Robin and the Maid
The goddess called to us, her singsong voice speaking the language of dogwood trees and elderberries, of soft breeze and and cracked blue eggshells, of hatchlings, open-mouthed in nests of pine straw, horse hair, and broken leaf. We answered. We could do no other thing.
She sent us pictures for our understanding. A child, long hair like ropes of worn hemp, woven into braids that brushed her tiny hips. A child with eyes the color of a slow tidal river in winter—blue edged with bright green. A child with a heart that beat with beauty and love and passion and purity, each beat fluttering like a finch exploding from her narrow chest. A child whose body was brutally used in ways that have names described in men’s books of law. A child we knew, who we saw each day, who left us bread crumbs on the tops of old stumps, and who sang to us in her scratchy, throaty voice of an Old Rugged Cross and Jesus and My Country ‘Tis of Thee.
We knew her. She was no stranger to us, nor us to her.
The goddess called to us, her singsong voice speaking the language of sacrifice, of blood like our breast feathers drifting across damp, rough sand. She spoke to us of what was given to us and what she asked one of us offer in return. A life. A gift of power. A spirit released and a spirit saved. The goddess called to us and I hopped forward, my legs like the tiniest sticks, my breast already red though not with blood. I volunteered. I had lived long. The last of my hatchlings long since fledged and flown. I hopped forward and bowed my dark head low.
The human hatchling, hair soft as feathers, was dying. Do you see? Her life force diminishing, her unmet heart beating slow and then more slowly. Her head hung on a neck thin as a stalk of salt marsh reed. Her shoulders rolled forward around her, shielding her chest, cradling that failing heartbeat with her tiny, bony, unfledged wings.
The pain in her was immense, as was the fear. The rage had yet to be born, I was the bright spark which would ignite it.
She, tiny thing, hands like small spiders crawling through the sand, up the stick of the metal-headed toy, moved beneath the pink foaming crepe myrtle tree, pushing and pulling the metal through the sand. Moving moving moving, the only way to move the pain out of her body, the only way to keep her heart from flying off a higher roof than the ones she jumped from every day, building her bravery, building herself up to fly.
I watched her from the branches of the bubble gum pink tree before gliding down to land beside her.
I stared at her for a long time. She stared back.
She did not know what was going to happen and I could feel her fear, could feel how being seen ignited terror in her breast so strong that it nearly glowed red like mine. Trapped. That is what I felt in her, the feeling of being trapped, no way out, tortured, afraid, unsaved, and a child so unable to help or save herself.
I stared. She stared back.
She swung the rake, meaning to frighten me into flight, to move me away from the intensity of our exchanged stares. I did not move. The rake hit me and I was no more in the body of the bird, I flew out of that tiny, crushed from and into the heart of the very small girl who whirled in horror and ran.
Into her heart I came with my red breast, with my baby blue shell for birthing something new into the world, with my sweet trilling voice, with my ability to puff up and look threatening to anything that might see me as prey.
I brought all I had to the child and she never realized until 50 years later when she found my many-generations later grandchild lying in her path after a storm. She took that fledgling to her heart, into her ever gentle, warming hands, and cared for it until the storm ceased, and then she returned him to his mother. Safe. Warm. His quick little heartbeat loved into safety and sent back into the lofty, reaching trees.
Full circle. A life for a life. My heart, her heart, one heart. My life knowingly given, a gift from both myself and from the goddess. Because we knew that there must be a gift given for this one wild and glorious heart.
