One To Seven

1.

It’s scenic.

Most places are, when you stop to smell the roses (see: 1). You move, happily—or perhaps more accurately—contently, towards your favorite park bench. It’s old, older than you know—it’s been around since you can remember, which is about the last decade of your life. You’ll have to discount that finals week though, where whatever was flowing through your veins were composed of more adrenaline and caffeine than blood, though sugar (the countless packets you dumped without a thought) might have played a small role.

You sit down, a bit away from the end of the bench (see: 2) 

It’s a bit chilly today, but not enough so to become uncomfortable. But it also means that you’ll probably not be able to stay for long.

From your vantage point, you can see a playground in all its detail. You remember playing there—all the slides and squeaking swings sounded so loud, but now it’s… almost small. You want to say something about how everything is insignificant in perspective, but the words catch on your throat.

In the massive tree that shades half of the playground—specifically the merry-go-round of death and the rightmost swing—a single magpie encroaches on its territory sardonically. It reminds you of a nursery rhyme you heard in passing (see: 3).

You came here for a reason, and you hope that reason will be realised. You know you have a job to do, but for now, you want to enjoy this moment. Despite the sorrow that clogs your throat, despite the… Well, nothing happened here. Nothing of value, just hours spent running, hoping. But this park, you think, could be compared to a relic of the past, a memento of all the things you might have lost and all the things you could have had. Once upon a time.

Still, you have a job to do. And as you hold your pen between your index and thumb, you get to work.

1. You’re not quite sure who came up with that saying, but you are impressed—linguistic genius isn’t something to talk about lightly. Sure, no one might remember your name. You think it’s admirable, starting what could only be called a fad, one that survived, when very few things ever manage to weather time.

 

1. You don’t sit at the very ends because you’ve learnt to know better: the split edges of the planks poke you through your trousers, and you’re worried that one day it’ll actually cut through the fabric. Besides, it’s a bit wet from the earlier drizzle.

 

1. —and when you manage to walk back home, rifling through the many papers you have scuttled around, you find the sticky note where you wrote it down:

“One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret,

Never to be told.”

You’re glad you aren’t a character in a short story, or forbid, a poem, because you might now be forced to live through those lines.

 

///

2.

 

You sit again, in your spot on the park bench. There’s a small pleasure, you think, in always having this place to yourself. For some reason, no one else ever sits here, but you don’t mind that. 

Thankfully, it’s warmer today than last time, and you lean against the wooden slats. You can still see the playground, and the sun that shines on your lap is the same sunshine that encourages children to run in the wind, limitations unshackling behind them. 

The magpie from before (see: 4) has a mate this time. The two of them prance around, and you wonder if they’d want a treat—maybe next time you’ll bring the stale bread at the back of the pantry.

You look out onto the park, and can’t help but feel a light pressure in your heart. But whenever you try to identify those bundles of nerves and veins and arteries, you are distracted by laughter. Distracted by joy (see: 5), and you don’t mind being misled. Your pen and pages can wait this time.

1. The bird’s coat (his, you decide, a bit uneducatedly but no less decisively) is black and white. Eurasian magpies, you think a bit stupidly—they certainly aren’t blue and green like the oriental branch. You guess a part of you was hoping to see the Californian yellow-billed magpie.

 

1. —and maybe last time you were a bit too harsh, this place holds happy memories too, and even if those were in the past, it didn’t matter, those moments of happiness still happened—

 

///

 

This time, you hear the magpies before you even see them. You don’t even get a chance to sit down before the air is cut by the screeches of new life. In that same tree there lies a nest, held together by dead grass and wishes. That dear magpie couple (see: 6) has found another way to scam parkgoers—this time, through the coercive cries of their children. In their clutch lies 5 eggs, but two of them seem to have already hatched.

The feathers of the two baby birds (girls, they must be, and you want to choose fitting names for them one day) are puffed out, unformed. The distinct shape must come from age. You wonder if all the eggs will hatch, and if all the hatchlings will look so similar. You hope not: you want to trace each of their stances, each of their identities. You want to tell them apart, like you can tell the two parent birds apart (see: 7).

You hope you can, with time.

1. You go home later and search it up; magpies do form mating pairs, and you think it’s funny that the only two magpies in the park gravitated towards each other. Was it fate? Or proximity?

 

1. The first magpie you saw is larger than his mate, who has a nick on her beak. The male bird has a straighter coat, with more white, and the female has slightly longer and darker feathers that let her disappear into the branches of that great tree they call home.

 

///

4.

 

The fortunate magpie couple—able to reproduce and subject the rest of the park to news of their success—seem to smirk with the trophies of another battle won, as they feed each eager mouth. One of the birds (see: 8) sits on the rim of the nest, as if daring the wind. You don’t know if he’ll survive past fledging. 

You forgot to note this last time, but the patterns on the eggs were beautiful: splashes of blue blues and black specks covered the whole shell. The few coos of earlier have evolved to the screams of a whole clutch, hatched and hungry. 

