Also known as Hollow Born Day, Capture Day, or First Martyr's Day. Traditionally taking place the morning of the Vagabond Month, Murder the Wren Day commemorates the first killing of the storm bird by the North Hestia children. Participants carry wooden boxes under their arms, sing the executor's chords, chase trails through a torn rain. They wear feathers around their necks and masks of wet skin to keep the skies from breaking them.
At the abandoned Clancy House their boxes are offered as burial plots for the storm to come. Prayers are provided to keep the bones of the bird from burning the boxes from within. A child may plea for a clear victory or costless season. They may recite the names of the Clancy's before them and a list of the clouds they have captured or killed.
The holiday is opposed by those who wish to overrun the town, command the wind, wreck at the nest until the children are naked and aching to be anonymous in the storm again.
The herd of them stayed a half sun ahead of us. The older ones were there, Carver, McInnis, Cota, and others. When they walled together the wind was warm blooded and whispering behind us. When I knocked down the nest they threw the seeds around me.
We followed the fence until the houses fell. Cota was the weakest, a crease they came to trust. Jillison held a box and so did McInnis and Carver and me. The strongest ones carried poles decorated with ribbons and wreaths, and positioned them where the wren would sleep. Some wore suits of straw and bricks over their eyes.
I held my box until I was one-armed in the dark. It hurt to hold it there. Jillison stopped and showed me how to blindfold my body in two places at once, he took off his clothes to keep the shadows warm and sharpened his hands so the smaller ones would stay away.
They were a herd, but they were never completely together. Scavengers came and were given blank skin and bare names. A child would push his fingers through the air to tell them when to walk and when to stop. Jillison and I stayed off to the sides and said little.
The strongest ones had to haul the sky in front. The rest of them held their handles and stood and looked. If the eyes of the wren were red and white, they would whip the pole and pierce it there.
When we reached the town they wrote the animals laws on their hands. They were the last words of the wren before, a marytrology recited to reach the nest again. Every prayer was target pratice and then the past would catch back up again.
There were other warnings I could have worn for them. I tore my box in two and hung the halves around my neck. I told them the wren wasn't what they thought, I said there was hair and skin hidden inside it. My eyes were wide and egg white. Jillison tried to talk to them and his lips started to sting.
Cota was first. He stood in the corner of the road, skeleton out, open handed. Even his hidden teeth were showing. He told them they could reach the other world hunting animals like this. His mouth mottled, off-color, molding over. Jillison looked at me and I knew he was thinking the same thing. Every herd has a black hole they've chose to believe in.
The shortest of them gathered around Cota and loaded the boxes around his legs. The rest formed circles around them. Their heads were pulled back, eyes and lips pointed up. I could see Jillison's outsides inflating and deflating. His nervous system was losing size of him.
What started as sinews soon was sharper than a storm. A clattering of kill chords and children's chants. Their faces were fake white, shining with sweat, scarred open by scales and overtones. Cota kept the sound growing. I watched one sun short circuit and then another and then another. Jillison reached in his pocket and they were pale black in there too.
The huntings songs were shuddering through them. I tried to cover my ears. Jillison guarded a rope in the dirt and dug it around us.
When they struck the matches, Cota stayed in place. The black air was building a picture in him. Jillison's rope kept me there, crouched over, knotted down. I tried to run and I couldn't.
I couldn't move. My pulse was pulled away from me. There was an erasure where my muscles had been.
The boxes didn't burn slow, smoke rose from them like snakes growing legs. The herd threw the wood closer. The fire was past Cota's knees, his face was a fautline of forgotten pieces. The smell was charred and leather and I couldn't come closer. Jillison tightened the rope and put me on the other side for good.
If they left him as cinders then I knew the wren had come. It was the only way they could have taken the new air away. If the grass was ash and gray then they had done what it had asked. Only the wren could kill a call that loud.
A solstice would pass, the suns would start over, the last of the shivering would understand where they had been. The wren would find fresh sticks to stack over the body. A new nest would be built and a new brood would hatch. The herd would find another leader and bring them there again. It was an animal law the wren made them write on their hands, a trap to keep every one of their prayers as empty as it planned.
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