This chapter contains the following trigger warnings:

Injured animal
Light descriptions of gore

“Dad–” Mikhail almost slid past his father’s room, “Ave found a bird.”

Machiavelli looked up from the novel in his hands. “Those tend to be outside.”

Mikhail shook his head, his dark ginger hair wagging over his eyes. “It’s almost dead. Wing’s all tattered and junk. It was in the backyard. What do we do?”

At this, Machiavelli stood up, sliding a bookmark into place, “We’ll get your sister, and you’ll get her to wash her hands. Dead birds can make people sick. I’ll deal with it.”

Mikhail gave a quick nod, and Machiavelli patted his shoulder when he passed by him. The two ran down the stairs, Mikhail gripping onto the rail as he went. He was barely 15, and quite proud of this fact. Already a smattering of facial hair had mixed in with his acne. Driving a car was a dream hidden behind the corner, but for now Mikhail had to watch over his little sister playing outside in the untamed space known as their backyard. 

Machiavelli pushed open the door and stepped into the early October air. His car and several other flattened patches yielded quickly to the wilderness. The withering grasses still sprung high, and old trees stood like soldiers at attention, dripping amber leaves and shiny acorns onto the ground below. Several meters away, hunched underneath a half-barren tree, was Ave. Someone could’ve mistaken her for a crouching fawn; short and stout at 9, dressed in her favorite fluffy brown coat with a cream scarf. Her dirty black hair fell over her face. It almost touched the object of her focus: a trembling bird, dark and open-mouthed.

“Ave, oh…” Machiavelli ran up to her, ignoring how his breath came out in visible plumes. Ave looked up, eyes glistening. Mikhail hung back.

“Hand me that, okay? I’ll take care of it.” Machiavelli said.

Ave shook her head and clutched the bird close. The bird blinked, sputtering, croaking out a caw. A crow. Hard to tell when it appeared as though a cat or other animal had torn its wing and tail to ribbons of black feathers and off-white bone. Hard to tell after the growing months of indoor complacency.

“Why not?” Machiavelli sat down next to her.

“...You’ll kill him.” Ave said, turning away from him.

Machiavelli tried to drown the subtle pain in such words. “Darling, what makes you think that?”

Ave didn’t speak for a few minutes. Warm tears built up in her eyes as she cradled the poor bird, which nestled into the crook of her elbow.

“Birds can be full of things that make you sick,” Machiavelli said slowly, “Especially if they’re hurt like this little guy is. I’ll fix it–him, if you give him to me.”

“You’ll kill him.” Ave responded.

“I won’t. I’ll patch up his wing, and we can call the animal clinic to come pick him up. And nobody will get sick, and he’ll be back to flying around again in a week or two.”

Ave sniffled. “What if you get sick from him?”

“I won’t. Adults don’t get sick as easily as kids do.” Machiavelli patted Ave’s shoulder, and she leaned into the touch. The tears finally fell, leaving spots of darkness on her coat. A little fawn. Machiavelli hugged his daughter’s side, letting her use him as support.

“And what if they can’t fix him? What if he can’t fly?” she asked quietly. Mikhail kicked a rock somewhere nearby, listening in, not daring to add anything.

“Then…” Machiavelli stretched the word out, tilting his head as if the slight angle would let his words tumble out easier. “He’ll be a walking crow. Or at the very least, a very loved and happy crow. They’ll give him all sorts of peanuts and seeds and things to play with.”

Ave sniffled again.

“You’ll get to see him, whatever happens. I’ll make sure of it,” her father said.

With a light nod, Ave passed the crow to Machiavelli’s hand. He released his other hand from her back, cupping the bird gently in both palms. It–he, now, Machiavelli supposed–shook in his hands, scraping his still-feathered wing along the man’s fingers. The other wing twitched. Matted blood stretched between the bones and feathers. The bird’s legs kicked and scratched as he tried to roll around. Machiavelli clamped one hand as softly as he could over the bird’s body. 

“Ave,” he said, “go with your brother to wash your hands, then go get a box from the storage closet. Okay? Try to get a big one with a lid, like a shoe box. I’ll follow you inside.”

“Okay,” Ave took a nervous glance at the crow before stumbling through the pine needles and towards Mikhail. The two exchanged words, just out of earshot of their father. 

