There’s an absence of sound, the absolute quiet of a misty morning. It’s an education in physics, really—that sound can travel differently when the air is heavy with moisture.
Somewhere, through the mist, there’s still the strangled cry of a magpie, again and again and again. The promise of a crisp day ahead. That’s what Nik always associates the sound with—blue skies and cold mornings on her second-favourite aunty’s farm.
She didn’t know it was magpies making the sound for the longest time—didn’t even know it was birds. A strange sound she only ever heard there, giving her a sense of place and security when she woke up in a bed with unfamiliar sheets and an itchier blanket than she was used to. The magpies told her where she was.
Her sister, Lana, is already sitting on the veranda with a plate of toast when Nik opens the ranch slider and steps barefoot onto the cold tile. ‘I stole the last of the coffee, sorry.’
Nik shrugs, perching on the arm of Lana’s chair. ‘I’ll make another plunger. Aunty Kath’ll want more when she gets in from dealing with the chooks.’
‘True.’
They look out over what would be the valley, the mist hanging in a pale veil. A magpie calls out again and another answers, closer to them than the first.
‘They’re corvids, you know,’ Lana remarks. ‘Like ravens and crows. Really clever.’
‘That doesn’t sound right,’ Nik replies. ‘I’ve never thought of them as particularly smart. Mostly just aggressive.’
‘But you like their song. You’ve always liked it.’
‘I do,’ she acknowledges. ‘But I didn’t know it was theirs at the time.’ She squints, trying to make out more details of their shapes in the shrouded trees. ‘I think you’re wrong. They don’t look raven-y to me. Are you just getting confused because magpies and ravens both have poems where they get chatty?’
Lana rolls her eyes and jerks her knee into Nik’s side. ‘Ha.’
Nik jumps up, wincing at both the sudden cold on her feet and the ache in her hip. ‘I’m going to look it up. And make coffee. And maybe phone in an assault charge.’
‘You do that,’ Lana calls after her. ‘And come grovel when you find out that I’m right.’
The kitchen is sprawling, heavy on the wood panelling and earthenware mugs and glass jars of jams and mystery preserves. Opposite the sink and countertop, there’s an out-of-commission cast-iron fireplace and beside that, a niche where the Christmas tree goes every year. Even now, in the early days of spring, Nik can smell pine needles.
She takes out the coffee plunger, a sturdy Pyrex creation that predates her by at least a decade or two. She bypasses the household coffee, taking instead from the stash that she and Lana had agreed to bring with them, a quick decision made in acknowledgement of their self-admitted snobbery. It feels more embarrassing to confess to it here, somehow.
Not embarrassing enough not to do things her way, though.
While the kettle heats up, Nik goes to retrieve her phone. She’d felt its absence overnight while it charged on the only available power outlet, far across the guest room from the single bed and its granny square throw. It’s charged, but the signal drifts between 3G and nothing at all and her initial attempt at looking up magpies is met with a blank screen and a frozen loading bar.
No more luck in the kitchen. Nik hits refresh with increasing aggression as the kettle starts to boil, as she carefully pours water over the grounds. Nothing. The magpies are still singing outside, occasional quardles and doodles that begin to feel mocking. She sets a timer for seven minutes and carries the plunger and a mug out to the veranda to join her sister.
‘So, what’s the verdict?’
‘The verdict is that the internet out here is dire.’
Lana nods. ‘And to think that when we arranged to come here that was part of the appeal.’
‘Don’t remind me.’ Nik walks to the edge of the veranda and leans on the railing, stretching her arm out as far as it can go before tapping the screen again. It flashes for a moment before returning to its previous state. ‘Goddamn it.’
‘You’ll just have to take my word for it, then.’ Lana’s smug claim is affirmed by another cry from the nearer of the two birds, a roiling tumble of notes more of an ellipsis than any more definitive punctuation.
Nik decides to ignore both her sister and the magpie situation. The mist is still lingering, although even now it’s a little lighter. A lamb bleats nearby but in what particular direction, she can’t be sure. It sounds terribly mournful, even more so when it repeats itself, louder and more insistent. The magpies respond in kind and the lamb goes quiet.
‘Hey Nik, remember that time we looked after that lamb for Aunty when we were kids and you attacked it with the hose?’
‘No, and you don’t either. I was barely two and you were two months.’
Nik turns and catches the tail end of Lana’s scowl. ‘You know I mean the photo.’
