COUSIN GEOFF

“Did anyone find it unusual that your aunt was…”

“A Furby?”

“…so small?”

Cousin Geoff and I looked at each other. We were both clutching sodas.

“Usually nobody mentions that,” said Cousin Geoff uncomfortably.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

We each looked into the middle distance, not quite at but slightly next to the other. I looked over his shoulder out the kitchen window, into the garden. He looked over my shoulder at the piano, but behind the piano, on the wall, hung a photograph of the aunt in question, so this didn’t help.

Poor Cousin Geoff. He definitely got the worse deal.

“So,” I said, as sweat beaded on the can of soda and my hands, and I nervously laughed without saying anything further and popped the tab and slurped.

Cousin Geoff did the same, gulping nervously and snorting when his can flowed over and fizz got in his nose.

“Did Aunt Bijou, er, have any, er, kids?” I asked finally.

“Not that I know of,” said Cousin Geoff.

“Oh,” I said. “I see.”

“But if she did, they would have been Furbies, too. Most likely.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Right.”

We stood awkwardly. In silence. Despite being called cousin, Geoff wasn’t my relative at all—otherwise Bijou would have been my aunt as well. I had married Geoff’s sister, Katie, who now went by her Japanese name: Katei. Katie, or Katei, was transnational—that is, she had been born American like the rest of us but identified as Japanese. Her gender was female. Her sexuality was ninja.

I, meanwhile, was a male lesbian… and Cousin Geoff was, sexually, a pineapple. We were a whole family of sexual deviants.

“Do you think your sister will be home soon?” I asked Cousin Geoff.

Geoff let out his breath heavily, like he had been filled up and was now deflating. “I hope so,” he said. “Do you think your wife will be home soon?”

“I hope so,” I said. “I think they’ll probably get home about the same time.”

Cousin Geoff nodded solemnly and finished his soda. He was looking at the floor, down at his sock feet. “Do you want me to tell you about… Aunt Bijou?” he asked finally, looking up.

I gulped, struggled to swallow, gulped again. Then, “Yes,” I croaked.

“Ok,” said Cousin Geoff. “It was like this.”

AUNT BIJOU’S BIRDCAGE

Aunt Bijou had a birdcage, it was approximately twelve inches high and nine inches wide, and made of wood and shaped like a tulip bulb. It hung from the doorframe, here, by the yard, but every door in the house had a hook, because the birdcage was transportable.

Aunt Bijou made the birdcage, she collected the twigs herself. She only collected the very finest twigs, and she had a rule that each twig had to come from a different tree—but always the same type of tree. Then she shaved the twigs with her claws, and sanded them with her beak. So what Aunt Bijou made was a piece of art.

It was a very spindly, delicate cage, but a very tasteful, feminine cage—and at the front of the little tulip-bulb–shaped contraption was a swinging door. The door had proper hinges and could open side to side or top to bottom… or even bottom to top, because there were hinges on all four sides, but only two of them were ever in use.

Inside were a few personal artifacts, including a whistle, a broken eggshell, and a comb, along with a tea cozy and a cork coaster. These belonged to Aunt Bijou, and for all of my life growing up, this birdcage was Aunt Bijou’s home. She had built it herself, to live in herself—and she did.

The eggshell was what remained of the egg from which she herself had hatched— with the comb she did her hair—the cozy and coaster were her bed and blanket— and the whistle was supposed to make gems spontaneously appear… but Aunt Bijou would never blow the whistle, so I don’t know if it did.

Now: Aunt Bijou traveled with this cage from place to place before setting up residence in our home, and added new pieces to it all the time. And how long did it take her to build it? Twenty-two years. And how long did she live with us? As long as I can remember. If I’m twenty-six now, and I can remember back to when I was six, it was at least that long—minus the time she’s been gone. So how old was Aunt Bijou? I have no idea. But we loved her, and she loved us, and we all tried not to notice that she was a Furby. We’re all deviants in this family—is it really a surprise that some of us would turn out to be Furbies as well?

