Stiller Than the Snow
The snow stopped falling while Emre was pulling on his boots. He pushed the door open and stepped into the quiet. The lamps along the street hung like small warm moons. His breath went up in little clouds. Somewhere above him, something went tik. Tik. Tik. Emre looked up. On the lamp post sat a bird no bigger than his mitten, grey, with a white chin. It was tapping the ice with its beak. Tik. Tik. Tik.
Emre had a crust of bread in his pocket from supper. He broke it into crumbs and laid them on his flat palm. "Here," he said. "Here, bird." The bird did not come. Emre took one step closer, and the bird flew up to the roof. Tik, went its beak on the frozen gutter. Emre hurried along the fence after it. The snow squeaked under his boots, loud as a door. The bird went further away.
So Emre sat down on the step instead. He rested his hand on his knee, palm up, crumbs in the middle. "Stay still, Emre," he said. "Stiller than the snow." The bird came back to the lamp post above him. Tik. Tik. It looked at him with one eye, then turned its head and looked with the other. Emre's nose itched. He let it itch. Nothing in the whole street moved except that small grey beak.
Sitting still turned out to be full of things. Emre counted the windows with steam on them. Six. He watched one icicle let go of one drop, and then another. He felt snow settle on his wool sleeve without melting. He heard a dog shake itself somewhere behind a gate. He heard his own heart, slow and warm inside his coat. And above all of it, patient as a clock, tik, tik, tik.
The bird hopped down to the top of the fence. Emre did not move his hand. The bird hopped along the fence, one, two, three, close enough now that Emre could see its feet, thin as twigs, pink against the snow. It tapped the fence rail. Tik. Then it stopped and watched him for a long time. Emre breathed out slowly, the way you breathe on a cold window to make it cloudy.
His arm began to ache. He wanted to shake it, hard, the way you shake a cold hand. Instead he lowered it the slowest way he knew, slower than the icicle dripping, slower than the snow coming down. The bird stayed. "Stay still, Emre," he whispered. "Stiller than the snow." The lamp above him hummed. His fingers held their shape around the crumbs, and the crumbs sat there like three small stones.
Then the bird dropped off the fence and landed on his thumb. Emre felt almost nothing. A leaf would have been heavier. He felt tiny feet take hold of him, tight and sure, and he felt the smallest tug as the beak went tik against his palm. One crumb gone. Then another. Emre did not laugh, and he did not move. He only watched, from very close, a grey chest going in and out.
When the crumbs were finished, the bird did not fly away. It shuffled into the warm middle of his hand and puffed itself round, until it looked like a small grey snowball with a chin. Its feet were still curled around his finger. Snow began again, soft, falling slantwise through the lamplight. Emre carried his hand against his coat and went up the step, slower than slow. "Stay still, Emre," he said. "Stiller than the snow."
He sat in the open doorway with a blanket over his knees and his hand held out flat in the lamplight. The village went quiet under its new snow. The icicle let go of one more drop. The bird held on to his finger and tucked its beak into its feathers, and did not tap, and did not hurry. Emre's eyes grew heavy. The snow came down. The little feet held his hand all the way to sleep.
