Songbird

"Papa where are we?" Christine looked up from the summer night fields to the large, comfortable shape of her father as he led her to a warmer place by the bonfire.

He sat his small daughter at the fire near the other families with young children. "This is a land called France. They speak French here."

Christine gasped with wide eyes. "We're not in Germany anymore?"

He loosened the shawl from around her shoulders. "We haven't been in Germany for a long time, don't you remember?"

"I remember now. It tasted better in Germany than it did in Belgium. How long have we been walking, Papa?"

"With this fair?"

"Since Belgium?"

"Since the land of the Dutch."

"Is that far?"

"Far or long? We have been stopping to sing all the time. That makes it much longer than it is far." He cleared his throat with a deep, rough cough that sent shivers down her spine.

"Oh…" Christine thought she understood, but a moment later, she did not care, distracted by the children chasing grasshoppers in the fields.

She leapt to her feet. "Can I go play, Papa?"

"After some supper." He tugged her back into her seat as he set about opening his knapsack.

She watched him with an eager stomach. "Will we see fairies in France too?"

"If you're a good little girl and say your prayers, who knows what you'll see."

She gasped with childish glee. "Angels?"

"Who knows," he answered with cryptic humor and handed her the small portion of rye toast.

She took it solemnly, and said her prayers at once before eating.

It must have been sometime later—long after she forgot wanting to join the other children, and had dozed off to the lull of her father's voice filled with enchanting stories—that he appeared.

"Look, my child!" He father stirred her awake. "Do you see him there? Out beyond the circle, where the firelight cannot reach?"

She rubbed at her eyes. Everyone else around the fire was quiet or asleep. But out there, where her father pointed, she saw the tall, black figure that blended into the night. He did not move. Frozen disturbingly where he stood except where the wind pulled at the jagged edges of his black cloak, as if the air itself was discomforted by his strange presence.

"I see him Papa, who is he?"

Her father's voice was at her ear. "Look at him closely."

She peered across the fire, into the night where only the moon illuminated the windblown waves of the field grasses. "He has no face, Papa…"

"Yes, he has no face. Inside that black hood, it is only the dark air of the night. But do you see his eyes? His two burning eyes?"

"Yes, Papa. I can see them even in the dark, even though he has no face."

"And do you see his hands? Where he clutches the staff of his blade?"

The hands were as immobile as the rest, but she saw them then, and they were real. "Yes, Papa. He has no face but he has two human hands!"

"No, look a little closer, my child. Look beyond the dancing light of the fire. They are not hands made of flesh."

"Bones!" she gasped. "They are hands made of long white bones, aren't they?"

"Yes. Yes, they are. Do you know who he is now?"

Christine curled closer to the protecting embrace of her father. "Yes. Yes, I do. But shouldn't we be afraid, Papa?"

"No, my little songbird," he laughed, deep and warm. "He is not here for us! He comes only for the dead, and you and I are alive."

"He looks lost, Papa. What if he can't find who he is looking for and he chooses us instead?"

"Don't be afraid, my little songbird. Look, he is already gone."

And he was. Try as she might, Christine could no longer see him out there. The field was empty and the forest too far away. A young rabbit leapt through the grass and disappeared again.

She looked back to her father, touched by the look of dreams in the dancing light on his calm features. "Will he be back?"

He smiled at her reassuringly. "Eventually, eventually… He always comes back."

She wanted to see him again. "Will he come for me?"

He pulled her into his arms and she felt safe. "Not as long as you keep singing, my little songbird. Keep singing night songs to life."

And as he rocked her, she did not know which of them fell asleep first. But he was already still and quiet when she heard the voice.

"Songbird," it whispered. It was the hollow voice of the wind.

With difficulty she opened the heaviness of her eyelids and looked across the fire. The dark figure was back, and now she was alone. Her father was gone, the travelers were gone. She was alone with the fire and the figure. He was watching her and she knew she should be afraid because he was so much closer than he had been before and he was watching only her. But he was so frozen that she felt safe. As long as he did not move, she was safe.

So close… He was almost in the fire. And closer. The fire was closer. He was coming through the fire without moving, and he was watching her! But she was safe as long as he was frozen.

