Firebirds Soaring (13 page)

Tory bit her lip as they rolled into town toward the cluster of school buildings. She hadn’t meant to embarrass Charlie. She just didn’t want him to think—or anyone to think—that she was Rosalie’s daughter, plain and ordinary. She was different, a changeling, mysterious. And one day, when her mother came back, they would all see.

It was when Tory was eleven that her life changed. Until then, Tory and her father had lived alone in the rambling country house with its wide yard and wraparound porch. Tory had invented an entire history for herself, turning the big old house into a castle, with a king and a princess, and a gypsy queen mysteriously gone missing.

Rainbow, the old chicken, was all that was left of the vanished queen. Tory treasured the solitary hen despite her arrogant ways. She spun stories in her head in which her mother returned for Rainbow, and for her daughter. She imagined a gypsy caravan trundling into town, the way they sometimes did during the county fair. She pictured her mother stepping down from an elegantly painted wagon to restore the kingdom, king and queen together, happy daughter basking in their affection. But something completely different happened when she was eleven.

Henry married Rosalie. And Rainbow laid her first egg.

On the day Henry brought Rosalie and seven-year-old Ethan home, Tory fled to the chicken coop to crumple onto the floor and sob out her resentment and dismay.

Rainbow sat on her perch, watching Tory cry. When her tears subsided, Tory sat crosslegged on the floor, rubbing her swollen eyes with her sleeve. The old hen hopped down from her perch and came to stand next to her, one yellow three-toed foot poised above the floor. She bent her long neck and pecked at Tory’s arm.

“Ow! Rainbow!” Tory exclaimed.

For answer, the chicken pecked her again, and then hopped up with a little flutter of feathers to stand beside her nest. Tory stared at her. “What’s wrong with you?”

Rainbow tilted her head, her scarlet comb drooping to one side, her black eye unblinking. Tory sighed, pushed back her hair, and got up to see what Rainbow wanted.

In the nest was a single narrow egg.

Tory stammered in surprise, “Rainbow! You—did you do this?” She stretched out her hand to the nest, wary of Rainbow’s hard beak, but the hen moved back, out of the way. Tory picked up the egg and cradled it in her palm.

It weighed nothing, as if it were filled with air, like a balloon. It was the color of a cloud at sunset, pink and lavender and gray, and oddly elongated. It almost didn’t look like an egg. Both ends had the same pointed shape, and the middle was slender. And it was so light! Tory stared at it in her hand, wondering.

“Victoria? Victoria, dear, may I come in?”

All of Tory’s resentment came rushing back to her at the sound of this intruder’s voice. For a long moment, she didn’t answer.

The door opened, and her new stepmother, Rosalie, put her head in. “Victoria?”

Tory turned, holding the egg close to her chest.

She couldn’t see why Henry had married this woman. She couldn’t understand why he had to marry at all, why things had to change, but why this Rosalie? She wasn’t even pretty. She was plump, and she had scraggly brown hair and round brown eyes. And that awful boy!

“Victoria? Did your chicken lay an egg?” Rosalie’s eyes widened at the sight of Rainbow’s pink-and-gray egg in Tory’s fingers.

Ethan was there, too, loudly demanding to know what was in the little barn. Rainbow, with an angry squawk, dashed out past Rosalie, between Ethan’s legs, and off to the farthest corner of the pen. Tory also stalked out of the coop and back to the house, the egg between her palms. Her father was waiting in the kitchen doorway.

“Honey? Rosalie was worried about you, and . . . what do you have there?”

And suddenly, the first egg Rainbow had ever laid was everyone’s business. Henry took it from Tory’s hand, exclaiming over its lightness. Everyone gathered around the table to look. It was Ethan who began demanding that they crack it and see what was inside.

“No,” Tory said, giving him a withering look. “It’s mine, and I’m not going to break it. I’m going to keep it just like this.”

“Come on, honey,” her father said. “Don’t you want to know why it’s so light?”

Rosalie said, in her soft voice, “No, no, Henry. Victoria’s right. It’s hers, and if she wants to keep it intact, we should respect her wishes.”

This was too much, the intruder speaking on her behalf. Henry was her own father, after all. He was the king, and she was the princess. These other people had no role here.

