FIN :: Five :: Urbane Magpie

namedurbane caprice magpie
agedforty one
locateddistrict five
presentedfemale
orientatedheterosexual
biography

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There was a time when I could look in my mirror and still call myself a dove.

My skin was not so pale, then, even though now I wear my feathers darker. Now, I am a marble sculpture, both in colour and composure. I have practiced the art of responding to peers, acquaintances, strangers,fledglings without showing so much as a flinch. No matter if they bring me good tidings or bad, my pale, softly curving lips stay still as Death itself, my cold, dark eyes unyielding. Even as the livelihood, good fortune and sturdiness that make up my nest tumble from the branches my husband and I wove for ourselves, I barely flinch. No longer a dove, no. Silent as a cadaver, but mournful as the vultures that circle it from afar.

Though my hair has always been black as the other Magpies, and their namesakes, there was a time when it accentuated the blush on my high cheekbones, and curved elegantly around my long, hangman's neck. That was when I could still be certain my husband, Braxton Basil Tarrety (success story of District Five, social climber, often seen exchanging friendly words with Peacekeepers, Victors, men and women of high authority, who chose a nineteen year old Magpie as his bride, despite their families reputation despite the fact that everyone knew that taking one Magpie was for sorrow, not for eternal happiness)

[/i] still truly loved me, despite my quirks and obsessions. I'm sure he loved me less when my hatchlings developed their own quirk obsessions, too.

Out of all my young chicks, Kirk is the one who looks most like me. He took my pointed chin, smooth profile, bottomless eyes, and my madness, too. Since the first time I returned home and found him at my mirror, skinny legs swamped in stockings, bony ankles peering cautiously over red patent leather, I knew this boy would be the child that ultimately pushed my husband away.[/i] And so it was, when Kirk wandered home from my sisters' home, still with the remnants of make-up on his eyes and giggles on his lips, Braxton finally decided that enough was enough. "Why couldn't he just have turned out normal like his brother? What did you do to him to make him that way? What did I do to deserve it?" His face was so different to mine, with only Mery taking his duckling-blonde hair rather than my crow's-omen-black. He had come to ignore the children he considered mine - Justice was invisible around him, just like she desired, and I know he would have loved beautiful Celeste if it weren't for her obsession with silver trinkets. That is what infuriated me the most - and still does now - that he thought he could claim posession of some of our children and disregard, almost illegitimise - the less desirable others.[/i] When people ask me concerning Elodie "is she really yours?" it is all I can do to smile courteously and say "yes, Elodie is my daughter." My perfect, human daughter. Mine.

Few things ever get me so frustrated as being questioned like that. The suspicions of others have never been kind, always speculating over my children and my husband and everything surround us. There is an old superstition which says that magpies are bad luck to salute, but I would never give in to the stupid, irrational fears of others. Besides, only the first Magpie is sorrowful, and the rest bring different tidings. My sisters used to indulge in this worry-fogged limelight that the citizens of District Five gave us. While I was always the sensible older sister, ever since our mother died and it was up to me to take care of my brood, they joked around, humouring the suspicions of other people. Always stupid, never serious, they deserved everything they got. Or, at least, they deserved everything I gave them.

It was inevitable, what happened to Rosa and Cissy, really. Both single and childless, while I struggled to keep seven little chicks happy and normal without the help of my magician's act of a husband, they entertained their fancies and finally found who they were sure they wanted to spend the rest of their life with. Rosalind confided in me first, a flurry of blushing cheeks and bright eyes. How she'd found someone tall, dark and handsome.[/i] I thought then of telling her that hunters were tall and dark, too, and she mustn't let her songbird heart get ensnared in a cage of emotion, but I knew she wouldn't listen. While I was obedient, quite and patient, Rosalind had always been wild and reckless. When mother would ask me to help her as a child, I would come willingly and without protest. Rosalind would purposefully burn her fingers on the stove, to avoid having to do what she was told.

