Firebirds

When one day my loneliness built a castle, I kept myself inside. Three despicable thieves tried to break through the wall, damaged the gates with swords and torches and entered the high tower. They stole the nightingale and kept it as gift from the dead. Little did I know that the nightingale was buried inside my heart.

In a huge empty house, dust covered all, even into the secret dark corners, where spiders secretly pulled the silk on the wall like old quiet weavers. The rose in the garden died on a cold winter morning, as it couldn’t overcome the wind and the old oak tree was crying in the pale sunlight, shaking and creaking. I had once been my parents’ princess, sitting on the couch, drinking wine from gold and silver goblets, but…

It was the third day after knowing of my parents’ death. Of course, it was the third day I locked myself in that huge empty house (not my home… and I was sure that my home had already gone with my parents, floating down some river, singing the old song till the end). People wearing different wooden masks were standing outside the locked door (I guess Blythe, whose proposal I refused, was also there), gently talking to me, expressing their regret and guilt, treating me like a fragile crystal ball -were they trying to seal in the softness, silk cloths swaddling the most precious gems? “I AM NOT CRAZY!!” I shouted again. I just found I had never been recognized as so conscious and talented before. In fact, the world in my eyes had changed!

A few young ladies wore dramatically heavy and luxurious dresses and exaggerated hair ornaments and colorful bird feathers (include my best friend Tina). They smiled gracefully with tears running down their cheeks, spun and melted in the colliding dark colors, like strange ballet dancers, and I was sure that I was one of them, after, after… just after my parents’ death. The others were iron puppets, fettered by aprons, full of scratches and dents, repeating every day and every night their drudgery, crying with smiling faces, taking care of malodorous roses, grown from their blood.

All around them suddenly appeared fiery red birds, opening their mouths and making plaintive sounds.

Then, the birds appeared just in front of a large stage in an auction house, being shown off like products, and, looking out, the seats in the house seemed to be made from disgusting flowing mud, while to my surprise, I clearly found a kind of burning fire inside every girl’s heart, which was like different kinds of birds, silently or noisily singing one and the same song.

Suddenly, I saw something strange: there was a person coming from the wings, wearing a black coat made of wool with silk patterns (maybe he was not a person as he didn’t actually have a face, just blank skin), taking small golden well-decorated cages and with crystal keys, walking slowly by the ladies, toying with which one to open.

“Good evening, my nightingale,” he said happily when he noticed me, waving the keys in his hands, just like an ornithologist accidentally meeting a rare bird while holding a bird net.

“What are you doing?” I asked curiously, unaware of the coming danger.

“Nothing special, nothing special… .” He repeated his words in a strange tone, catching the firebirds with a special tool and locking them in the cage. The firebirds had elegant and pleasing bodies, like forest elves. When they flamed, they made a cursing sound and burned almost everything close to them. The tool he used to extricate them was the thorn of rose with dark red color and a slender stem which enabled him to keep safe distance and to pierce and unlock the restless birds with the sharp head.

 “What are the birds for?” I asked again, trying to touch a firebird which looked like a black-crested finch with my fingers. It shook its wings when I touched it, and I slowly and gently rubbed my fingers; it lowered its head and let out a doleful cry.

“They are annoying little cuties,” he said with a big smile directed at the beautiful birds hitting the cage, shaking the keys to make a lonely sound and starting to croon a song without a lyric. “I just collect them so they will never disturb my mind and ability to recall lyrics.”

“Why you take them in such small cages?” I asked, lifting my skirt and walking with him. “Who are you?”

He just smiled, took my hand and walked to a white stone path, and as the blood rose, which seemed to invite the nightingale passed by, approaching his trap without awareness, he revealed the poisonous spines, and tried to kiss the nightingale’s heart.

That nightingale would never sing in a gold cage.

“Where we will go next?” I asked, looking forward to a kind of journey similar to the one Wendy had with Peter Pan.

“Well, you will not know it till the end. Before we go, you should change your dress. It is full of dust, mud and dirty water!” The man took out a dress with diamonds and sapphire from a hole in one of the white stones. “Just put on this dress and become a lady.”

“And then?” I asked, after I put on the uncomfortable dress, feeling like I was a funny walking wedding cake.

“Please comb your hair and wear headgear and hat.” The man took a silk hat from the top of the tree from the mountain and a beautiful feather with jadeite on it. “Just be a lady.”

“What I will do next – the hat is so heavy, can I take it off?” He did not respond, so I obeyed his suggestion, but it felt like I was holding a heavy stone on my head.

“Of course not, my nightingale. Please put on the rings in your hand and the necklace on your neck.” The man took out jewels with pearls, rock crystal and ivory from the river. “Be a lady and call me sir, please.”

 “Okay, sir, what I will do next? I want to eat something!” I was tired and hungry, wanting to give up.

“Be patient, my nightingale, the journey is almost ended,” the man said gently. “Don’t eat too often and be a lady.”  

Finally, he took out a box from the sand, and put powdered lead on my face, covering my healthy shining skin; he helped me put on earrings with drops of ruby and obsidian: “We are almost at the end! You are a lady now.” We set off.

After days of climbing, crossing the mountains and rivers, we finally arrived at the destination of twilight desert: the Death Plain.

It was a kind of barren plain, with vultures hovering in the air, waiting for the next person to hasten their decay into bones. A small house stood at the end of the line of sight.

It was a small Gothic building, like a witch’s hovel in a fairy tale, standing there quietly, as if waiting for the next unlucky ghost to break in.

He walked in front of me, humming happily while using a handkerchief to protect me from an attack of strange flying bugs.

“Be careful, be careful, the journey’s almost at an end,” I said to myself, lifting my skirt and standing on tiptoe to prevent stepping on someone’s bones. Two crows with red eyes were staring at me when I almost fell on the ground.

Finally, we arrived. He carefully knocked on the wooden door with a stick, shaking down a layer of suffocating dust. I walked in carefully and looked around, the only light coming from the window.

Thousands of firebirds filled almost every part of the room, jostling together.

“Look at my collection! They are far more beautiful than any precious jewel in the world!” The man came close to me and opened his arms trying to hug me like an old friend.

Rose thorns suddenly penetrated the flame, and like a nightingale in my chest, deep into its heart, a few drops of uninhibited golden blood flowed down the long stem of the rose. Under the man’s exertion, the nightingale that I thought was gone forever, bit by bit pulled out of my chest, closed the cage of my heart, and twisted into a putrid golden rose.

I felt a sharp sense of bondage, as if I had been wrapped in the gel suit of a nervous patient. I laughed uncontrollably, lowered my head and looked at my face for the last time – a high bun combed on the top of my head, with a huge lace hat and feathers fixed on the top, pale lead powdering my face a ghostly white… .

“Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.”

——Oscar Wilde, “The Nightingale and the Rose”