When The Birds Go Quiet

When the birds go quiet, the girls stop walking. The air around them is glassy and pale, like a glass of milk their mother used to pour every morning: half milk, half water.

When the birds go quiet, the girls can hear their own breathing: quick and light like cat paws in the snow. The right kind of breathing, their mother used to say, Doesn’t attract flaring wolf-eyes on your frail figures. The right kind of breathing, their mother tapped her upper lip with a finger, Is hazy and blurred, like ghosts merging with the walls.

But when the birds go quiet, there are no walls around the girls. Only the wide hips of an oak and it’s naked, open arms glinting in the moonlight, ready to receive their offering. The girls remove their hoods and look at each other. Their faces glow like fire. Fierce. Determined. A feast for the eyes, a shadow in the woods growled at them once, when they treaded off-path to look for their mother. 

But when the birds go quiet, their mother is nowhere. There are only the wool-wrapped girls, and the oak, and the budding, hungry leaves. Now, it’s their turn to feast.

When the birds go quiet, the girls kneel by the oak’s feet and start digging. They dig faster and faster, letting grains of dirt burrow under their nails. They take big gulps of breaths, inhaling the soil’s cool scent that guides their hands deeper and deeper.

The birds stay quiet when one of the girls stops and sits back on her heels. The other loosens a red coat around her waist. They found the coat four days ago, hanging from the oak’s branch, missing their mother’s body. The girl slips a hand inside the coat, over her heart, and pulls out a bundle wrapped in table cloth. The fabric is soaked in blood. The other girl reaches out. Her soil-kissed fingers unwrap the dripping package. Together, they shake it out, dropping a long, clumped, clotted wolf-tail – chopped off.  

As they bury the hole, the birds stay quiet. The girls bow to the ground and put their ears to the fresh lump of earth, listening to the oak’s roots.

While the birds stay quiet, the girls can hear the roots stretching, growing, feeding.