink, Charizard’s bold orange, seemed so bright after all these months in hibernation. Sasha blinked and blinked, eyes burning.

           She remembered the bird’s name. “Prince, stop!”

           The colors faded instantly, retreating into the bird’s feathers. Sasha exhaled.

**

           Seven days later, Sasha sat alone in the kitchen, eating gray bacon and drinking gray juice. The Finch sat in his tiny cage, quietly pecking at leftover eggs.

           “Mama is coming home soon,” Sasha said to Bert.

           She’d put the stuffed animal in her old high chair. Bert's empty eyes stared back at her.

           She imagined him saying something comforting, like Papa.

           But only silence filled the apartment.

           The Overseers had dragged the rebel’s body away. Sasha spent a morning scrubbing away the bloodstain. One floorboard still looked grayer than the rest, almost black.

           Someone knocked on the door.

           Sasha hid the Finch in the cabinet, behind a stack of gray plates. She straightened her hair and straightened her dress.

           A piece of paper slid under the door.

           She read it aloud. “Alice Martin now works in the mines. Your rations will be reduced by half.”

           Sasha grabbed a plate and hurled it against the door. She launched a cup, a knife, a fork, every muscle in her body vibrating and on fire. They’d taken Papa to the mines, too, and they’d sent his ashes months later. No one explained how he died.

Mama and Sasha had spread his ashes at Washington Park, at the lower lagoon. They’d spent so many nights near that pale blue water, grilling food, and selling lemonade. Sasha’s mouth puckered from thinking about the tartness.

           She didn’t even know where the mines were, or how she might get there. But Sasha could not let Mama turn to ash.

           Sasha focused on one thought. Color.

           The Finch’s colors had spread to the Overseers’ tanks; Sasha was certain that moment could not be a dream. Her dreams were gray.

           And the Finch’s colors had somehow restored her Pokémon sheets before she said the bird’s name.

           Maybe she could repaint the world.

           Sasha opened the cage and let Prince dance atop her palm. Her skin turned pale as fresh cream. She had forgotten this color, the softness of it, the blue of her veins beneath.

           Her breath hitched. She touched the feather to Bert. His fabric turned purple, and she smiled. Sasha remembered Papa taking her to the zoo, lifting her so she could touch the glass at the hippo enclosure. The giants danced and twirled, impossibly agile, sending vibrations through her fingers.

Sasha hid the Finch deep in her backpack, beneath gray books and gray papers. Her little red heart pounded. Stepping out into the world, cold sweat snaked down her back.

Overseers occupied every corner.

           She pretended to stumble. No one seemed to notice. Sasha attached one yellow feather to the treads of a tank.

           She kept walking to the soup line at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Sitting with the other girls from her school, she pretended to listen as they talked about going back to school someday.

           The tank rumbled to life. The treads turned.

           The machine moved deeper into the city. Slowly, St. Mary’s Cathedral bloomed with color and light. Sasha could hardly believe her plan worked. The bird’s feather seemed to revitalize the world.

           Soon, everyone stopped eating. Everyone stopped talking. The stained-glass windows filled with reds, yellows, oranges, and greens.

           The Overseers inside the church howled in pain. They burst into flame.

           She followed men and women in jumpsuits. They walked through the warehouse district, down to the railyard. Hundreds of people waited for the coal trains.

           Sasha did not wait. She followed the tracks east, toward the mountains, where the trains originated. Mama must be out there, somewhere.

           Sasha plucked another feather. She let it flutter into the sky, into the sun.