It lives in family infamy: tiny Nik in a nappy and pink t-shirt, blonde ringlets askew, face in a rictus of joyous laughter, a garden hose trained squarely on a month-old lamb. ‘I’m just glad it was the 90s,’ she replies with a shrug. ‘If it were today, there’d be video and probably someone attacking me for animal cruelty.’
‘You probably just thought it needed a bath.’
‘Probably. Or maybe my baby sister wasn’t playing with me enough so I needed to make do.’
‘That must be it.’ A pause. ‘Do you think the lambs need bottle-feeding?’ There’s a hopefulness to Lana’s voice that makes Nik smile despite herself.
‘Dunno. Ask Aunty Kath when she gets back.’
Lana groans. ‘She always takes ages with the chickens. I swear she has a chat with every goddamn one to ask it politely if she can take its eggs.’
‘Her.’
‘What?’
‘Not “it”. The chickens are all hens. They’re all “her”.’
‘You’re messing with me.’
‘Only slightly.’
Lana throws a crust at her.
‘Hey, a hen might like that.’
‘They’re probably better fed than any other living creature on this farm.’
Nik looks at the crumbs on Lana’s plate, the Marmite smear. ‘Yeah, maybe.’ She looks at her phone again. Still no signal. ‘What would we do if there was an emergency?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s just the internet that the signal’s shit for. Try texting me.’
She realises her sister is, in fact, correct even as she’s typing a message and sending it. A few moments later, the phone lying beside the empty plate dings.
‘Lana is wrong,’ she reads aloud from her screen. ‘Wow. Sick burn.’
‘I’ll be cleverer when I’ve had my coffee.’
‘Uh huh.’ Lana eases herself out of the chair, limbs stretched to their limits and joints popping in a way that looks to be satisfying rather than painful. Nik wouldn’t know, her calves are perpetually tight and unwilling. ‘I’m gonna have a shower. Ask Aunty Kath about the lambs if she comes back while I’m in there.’
‘Okay. Don’t use all the hot water.’
Lana doesn’t reply, just lets out a pointedly villainous cackle on her way down the hall. When the magpie calls out next, there’s somehow a similar quality to it. Nik shivers as she plunges the coffee. The plunger keeps forming a seal, preventing further progress, until she throws all her weight into it, trusting in the integrity of mid-80s kitchenware.
She and the coffee both come out intact.
Twenty minutes later, she is still sipping her first cup, watching the world go by and hearing more and more of the farm around her come to life as the mist continues to slip away. The stillness seems to endure, interrupted by occasional laissez-faire animal noises and the gentlest rustle of a driftwood wind chime.
Her reverie is shaken by screeches above and below. A ginger cat she doesn’t recognise tears past, yowling as it goes. A magpie is hot on its heels, swooping and screaming at regular intervals. ‘Jesus,’ she mutters, hand unconsciously pressing to her sternum. She watches them careen off into the paddocks below until they are out of sight, hoping that the fear for its own life prevents the cat from getting too friendly with the livestock.
‘What the hell was that?’
Lana appears in the doorway, hair in a towel turban, looking frazzled.
‘Cat and a magpie having a conversation,’ Nik replies. ‘An argument.’
‘Jesus. Well. Wow. So much for the calm rural escape.’
‘I knew we should have gone to visit Aunty Bev.’
‘In Pahiatua?’
‘Better food. Better company. And I just don’t think she’d have the same amount of screaming animals.’
‘But then you wouldn’t be able to maybe feed the lambs.’
Lana sighs heavily, raggedly. ‘You’re right. What did Aunty Kath say about them?’
‘She hasn’t come back yet. I’d have come and got you to deliver the good news if she had.’
‘Goddamn chickens.’
Nik drains the rest of her coffee, hands the plunger to her sister. ‘You can have the rest if you want.
The immediately contrite expression that crosses Lana’s face is disconcerting. ‘My favourite, best sister in all the land.’
‘Shut up. I’m gonna go for a wander to see if I can get signal anywhere in the garden. Maybe I’ll check in with Aunty on the way and get an answer to the lamb question.’
Lana settles into a chair. ‘Great plan. I appreciate how much effort you’re going to just to research something to attempt to prove me wrong. It’s very flattering.’
‘I’ll have you know I also have a compulsive need to check my messages and post a photo of my coffee in front of the valley.’
‘Nerd.’
Nik rolls her eyes and makes for the steps at the edge of the veranda, shoving her feet into too-big gumboots and padding out across the lawn. She keeps an eye on the trees, wondering whether she’s about to get the divebomb treatment from the magpies that have been serenading her in their own special way all this time. They seem content to keep chattering.
