The Blue Glass Bird
Frost had stiffened Juno's mittens until the wool felt like bark. She pressed them against her cheeks, then went back to stacking logs beside the woodshed. Mo waited on the packed snow next to her, his shell dusted white, a red scarf wound twice around his neck. The lamps along the lane were just coming on, one by one. Snow fell slow and fat, the kind that muffles boots and voices. Juno lifted the last log from the pile. Something small rolled out after it and landed softly in the drift. It was blue. It was glass. It was a little bird no bigger than her thumb.
Juno picked it up and brushed it clean with her thumb. The glass was so cold it stung through the wool. She knew this bird. Six of them hung under the big lantern at the bridge, turning whenever the wind came up the river: red, green, two amber, one white, one blue. The blue hook had been empty since the first snow. She had looked at that empty hook all week and wondered. Mo stretched his neck out and looked at the bird for a long moment. Then he pulled his head back a little into his scarf.
"I knocked it down," Mo said. He had climbed the snowbank by the bridge to watch the moon sitting in the black water. His shell had bumped the lantern post, just gently. The blue bird had slipped off its hook and dropped into the snow without a sound. He had carried it to the woodpile and pushed it in deep, hoping winter would cover it up. Juno's ears went hot under her hat. She looked at the glass bird, then at Mo's old patient face with snow on it. She closed her fingers around the bird. "Come on," she said. "It isn't far."
She tucked the bird into the fold of Mo's scarf so he could see it the whole way. Then she walked beside him, slow as he was slow, down the lane past the bakery window. Warm air leaned out of that window and touched her face, and then the cold took her face back. Her nose ached. Her toes thumped in her boots. The bird rode along in the red wool, catching bits of lamplight. "Breathe on it. Cold things take time," Juno said, to the bird or to Mo or to nobody. Mo made a low sound, agreeing.
The bridge lantern was lit and swinging a little. Five glass birds turned under it, throwing small coloured shadows onto the snow. The river moved slow and dark below, with ice growing out from both banks like lace. Juno took the blue bird out of Mo's scarf and found its wire loop. The loop had been squeezed shut when it fell, and now it was frozen stiff. She pushed at it with her mitten. Nothing. She pulled her mitten off and pushed with her bare thumb until her thumb turned white at the tip. The wire did not move at all.
Juno sat down on the bridge step. She cupped the bird in both bare hands and held it against her mouth and breathed on it, long and slow, the way you warm a window to see through. Mo settled beside her, blocking the wind with his shell. "Breathe on it. Cold things take time," she said. Her breath went out in clouds. She counted the snowflakes landing on Mo's head until she lost count. Her hands began to sting, then to ache, then to go warm around the glass. When she opened the wire loop with her thumbnail, it bent easily, like a soft thing.
The hook was higher than her reach. Juno and Mo pushed snow into a heap at the foot of the lantern post, scooping with her mittens and the flat front of his shell, packing it down hard with her boots. She climbed it carefully. The lantern's heat touched her cheek like a hand. She slid the blue bird onto its empty hook and closed the wire again. Six birds turned under the light now, and the blue one sent a small blue shadow down onto Mo's back. He watched it move there and did not say anything, and neither did she.
They went home the long slow way, Juno's hand resting on the cool ridge of Mo's shell. Behind them the lantern grew small and the six birds kept turning. "Breathe on it. Cold things take time," Juno said, and yawned so wide it hurt. Inside, she put her boots by the stove and lay down under two blankets with Mo warm against her side, his scarf still on. The window showed the lane filling in. Snow came down and settled into their footprints, and settled on the woodpile, and settled on the quiet bridge, until everything outside was smooth and soft and white.