—My thoughts exactly, I said, breaking into Cousin Geoff’s story. But what happened to the birdcage?

—Well, said Cousin Geoff, I can tell you about that, but I’d like to wait until Katei gets home.

—Of course, I agreed. It was only right.

GEOFF AND I SHACK UP

Despite what we’d said about hoping Katei would return soon, there was no way to tell when she actually would. She might have had to work late, doing whatever it was she did, she might have gotten stuck in traffic (“you’re not stuck in traffic,” she would say; “you are traffic.” Now that was indisputable!), she might have had to stop at the store.

I broke the silence that had descended on us like a commercial fishing net by gulping the final sip from my can. But as it was really a sip, only a few drops came out and most of what I gulped was air.

“What do you propose we do while we wait?” I asked Cousin Geoff under a sudden apprehension of nerves.

“We could go to the shack out back,” Geoff suggested, indicating an old and dilapidated toolshed in the backyard, “and take a look at it.”

“What’s inside the shed?” was the information I requested.

“Just us, if we go inside it,” said Geoff.

Well, well, well! This was a strange and somewhat intimidating offer, but under the circumstances it was preferable to remaining under the fishing net. We relocated to the shed, both of us in our sock feet, and Cousin Geoff closed the door.

It was very dark in the shed and there was an earthy smell, as of woodchips. What’s more it was very cramped, being a shed truly equipped only for one, so Cousin Geoff and I had to stand toe to toe and I could feel his warm and soda-y breath. Although he did not say as much, I presume he could also feel mine.

“Mightn’t be there a light in the shed?” I asked presently. We had been standing this way for a while. It was getting somewhat steamy in the shed.

“I believe so,” said Cousin Geoff, “but without light to see by, I won’t know very well where it is—if indeed there is one.”

“It might be behind you,” I suggested, and with his permission I felt that way in the darkness, but my hands brushed only the rough-hewn boards of the wall.

“Contrariwise, it might be behind you,” Cousin Geoff said. “If I may?” And at my acquiescence he felt in the general direction of me, but likewise found only the second wall, and an open bag of potting soil.

Having exhausted those options, there seemed to be only one place it could be, and I said so.

“Do you think there is still even one place?” said Cousin Geoff. “I myself had begun to think that there was no light.”

“Indeed I do,” said I.

“And where is that?” said he.

I indicated the space between us, but as it was dark neither of us could see me do so, even though our eyes had by now adjusted. I could see the faintest outline of one side of his face, but that was all. I raised my right hand and held it between our two faces and made to grip the air. Instead I found a pullcord, and it was on this I pulled.

Light blossomed in the darkness, and we were both temporarily blinded, for the bulb hung between us at forehead level. When the stars had faded from our eyes, we took in the contents of the shed, but there really wasn’t anything to see. The boards were much as we had felt them to be, all the way round, and besides the two of us, and the bag of potting soil (already mentioned), there was only a spider lying dead on its back in the far left-hand corner. Its web had undergone transubstantiation from spider- to cob-, and dangled from the ceiling tenuously.

“It’s rather claustrophobic in here,” I said, for the back of the shed was mere inches away. Cousin Geoff’s face was distractingly close to my own face, and it was difficult to focus on. “I rather preferred imagining the shed to be a deep one, when the light was off.”

“Quite,” said Cousin Geoff, and with this accord reached we turned the light back off.

KATEI COMES HOME

A crunch of gravel in the yard outside announced the approach of a vehicle, and, what with the time spent in the shed, the odds of it belonging to Katei were quite good—even with traffic. So, both of us feeling in the dark for the handle of the door, Cousin Geoff and I exited the shed, took off our socks at the slider to the kitchen and changed them for a fresh pair upstairs, then resumed our previous positions in the kitchen.

“Soda?” Cousin Geoff asked.

“Please, thanks.”

He crushed our last two cans, which were still empty, and put them in the recycling bin, then rummaged around in the fridge. He was at work on this task when Katei—for it was she—came into the house. We could hear her take off her shoes; they went thunk in the hall.

