The Canary
Kristina Blackwell
Each time I die alone, childless with no one looking over me. Daniel, my husband, believes he’s fixing my life. Making it as it should be – happy, safe, and without him. He’s a Time Captain. I’ve seized him from the future to have him back where he belongs, with me in our empty past.
Last night, I didn’t think sleep would catch me. When you spend eighteen hours swinging from frantic relief to pious desperation, your mind keeps up, but your body doesn’t. It’s bio-chemical, the adrenalin drop, the gravitational time dilation. The last thing I remember, before sleep snatched me like a thief, was praying…
Please don’t take him from me. He’s all I have.
The house stumbled awake two hours ago. Lotty, my maid, tripped pots and pans downstairs. Russell took two, possibly three stairs at a time to get his master’s fire stoked and stacked. A jittery silver tray thunked down in his bedroom, while I held my ear to the door of my own.
It’s difficult to thread a corset when your hands tremble. I miss 1968 when a bra was enough and no bra was even better. But he hated me then, he made two attempts to correct my future’s past. I can’t say that I blame him. I found his secret in that rendition. I love our first time together here in 1885.
The chronograph, the timepiece that helps him unfold and travel through time sits in my jewelry box. It’s as small as a hairpin, and as delicate as my self-assurance. He must stay this time. If he leaves, I will be lost to him forever. I will break time.
I’ve changed my dress three times. I couldn’t wear black for I’m no longer a widow. I tried the yellow, traded for the lilac, returned to the yellow. I couldn’t remember his favorite, if he ever had one. I’m a horrible wife.
The yellow dress is stiff silk not delicate chiffon. I didn’t want his burned hands to snag the material. But he won’t touch it.
Tappity-tap-tap.
“Come in Lotty.”
She plows into my room breathless. Her cheeks are bright pink, raw from tears or anticipation or both.
“Mistress. Sir Preston’s awake. It’s a miracle.”
She snatches my hands, wraps her stubby fingers around mine, and attempts to steady her excitement. It’s possible she wants to unfasten my fixed façade of calm. Some plan and some feel their way through life. I wish I could afford to live in her emotional neighborhood.
I kiss her on the cheek. The taste of elation from her skin sears my soul. Hope is a terrifying investment.
“He asks for you,” she says.
“Has he eaten?” I try hard not to sound evasive.
“He moves it around. He isn’t at ease. Maybe with you, he’ll attempt a bite.”
I muster a smile, because I know it reassures her. She squeezes my hand and leaves. Her hope litters my room with sugared expectation.
I hear Russell’s baritone mumbles. Russell is Lotty’s husband and Daniel’s manservant. I don’t mind their gossip. The house has been quiet for too long. A house needs activity or it falls into spirited depression.
I take one last look at myself in the mirror, and run my fingertips across my swollen split lip. It doesn’t look too bad.
We had no idea how much strength he had left when we brought him home. Daniel had been burning with fever for ten hours. His mind had swung between agony and madness. He thrashed in that ice bath like an ensnared snake. It was an accident, and we nearly lost him. The mind may want to travel, but it’s always brutal on the body.
I run to the window, push it open, force the heavy morning air in and out. This is what I want. For eighteen months I’ve searched across continents and time. I’ve brought him home. He has occupied every hour of my loneliness, every minute of my despair, and every second of my hopefulness.
He must stay. Stay with me. He’s all I have left. And I love him.
He’ll see that now.
I tuck a brown curl behind my ear and stare into the abyss of my eyes. Stay the course, I tell them, show him a warm welcome.
I hesitate in the hall and stare at his bedroom door. His bedroom had become a sanctuary for me. I’ve spent nights wrapped in his naval jacket blanketed in bleakness. Nothing has changed in there. Most wives change everything about their inherited homes, but I’m a horrible wife.
I knock, each rap echoes in my chest like a regret. I press the pleats of my dress, adjust my bustle, and wait for his permission.
“Come in.” His voice is full of exhaustion’s gravel.
I freeze at the sight of him. Dark curls frame his sallow face, his cheeks are hollow, even his beard couldn’t disguise how close he sat at death’s door. Like a feral animal, his crisp blue eyes zero in on me. I feel their heat inspecting me from hair to hem. I adore the life in those eyes.
“Witch!” He screams.
He grabs his bowl of porridge and hurls it across the room. I duck behind the door. The bowl shatters against the wall and my wavering expectations.
I should’ve worn the black gown. He’s disoriented. Time dilation stresses the human body. I’ll return later this evening, when he’s well rested.
I’m a terrible wife.
* * *
Daniel’s heart galloped at warp speed. Beware the canary. The phrase kept resurfacing. He thought it had belonged to the kingdom of sleep, but then she glided into his room. When the bowl shattered he understood he was no longer in a cosmic coma. She was real, the woman in the canary yellow dress.
He buckled in pain. Every cell in his body stretched to adjust, to find its rhythm, it’s present. Where was he? What year? Why was it ghostly familiar?
He leaned against the headboard, and scanned the room. He sat in a walnut four-poster bed. The linens were tidy but rough cotton, nothing as refined as the Waldorf Hotel in 1985. Daggers of pain stabbed at the base of his head.
He wasn’t in the twentieth century. Damn. Damn the witch. He was so close. So close to fixing everything. Close to setting the bird free. He needed to get back to the future.
