Trembling River by Andrée A. Michaud

Author:Andrée A. Michaud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2023-01-11T16:15:09+00:00

II.

MARNIE

February to

April 2009

The Saint-Alban owl was swinging in the dark window, which shook with the last gusts of the storm, mixed with snowflakes that fell silently on the dust the February rains hadn’t washed away. And it was talking to me again, telling me that little animals disappear in the middle of the snowy forest, little Mikes and little Marnies, some leaving a little trail of blood behind them, others leaving nothing at all, not even disoriented tracks or a flapping of wings.

My father had given me this owl, and I secretly named him Mister Holy Owl, alias Mr. Holy Crappy Owl, because it was born on Christmas Day, kind of, and because I hate the bitches of owls who stare at you in the darkness and speak to you at daybreak. I had seen this owl in a souvenir shop in Saint-Alban two days before Christmas, while my father and I were shopping with the feverish joy of the season. I immediately sensed that this inert little animal was watching me, me and nobody else, and felt he was calling to me. Every time the store door opened, he swung on the end of his cord and turned his little yellow eyes towards me. Every time.

I moved casually closer to him, and suddenly Michael’s bulging eyes were superimposed on the owl’s, confirming that owls see everything, absolutely everything, Marnie. In an instant I was swallowed up by his gaze and whisked off somewhere else, into another time and another place, alone with the owl in some area of my memory where clouds were gathering. The walls of the store disappeared along with the harried customers, the Christmas music, and the snow whirling outside the window, leaving only the owl, who opened his eyes wide in the face of the stormy sky. “Michael, is that you? Michael?”

The days when Michael and I used to pretend to be a snowy owl and a red squirrel were so far in the past that I had forgotten the way Mike used to let out clumsy hooting when he came to get me after dinner. The sound of three or four “tu-whit, tu-whoos” would come in through the open window, and I would respond to the owl’s call by racing outside as fast as a squirrel running down a tin roof. This game lasted a little over three years, but long ago I stored this owl, simply named “Owl,” in a closet of my memory and never took him out, because I preferred to imagine Michael as a superhero who had flown off to a secret destination.

The sight of this little bird made out of bark led me to reopen the closet and recall that in a time before robots, interdimensionality, and futuristic genetics, there had been a forest, trees, and animals. Before Michael became invested with Superman’s powers, it was the powers of a nocturnal bird that had kindled his childish imagination.

A shiver zigzagged up my back when my father rested his hand on my shoulder.

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