Bird Wings

Chapter 15

Wren had expected to remember the first moments back again forever: what her parents were doing when they first saw her again, what they said, who it was she saw next and how the news travelled through the village - but it all mixed into a blur in her mind. Now, three weeks later, she couldn't call back any of the details. There were tears, of course, but had she cried or was it someone else?

She did remember the way she had tried to think of what she would say to them as she walked back to her home. She had wanted to find exactly the right words, words that would do Hawk justice, but struggled to think of a way to justify the real facts of what had happened. She had felt real anxiety over this, but in the end it had been for nothing. No one wanted to hear details, it was bad luck to speak of it - even in such a moment.

Looking back on it and trying to piece together hazy memories, Wren could recall gentle hands guiding her out of the house and into her parent's back garden. They crowded around her but kept out of reach. She remembered how she had tried to talk to them only to be shushed or ignored. She had been so focused on her story, and Hawk, and everything she'd been through that she hadn't been able to understand that they didn't want her to tell them about it. She couldn't understand why she'd been taken outside, or why they moved away when she came near them. Clarity hadn't broken through the frustration until the town physician, Doctor Patrew, had arrived to give her a thorough examination.

That part especially wasn't worth remembering. Wren let her mind slip past it and move on to a time a while later, where she'd sat in her own room again for the first time. She remembered the feeling of the quilt on her bed under her shaking hand. One finger had moved back and forth over a triangle of fabric, searching for comfort in its texture. Her whole family had still been there in the house, she'd heard her mother crying somewhere, but she was left alone. The place had felt cold and stale the way rooms did when they had sat unoccupied for a long time.

The Wren now who sat reminiscing understood more of what had happened better than the Wren that had sat there in bewilderment. She wondered how she could have become so out of touch that she hadn't expected the fear and concern, but she hadn't. She had expected joy. Curiosity, too, almost too much attention, but not this. They were happy, she could hear the happiness going on in the rooms below her - but she was not allowed to go down and join it until the Doctor cleared her.

Weeks later now, she was still in that room. There was an old favourite seat with a patchwork cushion by the window and she sat there for the better part of every day. If she opened the panes as wide as they would go she could lean out and catch glimpses of the life that went on in the rest of the village, and sometimes a neighbour or an old friend would pass by and wave. They wouldn't speak to her, no one outside of family would come near her until Doctor Patrew was certain that 'there was no illness or other consequences from her experience'. Until then, she was in a sort of quarantine.

Wren tried intently to be understanding of their concerns, reminding herself of how she would have felt last year if it had been someone else. Understanding didn't make it any less difficult to know that her loved ones were waiting to see if she was carrying a demon's curse before celebrating the fact that she was alive. She hoped she could find it funny someday.

Wren's room had been restored to how it had been before she'd packed everything to move it to the house she would have shared with Cobin. Her family had brought everything back and set it all up again as close to how it had been as they could remember. It was all slightly wrong, of course, giving her an uncanny feeling of discomfort. She sighed and watched a tiny fly climb up the window frame. It was a little too warm, even with the window opened wide. The air didn't move much here below the treetops.