A man in a tidy black suit and white shirt entered his room. Daniel reached for the side table, for a gun he no longer possessed. He had also lost his suit, his ship, his memory, and his need for flight.
“Beg pardon sir. The Lady asked me to bring you another breakfast.”
Daniel glanced at the heavy silver tray, studied the man’s clothes, and then held the man’s stare. The man had combined terror and happiness in his eyes and meek grin.
“Who’s the Lady?” Daniel asked.
“The lady of the house?” The servant set the tray on the side table.
“Yes. Who’s the lady of the house?” Daniel directed his contempt at the bowl of mush. His stomach grumbled.
“Your wife, sir.” The inflection of the man’s voice hunted for reassurance.
“Give me her damn name.”
“Anna. Anna Preston.”
The name rang no note of recognition. But she was catching. Her brown hair swept up above her head, loose curls tucked behind her ears. Those light brown eyes that demagnetized his equilibrium, for they seemed elusive and familiar.
“We’re o’erjoyed to have you back, sir. Lady has had all kinds of journeys. Lookin’ for your lost ship. Searched every port.”
Had she told everyone about his ship? They would come after him and the ship. Destroy his life’s work.
“When she got word of a ship lost at sea. She’d set out that very day for the Admiral’s Office.” The man busied himself with removing invisible lint from the furniture.
What did he mean by a ship lost at sea? He struggled to remember, but his need to stay preoccupied his frantic mind. His first adventure had landed him in the Royal Navy, but that was eons ago. Now he crossed the sea of time not oceans. This Anna had held his secret, for no one would ever believe. She'd be institutionalized.
“Can you bring me some fried bacon and eggs? Some coffee? I don’t want baby food.”
“But the Lady insisted on the porridge. Said your stomach would be unsettled.”
After his first few trips through time, he’d spent hours retching but that was a dozen voyages ago. His skin grew warm at the courtesy. He needed to figure out his wife. No, he needed to remember the bewitching woman in the canary dress.
“I want my suit.”
* * *
“He requested what?” I ask.
Lotty twists her apron ties around her sausage fingers. Her fingers are turning purple.
“Alright. Is everything in his room?” Please say no. I need more time.
“Russell has it all laid out. Bringing up the hot water now.”
I slip on an apron and a prayer. Fasten them firmly behind my back. Why couldn't we just curl up together in his bed? Behave like a reunited couple.
I knock on his door and stumble for the correct endearment. Is it Daniel? Sir? Time Captain? Husband? I want to say Love.
“Come in.” The gravel has cleared from his voice, but it still strums an invisible chord inside my stomach. It has never been a soft smooth voice, just deep and rustling with wary adventure.
He sits near the window with a pair of scissors in his hand. He’s lopped off locks of hair. Tiny black snakes curl on the floor at his feet. He cuts away filaments of beard with no apparent regard for design. I try not to wince, but every course cut slices my mind’s portrait of my husband.
“It doesn’t hurt.” He speaks to my reflection in the mirror.
“How are you?” I try to capture his attention, but he concentrates on murdering his beard.
“I’m well.” He pauses, glances at my reflection. “Wife.”
My shock is framed within the mirror. Daniel would never say such a thing. He had never taunted, never risked offense. Not when it came to me. But he doesn’t remember me. A dark shadow eclipses my heart. What if this isn’t the man I love?
The steam from the basin fogs the mirror setting me free of his hold. I walk to the table and examine the tools. It’s not like I haven’t shaved a man before, I helped my father after his stroke. I dip the badger hairbrush into the basin and build the lather.
Daniel has had a beard for as long as I’ve known him. When my father took him in as an apprentice at eighteen it was already a permanent feature. I was ten at the time. I’m twenty-four now. But with all the time travel, I feel a decade older.
His shirt is beleaguered with clumps of hair. He should’ve covered himself. All those sharp hairs will needle him for the rest of the day, distract him from what he really needs to consider. I go to brush them with the towel, and he snatches my wrist.
Not a painful grip, but firm and aggressive like his devotion to my imagined happiness. This is Daniel’s unexpected touch. The one I’ve burned into my memory. It makes my heart race with anticipation. Makes my heart ache with longing, because nothing ever follows. He always mistakes my care for pity.
“I’ll change my shirt when you’re through.”
I lay the towel across his broad chest. End to end the towel almost reaches each shoulder. I swear my nerves are giving me a headache.
When I pick up the lathered brush, I’m disgusted by the tremor in my hand. You're not some frail little girl, I tell myself. I suck in the tremors and bury them deep into organs I can't even name.
The brush glides over his chin and cheeks. I manage to keep his lips and nostrils free of soap. The straight razor smells of mineral oil. Russell must’ve sharpened it. He's a good manservant, and he misses having a man to serve.
Daniel leans back, exposing his neck. “Where did you find me?” he asks.
I shift his chin to the left. Never begin with the neck, work up to it. I level the blade on his high cheekbone and take my first swipe. Swift like a fall from grace.
“In Newcastle. Your ship crashed.” Never begin with the truth, always work up to it. I read that in one of Daniel’s journals. It’s one of his rules for being a Time Captain. Along with always observe, never interfere with the past, otherwise, you unravel the future. But he’s broken this rule too many times.
I clean the blade in the basin. Clouds of foam float on the water like meringues. Does he like meringues? I can’t remember. I’m a horrible wife.
