Cara watched them go with a kind of surprise. It was like shouting at a storm to go away and having the rain stop. Probably the dogs had just decided that dealing with her wasn’t worth the trouble. Still, the way it had happened let her feel a little magic. Momma bird was swimming along the side of the pond now, her back to Cara. When the sunbird reached the far edge and turned, she was grunting to herself, the danger of the dogs and the girl equally forgotten. Sunbirds weren’t smart—they weren’t even particularly nice—but Cara still felt good that she’d kept them from getting eaten.
She tried lying back down on the blue clover, but her lazy half sleep was gone now. She tried closing her eyes, then watching the stick moons and their shimmer of colors, but she could feel in her body that it wasn’t coming back. She waited a few minutes to be sure, then sat up with a sigh and gathered up her handheld and her lunch pack. The sun was high overhead, the heat a little bit oppressive now, and it had been a long time since breakfast. She popped open her lunch pack. The sandwich was simple and exactly the way she liked it: two slices of nut bread, each about as thick as her thumb, with a layer of cinnamon and molasses cream cheese between them. Her mother said that honey was better than molasses, but there weren’t any bees on Laconia. Cara had only ever seen pictures of them, and based on those, she didn’t like honey at all.
She took a bite, chewed, swallowed, took another. The baby sunbirds were jumping out of the water, running on the ground, and then plopping back into the pond, sputtering and angry. Momma bird ignored their little sighs of distress, and before long they stopped trying to get her attention and devoted themselves to swimming and searching for food. Earth birds didn’t look much like anything on Laconia, but Cara remembered something about how to treat them. How to share. When Momma bird turned toward her, Cara broke off a tiny bit of nut bread and tossed it out on the water. Momma bird struck at it like it was a threat and swallowed it greedily. Later on, she’d puke up little bits of it to feed her babies. Cara had watched them at the pond for months. She knew how sunbirds worked maybe better than anyone.
So when Momma bird made a noise—a wheeze with a click in the middle of it—Cara knew it was something new. The babies knew too. They gathered around Momma bird, chittering in agitation and slapping the water with their wings. Momma bird didn’t seem to notice them. Her head was wobbling on its long, thin neck. Her unfocused eyes seemed fierce and confused.
Cara put down her sandwich, a knot tightening in her chest. Something was wrong. Momma bird spun around in the water, then turned and spun the other way with so much violence that the nearest of her babies overturned.
“Hey,” Cara said. “Don’t do that. Don’t hurt your little ones.”
But unlike the dogs, Momma bird didn’t even seem to listen to her. She spread her wings, slapped the water twice, and hauled herself up into the air. Cara had the impression of half-closed eyes and a gaping green-toothed mouth, and then Momma bird sped up into the air, paused, and fell. She didn’t try to catch herself when she landed—just crashed into the clover.
“Momma bird?” Cara said, stepping closer. Her heart was tripping over itself. “Momma bird? What’s the matter?”
The babies were calling out now, one over the other in a wild frenzy. Momma bird lifted her head, trying to find them from their voices, but too disoriented to do more than wave her head around once, twice, and then set it down. Cara reached out, hesitated, then scooped up the bird’s warm, soft body. Momma bird hissed once, halfheartedly, and closed her angry black eyes.
Cara ran.
The pathway leading toward home was barely wider than an animal track, but Cara knew it like the hallway outside her room. It only seemed treacherous because she couldn’t wipe her tears back, since she needed both her hands to hold Momma bird. She was still three hundred meters from home when the bird shifted in her hands, arched its back, and made a deep coughing sound. After that, it was still. The thick sack-and-earth walls of her house came into sight—red and orange, with the rich-green panels of their solar array on top canted toward the sun—and Cara started shouting for her mother. She wanted to believe there was time. That Momma bird wasn’t dead.
She wanted to believe. But she also knew better.
Her house stood out just past the edge of the forest. It had the lumpy snakes-lying-on-top-of-each-other walls that all the first-wave colonial structures had. They curved around the central bulb garden, where they grew food. The windows stood open, screens letting in the air and keeping out the insect analogs. Even the little toolshed, where Dad kept the clippers he used to cut the vinegar weed and the cart to carry the stinking foliage away, had windows in it.
Cara’s feet slapped down the stone-paved path, her tears making the house, the sky, the trees blurred and unreal. Xan’s voice called out from somewhere nearby, and his friend Santiago answered back. She ignored them. The cool, dry air of the house felt like walking into a different world. Rays of light pressed in from the windows, catching motes of dust. For the first time since the pond, Cara’s steps faltered. Her legs burned, and the vast, oceanic sadness and horror stopped up her throat so that when her mother stepped into the room—taller than her father, dark-haired, fixing a necklace of resin and glass around her neck like she was getting ready for a party—all Cara could do was hold up the body of Momma bird. She couldn’t even ask for help.
Her mother led her to the kitchen and sat there with her and the dead bird’s body while Cara coughed out a version of what had happened between sobs. She knew it was muddled—the bird, the dogs, the babies, the bread—but she just had to get it all out of her and hope that her mother could make sense of it. And then make it make sense to her too.
Xan came in, his eyes wide and scared, and touched her back to comfort her. Her mother smiled him away again. Santiago ghosted into the doorway and out again, curious and trying to seem like he wasn’t. Tragedy drew attention.
Eventually, Cara’s words ran out and she sat there, feeling empty. Deflated. Defeated. Momma bird’s corpse on the table didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Death had robbed the bird of her opinions.
“Oh, babygirl,” Cara’s mother said. “I’m sorry.”
“It was me, wasn’t it?” Cara said. “I killed her, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t mean to. It was an accident. That’s all.”
“But it was in the book,” Cara said. “Feeding bread to birds. The lady in the park in the book did that. And they didn’t die. They were fine.”
Her mother took her hand. It was strange, but Cara knew if she’d been just a little younger—Xan’s age, even—her mother would have hugged her. But she was getting to be a big girl now, and hugs weren’t for big girls. Holding hands was.
“These aren’t birds, babygirl. We call them that because they’re sort of like birds. But real birds have feathers. And beaks—”