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A cuckoo doesn’t ever build a nest. Instead, it lays its eggs into a family that’s already there.
You stare straight up into the heavy-feeling sky, to where the branches stretch and touch thick grey. Thick like what Hanni calls smog. Smoke-fog, from all the factories, he says.
The air smells of rain, and it smells of grass, and heat, and summer.
It’s quieter here than down the hill, in town. The smog doesn’t reach all the way up.
With a quiet sound, you push yourself onto your tiptoes, and reach for a branch that bends low enough to grab, like a spider’s leg.
Hanni caught a spider in a glass once, and you watched him pull the legs off. One by one, until there was nothing but a little black blob. A little dead thing.
You watched. Just stood there, and watched, and you didn’t say anything. Because Hanni was already in one of his cross moods, you remember, since your daddy had just come home with one of his new ladies. A different new lady to the new lady he has now.
Your daddy has a lot of new ladies. He has them in the sitting room, and in the bathroom, and in his bedroom, and sometimes on the stairs, and sometimes, you have to squish your way past your daddy and the new lady on the stairs to get to the loo, because the stairs are very narrow, and sometimes they creak and groan so much that you wonder if one day, your daddy and his new lady might fall all the way through them, and into the cellar.
You think about that happening a lot. But you don’t say anything.
You haven’t even said anything to Hanni, even though you know that he never likes any of the new ladies, so he probably wouldn’t mind you saying it.
‘Why dost fucking bother, titch?’ he asks, when he sees you peeping around the doorway to have a look at the newest new lady.
You don’t say anything then, either. You can’t say anything. Because it’s not something your brother would understand.
Most of the time, it’s the mother bird who builds the nest.
You clench your fingers tightly around the trunk and pull yourself up higher. Thick, knobbly bark makes lines in your hands. Brown bark. Browner than you. Much browner than Hanni, with his peachy-pink skin. His hair was brown once, but now it goes bright blond, and then it goes red, when he puts all the special dye on, and it looks like there’s blood all over the bathroom.
Hanni laughed when you told him that.
Your daddy laughs like a vulture, and Hanni laughs like a seagull, and you’re not sure what you laugh like, because there’s nobody left to laugh at when they’re laughing at you.
You climb to a big fat branch, and sit yourself down, amongst leaves and creeping trails of ivy. Your legs swing, and swing, and your itchy wool school socks start to slide down from below your knees.
You can’t see your house from here.
You know it’s there. Tucked away, in a pocket of the thickest smog. The deepest and darkest.
You’re six today.
You wondered if maybe you’d feel very different when you woke up. If magic would happen, and you’d be bigger, and taller, and maybe you’d have the boy’s body that you’ve only put on your most secret birthday list that nobody knows about.
Inside your head, this boy has feathers. White, or black, or rainbow-coloured. He looks different every time you think of him.
Sometimes he speaks with a voice like yours. And sometimes he has no voice at all, and he can only sing.
And every time, he is beautiful, and he is happy.
So far, being six feels the same as being five.
Your daddy didn’t wake you up by singing, or by making you a birthday breakfast, or giving you a big pile of presents in shiny paper.
You woke up to the sound of your daddy’s car exploding, and through the window, you watched him drive away with his new lady.
You imagined your daddy, and the new lady. You thought of them covered in black soot, with two pairs of white eyes blinking as they sat in the exploded car.
They’d probably do a snog then, you think. A snog in the smog. Your daddy does lots of snogs. That’s what Hanni says.
One time, you asked Hanni if he did snogs, and he nouped you one.
When you asked Hanni this morning when your daddy would be back, he just said ‘Who cares?’ and went back to lighting up a fag with his special silver lighter. The one he says he got from his mummy.
“It’s mar bothdee, Hanni.” You reminded him.
“Oh,” he said. “’Ow owd are yer?”
“Six.”
“Hm,” Hanni replied, looking at ‘On the Buses’ instead of you. “…Well, clear off t’ skoo, then, ay?”
You stared down at him. He was still in just his pants. “Han yer got skoo, too?”
“Nar.”
You chewed your lip. “It’s Chewsdee.”
Hanni said nothing and didn’t get up.
“Wut wait till Daddy gets back?”
Your brother snorted. It made you feel funny, so you decided that it might be best to clear off to school, after all.
Six feels like it should be a special age. Your special age. Because now, your birthday is the same as how old you are. The day you were born has a lot of sixes in it. You know that there’s a nine and a one, but the rest is all sixes.
Perhaps six can be your lucky number, where things change.
That’s what you thought to yourself, on the way to school. You thought it very, very hard, as a birthday wish.