When I was young, there were rumors about why Daniel had a beard. That it covered a mangled face. A scar twisted up his cheek. A portion of his lip had been knifed away. And because he talked seldom, remained stoic in ballrooms, reveled in no one’s company, the rumors became fact.
His barren left cheek reveals perfection. Shaving his face turns into a treasure hunt. My strokes quicken as I shave his right cheek, and find no deformity, no defect, no finer face. I see stars along the edges of my vision.
“You always this fast?”
“I've never shaved my husband's face.”
“Are you sure I'm your husband?”
“I need to finish your chin. You shouldn't talk.”
We've been married for five years, but he left me in the first year. He can wait a few minutes more for my answer. I finish his chin and uncover a dimple. Come close to tracing it with the tip of my finger, but I spy the tendons in his jaw throbbing. The towel casts a grey tone to his blue eyes. Storm filled grey. I clear my throat.
“Depends on your definition of a husband. If a husband is the man who shares his life with you, then no, you are not my husband. If a husband is the man who shares your bed, then no, you are not my husband. If a husband is the man who loves you so completely that he would unravel time to find your happiness, then yes, you are my husband.”
For the first time in our married life, our eyes are tethered by connection.
“Who hit you?” The question rumbles from his throat full of the promise of retribution.
I’m afraid to answer. Afraid the words will cut through him. “You were burning with fever. We had to put you in an ice bath. It was accident.”
A strange emptiness displaces the storm in his eyes. Its cold caress lashes my skin. I’ve lost the connection. Never tell the truth, always work up to it.
This is the man I’ve grown to love. The man concealed in journals and diaries. On the first few readings they seemed fiction, but as I compared the words against my recollections they were as genuine as poor relations.
Daniel can't bear to hurt me. But he has, repeatedly.
He is not a horrible husband.
I place another towel into the basin of hot water, and pray the sound of water will interrupt his self-loathing. I fold the towel into fourths. He keeps his eyes locked, over my shoulder, on the door. He wants to leave. He always wants to leave.
I lay the hot towel across his shaved countenance. I want to laugh at myself, at the rumors, at him, for hiding such a nice face. My levity erodes as I cradle his face with my hands. I've never touched him like this, not in this life. Touch is a terrible courtesy to waste.
The room fades from view. All I see is the bright white towel against his features. His haunted blue eyes, the high cheekbones, and the strength of his character. I imagine his full mouth under my hands. The tremors I had buried return with a vengeance, as if they’d spent all this time planning a massive ambush. My only safeguards from disintegrating to the floor are my dress, corset, and aspiration. And they’re not very steadfast.
“Why are you shaking?” he asks.
“Because you never touch me.”
His body goes lax and his arms spill over the chair. Did he want to slither away? I'm a horrible...he covers my hands with his. The calluses on his palms cut through my skin and my uncertainty. He pulls the towel from his face, tosses it to the floor, and my hands rest on his hot complexion.
All of my insides, all those unnamed organs, all of it, evaporates. His hands fasten on my waist. The room ascends and orbits. Gravity pulls my hungry lips to his full mouth. The blood in my body surges towards his rising. I taste his breath.
There is a loud knock at his door. Russell enters the room with another tray of food.
* * *
What the bloody hell? Daniel straddled his desire to launch himself at the manservant. But his body was hard and had cemented to the chair. The armrests sighed with relief when his grip loosened.
“Beg pardon, Sir.” The manservant no longer looked him in the eye, and he made small talk to the carpet instead.
What was so shameful about a kiss? Anna had left the room as if her face would combust. Surely he had kissed his wife? Bedded his wife? Why couldn’t he remember a wife?
The lingering scent of primrose held him captive. It soothed an ache masked deep within his core. The pain was different than the sharp jabs from future recollection. It was a soft ache with dull edges, malignant like forgotten happiness.
He'd been trying to right a wrong for so long it seemed an event not a person. Why would he leave this wife? She enthralled every molecule colliding in his body. When she had sucked her bottom lip in concentration, sitting became monstrously painful. How could he have left her?
Had leaving her become his occupation?
He was a man of the future that could visit the past. But the ivory combs she had in her hair tempted him to undo his intentions. He wanted to see the length of her brown curls fan across her naked back. He wanted to comb his fingers through their comfort. He wanted to feel them nest under his chin.
Beware the canary.
He had never suffered a memory setback this large. He had recorded everything, left meticulous journals. Where had he left them? The manservant eyed Daniel with dedicated earnest.
“I seem to have forgotten the layout. Did I keep my journals here or elsewhere?”
“Your study, Sir. Downstairs. I’ll bring them up.”
* * *
When Lotty pulled the five journals from my hands it felt like my children were being ripped from my arms. They meant everything. Hope. Calculations. Love. Life. Death.
Please don’t take him from me. He’s all I have.
Seven hours later, sitting in his study, the journals rest neatly on his desk. He’s never kept a tidy desk. I had the answer to my prayer, and I was devastated.
“I’ve signed the papers. Everything is yours,” Daniel says as he paces the room. He looks elegant in his black woolen riding suit, the length of his legs as infinite as my desperation. It’s strange what one notices in these helpless moments.
He’ll leave tonight. He doesn’t know there is another set of papers. My papers. The estate will go to Lotty and Russell and their six children. Their lives are more abundant than the stars in the Milky Way.
I’m glad I retrieved the chronograph from my jewelry box. It rests in my hand wrapped in my handkerchief. If I break it, he’ll never be able to change the past again. And I’ll be free of his kindness.
