Magpies in the Attic

 (This is a translated version of the short story "Quelques pies", which can be found here )

This morning, it was the same as ever. Cold tea, cold coat and cold seat. Then I go outside and of course it had to be winter. Well well… the opposite would have had be me astonished. I go inside my cold car, but before, I cast a cold look around and I meet eyes to beak with a bird. Some sort of magpie, well in all cases the animal was black and white. But I’m sure there are a lot of black and white birds. Maybe the colours of the male and female are even different. But “magpie” seems like a female word, there would be no male. I’m stupid in the morning. Stupid and cold.

There was only one magpie, fluttering gently on the street lights which annoyingly lit the fog around it. I ask myself “is this magpie cold too ?”, then I turn my car on. The engine is cold, so it takes a little while. When finally it is… hot, I drive my way to work.

After that I come home. I am… hot but it is only an illusion. I’m not stupid in the afternoon, I know that around me everything is cold. Especially the gear-lever. But I don’t know why. I could ask but I do not dare. I fear people would think me crazy if they saw me.

When I come out of the car which is so deceivingly… hot, I notice that instead of finding only one magpie where there was only one magpie this morning, there are now two of them. They croak like two old crows. Strange, because they are definitely magpies (I looked it up at work). I walk to them softly and all of a sudden they stop speaking to look at me with their black cold eyes. I feel this coldness ripping through my body, going to my cold heart which pulsates in his turn coldness in all directions. Being cold by nature, I only feel a tickle, as if some cold ladybugs were caught under my T-shirt.

Since I’m not welcome among the birds, I decide to walk to the right. But I take the wrong direction. I turn around, dawdle my way in front of the birds which are still silent, in front of the car dealer whose cold gigantic shiny billboard cast a shadow on me during summer. Even in summer, I’m cold.

I go inside and eat food. I don’t talk to my television, this is a sign that my mental balance is starting to collapse. I take a cold shower and think about these birds again. What could they be plotting ? I can never know, not even guess, not even some kind of story to explain all this. So I went to bed.

This morning, it was the same as ever. And it was even colder than usual. That made the usual even usualler than usual. Even my cup trembled. The fire was sick and coughed a dark cold smoke, leaving its sustenance to dry in its black entrails. I donned my cold hat and my rubber boots (the ones that are cold) and went outside.

Arriving before my car’s very cold handle, I think I hear a farm screaming not very far from here. But I was wrong. It was the magpies. There was now three of them, and they clucked like chickens telling each other stories about the neighbours. I was puzzled to see these birds would not use their natural chirping. This question materialised in front of me, left a cold kiss on my blue cheek, then left. I left too.

A day of work, one hour to come back, usually. Traffic jams, cold people tossing abuse at each other. Insults like cold spit, so cold it would turn into little balls of ice. I personnally use a little cold protable baseball bat to hit back these little projectiles to were they belonged. When I do that, I say “return to sender !” and even if this is a very nice joke, it leaves everybody cold, even me.

Home sweet home ! It is black and the frost (on whose nature I don’t need to be specific) begins to gently cover the grass. The grass did not ask for anything, yet it yields to this numbing coldness. When I step out of my vehicle, I immediately turn my eyes to the place where the birds gathered. This time there was ten magpies. Maybe twelve. I wouldn’t know, I was never thaught how to count after ten. And they chirp like little sparrows. They are close together, probably because it’s… hot. I look at them, they stop singing and turn their frosty gaze to me. Well it wasn’t altogether frosty, but cold. And their small eyes, let’s not talk about it at all.

At this very precise moment, I understood I would never understand. I went home and fell into sleep with my clothes on. I dreamt I was a magpie and I was troating like a deer in the middle of my brothers and sisters. We all had little curvy horns. Then, as it is too often the case with sleep, it ended. I woke up. I feel like I’m going crazy. It was a pleasant dream, yet I wake up covered in cold sweat. I change clothes and go to work without eating breakfast, without looking at the birds, without even turning the engine on. And I do that for days and days. I never want to hear about birds again, and I’m so cold one could freeze eggs on my forehead. It is not only me feeling cold, I AM cold. I don’t say hello to old ladies anymore even if I meet them in the woods. And I keep up with this cold behaviour for two weeks.

With so much time, winter had had well enough time to settle comfortably. It had solidified all it could solidify, be it blades of grass, fruits, people…

No one moves anymore, the whole world is cold as death. Even colder. I myself have trouble walking. I still go out each morning to go to work. But this time it seems cold will have the last word. Before I put my foot on the ground, my leg starts freezing at the speed of freezing light. The veiled sun casts a cold light when possible, and that only makes things worse.

Soon the rest of my body starts freezing too. And I see all these people outside who had the same misfortune, frozen forever in ridiculous positions. I thought I was fed up with everything, but suddenly I lost my cold blood. I panic. I feel my egotist heart abandonning my limbs one by one, until even the holiest of them is turned into a gloomy icicle. The end draws near, I am going to freeze. I’ll stay cold forever, until the end of times. I close my blue eyelids and think about how I’m going to let my last breath away. I shed a tear that breaks like glass when it touches the ground.

And in a cold sigh, I hear the magpies. I open my eyes, even if this sole move is so painful. At last they use their correct chirping. There are fourty-thousand of them. Even more maybe, because I was never thaught how to count after thirty-thousand. The noise they make is deafening. I would even prefer not to have any eardrums, I would like them to freeze so I can be left alone at last. But it did not end. It feeled like a last moment of horror before the long sleep. Maybe I deserve it, I don’t know.

For a few minutes I waited death like a nice dog waiting at home for his master to return. But she was late, very very late. Only my eyeballs were still active, and they only permitted me to see lots and lots of screaming birds. Soon, they chirped three times together, then they all flew away, made a circle in the sky three times, plunged three times to the ground and flew back again. Then they all landed on the enormous billboard, the cold metallic car-dealing billboard. It was so shiny it hurt. They suddenly went quiet. The silence was even more deafening than they screaming all at once. And in this silence, something made a very deep creaking. A powerful sound one would like to hear in an old piece of wreckage.

A fluttering of wings, a creak again. Again and again. Soon they all moved together frantically, filling the cold air with their airy hum. And in a moment of perfect waking dream, they tore up the billboard, cutting the wires, twisting the metal, destroying the lightbulbs and they took it far away. Very far. Probably to their giant nest. Like a monstrous war trophy. And the veiled sun unveiled, and the billboard’s shadow did not keep me cold any longer. All of a sudden, it was summer and I felt like melting, unfreezing. I was the first, because I deserved it. Then the city, then the whole world.

And for the first time since so long ago, it was really… warm.