A whoosh of wind rattles the tree. Rattles the branch where you’re sat with a noisy whine that makes you shiver, in your school clothes. You wrap your arm around the thick trunk and press your body close.
The wind whistles, and you whistle back in a hiccup that makes you jump, and almost fall all the way down. The feeling sneaks up on you, sometimes, before you can tell your mouth that it needs to be quiet. Your mouth forgets. Your mouth forgets a lot, and is a very, very naughty mouth.
That’s what your daddy says. But he doesn’t say it like that. He says it with his loudest and most shouting and swearing voice that makes you shake, and worry, and when you worry about your hiccups, they start hiccupping again, because they don’t understand, and they like to be Loud, Loud, Loud when the rest of you is Quiet, Quiet, Quiet.
You cover your mouth with your hand to shush the hiccups. And as you squish yourself down into a shushed and quiet shape, you see something. Hidden in a little hole, smaller than your arm.
A nest, made from grass, and twigs, and mud. And inside the nest are some eggs. Three very small eggs.
They’re not chicken eggs. You know that, because chicken eggs are the kind that Hanni uses. They’re the sort he used last week, when he took you out with him, and his bigger, older mates, and you watched him throw eggs at some houses that you didn’t recognise.
You watched the eggs splatter all over those houses, and dribble everywhere.
You heard Hanni’s squawking seagull laugh, and the laughs of all his mates, shrieking and whooping.
You felt your heart jump right up from your chest, and into your mouth as the door to one house opened, and quick as a flash, Hanni grabbed your wrist tight, and dragged you through an alleyway full of smelly bins to get away quickly, quickly.
But you didn’t go home then.
You found another house.
You found another, and another, and the eggs kept flying. And your brother passed you an egg to throw.
You watched it sail through the air.
Heard it smash.
And then, something inside you felt different. Felt boiling hot, and bright.
You threw another egg.
And another.
And Hanni’s bigger, older mates laughed, and cheered.
They cheered for you.
And you…you couldn’t stop throwing the eggs.
Only, it didn’t feel like you. It felt like somebody else, doing the throwing. All you felt was the white-hot feeling. This feeling of wanting to explode. Of wanting to smash, like the eggs against the walls, and the doors.
And then.
And then.
The door opened.
Hanni’s mates were shouting still, but their voices faded.
Hanni’s voice faded.
And you were alone.
You were frozen.
You were holding the carton of eggs in your arms, and you were puffing, and panting, and you could feel thunder in your head. You could hear it so loudly. So loudly that you couldn’t hear the sound of a shouting voice, shouting, and shouting, and shouting.
And when you looked up, it wasn’t the person on the other side of the door.
It was your daddy. Shouting, and shouting, and shouting.
And you were still. You were frozen.
You were thinking about how you couldn’t remember walking home. How home had suddenly sprung up, and now your daddy was shouting.
You couldn’t hear anything of what he was shouting. His words became a blur. A messy sludge, like they do when he comes home very late, with his nose bright red, and his eyes not really seeing.
But you saw his eyes then. His eyes were so sharp. So cold.
And then, your daddy smashed an egg. He smashed an egg right onto your head. Right into your hair.
Your daddy’s hair is lank, and full of grease. Your brother’s hair is straight, and thin and floppy.
Your hair is thick, and dark, and curly, and the egg got stuck, and tangled up.
You felt it slop, and drip, drip, drip in slow, slow drips. Trailing down your cheeks. Down your neck.
And you were still. You were frozen.
You remember the feeling. The cold, cold feeling, reaching down, down. Your whole body being covered. Drip, by drip, by drip.
You heard your daddy’s voice. You heard it going ‘Nar theyt the one wit’ hegg on thar face, kidda!’
You heard his vulture laugh. The loudest thing in the world.
You said nothing. You did nothing.
You didn’t tell your daddy ‘No’.
You can never tell your daddy ‘No.’
You couldn’t even move. You were so frozen.
Hanni found you later. Still standing in the same place, in the hall, and not knowing what to do or say, or feel, or think, or anything.
And then, he threw a bucket of water over you, and you felt even colder. You felt it go right through you. Right into your bones.
Bird bones are hollow. Bird bones break so easily.
Hanni said it was fine. Hanni said it was okay, after the water, because that would take the eggy smell out of your school uniform.
But you’re not sure. You think you can still smell it. Still feel it there, in the rumples and crumples of your brother’s old jumper, and your brother’s old tie, and your brother’s old shirt, and your brother’s old shoes, that are still too big for you, and feel like boats. Boats filled with egg yolks, swimming in cold slime.
