Once upon a time, last spring, a dozen small ducklings sailed in a box on the U.S.S. Postal Service and arrived at my door. The journey was short, but long. They traveled in the dark. Cold air seeped in through the holes in the box, the tiny cup of water ran dry. When I opened the hatch two days later, the ducklings peeped with relief and questions. I tipped them out onto the rug and they ran around in confused circles until I boiled an egg, chopped it into pieces, and floated it in the refilled water cup. The smell reminded them of home and tasted like a place they once knew. Their tiny heads got heavy and they fell asleep on the rug in a pile shaped like a box.
They grew and died, one by one. That same year in the woods a coyote family and a wandering bobcat grew sleek and clever on a diet of hopefully tended duck. When the slugs emerged the following spring to eat the daffodils, I mourned the gap in our small food-chain, but I did not open the emails from the hatchery. When I drove past the feed store, I stubbornly refused to read its announcements until hatchling season had come and gone.
It was not a time for ducklings. Everywhere, suddenly, people went to get a pint of ice cream, or a pair of pants, or a chance at a new life, and died. The people who were left began to run around in confused circles. No one knew what home smelled like anymore. Hardly anyone could sleep, but when they did, they lay alone in the dark, flinching at strange sounds and clicking their thirsty tongues.
My news feed in those days was buzzing with a story about a newly discovered flower somewhere west of the Pacific. It was a color no one had ever seen before (though the indigenous people of its home forest had a name for it so ancient it could no longer be pronounced). It would only bloom when held in the hand of a child still in its innocence. Beauty was in demand, as was innocence, so a black market of seeds sprang up almost instantly, but when the seeds arrived, the gardeners discovered all the children had grown up overnight. The seeds were put in the ground or thrown into the compost and forgotten. During this time, messiahs roamed the country selling sachets or truth serums, or more rarely, bottles of water said to quench every thirst.
One day I was sitting alone in my bedroom thinking of the ducklings. I remembered them sleeping, their bellies full of egg. It was foolish, but I took out my phone and looked at images of them fresh from the box: their downy yellow and black feathers, their dark little feet and beaks. There was a knock at the door; I answered it and found a woman standing there. I could tell immediately she was one of the messiahs. She had a slightly disheveled appearance and there was a twig in her hair. She spoke, but her voice was hoarse and I couldn’t understand her. This embarrassed me, so I looked down at her shoes. They were the kind of shoes you saw sometimes in old movies, little brown oxfords with a sensible heel, slightly scuffed. My thoughts about her softened. The woman rummaged in her bag. I did not want to buy truth serum or sachets, so I shook my head, but she held out her hand anyway. In the center of her palm was a shiny black seed. She put the seed in her mouth and swallowed it. When she opened her hand again, she was holding an egg.
“Come in,” I said immediately. She did. She took off her coat and set the egg on the table. We watched it for a moment to make sure it wouldn’t roll off. The egg was pale blue and incredibly beautiful.
“I would love some cake,” the woman said in her hoarse voice. I was startled. I began to say I had no cake, but the smell of baking had filled the room. On the table beside the egg was suddenly a cake, a pot of coffee.
“Of course,” I said, and we sat down together. The egg lay between us. Sometimes it rocked a little, as if something was inside — a small something, wanting to get out. We watched the egg and ate our cake. The rocking was so slight I sometimes thought I had imagined it.
“No one wants these anymore,” the woman said, hovering her coffee cup just above the egg’s trembling shell. Her voice was smoother now, but a little sad.
“I do,” I said, surprising myself. Between us, the egg was now shell pink. It became very still, almost as if it had never been alive. The woman and I glanced at each other and my cheeks grew hot at how bright my hope had been. She cleared her throat as if she might say something else, but then the egg give a little jolt. A crack appeared near the top. It widened until a small triangle of pink fell off. Beneath it, I could see a tiny, dark unfurling.
“It’s a petal!” the woman whispered.
“It’s a wing!” I shouted at the same moment.
…
At the sight of this small hatching, a word was on my tongue, a word so old I could almost remember how to say it. I whispered it out loud but not even my ears were quick enough to grasp it. The word curled itself into the air and out the window and spread across and across the sky.
…
Later, I gave the woman the spare bedroom. When I asked her name, she said, “Many lifetimes, all is coming.”* She was very tired. I politely removed the twig from her hair and left her alone to rest. The house was quiet, all the cake was gone. The egg was where we had left it, sitting in the center of the table, now green as a spring caterpillar, now purple as a bruise. It shed layers of shell, revealing first a glimpse of feathers, then a curl of leaf. It had been that way for hours, for days, for years. I went to the kitchen and got my big porcelain bowl, lined it with a towel and brought it back. As carefully as I could, I lifted the egg and held it for a moment. It was warm, pulsing with its hidden life. As I watched, its shell would crack and split then knit itself back together. Breaking and healing, breaking and healing. I brought it close to my face. It smelled like the damp rot of woods or the sharp saltiness of seahorses or the heat of blackberry leaves in August. I set it down as carefully as I could inside the bowl to wait.
*attributed to Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