I know I’m supposed to exercise courage. I had contingencies planned, but with a ruined heart, it’s difficult to exude strength. I think he could taste my failure, so he didn’t make haste to leave.
“I’m tired of watching you disappear. Watching our children fade,” I say.
“We have no children.” His gaze is rich with hopeful accusation.
“We could, if you stayed.”
Logs pop and crackle in the fire.
“I’m not the man you love. Not in this life or the next.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I was wrong when I changed the past. Your past. I obligated you into marriage. I broke my own rule.”
He had saved my life, saved my father’s reputation, and the man I thought I loved had married another. The only option presented was his proposal. And I had accepted, figuring we would muddle through like everyone else. I was so very wrong.
“But you love me,” I whisper.
His hand twitches and his eyes shift across the fire.
“After all this, you still can’t admit it? You’ll confess to your journals. You’ve jumped across time to save me countless times. And still, you can’t admit it. Not now?” I will perish if I don’t hear those words from him. Once.
“I can go back and change it all. I can go back and make it so that your father lives.”
“But you die.”
“But you’re free.”
“Free to watch you disappear with my father? Free to marry a clergyman and die of consumption at twenty-seven? Is that how you envision my happiness? Or how about when you fix everything so that I marry Robert? Did you know he’s a mean drunk and a philanderer? I endure the humiliation, the beatings, and die at thirty of syphilis. Each time I die alone with no one. It’s terrifying.”
His face turns the color of bleached coral. “How do you know this?”
“I’ve suffered through all of it.”
He staggers, catches the mantle, whispers in choked syllables, “Impossible.”
I cross the room, cross my heart, and pray. “Why can’t you just stay and make me happy?”
“That isn’t possible.”
I laugh. I had to. The futility of honor. “You can manage time travel, but staying with me is impossible?”
“How do you know?”
“Whatever you alter I inherit that experience as a memory or a haunting expectation.” He gave me a look fit for Lazarus.
“What have I done? I miscalculated everything.”
He runs from the study. I follow him, down the stairs, across the foyer. Watch him spin in confusion as he looks for an exit hatch.
“Daniel, please. Don’t go. I love you.” I couldn’t bury the terror in my voice with a shovel.
He finds the door, whips it open, and storms out of the house. The moon is half crescent, and slices through the sky. The night air is thick and electric. It holds the scent of the ocean and pain.
“Wait!” I catch up and tug his arm. “Russell can bring your horse around. Do you even know where you’re going?”
* * *
Beware the canary. She dies. Always.
That’s what he’d read in his journals. The warning pounded in Daniel’s conscience in an infinite loop. He attempted to navigate the expanse of the estate. The strange alien territory from a created past. He spotted the horizon, smelled the ocean, and braced for her intervention.
How many times had he hurt her? How many times had he destroyed her happiness? All because he’d followed her back in time. He was a man of the future preoccupied with one past.
Daniel heard the clip-clop of a horse. A massive black stallion nuzzled his shoulder. The horse knew him, but he wasn’t the same man that owned this estate. The journals had confirmed his fraud. How much pain had he bestowed upon her?
His guilt scraped out his innards, made him feel weightless and worthless.
The wind died as Russell handed him the reigns. Daniel thought he heard a whimper, and he wasn’t sure if it came from the horse, the manservant, Anna, or his soul. The ground destabilized. He turned to look at her one last time.
Her eyes were slick like an iced over lake. The look of raw pain in her face flayed him open and grounded him. She slung her arms around his neck and her face branded his chest.
“If you love me, please stop changing my life. I’m tired,” she sobbed. “I’m tired of coveting an existence. If you truly love me, let me go.” He wrapped his arms around her desperate for a last embrace to cherish. “Let me go, as I let you go.” She snapped her arms free, and the reigns tightened around his grip. Had she been holding him upright? Because he felt like he was falling to the ground.
What an uncompromising choice. Leave her so that she may live. He wanted God to strike him dead, because leaving her would kill him. Her hair comb caught the moonlight, and he swore there were birds engraved within the ivory. He was a tattered man.
“Onyx will take you to the Canary. He’s the only one who knows how to find it,” she said.
The atmosphere ignited.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“He’s the only one who knows.”
“No, not that part.”
“He’ll take you to your ship, the Canary. Surely you remember your ship?”
A flash of lightning lit up the sky. He felt his body sail free of the Earth. He released Onyx’s reigns. The horse jogged towards the barn, spooked by the flash of light and the rumble of thunder.
“Beware the Canary.” She dies. Always.
* * *
“Beware the Canary,” I repeat. “You’ve been saying that since last night. Through all of your pain.”
“She dies. Always.” He gently cups my face in his rough hands. “You die. Always. I never wanted to hurt you.” He brushes tears from my cheeks with his thumbs.
“Then stay.”
Daniel leans in and holds his mouth a hair’s width from mine.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
His kiss shatters all of my resolve. It is hot, full of desire and heartache. It makes my palms bleed passion. It is everything I had hoped it would be.
And he fades from my sight.
Each time I die alone, childless with no one looking over me. Daniel, my husband, believes he’s fixing my life. Making it as it should be – happy, safe, and without him. He’s a Time Captain. I’ve seized him from the future to have him back where he belongs, with me in our empty past.