You went to school today, full of your birthday wish, and when you got there, you told everyone about your birthday. You’ve been telling everyone for weeks. Perhaps even months, because you thought that maybe, maybe if people had the time, they might remember, and then they might put something in the post for you, just like Hanni gets packages from his mummy, sometimes. And so maybe it wouldn’t matter that your daddy forgot about doing any birthday things. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that Hanni didn’t even know that today you are six.
All you got were some strange looks. You got some wrinkled noses, too, but you don’t know if that was because of the eggy smell on your school uniform, or because today was a very hiccup-y day.
Some birds have songs that don’t sound like anyone else’s. Some like to steal the sounds that they’ve heard and stick them back together to make new music. Music that nobody’s heard before.
Music that nobody understands.
Hanni doesn’t understand. He doesn't get that feeling that you get. The fizzing, itching, scratching feeling, sitting on your tongue. Brushing ticklish feathers against the roof of your mouth, until it gets too hard to not think about, and you’re opening your mouth, and hiccupping, hiccupping, hiccupping all kinds of not very hiccup-y noises into a long, long song that your body has to move to in a dance that you can never do when you’re not hiccupping.
At lunchtime, you talked to Mrs. Mullovely whilst you were in the dinner queue. And when you told her it was your birthday, she went to somewhere that you couldn’t see through the serving hatch, and when she came back, and served you your beef and boiled potatoes, you noticed her put something else on your plate, wrapped in shiny gold foil.
You’d never seen anyone else get a shiny gold surprise. Not even when it was their birthday.
Mrs. Mullovely told you in a very quiet voice that it was a little secret, just between you and her.
As you were putting it in your pocket for safekeeping, you remember thinking how having secrets with a grown-up made you feel.
It made you feel different. But in a different sort of way to how everybody else makes you feel, all the time, and every day.
A warm sort of different, that makes your heart go really fast when you think back to it now, and when you reach into your pocket to feel the crinkle of the foil in your hand.
You kept your promise to Mrs. Mullovely and didn’t tell anyone. You kept your lip buttoned all afternoon, and then all the way home, until you finally, finally got through the front door, and ran to the living room, where Hanni was still in nothing but pants, and having a fag, but now ‘Jackanory’ was on.
You waved your sparkling golden surprise in his face, the wrapper crunching noisily.
And your brother narrowed his eyes. You watched them dart from side to side, fixed on the sound, and the sparkle.
And then, quite suddenly, you didn’t want to show him anymore. You wanted to stuff your hand back into your pocket and pretend that nothing had happened on your birthday.
Just like all the other birthdays you can remember before this one.
You felt a strange feeling. A sick sort of feeling.
Because Mrs. Mullovely wanted you to keep that secret. And she must’ve wanted you to keep it for a reason.
Maybe she knew that Hanni would see your secret thing, and that he’d get a storm brewing across his face.
Maybe she knew that Hanni would lunge forward and twist your arm until you couldn’t keep hold of the precious, secret thing, and it fell to the floor.
Maybe she knew that Hanni would dive for it, and you would dive for it, but that Hanni would just be too big, and too strong for you to pull his fingers apart.
And that you’d have to watch him peel the golden wrapper off, and toss it to the ground like rubbish, and gulp the star-shaped chocolate down without even stopping to chew.
You’re not going to tell her how you scrounged round to snatch up the crumpled, torn foil, and clutched it so tightly that your knuckles felt like they would burst underneath your skin as you ran, and ran, far away from your house, and the deep, dark smog that covers everything.
Deep in your bones, you feel it rising up again. The feeling. The burning, exploding feeling, as you stare out from your branch, and feel the blood in your veins, noisy like an ocean inside your head. Behind your eyes.
You stare at the eggs. The three eggs perched inside a peaceful nest.
Before you know what’s happening, you pick one up. You feel yourself, see yourself, holding it in a cupped hand.
You feel your fingers curl around the shell, like chalk against your skin. Shaking, trembling fingers, clenched and twisting. Branches of a tree.
You feel hot, and prickling, and sick, and for a moment, you have to close your eyes.
And then, the thunder fades, to the sound of a gentle sea far, far away.
You feel something else for the first time. A squirming. A strange warm feeling, coming from inside the egg.
You stop.
You breathe.
And hands that don’t feel quite like yours slowly guide themselves towards the nest again.
Hands that feel bigger than yours put the warm and thrumming egg back down.
A long time ago, people used birds to see into the future.
And as you’re climbing down from the tree, you wonder if you might have done the same.