She began to say her prayers again. She wanted to close her eyes. He had no face! Only burning eyes that grew and grew as they sucked in the heat of the fire that began to envelop them both, and two hands of bone. Two hands so long and white, wrapped around the staff of his scythe.

Stay still, she prayed. Stay still.

He was closer now. She knew he was closer. And then the hands—They moved. Slowly and tightly, the staff twisted between them. He was frozen no more.

"Songbird," the wind shrieked through the fire.

Christine screamed.

It was no child's scream, it was her own scream, and she was awake now in her own bed in Erik's house. She was sitting up, tangled in the lavender sheets, painfully aware of the racing of her own heartbeat.

She looked around in the dim light slowly, making sure her surroundings were real. Her calming pulse fluttered timidly when her eyes came to rest on Erik, who was looking at her with surprised concern from across the room. She did not bother to wonder at the fact that he was in her bedroom in the middle of the night, for she was glad that he was there just now.

He set down the pitcher of fresh water he had brought for her basin. His entrance to her room as she slept never usually woke her, and he wondered if that momentary terror that had flashed in her eyes as they snapped open was his doing.

"A nightmare?" he asked softly.

She nodded and moved back where she sat to curl against the headboard. "Yes… I mean no… It was just a dream."

He moved closer to her bedside. He had been worried the trauma of the day would affect her sleep that night, but he had told her to go to bed all the same. Letting her alter her normal agenda on account of the girl would have been no better.

"A frightening dream?"

"No…" She sighed, furrowing her fair brow that felt cool now as the glistening there evaporated. She looked down to her hands. "I don't know how to explain."

Her fingers were still clenched in the tight fists of her wakening and she uncurled them tenderly now. She smoothed her left hand against the sheets at her thigh, but when she opened her right hand, she found inside that little, silver necklace. She must have been holding it the whole time as she slept, clutching it so tightly that the heart pendant had pressed into her palm, leaving its shape there, a ghostly white imprint. She plucked it gently from her skin and flexed her hand a couple times. But when she looked again, the shape was still there, red now against the pale color of her hand, as blood flowed back into it. And written in the same engraved script of the silver pendant, was the word Songbird temporarily branded backwards in her flesh.

"It will be gone in a few moments."

Erik gently took the necklace from her as the shaking that began in both her hands spread to a cold shiver down her body. She pulled up the satin quilt and half glanced to the dark fireplace.

She was about to ask Erik to light it for her, but her words were lost as she turned to look up at him and was caught by the image of him slowly twining the chain of the necklace between his fingers as he examined it. Those fine, long fingers of his… Those inhumanly long, thin, white fingers.

The soft images of her father and the summer night of her dream were floating from her memory in wisps too light to grasp. But she clearly remembered the skeletal fingers.

"I think I dreamt of you."

His eyes met hers.

"I mean of your hands… I think they were in my dream."

"What about the rest of me?"

She glanced away, suddenly feeling conscious of how closely he stood to her bed. "I don't know…"

"Is that why you screamed yourself awake?" The sincerity of the lightness to the humor in his tone seemed questionable.

"I think so…"

It was not the answer he anticipated. He dropped the necklace in a delft bowl on her end table.

"What time is it?" she asked before he could turn to the door.

"Late," he sighed.

She reached to the bowl and took back the necklace, winding its small chain twice around her wrist.

She took a moment to breathe deeply and then spoke softly, "Don't go."

He returned and took a seat at the edge of the chair at her bedside. He rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward so that his eyes were at her level, watching her intently.

"I'm fine." She tore her eyes from her wrist and looked to him. "I don't know why I cried out. I don't know what I dreamed. I only remember dark shadows…And that I was a child."

"Ah." Erik leaned back where he sat. "A child."

Christine wrapped her arms around the quilt at her knees. "Where is she, Erik?"

His eyes seemed to frown. "Defrosting."

She shivered again. "I'm cold… It's very cold. Would you light the fire for me?"

His voice was soft, but the tone was deliberate. "I had better not, Christine. She was frozen though, and it would be best to let her thaw slowly lest she begin to smell." He moved to rise. "I will bring you another blanket if you are cold."

She shook her head. Her trembling now was not from the cold. "Let me see her, Erik. Please? I just want to see her."