Last night, I didn’t think sleep would catch me. When you spend eighteen hours swinging from frantic relief to pious desperation, your mind keeps up, but your body doesn’t. It’s bio-chemical, the adrenalin drop, the gravitational time dilation. The last thing I remember, before sleep snatched me like a thief, was praying…
Please don’t take him from me. He’s all I have.
The house stumbled awake two hours ago. Lotty, my maid, tripped pots and pans downstairs. Russell took two, possibly three stairs at a time to get his master’s fire stoked and stacked. A jittery silver tray thunked down in his bedroom, while I held my ear to the door of my own.
It’s difficult to thread a corset when your hands tremble. I miss 1968 when a bra was enough and no bra was even better. But he hated me then, he made two attempts to correct my future’s past. I can’t say that I blame him. I found his secret in that rendition. I love our first time together here in 1885.
The chronograph, the timepiece that helps him unfold and travel through time sits in my jewelry box. It’s as small as a hairpin, and as delicate as my self-assurance. He must stay this time. If he leaves, I will be lost to him forever. I will break time.
I’ve changed my dress three times. I couldn’t wear black for I’m no longer a widow. I tried the yellow, traded for the lilac, returned to the yellow. I couldn’t remember his favorite, if he ever had one. I’m a horrible wife.
The yellow dress is stiff silk not delicate chiffon. I didn’t want his burned hands to snag the material. But he won’t touch it.
Tappity-tap-tap.
“Come in Lotty.”
She plows into my room breathless. Her cheeks are bright pink, raw from tears or anticipation or both.
“Mistress. Sir Preston’s awake. It’s a miracle.”
She snatches my hands, wraps her stubby fingers around mine, and attempts to steady her excitement. It’s possible she wants to unfasten my fixed façade of calm. Some plan and some feel their way through life. I wish I could afford to live in her emotional neighborhood.
I kiss her on the cheek. The taste of elation from her skin sears my soul. Hope is a terrifying investment.
“He asks for you,” she says.
“Has he eaten?” I try hard not to sound evasive.
“He moves it around. He isn’t at ease. Maybe with you, he’ll attempt a bite.”
I muster a smile, because I know it reassures her. She squeezes my hand and leaves. Her hope litters my room with sugared expectation.
I hear Russell’s baritone mumbles. Russell is Lotty’s husband and Daniel’s manservant. I don’t mind their gossip. The house has been quiet for too long. A house needs activity or it falls into spirited depression.
I take one last look at myself in the mirror, and run my fingertips across my swollen split lip. It doesn’t look too bad.
We had no idea how much strength he had left when we brought him home. Daniel had been burning with fever for ten hours. His mind had swung between agony and madness. He thrashed in that ice bath like an ensnared snake. It was an accident, and we nearly lost him. The mind may want to travel, but it’s always brutal on the body.
I run to the window, push it open, force the heavy morning air in and out. This is what I want. For eighteen months I’ve searched across continents and time. I’ve brought him home. He has occupied every hour of my loneliness, every minute of my despair, and every second of my hopefulness.
He must stay. Stay with me. He’s all I have left. And I love him.
He’ll see that now.
I tuck a brown curl behind my ear and stare into the abyss of my eyes. Stay the course, I tell them, show him a warm welcome.
I hesitate in the hall and stare at his bedroom door. His bedroom had become a sanctuary for me. I’ve spent nights wrapped in his naval jacket blanketed in bleakness. Nothing has changed in there. Most wives change everything about their inherited homes, but I’m a horrible wife.
I knock, each rap echoes in my chest like a regret. I press the pleats of my dress, adjust my bustle, and wait for his permission.
“Come in.” His voice is full of exhaustion’s gravel.
I freeze at the sight of him. Dark curls frame his sallow face, his cheeks are hollow, even his beard couldn’t disguise how close he sat at death’s door. Like a feral animal, his crisp blue eyes zero in on me. I feel their heat inspecting me from hair to hem. I adore the life in those eyes.
“Witch!” He screams.
He grabs his bowl of porridge and hurls it across the room. I duck behind the door. The bowl shatters against the wall and my wavering expectations.
I should’ve worn the black gown. He’s disoriented. Time dilation stresses the human body. I’ll return later this evening, when he’s well rested.
I’m a terrible wife.
* * *
Daniel’s heart galloped at warp speed. Beware the canary. The phrase kept resurfacing. He thought it had belonged to the kingdom of sleep, but then she glided into his room. When the bowl shattered he understood he was no longer in a cosmic coma. She was real, the woman in the canary yellow dress.
He buckled in pain. Every cell in his body stretched to adjust, to find its rhythm, it’s present. Where was he? What year? Why was it ghostly familiar?
He leaned against the headboard, and scanned the room. He sat in a walnut four-poster bed. The linens were tidy but rough cotton, nothing as refined as the Waldorf Hotel in 1985. Daggers of pain stabbed at the base of his head.
He wasn’t in the twentieth century. Damn. Damn the witch. He was so close. So close to fixing everything. Close to setting the bird free. He needed to get back to the future.
A man in a tidy black suit and white shirt entered his room. Daniel reached for the side table, for a gun he no longer possessed. He had also lost his suit, his ship, his memory, and his need for flight.
“Beg pardon sir. The Lady asked me to bring you another breakfast.”
Daniel glanced at the heavy silver tray, studied the man’s clothes, and then held the man’s stare. The man had combined terror and happiness in his eyes and meek grin.
“Who’s the Lady?” Daniel asked.