She pulls out her phone, and finds that, miracle of miracles, it’s behaving. She balances her priorities, first establishing her countryside getaway aesthetic in an Instagram post, then the rebuttal research.
Magpies are birds from the Corvidae family. Damn. Highly intelligent. Damn.
She realises that Lana is going to be insufferable after all this build-up.
She keeps reading and strikes gold. The birds referred to as magpies in Australasia are a different species, unrelated to those in other parts of the world. She blurts out a ‘ha!’ before she can stop herself, and the magpie song stops abruptly. Visions of the birds as some sort of ill omen vanish from her mind; they aren’t the clever cousins of crows and ravens after all. Thank god.
She stuffs her phone in her pocket and begins heading towards the chicken coop to track down her aunt. At least if she says yes to lamb feeding, Nik will have one piece of good news to help with the bad.
As she approaches, she notices the return of the silence from earlier in the morning, when the mist clung more closely. The raucous jumble of chicken noises she has come to expect seems deadened; the silence of the magpies drawing her attention to the absence. They must all be inside the coop, still. Nik’s no farm girl but that seems odd to her.
‘Aunty Kath?’ There’s still nothing but the squeak and rub of her gumboots as she picks up the pace. A magpie swoops down past her shoulder and perches on the gate. ‘Hello?’
She can’t see her—or any chickens—in the pen but from around the corner, she can see that the door to the coop is open. ‘Aunty Kathy?’
Rounding on the door, she sees her aunt’s back as she sits on the floor of the coop, cross-legged, very still. Nik can see no reaction to calling her name. She creeps up the short ramp, hearing it creak beneath her, and there is still no sound from inside—neither from Aunty Kath nor from the chickens.
Nik touches her aunt’s shoulder when she reaches her before fully taking in the surroundings. There is hay all over the place—more so than would be typical. And there are feathers everywhere. Broken eggs. And blood.
And she realises that the chicken that Aunty Kath is cradling is dead.
Lying at the other end of the coop, there are five more feathered bodies.
Nik isn’t sure if she needs to throw up or pass out but she manages to avoid either and instead crouches down. ‘Aunty Kath, what happened? Have you been out here like this all this time?’
Her aunt doesn’t say anything but does turn to look at her. Or at least, to look in her direction. Her eyes are empty.
‘Were they…were they dead when you came out to feed them? Was this one still alive when you found it?’ Nik asks, not having a playbook for any form of grief. No sense of the correct words for when a beloved flock has been unceremoniously killed.
‘She,’ her aunt rasps. ‘She’s not an it. She’s a she. She was still alive. The others weren’t. They were all my girls too.’
‘She,’ Nik corrects herself, wondering how she’d fallen at the first hurdle. ‘Aunty, I think you should come inside. Is there someone we can call? Do you know what happened?’ Which question is the right one—if any of them are the right one—is unclear. Her aunt does let herself be pulled to her feet, although she doesn’t let go of the hen in her arms. ‘Maybe you should put her down.’
Aunty Kath lets out a single choked sob and shakes her head. They walk slowly to the house, Nik’s arm awkwardly around her aunt’s shoulders. The magpies have started singing again.
‘So, lambs?’ Lana calls out as she sees them approach, before they are close enough for her to take in the whole situation. It’s only a step or two, in utter silence before she can see more clearly. ‘Oh my god, what the hell?’
‘There’s been an incident,’ Nik says. ‘Um. I don’t really know what to do.’
There is a magpie walking along one of the steps up to the veranda, back and forth like a little man on patrol.
‘Well, I definitely don’t,’ Lana replies, brow furrowed. ‘Aunty Kath, are you okay? What’s going on?’
‘I just need a minute. To figure out...’ she drifts off, moving from Nik’s grip and walking around to the other side of the house. Nik and Lana stare as she walks off.
‘I have no idea,’ Nik begins, before Lana can jump in with the questions that are clearly burning at her. ‘She was just sitting there.’
The magpie on the steps stops its walk and looks directly at Lana. She blanches. ‘Maybe I was right talking about them being like ravens and crows. Bad omens.’
‘They aren’t. I did look it up. Our magpies are different from the ones in Europe and the States. No relation. No graveyard cousins.’
‘Well they still seem like a pretty bad omen to me.’
Nik can’t argue with that.
The mist has fully disappeared and the sounds of the day are technically all there, Nik can tell. It all still feels muted, shrouded, as if underwater. Except for the magpie on the steps, a smear of red on its beak, what looks like a strand or two of ginger fur peeking out from under one wing, singing and singing and singing.