Narcissa came afterwards, tentative as always. She looked exactly like Mother, but younger and less haggard by stress and age. Unlike Rosa, Cissy always held back from what was going on. I used to think that I could coax her into helping me do what was necessary around the house, with kind words and promises that no harm would befall her, but she never trusted me. It angers me still, when I try to help a wounded soul and they return the favour with distrust and fear. Isn't being a mother enough to diffuse the caution? I am a figurehead of responsibility and love, my peacock feathers are my authority, and I try to display them wherever I walk. But no, perhaps it was because of what happened after both my younger, more beautiful, better loved siblings had confided in me that brought on the stormy shield other people place around me.

I told neither of my sisters that the men they claimed to love were just one man. Perhaps I should have, though I don't regret it now - regretting past actions is like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs as you wander out into the forest. You try to tell yourself that it's worth it, that you won't get yourself lost, but holding onto something as insubstantial as birdfood only merits panic and a disrupted dependence on other people, to forgive you for what you've done and show you the way home themselves. Instead, I do what I need do and never look back. The forest may be full of terrors, but they stay at bay as long as you keep pushing forwards, with your own confidence, and do not rely on an impermanent trail to take you home again.

As both played on their fancies of love, my jealousy increased. The subject of their desire was notorious in the District for his wandering hands and lust for everchanging affairs. He was not the sort of man who settled down for life. Like I thought Braxton would. However, I feared that permanence was not what either of my sisters wanted. If they were happy with their brief encounters, they would never feel how I felt then, and now, with my own husband. My jealousy sparked again, and my quick mind gave me an easy way of eliminating the shared source of pleasure from their lives.

Peacekeepers are always close on hand in a District such as ours, where the expanse of factories and winding streets make crime and disruptions of peace simple and frequent. I hurried out one morning, past the twins' house where my children enjoyed spending time. Much more than at their own home, with their own, sorrowful, hate-filled mother. I found some authority in the District Square, and reported the suspicious actions of the man who my sisters so loved. I knew then, as I still know now, that the brutal instincts of piggish Peacekeepers lead them to treat every offence as a capital crime, and knew that I didn't have to lie to any extreme for them to take the man away. And I certainly knew that what came next would be a fully-fledged investigation into everyone the convicted man was acquainted with, including my sisters, and the likely conviction of them, as well, for not stopping his illicit behaviour. It would have been taking down three birds with one stone, removing from my children their escape, and returning them in full trust to my own nest - my own children who I needed to need me - and removing the man that began my problems, as well.


But then my tricky, youngest daughter got herself involved.

Halle Samara, as she was named, was always more of a listener than a talker. She was the quietest of us songbirds, with her wide eyes and knowing lips always slightly parted, as if everything she saw and heard amazed her. Oh, but when she saw me running to the Peacekeepers, she sang. Her little beak opened and told my sisters to run, run away Aunts, before you're both hunted down. And run they did, when the authorities knocked at my door instead of theirs, and asked me why the witnesses I had reported weren't at their place of residence, and questioned me instead. And I knew I couldn't let my little one sing anymore.

Halle had always liked to wander off, and listen to the little birds singing in the forests around our home. Particularly after Rosa and Cissy had flown the nest, gone off into the wide world in search of a less threatening dominant power, Halle and the others found different ways to escape me. Which only made it all the more easy fr me to catch Halle alone and make sure she never sang again. I dressed all in black, as is still customary for me, like I was already morning the poor sweet voice of my youngest daughter. Approaching her slowly as she spun and hummed to herself, with a chord of barbed wire wrapped around my knuckles, I barely felt the pain as a hatred for the child washed over me. Halle came at a time when I thought I could have no more children. Two years younger than Celeste and Elodie, finding out I was pregnant again was not only a shock, but a panic-inducer. Braxton was barely ever at home, and the rumours that made a racket about my head as I walked through town would only increase. Only now, instead of questions of "is she really yours?" they would ask each other "is she really his?"

Maybe I held the wire across her throat longer than I should have. A bird without its song is even more powerless than a bird with broken wings, who can still cry for help, and I believe in a little more than an eye for an eye. As Halle had removed the chance of any completion of my revenge on Rosalind and Narcissa for being so much better loved than I, I made sure she could never stop me again. I soothed her as she struggled, and when she finally resigned from fighting back I washed her wounded neck and took her home, again. Because even like then, in the dakrest moments of my existence, a mother bird must care for her chicks.[/size][/blockquote][/blockquote][/justify]