When The White Bird Sings

Content warning: eating disorders + related themes

Bones show best in cold weather.

Sharp lines cut under skin; bare branches crack against the sky; snow drives on snow. In a land wiped clean, only the essential remains.

The village freezes, and hungers.

•••

Catja crouches at a stuttering hearth. Embers leak scant heat. She stirs a pot set amongst the ashes, a rusted iron belly filled with meltwater and oats and a segment of apple smoked long ago in the far-dead autumn.

At her shoulder perches a white bird. A clever fellow he is, with plumage so bright it hurts and a hooked little beak. His dark eyes never blink, shining like apple seeds flung against the snow. 

“Go on,” the white bird says. “It’s all right.”

Catja brings a spoon to her lips; she suckles clouded water, tentatively welcoming its weight and warmth. She hunts the oats one by one, holding each upon her tongue.

She comes to the apple segment.

“Wait,” says the white bird. “Save that for later.” His voice pricks needle-sharp and needle-bright. 

As she hesitates, he nuzzles her cheek, his feathers soft as dream. “Tomorrow, you’ll be glad you waited.”

•••

Glassy morning shatters. In stillness so deep, snowfall kisses the windowpanes. Though Catja and the white bird wake before dawn, they do not leave until nearly midday, for she complains of weakness.

“Lace up your boots,” the white bird pleads.

Her fingers tremble, wooden. It takes too many tries.

“Put on your mittens.”

How her head spins. She clutches the bedpost, black spots blossoming across the floorboards.

“Without work, you cannot eat,” the white bird whispers.

•••

And so, the woods.

The trees gape, toothed with icicles, famished in themselves. The white bird flits ahead, one more pale flash against the snow-blind expanses and snowbound branches.

The very air cuts. 

Catja enters the glittering forest as she would a cathedral. The hard blue sky domes overhead; columns of birch and beech bend with the dying year’s melancholy. She dares not gaze skyward for long, keeping her eyes on her boots. The sun bites, and in such weather, tears freeze quickly.

“To work,” says the bird.

Catja peers through the thickets. Sloes show like bruises under a snowbank’s pallid cheek; she secrets them into a leather pouch. Between humped roots, she finds a squirrel’s forgotten cache: a few acorns, empty chestnut casings. And then—wonder of wonders—a branch of hawthorn berries, sugared with snow and gleaming like blood. 

Her stomach growls. Before she’s realized, she has a berry pressed to her lips.

“Save it,” the bird says.

“But I’m hungry now.”

The bird fluffs his feathers. “Very well, if truly you suffer…”

Silence.

She slips the berry into the bag. 

The sunlight richens with the failing of day, melting buttery gold down the snowbanks. Beneath her tattered coat, Catja shivers, and she’s about to ask the white bird if they can go home—but then, she stops. 

In the midst of the wood, a garden.

Inevitable, perhaps, as the winter itself.

•••

Cragged grey stone cuts through the trees with a nursemaid’s primness, aproned with moss and untroubled by snow. On the far side, orchards moan with fruit, their musk swelling the breeze.

“Oh, no,” says the white bird. “Oh, no, you mustn’t.”

But Catja’s already scaling the garden wall into somnolent rose and lilac. After so long scraping against winter diamonds, it’s like she’s fallen into a wine-rich tapestry. Variegated greens fill the garden—viper and velvet—cushioned lichen, spring leaves, mallard feathers—too many shades—she loses count. 

“Go back—unsafe—she’ll get you—”

A blushing apple beckons from the nearest branch.

“No!”

But desperation drowns all thought. Catja seizes the apple and bites wolfishly, juice dribbling to her chin. Sweetness explodes across her tongue; she sinks to the warm earth, the garden whirling around her.

“Now you’ve done it,” the white bird mutters.

A creak sounds from far away. A cottage stands at the garden’s end, a perfect gingerbread cottage with scarlet shutters and puffing chimney. Someone comes striding down the path. 

