When You See Red Birds You Know You Are In The Wrong Part Of Canada

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The woman had been standing behind the blue door since supper.

She did not come out, and the red bird did not go in.

Between them stretched a hallway built of cold stone, old wallpaper, and the sort of silence that makes a person wonder whether a house has been listening all along. Above the doorway, a yellow lamp burned in the shape of a heart.

That should have been comforting.

It wasn’t.

The bird turned its head toward the woman, then toward the staircase. It had a round yellow eye and the calm posture of something that already knew the ending.

In most parts of Canada, a red bird means spring, or luck, or somebody’s grandmother watching over you.

In this house it meant you had taken the wrong road three towns back.

The woman followed it from room to room.

It waited beneath the window while a thin moon hung outside. It stood beside the staircase under the portrait of a man nobody in the family admitted recognizing. It watched an empty chair. It watched a yellow patch of light fall across the floor in the shape of a broken heart.

Whenever the woman came near, the bird moved farther down the corridor.

Not flying.

Walking.

That was worse.

At the end of the hall stood a green door with a heart painted on it. The paint had cracked straight down the middle.

The woman reached for the knob.

The bird gave one short cry.

It was not birdsong. It sounded more like a warning issued by a small government office just before closing.

She opened the door.

There was no room beyond it.

Only rooftops, chimneys, a church tower and the whole sleeping town spread beneath a blue-black sky. Every window was dark except one.

Her own.

The red bird stepped onto the ledge.

Above the town, the moon had become a great yellow heart, swollen and luminous, too large for the sky that held it.

The woman looked down at the streets and finally understood.

She had not been following the bird through the house.

The house had been following the bird through her.

The creature faced the enormous heart in the clouds. Its feathers glowed like an alarm.

Behind her, every door clicked shut.

That is how you know you are in the wrong part of Canada.

The landscape looks familiar.

The houses are polite.

The lights are warm.

But the red birds know where the borders really are.