Prophecy
Dassy was drawing when Zari came in with a lunch tray the next day. "Glad to see you're feeling better," Zari remarked, setting the tray on the bedtable. "Hungry yet?"
"Not really," said Dassy. "I want to finish this before I eat anything so I don't spill on it."
"Fair enough." Zari peered over her sister's shoulder at the drawing. "What is it?" It looked like a jumble of towers and lighthouses, with a jagged dome of purple-gray shadow suspended over it instead of a sun. As she watched, Dassy added two tiny domes beneath the first, connecting them with thin wisps of black shadow, and heavily marked two slanting ovals in the middle of the large dome with her purple crayon. "It looks like a demented parasol."
"Shadow of the lost, future hanging balanced and held," said Dassy breathily, her crayon sketching in a deep, narrow V just below the ovals.
"What?" asked Zari. "What's that supposed to mean? Have you been writing poetry?"
"Years show, all will unveil with terror. Silent with fingers of feathers, known before time and after need," Dassy continued in the same tone.
Zari felt the hair rise on the back of her neck, noticing how much the purple ovals looked like eyes, the tiny domes like claws. "Dassy?" she asked, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed. "What are you talking about? Are you feeling all right?" Telling her heart to stop pounding, she felt her sister's face for fever. Warm, but not enough to cause alarm.
Dassy looked incredulously at her. "What's wrong?" she asked, and put down her crayon. "I feel fine. Can I have my lunch now?"
"You were talking strange," Zari said, realizing how much of an understatement it was. "Could--could you tell me again what your drawing is?"
"Oh. It's just what the city's going to look like in the future."
Zari pointed at the dome of shadow, tensing her hand to keep her fingers from shaking. "And--what's that?"
"It's a bird, actually, and it's not dead. Everybody thinks it is, but it's not." The clarity of Dassy's speech was unnerving proof of total lucidity. "It's just waiting until it's strong enough again and then it's going to come back and sit right there--" She pointed to a spot on the drawing, the top of what looked like a tall metal building. "And nobody's going to be able to do anything without it knowing. It's not going to let them. But that's not going to happen for a long time. We'll all be dead, so we don't have to worry about it."
Zari wondered in some part of her mind that wasn't yet beginning to panic whether this might be a side effect of the medicine. "Are you making up a story?" she asked, trying to believe that could be the case.
"No," said Dassy. "I saw it. It was a picture, like a dream but it was real. Bird with teeth of secrets. I'm serious, can I have my lunch?"
Slowly, Zari reached for the tray and transported it as quickly as she could, stifling the rattling of dishes by resting her elbows on her lap. "I don't have to tell you to eat it all," she said, her voice coming from somewhere calm and isolated behind the fear. "You better get well soon or we'll stop bringing you food."
"Liar," said Dassy around a mouthful of bread.
Zari managed a weak smile as she ducked out, and nearly broke into a run on her way to the kitchen. Leima was there, washing dishes and cleaning up scraps, as Zari had known she would be. "Has Dassy been talking strange to you?" she demanded.
"Strange?" Leima didn't turn around, or take her hands out of the soapy water. "She's hardly talked at all. She wasn't really awake, remember?"
"But when she did talk to you," Zari persisted. "Did she talk about birds and secrets and things being lost?"
"Is that what she's talking about to you?" asked Leima, disbelieving.
"Yes."
"She's probably making up a story," Leima diagnosed. "You know she does that."
"I asked her and she said she wasn't. And this didn't sound like a story, more like old holy books."
"Then she's reciting from them, maybe, I don't know!" Leima threw soapy hands toward the ceiling. "If you're so worried, call that doctor. He ought to be happy to stop by, if he doesn't hate you." She went back to the dishes, and Zari turned and left.
She realized even as a cold knot tied itself in her insides that it was a good idea. Temin had said they should call him if things got strange, after all. But with the kitchen help working on the dishes and everyone else in the field, there wasn't anyone to send. If she wanted his opinion, she would have to go herself. It took her only a few seconds to decide. "I'm going into town," she called back into the kitchen. "Tell Mama or Father if they ask." Then, as an afterthought, "But don't tell them about Dassy."
"Won't they wonder why the doctor's here?" called Leima.
Damned if she wasn't right, thought Zari. "Well, just tell them she's talking in her sleep," she compromised, wriggling into her top-coat. "I'll be back when I can."
The horse took her at a gallop, nearly too fast for her taste, but the urgency of the situation kept her from slowing down. As she tied the mare to a post at the edge of town, she realized that she didn't know where Temin's office was. She'd been into town recently enough to know that the old herb-medicine clinic had been converted into a cobbler's, but she had never seen the new office. Easily remedied, she thought, grimacing at the pun, and asked a passerby. The building he sent her to was the old location of the barbershop. That shop, she noticed, had moved into what had once been a milliner's; there was no evidence that the millinery shop had moved anywhere but out.
There was no identifying sign in the street yet, but there was a small plaque on the door that read T. SELVENITH - MEDICAL DOCTOR. Zari hesitated a moment before knocking, steeling herself for the ice she was sure would accompany Temin to the door. "Just a moment," he called from inside, and soon the door opened explosively inward. He stepped into the doorway, looked at Zari, and smiled. "Hello! What can I do for you?"
The ice inside her melted instantly, and she had to think for a moment to remember what she needed. "I need to talk to you about Dassy," she said, entering the office as he waved her inside. "Are you busy?"
"No," he said. "My last patient just left. What's happening with Dassy? Is she not getting better?"
"I"m not sure," said Zari. "Her fever's gone down, but she's acting like she's delirious."
"Delirious?" repeated Temin. "With no fever?"
"She's talking strange, really strange," Zari told him, the panic rising in her throat. "Like she's crazy, or seeing things."
"What kind of things?" asked Temin. "Animals? Colors?"
"A bird, over a city," said Zari, trying to remember. "She drew a picture of it. She said it was a bird with teeth of secrets. And something about 'shadow of the lost,' and silent fingers made of feathers . . . ?"
Temin was standing still, looking at her as if she were the one who had gone crazy. "She said that?"
"More or less," Zari confirmed. "It was just right in the middle of talking with her. She said some of it between two perfectly normal sentences. It scared me, doc--Temin. It really did."
"That's not your usual childhood fever-dream," said Temin. "I ought to see her, see if she does it again. Are you sure there was no fever?"
"She was bed-warm, no more," Zari said. "I hope I'm not making this into something it's not worth."
"If you're concerned, I believe you," Temin told her, picking up his bag. "You're much more sensible than I trust anyone else in your family to be. Let me get my horse and I'll be right behind you."
Copyright © 1999 by Katherine Foreman.