You roll your pen between your fingers again. There are other things to notice and other things to write about than magpies (see: 9). You still need to finish the story that you planned to write—deadlines to meet, people to meet, food to eat. Money doesn’t grow on trees, or magic on sidewalks.

 

1. One of the latter that hatched is probably male, and to your eyes, looks like a David or maybe a Michael.

 

1. You don’t like looking back in your notebook, filled with ponderings of birds, instead of the story that should have been taking form. Still, you feel like it is your job, to be a Boswell to these birds, chronicling their day-to-day lives. Maybe you’ve grown too fond of Ava, Lucy, Noah and Simmon. You would’ve given the parent birds names too, but you were worried that the pair might have pecked your eyes out. You also notice with a bittersweet feeling that Michael didn’t make it.

 

///

 

Or maybe it does. There’s a silver coin, tucked into the crack of one of the planks of wood that you’ve been sitting on. You don’t remember the coin (see: 10) being there yesterday. And then you see the shining eyes of the father magpie, your first companion, sitting on the other end of the bench. You would start laughing, but that might scare the bird away. 

Still, you decide to pocket the change. Wealth comes in increments, you say, and this is only the beginning. You think that the bird might have actually taken a liking to you. So, while you don’t manage to write anything resembling English, you sketch the magpie, talons clawing onto the seat, looking over his home.

 A picture is worth a thousand words anyway. You think it’s all in a good day’s work. 

 

1.  20 cents, you suppose it’s likely, but it could easily be 50. It might be worth it to try to dig it out, just to check.

 

///

 

You’re surprised it took that long. Magpies, after all, were known for their thieving nature. So it shouldn’t have been unexpected, when you see a dazzling gold necklace in the cradle of the mother bird’s mouth. It’s simple. But even from a distance, as the great magpie glides through the trees, you can see its beauty. She stashes it in her nest—now worn by time and an unruly clutch. Still, the necklace dangles out, and you wonder if you would be able to climb up and snatch it. Steal it, and call it your own.

Last time, you managed to walk away with some pocket change. Maybe this time, you could go home with something more.

Or, at the very least, the tale of scaling the branches of a looming tree, avoiding the prickly bark and any and every other obstacle (see: 11) that separates you and your deserved reward. It would go something like this (see: 12):

‘The situation was a bit comical, if I was being honest. A giant tree separated me from my treasure, the one thing that I’ve wanted for as long as I could want anything. My eyes focussed on that chain; everything else was blurry and meaningless.

It shadowed over me, daring me. I was nothing, an insignificant speck in the midst of something bigger. There was no one to stay by my side, but solitude was something I accepted when I went out on this journey. This was the way it always had to be, even if the harsh surface of the tree would dig into my knuckles, even if wood stuck under the softness of my nailbeds. A reward, an oasis, so close and yet still out of reach. And I reached and reached; nothing very worth doing was easy, but this I knew. I took it but still, there was such a long way left to go. 

The summit wasn’t the end. I wished it was, with a feverish desperation. But from that peak, the one that I stood on, all that I could see was how I was one false step away from tumbling down, like a leaf left to twirl in the wind. My next step could easily be my last step. And yet—’

—at that last line, your pen slips from your fingers, the ink from the ballpoint painting an arc in the sky. It clatters down, and the tip of the pen points towards a dismayed woman sitting near the playground, twisting and turning. Looking for something. Looking for her necklace.

1.  And ignoring the looks that the kids from the playground would logically be giving you while thinking, ‘is this the village idiot?’.

 

1.  You’re pretty rusty, but that’s what editing and drafting is for, right?

 

///

7.

 

You guess that the reason you felt so drawn to this family of birds might be in part because you are a magpie, at least in the metaphorical sense. The story that you scribbled out, the adventure of how you managed to get that necklace back, was less of a piece of fiction and more of a thought experiment. And an exploration of how you would theoretically commit your theft, even if it seemed a bit too clear on paper.

Life, however, isn’t so clean-cut—you manage to hobble away, somewhat still in one piece. Your fall—your getaway, in your story, which will later be dramatised to be a lot smoother and intentional than it actually was—leaves you with scraped knees and ripped trousers.

The woman (see: 13), who had been so distressed before, notices your approach before you’re fully conscious that you’ve been limping in her direction. She springs up, and when she sees her necklace, grasped like an offering, her face breaks into a heavily relieved smile.

You hold out the necklace, uncomfortable with her gratitude and attention. There isn’t much of a chance that’ll you be able to run away with the jewellery now anyway.

She turns to you with her chain secured around her neck again. She asks how you found it, thanking you with every other breath, inviting you to eat with her, but you can really only focus on the birds circling the trees. Watching. Weighing everything you’ve done, and everything you could do.

You tell her that you found it in the bushes, and the birds continue singing, faintly, with an approving tone. This is their secret, and it is now yours too. 

(You palm the charm that fell off, your personal keepsafe, through the fabric of your clothes).

 

1.   Whose name, you later learn, is Raven. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and the world loves its coincidences.