Stitches

Prologue

The first time the wrens sang at night was three years ago, when I used a rusty saw to cut off Pa's left foot. The birds drowned out his screams.

Wrens don't normally sing after sunset, but I wasn't surprised by it. Birds are known as spirit carriers in mountain lore. When someone dies, birds of all kinds carry them back and forth between this world and the afterlife, so folk can keep watch over their living loved ones, even after they're gone. I figured these wrens heard how loud Pa was wailing, and gathered in expectation of a fresh delivery.

Atleast fifty of them sat under the eaves of the slanted garden shed- my makeshift operating room. Dark skies folded around our mountains like a boys hand covering a anthill. Regular folk would assume that the storm had driven the birds to seek shelter, but there'd never been anything "regular" about me or mine.

My identical twin sister, Clover, and little brother, Trent, weren't allowed to watch Pa's dismemberment. Even at the age thirteen and a half, Clover was too squeamish, and Trent, being seven years younger, was too tender. I'd left Clover in charge of things in our tiny cottage some ten yards away. Upon my last look, they hunched in the farthest corner, a quilt wrapped right around their heads as they shivered at the thunder in the distance.

Pa didn't scream long before he passed out. He was strong that way. A rock, Ma used to say; a rock that needed his edges filed. She was the only one who could take his temper. When she disappeared on mine and Clover's thirteenth birthday, and Pa's drunken rampages spiraled out of control, it fell on me to file him down.

By the time I was sixteen, my surgical instruments and abilities had improved. I'd taken Pa's other foot and his eyes. His tongue and ears, too.

I soon came to realize that the rain always accompanied dismembering days, as did the wrens. I suspected they were tied somehow to The Collector, the boy who claimed the parts and gave us our cash. Seemed like both the weather and the birds knew when he was gonna pay a visit. Or maybe it was the other way around, and they told him when it was time. Whatever the case, at the scent of rain and the rustle of feathers, I made the first cut, because I knew he was on his way.