Tory spoke to Henry as if no one else were present. “Okay, Dad. Get a bowl, will you?”

Henry and Rosalie exchanged a look but neither spoke. Henry brought a glass bowl, and Ethan climbed up on a chair, without even asking permission. Tory pulled the glass bowl to her, as far from Ethan’s hot curiosity as she could. She held the colorful egg in her right hand and struck it on the bowl’s edge.

The narrow oval split lengthwise, as neatly as if it had been perforated. Tory held one half in each hand, gazing in wonder.

Rosalie said, “There’s nothing in it!”

Tory said slowly, “Dad—there’s a—there’s something painted on the inside.”

Ethan crowed, “Let me see! Let me see!” Tory snatched the shells away from his grasping hands and held them up where her father could see them.

The two halves of the eggshell made an image, cloudy and vague, as if painted out of fog, but unmistakable. It was a woman, with narrow dark eyes and long hair and one long-fingered, slender hand held to her throat. The image made Tory feel disoriented, as if she were upside down. On the inside of Rainbow’s barren egg was the faintly remembered image from her babyhood.

It was her mother.

“Magda,” Henry muttered, and then shut his mouth hard.

“Who? What did you say, Dad?” But he shook his head. Again, Tory saw her father and Rosalie, the interloper, look at each other.

Fresh tears welled in Tory’s eyes as she fit the eggshell back together and held the whole egg protectively to her chest. “Dad?” she whispered. “Is her name Magda?”

Henry pressed his lips together.

Ethan demanded, “What? What?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Rosalie said. “An empty eggshell.”

Henry muttered, “Old hen never did lay any eggs.”

They had all seemed to lose interest then, except Tory. Amid the fuss of suitcases and boxes and things, Tory carried Rainbow’s strange gift up the stairs to her room. Ethan stared hungrily after her, but she ignored him. She stood beside her window, pondering the image in the egg. Her mother had a name now. It was Magda, a perfect name for the magical queen of her dreams. She would come soon, in her painted wagon, and carry Tory away. She would take her to a real castle, and Henry, too, and the king and princess and the gypsy queen would live happily ever after.

 

Rainbow met Tory at the gate when she got back from school, stretching her neck and scolding. Her feathers shone their autumn gold and black, her ruffled comb gleaming scarlet.

Tory dropped her backpack outside the gate and slipped inside. She knelt to offer Rainbow a morsel of oatmeal cookie saved from her lunch. The hen pecked at it until it was gone and then cocked her head at Tory as if demanding to know what happened to the rest of it.

The other hens came running, and Tory scattered a handful of corn for them. They pecked at it happily, chortling among themselves. Tory ducked into the coop to check the nests.

She savored the sweet smell of fresh wood shavings. Some chickens smelled awful, but hers, with their spotless coop and generous pen, smelled of clean feathers and good food and healthy bodies. Most of the hens laid their eggs in the hours of darkness, but there were always a few in the afternoons. Tory’s egg business was thriving. Every weekend she sold several dozen eggs, brought back egg cartons to reuse, and collected discarded newspapers for the laying nests.

There were four eggs today, two large white ones and two tiny speckled ones, Pansy’s efforts. Tory cupped them against her middle, enjoying their smooth warmth against her palm.

“Good girls,” she said as she made her way back through her little flock. “Especially you, Pansy! You try harder, don’t you?” Pansy waddled at her heels, clucking mournfully when Tory went through the gate. “Don’t cry,” Tory told her. “I’ll be back soon.”

She went up through the screened porch and into the kitchen. The boys were seated around the table, arguing and poking at each other. Tory passed them on her way to put the eggs into the refrigerator, where a shelf was set aside for the purpose. Rosalie, immersed in setting out milk and sandwiches, greeted her, but Tory could hardly hear her over the boys’ racket. She murmured some response and dashed up the stairs toward her own room.

She glanced back from the landing, noticing the flush on Rosalie’s cheeks, her hair curling in sweat-tendrils around her face. She looked tired. The kitchen counter was lined with jars of freshly made preserves, blackberry and raspberry and currant. The hot-water bath still steamed on the stove. Tory paused, supposing she should offer to help her stepmother.

Just then Peter upset his milk into Jack’s lap, and Jack jumped up, knocking his chair to the floor. Ethan squalled some insult, and Rosalie exclaimed in exasperation. Tory groaned and escaped into her bedroom.