“The lady of the house?” The servant set the tray on the side table.
“Yes. Who’s the lady of the house?” Daniel directed his contempt at the bowl of mush. His stomach grumbled.
“Your wife, sir.” The inflection of the man’s voice hunted for reassurance.
“Give me her damn name.”
“Anna. Anna Preston.”
The name rang no note of recognition. But she was catching. Her brown hair swept up above her head, loose curls tucked behind her ears. Those light brown eyes that demagnetized his equilibrium, for they seemed elusive and familiar.
“We’re o’erjoyed to have you back, sir. Lady has had all kinds of journeys. Lookin’ for your lost ship. Searched every port.”
Had she told everyone about his ship? They would come after him and the ship. Destroy his life’s work.
“When she got word of a ship lost at sea. She’d set out that very day for the Admiral’s Office.” The man busied himself with removing invisible lint from the furniture.
What did he mean by a ship lost at sea? He struggled to remember, but his need to stay preoccupied his frantic mind. His first adventure had landed him in the Royal Navy, but that was eons ago. Now he crossed the sea of time not oceans. This Anna had held his secret, for no one would ever believe. She'd be institutionalized.
“Can you bring me some fried bacon and eggs? Some coffee? I don’t want baby food.”
“But the Lady insisted on the porridge. Said your stomach would be unsettled.”
After his first few trips through time, he’d spent hours retching but that was a dozen voyages ago. His skin grew warm at the courtesy. He needed to figure out his wife. No, he needed to remember the bewitching woman in the canary dress.
“I want my suit.”
* * *
“He requested what?” I ask.
Lotty twists her apron ties around her sausage fingers. Her fingers are turning purple.
“Alright. Is everything in his room?” Please say no. I need more time.
“Russell has it all laid out. Bringing up the hot water now.”
I slip on an apron and a prayer. Fasten them firmly behind my back. Why couldn't we just curl up together in his bed? Behave like a reunited couple.
I knock on his door and stumble for the correct endearment. Is it Daniel? Sir? Time Captain? Husband? I want to say Love.
“Come in.” The gravel has cleared from his voice, but it still strums an invisible chord inside my stomach. It has never been a soft smooth voice, just deep and rustling with wary adventure.
He sits near the window with a pair of scissors in his hand. He’s lopped off locks of hair. Tiny black snakes curl on the floor at his feet. He cuts away filaments of beard with no apparent regard for design. I try not to wince, but every course cut slices my mind’s portrait of my husband.
“It doesn’t hurt.” He speaks to my reflection in the mirror.
“How are you?” I try to capture his attention, but he concentrates on murdering his beard.
“I’m well.” He pauses, glances at my reflection. “Wife.”
My shock is framed within the mirror. Daniel would never say such a thing. He had never taunted, never risked offense. Not when it came to me. But he doesn’t remember me. A dark shadow eclipses my heart. What if this isn’t the man I love?
The steam from the basin fogs the mirror setting me free of his hold. I walk to the table and examine the tools. It’s not like I haven’t shaved a man before, I helped my father after his stroke. I dip the badger hairbrush into the basin and build the lather.
Daniel has had a beard for as long as I’ve known him. When my father took him in as an apprentice at eighteen it was already a permanent feature. I was ten at the time. I’m twenty-four now. But with all the time travel, I feel a decade older.
His shirt is beleaguered with clumps of hair. He should’ve covered himself. All those sharp hairs will needle him for the rest of the day, distract him from what he really needs to consider. I go to brush them with the towel, and he snatches my wrist.
Not a painful grip, but firm and aggressive like his devotion to my imagined happiness. This is Daniel’s unexpected touch. The one I’ve burned into my memory. It makes my heart race with anticipation. Makes my heart ache with longing, because nothing ever follows. He always mistakes my care for pity.
“I’ll change my shirt when you’re through.”
I lay the towel across his broad chest. End to end the towel almost reaches each shoulder. I swear my nerves are giving me a headache.
When I pick up the lathered brush, I’m disgusted by the tremor in my hand. You're not some frail little girl, I tell myself. I suck in the tremors and bury them deep into organs I can't even name.
The brush glides over his chin and cheeks. I manage to keep his lips and nostrils free of soap. The straight razor smells of mineral oil. Russell must’ve sharpened it. He's a good manservant, and he misses having a man to serve.
Daniel leans back, exposing his neck. “Where did you find me?” he asks.
I shift his chin to the left. Never begin with the neck, work up to it. I level the blade on his high cheekbone and take my first swipe. Swift like a fall from grace.
“In Newcastle. Your ship crashed.” Never begin with the truth, always work up to it. I read that in one of Daniel’s journals. It’s one of his rules for being a Time Captain. Along with always observe, never interfere with the past, otherwise, you unravel the future. But he’s broken this rule too many times.
I clean the blade in the basin. Clouds of foam float on the water like meringues. Does he like meringues? I can’t remember. I’m a horrible wife.
When I was young, there were rumors about why Daniel had a beard. That it covered a mangled face. A scar twisted up his cheek. A portion of his lip had been knifed away. And because he talked seldom, remained stoic in ballrooms, reveled in no one’s company, the rumors became fact.
His barren left cheek reveals perfection. Shaving his face turns into a treasure hunt. My strokes quicken as I shave his right cheek, and find no deformity, no defect, no finer face. I see stars along the edges of my vision.
“You always this fast?”