Machiavelli stood up, leaning on the tree with his elbows. Each careful movement cracked an acorn or crunched a leaf underfoot. The crow stirred every now and then. His captor watched the two kids clamber inside, taking off their boots and racing up the stairs. The house yawned to greet them, their familiar forms pressing into each creaking step. Machiavelli followed soon after.

A rag usually hooked around the oven door became the bird’s new bedding. Slowly, the rays of sunlight faded from the kitchen window. Machiavelli flicked the overhead lights on. The rumble of pipes spread through the building as Mikhail and Ave washed their hands upstairs. Their father looked up towards the ceiling, as if doing so would reveal their location to him. The bird turned over and over on the rag. A childish thought bled into Machiavelli’s mind–he wanted to pet the bird, run his hand over him until he calmed down. But birds were not cats, and birds could make you sick. And besides, wouldn’t the scared thing bite, peck, screech? He wanted silence. Machiavelli gingerly lifted a corner of the rag and put it over the crow like a blanket before washing his hands thoroughly under the kitchen faucet. 

Ave came tumbling over, holding a shoe box in front of her. She sweated slightly, still in her coat despite the warmer indoor temperatures. Mikhail again hung back, merely a scruffy shadow resting against the wall between the kitchen and the living room. His hazel eyes, so painfully like his mother’s, gleamed when he faced the kitchen. Machiavelli looked at him with a gentle smile, but said nothing. Mikhail turned away.

“I got it,” Ave mumbled at last.

“Great. Thank you. Can you get a pen from the cup? One of the ‘twisty’ ones, as you call them.” Machiavelli pointed to a mug in the corner, nearly overflowing with pens, pencils, and markers. Sticky notes littered the space around it. Those scribbles brought purpose to the mess.

Ave reached over and pulled out a pen fitting her father’s description. Sleek, black, probably had some brand printed on the side at one point. She offered it to Machiavelli, peering over his hands to look at the crow. He tilted his head at her, as if trying to look at her too. 

“No, I don’t need it,” Machiavelli said, “I need you to use it to poke holes in the box for air before we put our friend in. We wouldn’t want to do that while he’s already in the box, right?”

“Right,” Ave shuddered at the thought of the pen finding a new home in the bird’s heart, like the weakness of a vampire. Mikhail talked too much about monsters now. She tightened her fist around the pen, and pushed the box back in front of herself.

Cardboard yielded to each stab, each puncture vaguely round in shape. Ave shook the whole time, raising the pen over her head like she’d seen in her brother’s movies. She lost count of the number of swings when tears started falling down her cheeks again. Her father placed a hand around one of her wrists.

“That’s enough,” he said. Ave had made an imitation of a dried lotus pod out of a cardboard box.

Ave stepped back. Words bubbled at her lips, anger and fear and sadness rising like vomit in her throat. Maybe vomit was rising in her throat. She choked it down. The crow was okay. The crow had a torn wing and tail. The crow would get all the peanuts and seeds and toys he wanted. Right? 

“Did all that feel good?” her father asked in a quiet voice.

Ave still clutched the pen tight. Tears fell again. “Mm.”

“It’s okay,” Machiavelli rubbed her shoulder, a familiar motion, “It’s okay to be angry, or however you feel. But it’s better to do all that–” he imitated Ave’s swings with his free hand, “to a box instead of a person. Do you understand?”

“Are you upset?” Ave said.

“No. No, Ave, dear…” her father crouched down to meet her gaze, folding like a camping chair, “Like I said, it’s better to get all those feelings out on something that isn’t a person, or a bird, or any other animal for that matter. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Machiavelli gave her shoulder a firm pat and resumed his towering stance. His hair, still near-black like hers, grazed the back of his neck as he moved. Two hands swept up the crow and his blanket. A faint heartbeat came back to life, and an attempt at a caw made Ave perk up despite her tears. 

“Hello,” she said as Machiavelli placed the bird in the box.

“Mikhail,” said her father, peering into the darkness, “can you use the computer to find the number of the nearest rehabilitators?”

Mikhail had been staring into nothingness. He shook himself upright at his name. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go do that.”

“Thank you.”

The boy wandered back upstairs, his path communicated to his father and sister by the noise of flicked switches and footsteps that traveled from wood to carpet. The house yawned again, air flowing swiftly through its ventilator veins, heartbeats beginning to thump out of sync across its occupants.