The Chickadee Girl

The First Awakening

"What happened to you?"

He considered again, and then answered, thoughtfully, while feeding a corner of the second sandwich to Midas. "I think someone hurt me."

"They definitely did. Did you see who it was?"

"Am I alright? I'm not going to die?"She regarded him for a nanosecond before confirming this. His colour had flooded back remarkably quickly, and he looked nearly fully alert, hardly drowsy or confused. How was that possible? 

"You're fine, or you will be." Hoping beyond hope that she wasn't lying, Isa gently lifted off the bandage she'd wrapped around his chest to staunch the flow of blood. The wound was still open and alarming-looking, but seemed like it might have begun the process of repairing itself at the edges. It was a little less raw, and now that it was no longer bleeding, she could see that it wasn't as deep as she had feared. Now, she just had to make sure it didn't get infected, and he might well be fine.

She lightly prodded the area around the wound, and took a step back from the bed. Her eyes met the child's, and she saw to her surprise that he was regarding her with something close to amusement, an expression which made him look far older and reminded her powerfully of Malcolm.

"You don't know what you're doing."

She thought about denying it, but he had clearly already taken the measure of her. 

"No." She took a deep breath.

She sprayed some disinfectant on the wound again, and re-wrapped it in fresh dressing. And when Tristan cried at the sting of the antiseptic, it was quietly, uncomplainingly, the tears briefly wreathing his blue eyes in pain. His little chest heaved with each breath, and oh, he was thin. Isa suffered silently along with him, her own chest tight. Midas placed a sympathetic paw on her leg, sensing her upset. And then the boy fell asleep again, and she was once more alone with the dog, their two hearts beating, two sentries keeping vigil at the bedside of someone they'd only just met, but had already, somehow, begun to love.

*********************

A shadow had fallen over Malcolm around his sixteenth birthday, though there had been plenty of strangeness in the years prior to that. 

Isa had entered the kitchen one day after school, craving sugar with her very soul. She tossed her book bag down onto a bar chair and crossed to the fridge, imagining there might be some cheesecake left from dessert the night before. She'd opened the fridge and located the cake, placed it on the counter, uncovered and begun to cut it before she realized Malcolm was behind her. He was standing in the doorway to the living room, watching her. She hadn't appreciated the shock.

"You scared the shit out of me. Fuck off, Malcolm. Why just stand there?"

He'd stayed there a moment, then meandered to stand across the marble island, his eyes focused not on her, but on the cake.

"You're getting fat, Isa."

"Excuse me?"

His eyes drifted up to her face, and he smiled. It was not a kind smile, or one that might have softened the previous statement. Her reflexive fury turned to a cold stone in her gut.

Malcolm beamed. "You're getting fat, baby sister. Keep eating like that, you'll have a full-on gut. It's disgusting." His smile brightened further. "You're disgusting."

She'd stopped mid-cut, and the knife was still hovering an inch above the surface of the cake. With great effort, she set it down, trying not to show him how much his words had devastated her. Who was this person?

"But you can always yak it up, right? Calories don't count if you don't have to keep them. You're just borrowing, Izzy. You can always give them baaaack." He'd done a little retching mime and laughed loudly, seeming to delight in the fact that he'd horrified her.

"Are you drunk?"

He'd considered this a moment, and then shrugged it off. 

"No, but you'd look a lot better if I was, I bet." He'd cackled again, and then licked his lips in a way that sent a shiver through her. He had to be drunk. He'd been strange lately, but this was like talking to a different person. He looked different too, she realized. His eyes were sunken-looking and tinged red, as though he hadn't slept in days, and he looked thinner. Pale. Older than his years, maybe by a lot.

He noticed her examination of his face, and it seemed to bother him. "What the fuck are you looking at?" He moved to come around the island, and she winced and backed away instinctively. After a moment, seeming to think better of whatever he'd been about to do, he'd walked instead to the fridge and opened it. He came away with the orange juice, which he knocked back directly from the carton. He'd drained it as she watched, and then chucked the empty carton into the sink. And then he'd left the room, without looking back. 

It wasn't simply that Malcolm had became reclusive, secretive and nasty - Malcolm had become downright odd. Even on those odd occasions when he was physically present (at table, in the car on the way to school) he appeared to be adrift. His grey eyes had a faraway disconnected quality, and, stranger still, his breathing grew louder - it was laboured and shallow, as though something heavy was sitting astride his broad chest. Their mother noticed the change in breathing and weight, and made some noise about taking Malcolm to a specialist. He flatly refused to go. His teachers noticed the changes as well, and spoke of stress and depression in low, sympathetic voices. Malcolm laughed at their counselling referrals, and sneered derisively until they went silent.

This, however, was not the oddest thing.

One night, while quietly returning to bed from a late night trip to the kitchen (where she'd quietly devoured nearly an entire apple tart in the space of a few minutes) a voice from her brother's room caused Isa to pause on the second floor landing. It was gone three in the morning, but it sounded like her brother might be talking on the phone. 

A light shone from underneath his door, dimming and brightening as though something was moving  back and forth in front of it. She approached the door and strained to decipher the words. He was pacing the floor - the movement of the shadow left little doubt of that - but his words were, as far as she could tell, almost nonsensical - she couldn't make out a single one, yet he clearly wasn't trying terribly hard to keep his voice down. It rose and fell as though he were profoundly distressed - a babbling, nearly.

As far as she was aware, Malcolm spoke no second language. They'd both taken French at school, but this was certainly not French. She was barely breathing, was suddenly very aware of her bare feet, and the fact that they were alone in the house. There was a softly venomous quality to the voice - to Malcolm's voice - at times, and then moments where he sounded like a frightened childlike version of himself. It was almost a dialogue. Also, and it was this that was causing her neck to prickle - the shadow under the door was moving rather faster than would seem reasonable. Pacing was too measured a description - as the babbling continued, it seemed almost as though her brother must be dashing from one end of his room to the other, nearly soundless in his progress. It seemed impossible that a boy of his size could be moving at such a clip without making any noise at all. She'd reached for the doorknob.

But she'd backed away from the door that night, though if asked, she'd have had a hard time explaining why. By the next morning, she'd rationalized that a friend might have been in the room with him, and that the shadow must have been a trick of the light. Her brother might have been lying on the bed tossing a ball in the air, or perhaps they'd been passing the ball back and forth between them. 

As she had left for school that day, Malcolm had lagged behind a little, and she'd been aware as she walked out to the car that he was watching her from his bedroom window. And though she couldn't swear to it, it had looked as if there was someone standing behind him.