Cousin Geoff handed me a soda.

“Cheers,” said I.

“Cheers,” said he. He had gotten one out for Katei as well and set it on the table. At that moment my wife and his sister walked in the door, together.

“Hello!” said Cousin Geoff to his sister.

“Hello!” said Katei to him, taking the soda from the table.

“Hello!” said I to my wife.

“Hello!” said she to me, popping the tab.

“Have you met each other already?” I asked all round, greetings exchanged.

“We took a rideshare from work,” Katei agreed. Then she drank the soda.

“And what have you two been up to today?” she asked.

“We’ve consumed a great quantity of soda,” I volunteered, indicated the recycling bin, which was overflowing, “and spent a good long while standing in the shed.”

“Mm,” Katei said agreeably. “Did you find it extensive?”

“I believed so at first, when it was dark. But upon turning on the light, I found it significantly less extensive than I expected.”

“I leave the light off, myself,” said Katei, “when I spend a lot of time in the shed.”

I decided not to plumb the depths of that topic, which was proving to be deeper than the actual shed, and instead changed the subject. “How was your day at work?” I asked her. “If indeed it was to work you went?”

“It was,” said she, “and I did a lot of whatever it is I usually do. So much of it was to be done, in fact, I had to work late, instead of leaving half an hour early as per usual. Then I was trapped in traffic, and it was moving so slowly I had time to get out and go to the store. When I got back to my car, traffic had cleared considerably ahead of me, but not very much at all behind! A few minutes later I arrived here.”

“Bravo!”

Cousin Geoff and I both applauded her tale. She curtseyed slightly and put on her ninja mask, which she had removed to drink the soda. She was dressed in full ninja apparel.

“What say we cook dinner?” said Cousin Geoff. He must have gotten hungry after all the soda.

“That would be ideal,” said Katei, and the two of them set to it, while I stood there unhelpfully and looked at the pilling on my socks.

***

We were eating dinner now, a stir fry of sorts in keeping with the theme. There was a dish of wasabi in the center of the table for us to share, a pitcher of soda with ice in it, and slices of pineapple for dessert, although Cousin Geoff had put some in his stir fry for now.

“Your husband has been asking me about Aunt Bijou,” Cousin Geoff said as we ate, not one to beat around the bush. “But I said we ought to wait till you got home.”

“Your brother has been most obliging in informing me, as much as he has,” I assured her.

“Oh, Aunt Bijou,” sighed Katei wistfully, holding her chopsticks. “All right, then. It was like this.”

AUNT BIJOU’S BIRDCAGE, CONTD.

Picking up precisely where Cousin Geoff left off, as if she had been privy to that conversation, Katei began:

Part of the reason Aunt Bijou traveled so much—in fact the main reason—was her self-imposed restriction on twig-gathering. Taking only one twig from each of only one type of tree, she soon ran out of possibilities in any given area, and had to expand her range. Such trees as she used only grow in particular climates, it might be added, so some of her gathering missions went on for years at a stretch. Compounding the problem, she could only carry so many at once in her beak, and had to set them down to eat and drink. This problem was alleviated somewhat when she learned to tie them in bundles and carry them around on her back, but even then the weight was a burden. She would often spend months bearing a bunch to her current encampment, only to turn round and make the pilgrimage back to her foraging grounds. This was in the early days, of course, before she had enough cage-structure to be able to carry the cage with her.

—I remember those times, said Cousin Geoff.

We tried to help her, of course, when we were older, but the twigs we found were rarely up to the standard she had set. Too small, too large, too old, too brittle. You name it, there was always something. Once I came home with what I believed to be, according to her criteria, the perfect twig. And it was the perfect twig—but it came from a tree where she had already gathered.

—It was an impossible task! said Cousin Geoff.

And yet, she did it! By now she was so worn out from her years of pilgrimage, though, that she only went to gather new twigs for repairs—for example, after a storm. The rest of the time she perched in her cage and slept, waking from time to time to rearrange her eggshells and her whistle.

