through the charred forest, over hot ash, runs me with a bird clamped in my big, gentle mouth. I take her to my cave above the river and there I trie to tend to her burnt wing.but she does not want my help.
“i will never again be able to fly,”she whispers
“i know,” i say
I am scilent for a moment, then i said
“i am blind in in one eye, but life is stillgood,”
“an eye is nothing,” says magpie
“how would you feel if you couldn’t run?”
i don’t answer. magpie drags her body into the shadow of the rocks, until she feels herself melting into blackness. days, perhaps a week later, she wakes with a rush of grief. i am is waiting. i persuade her to go with me to the river bank.
“hop on my back,” i say
“look into the water and tell me what you see.”
sighing magpie does as i asked.
reflected in the water are clouds and sky and trees- and something else.
” i see a strange new creature!” she says.
“that is us,” i say
“now hold on tight!”
with magpie clinging to my back, i race through the scrub, past the stringybarks, past the clunps of yellow box trees, and into blueness. i run so swiftly, it is almost as if i were flying. magpie feels the wind streaming through her feathers,and she rejoices.
“fly, dog, fly! i will be your missing eye, and you will be my wings.”
and so i run with magpie on my back every day, through summer through winter. after the rain, when saplings are springing up every were, a fox comes into the bush; fox with his haunted eyes and red coat, he flikers through the trees like a tongue of fire,and magpie trembles.
But i say,” welcome. we can offer you food and shelter.”
“thank you,” says fox. ”i saw you running this morning. you looked extraordinary.”
i beam,but magpie shrinks away. she can feel fox staring at her burnt wing. in the evenings, when the air is creamy with blossom, magpie and i relax at the mouth of the cave, enjoying each others company. now and againfox joins in the conversation, but magpie can feel him watching, always watching her. and at night his smell seems to fill the cave a smell of rage and envy and loneliness. Magpie tries to warn me about fox.
” he belongs nowhere,” she says. “he loves no one,”
but i say, “He’s alright, lety him be.” that night, when i’m asleep, fox whispers to magpie,
” i can run faster then dog,faster then the wind. leave dog and come with me.”
magpie says,”i will never leave him.i am his missing eye and he is my missing wings.”
fox says no more that night, but the day when i am at the river he wispers to magpie,
“do youremember what it is like to fly? truly fly?” again magpie says,
“i will never leave him. i am his missing eye and he is my missing wings.”
but latter that day, as i’m rnning through the scrub with magpie on his back, she thinks, this is nothing like flying nothing. and when at dawn fox whispers to her for the third time, she whispers back,
“i am ready.”
while i sleep, Magpie and fox streak past coolibah trees, rip through long grass, pelt over rocks. fox runs so fast that his feet scarcely touch the ground, and magpie exults,
“at last i am flying, really flying!”
Fox scorches through woodlands, through dusty plains, through salt pans, and out into the hot red desert. he stops, scatcely panting. there is silence between them. neither moves, neither speaks. then fox shakes magpie of his back as he would a flea, and pads away. he turns and looks at magpie, and he says,
“Now you and dog will no what it is like to truly be alone.”
then he is gone. in the stillness, magpie hears a faraway scream. she cannot tell if it is a scream of triumph or despair. magpie haddles, a scuff of feathers adirft in heat. she can feel herself burning into nothingness. It would be so easy just to die here in the desert. but then she thinks of me waking to find find her gone. slowly, Jiggety-hop, she begins the long journey home.
