by Malika Savory
A figure is tracing itself through the summer air, a bead of sweat swells up on the broad dirt canvas. The grass is still, trees immobile underneath a beating sun. It is the time of day where the heat can trick a person into thinking the image in front of it actually contains two figures instead of one: two shapes moving silently across the grass, two beads of sweat, two girls in the mid-afternoon heat.
Gusts of wind surge from below her armpits, her thighs, her neck. Her whole body ripples back and forth as wind particles scrabble to solidify around her, each one swallowed up by the muddled air; their existence becoming a memory until that memory becomes a dream and then nothing again. Above her, birds dance in the breeze. It is mid-January. Or perhaps mid-February. Ana lets her head fall back and spins on the spot. She thinks of other things, like how the sky is so blue and there are no clouds in the sky. Or about this morning.
“I wish you had left instead of dad.” She hadn’t meant to say it.
Her mother just stared at her and then said, “Oh.” “Oh,” Ana repeats to the blue sky above her.
It would be better if her mother had screamed at her, pulling her postcards from underneath her bed, slamming her door shut and locking her into her room. Anything would be better than being treated as sort ofafterthought, a reminder of someone else. But that still doesn’t explain all the rules and restrictions, the curfews, the inability to escape, see the world, have a life.
Yes, oh oh oh.
Ana knows she shouldn’t hate it, but she understands it because of this place. This dirt canvas, the house, and she knows of love because she has seen it once. It is on a postcard, in a box, carefully stashed behind ashelf in the kitchen. There are others, but she has forgotten their names. This one is printed in pale letters with swimming people in a blue ocean and the sky – although it has many clouds, not like this one. Its name was whispered to her once when she was very young. She whispers it again as she spins around in the hot summer air.
Oh, Italy: The Land of Love.
And there is life, peering at her through a little window. Soon, that window will become a door.
Ana spins slowly. The branches of the old brittle gums dip to ground as if still trying to feed from the water reservoir that existed many years ago. Ana spins faster and the gums turn to a blur.
The canvas tugs at her. Not yet, it urges. Not quite yet. She is not meant to be here, in this place, at this time. Not here, the gusts of wind gasp around her. They cling to her desperately, little mouths pleading, not quite here! The grass wants to swallow her up, the hot air wants to eat her alive. She is a drop of sweat stuck on a painting and the blue sky is a gaping hole above. Then, the air under her legs snaps up and she is taken away into the sky. In the future, people will wonder what happened–they will argue, exchange theories and ideas, but ultimately fall silent. Their silence stretches out beyond time, joining the silence on the broad dirt plain. They observe her silently watching as the bird ascends to the sky above.
A tree is dripping into the bird’s eye.
It lies immobile against the dirt and tries to flap its wings feebly, but a bullet has cut right through the bone of its right wing and lodged itself deep into the neck. Brittle gum branches sway downward and dip towards the paralysed bird. Rustling is heard nearby, and its eye darts around. But then drip, drip and the dripping blood tree penetrates deeper into the temple, burrowing into some hidden place where something has long been buried in its mind–
A gasp emerges, a human gasp from the bird. Dripping and brushing off the dust, something is held to the light. Something forgotten, something important.
The hard pupil dilates outwards, and Ana exists once more.
It is as if she has just awoken from some dream. Yes, the bird remembers soaring through the air, but before that, it remembers being a girl. How did this happen? Either she is a girl in a bird’s body, or a bird with a girl’s mind. Her consciousness begins to fade away as the blood drips down into her skull. She tries to think. She knows the sky is now not blue, but somewhere it had been. And yet the memory seems to drift away from her again. Yes, her house! No, it is leaving her. There is a kitchen, she thinks.
What colour are the walls? She can’t remember, and blood pools deeper into her brain, taking Ana’s sudden lucidity and fading it away into a dream. Soon, it will be gone–
A memory, oh! Yes, that scent! That sky! But it hurts, it aches. She sees it in her mind’s eye. A hand holding a postcard of Italy and whispering to her at night.
Oh, yes! But she remembers, yes! She does not want Italy, she wants– Oh, what is it? Yes, there she is, kneeling right in front of her. Oh, her mother! There is nobody chasing her, it is just her mother waiting for her to come home. She wants to apologise, to put this argument behind them. Ana remembers what her mother said, she wants to say it back, she is in front of her eyes, right there and yes, everything will be ok once more, they will not fight anymore, just wait for her to reach out, pull the covers back again, the bad dream is over don’t worry, she will hug her and everything will be–
I should set the table, Diane thinks to herself, as she cuts off the bird’s head.
It’s clean; severed right through the vertebra and disposed to the side while the base of the bird is neatly sliced into. The skin parts wetly at Diane’s touch. She has already plucked and bled it out near the gums that grow at the edge of the old water reservoir, where it was slain. She imagines the blood seeping deep into the ground, becoming a fertiliser welcomed by the malnourished trees. Outside, the tops of the brittle branches bobup and down in agreement. Her fingers continue to probe deeper into the body, contently.
Cooking is one thing. Being a mother is another.
The latter never seems to come easily to her. People have faults, she assures herself, it is healthy to have them. At least she is still here, trying to make amends, be a good mother.
Her daughter. Oh, her daughter.
Her fingers massage their way along the seam of the intestines until they locate a hard, pearl-like pouch at the base. She cuts through the lining of the pouch with precision and pulls out the gizzard. The rest shouldbe easy now. She guts out the heart, liver and intestines; her hands move steadily, stripping the bird as commonplace as a person would remove their clothes at the end of the day. The inside of the cavity is rinsed, and the skin is scrubbed to remove any leftover innards or blood. Its legs undulate back and forth under the pressure of the open faucet, as if paddling upstream with the oncoming water. The legs are then cut off at the hock joint, and the duck is glazed and placed into the oven. Diane smiles as the skin begins to crisp and darken in the orange glow of the oven. It’s a small duck, a waterfowl variety. It’ll turn out well. Ana will enjoy it.
Diane pauses and looks out the window. The brittle gums shiver back at her.
I wish you had left instead of dad.
That sentence seems to be strung between each sparse tree outside, waiting for Diane’s reply. She sits down and looks out of the window.
Suddenly, something catches Diane’s eye, and she gasps. On the bench-top below the window lies the severed head of the bird. The beak sits open in a wide gasp and its pale eyes stare back at her with an uncanny sheen. The pupils dilated in such a way where they have almost disintegrated.
What is this? There is something here, deep in the pit of her stomach. Diane throws the towel over the severed head and scoops it up into a kitchen towel, bundling it with the rest of the innards. She walks out the door and throws the bundle outside, watching it disappear into the overgrowth.
She pauses for a moment before heading back inside, her hand hovering above the front doorknob. The sun has begun to set, and the pasture is turning into a solemn crimson. Diane sighs. Ana becomes more like her father with each passing day. It grows like a cancer in her, his desire. In the distance, the brittle gums look like they are dripping blood. Since his disappearance, the rift between mother and daughter continued to grow until the only thing she can reply back now is – oh.
Yes. Oh, oh, oh.
Diane walks back inside. The meal is almost ready, and Ana will be back soon.
She sits down and waits for her daughter to come home.
–
Malika Savory is currently studying creative writing at QUT. She has a keen interest in short stories and gothic horror fiction. As a writer, she has worked under ATYP Theatre Company, Queensland Writers Centre and QUT Literary Salon 2025.
This piece was submitted for the 2025 Annual edition of Glass.