“I've never shaved my husband's face.”
“Are you sure I'm your husband?”
“I need to finish your chin. You shouldn't talk.”
We've been married for five years, but he left me in the first year. He can wait a few minutes more for my answer. I finish his chin and uncover a dimple. Come close to tracing it with the tip of my finger, but I spy the tendons in his jaw throbbing. The towel casts a grey tone to his blue eyes. Storm filled grey. I clear my throat.
“Depends on your definition of a husband. If a husband is the man who shares his life with you, then no, you are not my husband. If a husband is the man who shares your bed, then no, you are not my husband. If a husband is the man who loves you so completely that he would unravel time to find your happiness, then yes, you are my husband.”
For the first time in our married life, our eyes are tethered by connection.
“Who hit you?” The question rumbles from his throat full of the promise of retribution.
I’m afraid to answer. Afraid the words will cut through him. “You were burning with fever. We had to put you in an ice bath. It was accident.”
A strange emptiness displaces the storm in his eyes. Its cold caress lashes my skin. I’ve lost the connection. Never tell the truth, always work up to it.
This is the man I’ve grown to love. The man concealed in journals and diaries. On the first few readings they seemed fiction, but as I compared the words against my recollections they were as genuine as poor relations.
Daniel can't bear to hurt me. But he has, repeatedly.
He is not a horrible husband.
I place another towel into the basin of hot water, and pray the sound of water will interrupt his self-loathing. I fold the towel into fourths. He keeps his eyes locked, over my shoulder, on the door. He wants to leave. He always wants to leave.
I lay the hot towel across his shaved countenance. I want to laugh at myself, at the rumors, at him, for hiding such a nice face. My levity erodes as I cradle his face with my hands. I've never touched him like this, not in this life. Touch is a terrible courtesy to waste.
The room fades from view. All I see is the bright white towel against his features. His haunted blue eyes, the high cheekbones, and the strength of his character. I imagine his full mouth under my hands. The tremors I had buried return with a vengeance, as if they’d spent all this time planning a massive ambush. My only safeguards from disintegrating to the floor are my dress, corset, and aspiration. And they’re not very steadfast.
“Why are you shaking?” he asks.
“Because you never touch me.”
His body goes lax and his arms spill over the chair. Did he want to slither away? I'm a horrible...he covers my hands with his. The calluses on his palms cut through my skin and my uncertainty. He pulls the towel from his face, tosses it to the floor, and my hands rest on his hot complexion.
All of my insides, all those unnamed organs, all of it, evaporates. His hands fasten on my waist. The room ascends and orbits. Gravity pulls my hungry lips to his full mouth. The blood in my body surges towards his rising. I taste his breath.
There is a loud knock at his door. Russell enters the room with another tray of food.
* * *
What the bloody hell? Daniel straddled his desire to launch himself at the manservant. But his body was hard and had cemented to the chair. The armrests sighed with relief when his grip loosened.
“Beg pardon, Sir.” The manservant no longer looked him in the eye, and he made small talk to the carpet instead.
What was so shameful about a kiss? Anna had left the room as if her face would combust. Surely he had kissed his wife? Bedded his wife? Why couldn’t he remember a wife?
The lingering scent of primrose held him captive. It soothed an ache masked deep within his core. The pain was different than the sharp jabs from future recollection. It was a soft ache with dull edges, malignant like forgotten happiness.
He'd been trying to right a wrong for so long it seemed an event not a person. Why would he leave this wife? She enthralled every molecule colliding in his body. When she had sucked her bottom lip in concentration, sitting became monstrously painful. How could he have left her?
Had leaving her become his occupation?
He was a man of the future that could visit the past. But the ivory combs she had in her hair tempted him to undo his intentions. He wanted to see the length of her brown curls fan across her naked back. He wanted to comb his fingers through their comfort. He wanted to feel them nest under his chin.
Beware the canary.
He had never suffered a memory setback this large. He had recorded everything, left meticulous journals. Where had he left them? The manservant eyed Daniel with dedicated earnest.
“I seem to have forgotten the layout. Did I keep my journals here or elsewhere?”
“Your study, Sir. Downstairs. I’ll bring them up.”
* * *
When Lotty pulled the five journals from my hands it felt like my children were being ripped from my arms. They meant everything. Hope. Calculations. Love. Life. Death.
Please don’t take him from me. He’s all I have.
Seven hours later, sitting in his study, the journals rest neatly on his desk. He’s never kept a tidy desk. I had the answer to my prayer, and I was devastated.
“I’ve signed the papers. Everything is yours,” Daniel says as he paces the room. He looks elegant in his black woolen riding suit, the length of his legs as infinite as my desperation. It’s strange what one notices in these helpless moments.
He’ll leave tonight. He doesn’t know there is another set of papers. My papers. The estate will go to Lotty and Russell and their six children. Their lives are more abundant than the stars in the Milky Way.
I’m glad I retrieved the chronograph from my jewelry box. It rests in my hand wrapped in my handkerchief. If I break it, he’ll never be able to change the past again. And I’ll be free of his kindness.
I know I’m supposed to exercise courage. I had contingencies planned, but with a ruined heart, it’s difficult to exude strength. I think he could taste my failure, so he didn’t make haste to leave.
“I’m tired of watching you disappear. Watching our children fade,” I say.
“We have no children.” His gaze is rich with hopeful accusation.
“We could, if you stayed.”
