Birdy

and wait. I know there is a new hole in the dream. I can feel the mixing of the waves of two places, like an undertow. Two places are pulling at once.
    I do not see me. This is as usual. Then I lean down and pick up Perta. There is great unhappiness on my face. It is the unhappiness of a boy; birds’ faces show nothing. I pick up Perta and walk back towards the aviary. I fly painfully after me to the edge of the aviary roof. I watch myself come back out again with a small spoon and a matchbox. It’s one of the kitchen matchboxes in which I keep the eggs. I put Perta carefully into the box and close it. I dig a hole in the back of the aviary beside the wall and bury the box. I go back into the aviary.
    I hop from the top of the aviary and stand by Perta’s grave. I’m glad she’s safe from the cat. I know I must go to my babies but I don’t want to leave Perta.
    Then I see myself come out of the aviary again. I have a popsicle stick with me. I push the stick into the ground over the space where the matchbox is buried. I hop close and read the writing.
    MY WIFE, PERTA .
    I wake up.
     
    That next day at school I know all the things that have to happen. I’m not too frightened by the strange way the real world has tofollow the dream. I’m sorry for Perta and I think of locking her into the flight cage but then her baby birds would starve. I could put those babies under other birds but this whole thing is something that has to happen. If it doesn’t happen as it must, then my Perta will never be really dead, I can never be free as a boy again.
    After school I’m working in the aviary when I hear the cat scream. I walk across the yard and over under the tree. She’s there exactly in the spot where I look for her. I look, but know I cannot see myself. I pick Perta up and her neck is broken. There is no other mark on her body.
    I carry her across the yard to the aviary and do the things I’m supposed to do. I’m feeling very calm inside myself. More than ever I feel that I am together. As boy I’m doing exactly what must be. I almost feel myself fitting into the space I occupied in the dream. I put Perta in the box and go out to the place beside the wall. There’s a slight depression in the ground. I dig the hole half-looking, expecting a matchbox to be there. Al will never know about the treasure we didn’t find. In some way it was there, there, in the power of our dream.
    There’s no matchbox and I put my matchbox with Perta into the hole. I cover it over and look for myself up on top of the aviary. I’m not there. I go back into the aviary and take the popsicle stick I use for scraping out the corners of the cages. I clean it off and print the message on it with a dark pencil. I go out and push it into the ground over the grave. There are no bird tracks. I wake up.
     
    During the day I can’t keep my thoughts from the dream. My throat hurts because I’m not crying when I should. We’re having final exams so no one notices me much.
    That night I’m still standing by Perta’s grave. The dream has become more like a dream. Things don’t happen the way they used to. I don’t see any of the other birds. When I fly, I fly in slow motion. It’s like a dream.
    I fly up to the babies and feed them. I tell them their mother won’t be coming back but I will take care of them. I spend all that day and night sitting on the edge of the nest, feeding them whenthey’re hungry and remembering Perta. I know they will not remember her. To them, she’s in Echen and that’s all there is to it. It’s not worth thinking about; it doesn’t matter.
    In my dream, over the next weeks, I bring the young birds up till they can fly from the nest and join the others. They are free, they can fly where they want to. My babies are completely bird. I do not show them where Perta is buried, it would mean nothing. I’m getting more and more boy in my dream, the bird in me is fading. The dream is becoming less and less real.
    As boy, I’m not as interested in the breeding of birds either. I’m seeing them for what they are, canaries. Everything in the aviary seems so automatic. The young birds all look alike. I can’t tell them from last year’s birds anymore. I can feel it all coming to an end. Something is finished.
    I build a feeding platform on top of the aviary. I build a roof over it to keep off the rain. I build perches for the feeders so the flying birds can feed up high away from cats. When it’s done, I let