Tory had just turned thirteen when Rainbow laid her second egg.

It came the day she started her first period. Rosalie gave her a cup of tea for her stomach and a Midol for the cramping, and let her stay home from school, lying on the couch eating toasted cheese and chicken noodle soup. For once, Tory let Rosalie fuss over her, bringing her magazines and a pillow for her feet. She lay there most of the day, reading, until Ethan came home from school and the twins, then eighteen months old, got up from their nap in their usual noisy fashion. Tory wandered out to the chicken coop to get away from the din. She felt fragile and headachy, tender all over.

By that time there were nine hens in her flock. Her first layers had come when she and Henry went to the feed store in Newport to buy scratch and grain for Rainbow. The feed store owner took her in the back to show her some leghorns that had come in for a Newport farmer, and Tory begged Henry to buy her one. He bought three, and Tory’s little egg business began.

In the next year, she acquired Pansy from a woman who was moving into a retirement home, and the first of her Barred Rock layers from a man Henry met at the barbershop, who had heard of Tory’s enterprise, and had more chickens than he wanted. More Barred Rocks came from him a few months later, at the same time Tory discovered the joys of the
Catalog of Contemporary Poultry
and the satisfaction of showing her hens in 4-H shows. Her Black Jersey Giants were a birthday present from Henry—well, the card said Henry and Rosalie—and her single, prized Arucana she bought with some of her own egg money. She was proud of every hen.

She spread fresh grit in the pen and pulled a handful of corn from her pocket. Pansy came running, chirping. The other hens were spread out around the ramp to the coop, and at the top of the ramp, Rainbow stood with both feet set, claws curled around the joist. As Tory watched, one of the Barred Rocks tried to come up into the coop, but Rainbow, with a single ominous cluck, warned her off.

“What are you doing, you crotchety old thing?” Tory asked. As she approached the coop, Rainbow stepped backward and waited just inside. The Barred Rock stepped up on the ramp, bringing another warning from Rainbow.

“Okay, okay,” Tory said. The Barred Rock chirped plaintively as Tory moved past.

Rainbow had jumped up beside one of the nests. And there, on the shredded newspaper, was another sunset-colored egg.

This time Tory hid the egg inside her sweater, and after finishing with her chickens, she smuggled it up to her room. Rosalie called as she passed, “Victoria? Are you feeling better, dear? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” Tory answered, and hurried on. She pretended not to notice that Rosalie had followed her out of the kitchen and was standing at the foot of the stairs, gazing after her. The twins were banging pot lids on the floor of the kitchen, and Ethan was watching cartoons with the volume up to drown out the banging. Tory felt her cramps coming back, and she wished everyone would simply go away and leave her alone.

She sank onto her bed and gazed at the pink-and-lavender egg in her hand. Like the first, it was long and narrow, with symmetrical ends. She set it on her pillow, and went to her desk drawer to get the shards of the first egg, and laid them beside the new one. The image inside the first had faded to grayish blotches.

Tory picked up Rainbow’s new offering and cracked it on the edge of the lamp.

Like the first, it fell into neat halves. And like its predecessor, it held an image.

It was the same, the woman’s vague face, long black hair, dark eyes, a narrow hand. Narrow, like Tory’s own. Dark eyes, like her own. Magda. The missing queen.

Tory stared out of her bedroom window at the yard, the neat chicken coop, the pen with its wire covering to keep the hawks away. Rainbow marched at the outer edge of the pen, her neck craning this way and that, her comb shining in the sun. As Tory watched, she tilted her head up to the window. Then, imperious as always, she turned her back and strutted away.

 

And now Tory was sixteen. The other high school kids called her “the chicken girl,” which she had learned only when Ethan announced it to everyone at the dinner table.

“You—you little troll!” Tory shouted before she dashed to her room to sob on her bed. Henry, in a rare display of temper, had ordered Ethan to his room without dinner. Rosalie had tried to make it up to Tory with the offer of a shopping trip into Spokane, but Tory only shook her head. Rosalie made Ethan come to her room to apologize, and Tory slammed the door in his face, just missing his fingers on the doorjamb. She told herself she didn’t care what the other kids thought. She didn’t need them.