Logs pop and crackle in the fire.
“I’m not the man you love. Not in this life or the next.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I was wrong when I changed the past. Your past. I obligated you into marriage. I broke my own rule.”
He had saved my life, saved my father’s reputation, and the man I thought I loved had married another. The only option presented was his proposal. And I had accepted, figuring we would muddle through like everyone else. I was so very wrong.
“But you love me,” I whisper.
His hand twitches and his eyes shift across the fire.
“After all this, you still can’t admit it? You’ll confess to your journals. You’ve jumped across time to save me countless times. And still, you can’t admit it. Not now?” I will perish if I don’t hear those words from him. Once.
“I can go back and change it all. I can go back and make it so that your father lives.”
“But you die.”
“But you’re free.”
“Free to watch you disappear with my father? Free to marry a clergyman and die of consumption at twenty-seven? Is that how you envision my happiness? Or how about when you fix everything so that I marry Robert? Did you know he’s a mean drunk and a philanderer? I endure the humiliation, the beatings, and die at thirty of syphilis. Each time I die alone with no one. It’s terrifying.”
His face turns the color of bleached coral. “How do you know this?”
“I’ve suffered through all of it.”
He staggers, catches the mantle, whispers in choked syllables, “Impossible.”
I cross the room, cross my heart, and pray. “Why can’t you just stay and make me happy?”
“That isn’t possible.”
I laugh. I had to. The futility of honor. “You can manage time travel, but staying with me is impossible?”
“How do you know?”
“Whatever you alter I inherit that experience as a memory or a haunting expectation.” He gave me a look fit for Lazarus.
“What have I done? I miscalculated everything.”
He runs from the study. I follow him, down the stairs, across the foyer. Watch him spin in confusion as he looks for an exit hatch.
“Daniel, please. Don’t go. I love you.” I couldn’t bury the terror in my voice with a shovel.
He finds the door, whips it open, and storms out of the house. The moon is half crescent, and slices through the sky. The night air is thick and electric. It holds the scent of the ocean and pain.
“Wait!” I catch up and tug his arm. “Russell can bring your horse around. Do you even know where you’re going?”
* * *
Beware the canary. She dies. Always.
That’s what he’d read in his journals. The warning pounded in Daniel’s conscience in an infinite loop. He attempted to navigate the expanse of the estate. The strange alien territory from a created past. He spotted the horizon, smelled the ocean, and braced for her intervention.
How many times had he hurt her? How many times had he destroyed her happiness? All because he’d followed her back in time. He was a man of the future preoccupied with one past.
Daniel heard the clip-clop of a horse. A massive black stallion nuzzled his shoulder. The horse knew him, but he wasn’t the same man that owned this estate. The journals had confirmed his fraud. How much pain had he bestowed upon her?
His guilt scraped out his innards, made him feel weightless and worthless.
The wind died as Russell handed him the reigns. Daniel thought he heard a whimper, and he wasn’t sure if it came from the horse, the manservant, Anna, or his soul. The ground destabilized. He turned to look at her one last time.
Her eyes were slick like an iced over lake. The look of raw pain in her face flayed him open and grounded him. She slung her arms around his neck and her face branded his chest.
“If you love me, please stop changing my life. I’m tired,” she sobbed. “I’m tired of coveting an existence. If you truly love me, let me go.” He wrapped his arms around her desperate for a last embrace to cherish. “Let me go, as I let you go.” She snapped her arms free, and the reigns tightened around his grip. Had she been holding him upright? Because he felt like he was falling to the ground.
What an uncompromising choice. Leave her so that she may live. He wanted God to strike him dead, because leaving her would kill him. Her hair comb caught the moonlight, and he swore there were birds engraved within the ivory. He was a tattered man.
“Onyx will take you to the Canary. He’s the only one who knows how to find it,” she said.
The atmosphere ignited.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“He’s the only one who knows.”
“No, not that part.”
“He’ll take you to your ship, the Canary. Surely you remember your ship?”
A flash of lightning lit up the sky. He felt his body sail free of the Earth. He released Onyx’s reigns. The horse jogged towards the barn, spooked by the flash of light and the rumble of thunder.
“Beware the Canary.” She dies. Always.
* * *
“Beware the Canary,” I repeat. “You’ve been saying that since last night. Through all of your pain.”
“She dies. Always.” He gently cups my face in his rough hands. “You die. Always. I never wanted to hurt you.” He brushes tears from my cheeks with his thumbs.
“Then stay.”
Daniel leans in and holds his mouth a hair’s width from mine.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
His kiss shatters all of my resolve. It is hot, full of desire and heartache. It makes my palms bleed passion. It is everything I had hoped it would be.
And he fades from my sight.
Working notes
I think we've all had moments when we've been preoccupied with love and fate. Are we destined for the one we can't escape? Or the one we follow through time's trials and errors? Do our actions carry consequence when they have the purest intentions? That's what I wanted to explore with "The Canary" - the preoccupation with love and how far we travel for it.
About the author
Kristina Blackwell writes from the Bay Area. A former marketing analyst for an Internet company, she is now a full time mother of two children, and has a husband of 15 years. She is a member of RWA, and co-chairs the VP of Programs position of her local RWA chapter, Silicon Valley RWA. She enjoys being preoccupied with Gothic literature, and stories about the paranormal and dark fantasy. It isn’t unusual for her to have four different writing journals scattered around her house at any given time.