He lingered before the door. "Christine…"

She rose, taking her dressing gown from its hook. "I will not be able to rest until I see her." She took extra care as she slipped the wrist with the necklace through the frills of the sleeve.

He continued to not move as she tied the ribbons about her small waist. But then as she approached him, there was nothing he could do but consent, and he held the door open for her.

However, once in the hall, her boldness dissolved, and she followed with timid steps as he led her back to the door he had barred to her before. Before he turned the handle, she impulsively clutched at his sleeve. He glanced down at her questioningly as she pressed her lips together in hesitation.

"No," she breathed as he let go of the handle. "Let me see her." She released his sleeve and he led her through the door.

Christine had only been inside this room once before. It was a room of clinical sterility, and when she thought about it, it unnerved her to consider for what reason a man like Erik would need a laboratory. But consideration was forgotten the moment he took her around a unit of shelves and she saw the child. Elainie… She knew this child… And yet, seeing her now, it was as if she had never seen her before.

The little girl was lying on a steel table at the far end of the room, flat on her back, her arms at her sides. As Christine approached, she could see that the color of the child's flesh had paled, but the crystals had melted from her eyelashes and the hair that framed her doll's face had mostly dried into soft curls of muted gold.

Christine could come no closer than a meter or so to the table, and when she stopped walking, she felt Erik's presence pause behind her.

"You see, Christine? She's safe."

Christine nodded and did not know whether she was happy now or whether she wanted to cry. But as she wrapped her arms around herself, her teeth began to chatter. It was even colder in this room than it had been in her own.

"I'll be right back," Erik offered as he left the room to find something warmer for her.

She watched him go only for a moment before looking back to the child.

"Elainie," she whispered saying the name the way Erik had before, like a prayer. And she felt drawn to the girl's side then. She closed the short distance to the table, gazing down at the round face of sweetness. She was an adorable little girl. As beautiful as a child so young could be. Too beautiful, she thought. Too beautiful for such a young child. It was unearthly.

"Little angel," she whispered with an even softer breath as she felt a tear edge its way onto her cheek. "Why did you die?"

She leaned down to be closer and lifted a hand. She wanted to touch her. But before she could, her eye was caught by the marks that still lingered in the soft flesh of her palm.

"Songbird…" She looked down at Elainie's closed eyes again. "Songbird?"

And then slowly, very slowly, she laid that palm over the child's smooth, white forehead. The pendant dangled from the chain around her wrist and brushed the girl's little dead lips.

Christine felt the weight of the blanket as Erik dropped it softly around her shoulders, but it did not startle her.

"She's so cold." Christine's wavering fingers traced the round cheek to the point of the chin.

Very gently, Erik removed her hand from the child's face. "Let her rest in peace, Christine."

To his surprise, Christine clasped his hand, which felt oddly warm to her in comparison to the flesh of the dead child. She turned to look up at him with pleading, tear-filled eyes. "How did she die, Erik?"

"Christine…" He separated himself from her and moved to the other side of the table. "I am sure she drowned."

"But how do we know?" The pink dress, still wet and clinging, which separated them now seemed an impassable barrier.

"We don't Christine. We can't know."

"But aren't there ways, Erik? Isn't there a way to know?"

He seemed to sigh and she was immediately filled with hope.

"You can find out why she died. I won't be able to rest until I know why she died. Can't you, Erik? Please, I must know, I must!"

He was watching the corpse now, unable to look at Christine whose growing desperation continued to disturb him.

"Yes, there are ways…"

"You will find out for me, won't you Erik?" She took a step back from the table.

Her eyes lingered on him as he stared at the girl in silence for a very long time. Christine made her way around to his side of the table. Her voice again was a waterfall of distant murmurs, "She's so young. So pure. How could she be dead? How could she be dead and I still be alive? Why was she in your lake? Why was it I who found her? Who put her there? Who could let a child so young die? Are we the only ones mourning her? Why did she die? Why, Erik?"

He looked down at her as her hands reached to his arm yet again and tears coursed down her cheeks. "Why, Erik? Can't you tell me how such a perfect little songbird could die?"

As the pressure of her fingers worked into his sleeve he could not look at either of them anymore.

"Please, Erik?"

And then he nodded slowly in reluctant agreement, and there was a hoarseness to his voice she had never heard before as he finally spoke, "Yes, Christine. I can… I will."