The bird trembles. “You’ve trespassed on the witch.”

So she has.

Perhaps witches are also inevitable. This one looms over Catja, drowning the sunlight, her face canny and gritted as roots under frozen earth.

The apple falls from Catja’s hand. But it’s too late, of course.

Of course.

•••

And so Catja finds herself at a scarred kitchen table, her breath knifing her ribs. The witch leans on her elbows, her brambled hair escaping a ratty brown cap.

Behind her looms a stove. Freshly blacked, wholly iron, it dominates the entire wall. Heat radiates across Catja’s cheeks. If she holds her breath, she hears the fire thrumming within.

“Why were you eating the fruit of my garden?” the witch rasps.

The white bird’s claws dig into Catja’s shoulder. 

“I asked you a question, girl.”

“I’m a woman,” Catja snaps back, stroking her frightened bird. “Not a child.”

The witch nods. “My mistake. Yet the question remains, even so. Why were you eating the fruit of my garden?”

“I—I was hungry.”

The words break like ice as the white bird whimpers. Catja slumps back in the chair, empty and heartsick at once.

But the witch smiles, all yellow teeth. “Then we shall have to feed you up.”

•••

Apples and berries, watered with blood—

Bread of bone and ashes—

The roasted joints of little children—

Such is the food of witches. The white bird tells Catja so, his voice growing ragged with warning. 

•••

It is strangely intimate, the witch’s bedroom. A narrow bed, a stool, a rickety table with a pitcher and wash basin. Sunlight speckles the wooden floor, glinting off sketches pinned to the walls. Details of leaves, mushrooms, flowers, rendered in charcoal. 

Only a curtain separates sleeping quarters from kitchen. Even here, the oven’s heat penetrates.

The witch’s hand slips around Catja’s shoulder, squeezes, and then withdraws. Catja twitches, trying to dispel the chill shuddering down her spine. 

“The bed’s clean enough,” the witch says. 

Colder yet, Catja gulps. “Where—where will you sleep?”

The witch cackles. “In the other room, never fear, stretched by the fire like a hound at watch.” 

Perched atop Catja’s head, the white bird shifts. A trill of alarm issues from his snowy breast. 

The witch bows sardonically. “Rest well.”

Like a whisper, she slips through the curtain, leaving Catja to sink to the floor. The thought of climbing into the witch’s bed weakens her knees in a manner she cannot articulate, not even to herself. 

The bird flutters to the floor. “Do you know what the witch desires, stupid girl?”

Perhaps, yes. 

“She will fatten you to bursting.”

Without thinking, Catja grips her wrist, thumb overlapping middle finger. Thumb overlapping index. Again. Again. Again.  

“She will eat you whole.”

“No…” Catja murmurs, but she cannot forget the curve of the witch’s lips.

“She will glut you like swine turned out to the trough. And swine that you are, you’ll swell for the slaughter. When the time comes, she’ll stoke the fire high and ready her oven.”

Catja curls herself around her knees.

“One shove,” the white bird whispers, “and you’ll be inside. How your skin will blister and bubble; how your fat will gleam and crackle. You will roast, girl. Blood boiled out, meat dripping juice.” 

Fingers around wrist. Thumb over index. Again. Again.

“Tell me, dearest, tell me true—is that what you want?”

“No!” 

The bird looks at her, long and level. “Then do exactly as I say.”

KT BRYSKI is a Canadian author, playwright, and podcaster. She has stories in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Apex (among others), and her audio dramas Coxwood History Fun Park and Six Stories, Told at Night are available wherever fine podcasts are found. She’s won the Parsec and the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and she has been shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. KT is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing, and she is represented by Kim-Mei Kirtland of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. When she’s not writing, KT can be found frolicking through Toronto, enjoying choral music and craft beer. Find her at www.ktbryski.com or @ktbryski on Twitter!