The Bird Woman by Kerry Hardie

Author:Kerry Hardie [HARDIE, KERRY]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316086813
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

About a month after this the Seeing came back, but not in a way I’d ever had before or ever want again as long as I live. I opened the door on a woman who was a stranger to me, and I knew just by looking at her that she’d heard the things people said and she’d come, without hope, for a cure. I knew, too, that she’d been ill for so long there was no point me even trying; I wouldn’t get through to the sickness, there were too many layers in the way. But I brought her in, though I didn’t want to, and I sat her down and listened while she found her few words and laid them out for me to look at with the front part of my mind.

But with the other part—the part that isn’t mind at all but something else—I was reaching out in spite of myself and slowly moving towards her. And as I did I met with the layers that covered her sickness, and the layers changed into forms, but not ones you’d see with your eyes alone—more like those you’d half sense and half see inside a dream. Without thought I began to name them, and each time I found a name for the form, it dissolved and another walked forward to take its place.

The first form was wrapped round in filth and its arms hid its face, so I named it as Shame and it left. Next came a figure straight as a die, an awful, clear stillness about it, and I knew that suffering had made it so, and I named it as Courage. Then came Despair, turned in on itself, naked and huddled and barely human, but at the sound of its name it went scuttling away. Behind Despair was a wild-haired, demented figure, shaking with rage, and I knew I was looking at Pain. Then something came forward shuffling and weeping, not caring who saw, so I named the form as Self-Pity and it was gone. After that I could stand no more, so I closed myself down and told the woman I couldn’t help her.

If I could have let myself go on seeing and naming I might have got through to her sickness, but I couldn’t. To reach deep into sickness you have to know darkness yourself, like must touch like, though your darkness may not be physical. And you’re vulnerable, just like the sick, and what is available to you is limited and your courage is already sorely tried. I could name and dissolve the outer forms, but each time I did I lost part of myself. I stopped because I was too afraid to go on.

She looked at me then with a weary derision and got slowly up from the chair and began to button her coat. Shame seized me, but it was drowned out by anger, though I don’t think she knew what she was doing to me, I don’t think she had any idea.

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