—But what became of the cage? I asked her. I had looked round and round but there was no sign of it anywhere. Nor had I ever seen it, and Katei and I had been married for several years.

—This is a good part, said Cousin Geoff.

***

“Well,” said Katei circumspectly, “we planted it.”

“After all her hard work?” I cried.

“She had left us by then,” Cousin Geoff explained.

“Where did she go?”

“Where we all go,” said Katei.

“Where is that?” I asked.

They didn’t know.

“It had been her intention all along,” said Katei, “that after she left us, we should plant her cage—along with her eggshell.”

“Both of her homes,” Cousin Geoff explained.

“Fine,” I said. “What about the whistle?”

“I’m getting to the whistle,” said Katei.

“This is a good part,” said Cousin Geoff.

***

After she left us, said Katei, we let her cage hang for a week. Then, in accordance with her wishes, we took it down and photographed it for the museum. After they had built a replica of it for posterity, we planted the original in the back garden, where before long it had grown into a tree. The tree grew very quickly and was soon as big as a house. What’s more, it had grown in the shape of a birdcage. This was the state of affairs for about six months, at which point during an unexpected weather event the birdcage-tree uprooted and blew away.

—And that was the end of the cage? I burst out. Sometimes I can’t restrain myself.

—No, said Katei.

The tree came down in a field and splintered into a thousand twigs. Each of the twigs landed upright, which is quite an unlikely thing, but that’s how it was. And each of the twigs grew into another tree, this time regular shaped.

—The cycle could begin again! said Cousin Geoff.

New foragers flocked to the forest and picked the trees clean until they were just trunks. Then loggers cut the trunks down and gave us the boards, and with the boards we built the shed.

—Gosh, I said. It was enough to make my head spin.

But the boards weren’t very good quality, as you’ve seen. We expect the shed to collapse any day now.

—And goodness knows what it will turn into, then! said Cousin Geoff.

AUNT BIJOU SWALLOWS THE WHISTLE

“The last part of the story,” said Katei, “is how Aunt Bijou met her fate.”

“Yes, please,” I said, for I felt that this was the exciting part.

“Aunt Bijou had a whistle, as you know, and, as you know, when she blew on the whistle it was supposed to make gems appear from thin air. But she never blew on the whistle, so none of us really believed it—including, it seems, Aunt Bijou. For she was out there one day, tooting on that whistle, trying to make it work.

“She had it clenched in her beak, with her head tipped back, and while true it made a feeble chirping sound, it was no different from any number of birdcalls or the sounds Aunt Bijou made herself.”

“I burst out onto the patio,” said Cousin Geoff, taking the reins of the story, “for I’d heard the peculiar sounds. I thought she was in distress. Aunt Bijou, though, was quite deaf at the time, so she probably wasn’t aware that she was making any noise. On seeing me burst onto the patio, and being caught with the whistle around which so much legend had grown, but the use of which she had never demonstrated, she was so startled she opened her beak.”

“And the whistle went down her throat,” said Katei.

“Aunt Bijou swallowed the whistle,” said Cousin Geoff.

I gulped. “And after swallowing it…” I said.

“She died.”

CONCLUSION

“Well.”

That last was me. The other had been said in unison.

“Yeah,” said Cousin Geoff. “Ruminate on that.”

I ruminated in silence, though this silence was less awkward than the previous ones now that all the secrets had been let out to air. “It’s good to know these sorts of things about your family,” I said finally, for I had come to realize over the course of the day what I already suspected, that I didn’t know these two very well at all, despite my relation to them.

“Does this change the way you feel about my sister?” asked Cousin Geoff.

“No,” I said truthfully, “I don’t think so. Does it change the way you think about my wife?”

“Not particularly,” said Cousin Geoff. “Katei,” he double-checked with her, “has anything changed for you?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, “but then again to me none of this was news.”

“Except at the time,” I pointed out.

We all thought about that. Then we had another soda, and after that we did the dishes, and after that we went to bed.

————

Kai Swanson-Dale currently lives in the United States. You can read more of his original fiction at kaiswansondale.com and milemarker79.com.