Teapot of Sparrows

Fiadh (fee-a)

Fiadh Delaney loved the forest, but she didn’t realize it until after she’d spent six weeks in the belly of a damp, humid ship. Fiadh could still remember her parents and her brothers and sisters, stuffed like sardines, nibbling on soggy biscuits to ease their seasickness. In the beginning, there were five of them, with Fiadh smack dab in the middle between two older sisters and two younger brothers. In the end, her sisters Mary and Sinead hadn’t made the full voyage. Their bodies were hauled over the edge before Fiadh had even recognized it was their shoes being tugged ungracefully off of still, pale feet sticking out the end of wrapped burlap. They were bundled together, like old Christmas trees.

Thereafter, her mother remained suctioned to her cot with sweat, sallow and despondent, only lifting her head when the hull jolted rudely against the docks. Fiadh’s father took it as a sign to haul them off the ship at the first port they docked in, Port au Choix, eager to leave the “floating hell” they had resorted to.

Fiadh was not impressed. Thinking of the stories she’d been told about Canada, she expected towering mountains and golden plains as far as the eye could see. But Newfoundland looked just like Ireland, except for the enormous trees that thickened and darkened the land. Fiadh would eye the shadows between each towering trunk, imagining the space congealing together, blocking any shard of light.

It wasn’t until Fiadh had scratched together enough nerve to explore the strange land that she began to understand. Sheltered by a canopy of hopelessly tangled branches and foliage was another world teeming with life and wild growing things. Sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the waxy moss that carpeted every upturned root and fallen log. Fiadh loved the smell of wet earth that swelled in the air after heavy rain, when the beetles and worms would nudge up to the surface and squirm in the damp forest floor, dancing for the rain and sun.

Fiadh decided that Newfoundland would do nicely.

—

While her parents struggled to find work and her brothers preoccupied themselves with their scrapes and squabbles, Fiadh took hold of the household. As the only remaining daughter, she was left in charge to darn socks, wring the washing, feed chickens, collect eggs, and wash the dishes. Though she despised most everything she was tasked to do, washing dishes was the least offensive. The lye they used, however, scrubbed her skin raw, leaving her hands red and cracking. Yet she silently enjoyed how it bit into her, prickling her awareness long after she had dried and stacked it all. It was like scratching a long-ignored itch.

Fiadh coveted her time standing at the basin, staring thoughtlessly through the kitchen window. Between the neighboring tin roofs and stove pipes, she made peace with a sliver of the ocean. It churned in her belly and sang in cerulean blue when the clouds parted on warm days, and she couldn’t help but be curious about how much of the world it could touch.

When they were packing for their voyage to Canada, the one thing her mother insisted on dragging across the ocean was her cream-coloured tea set. Four teacups and saucers accompanied by a sugar bowl and milk jug, all mothered by a round, weathered teapot. They were daintily painted with yellow and grey sparrows soaring across the old ceramic; they flew together in one flock, their sharp feathers fanned behind them.

The pieces hung on special hooks above the kitchen window, the saucers stacked neatly on the window sill. Fiadh always took extra care lathering suds into the murky dregs of last night’s tea. She’d wash and rinse them, rub them dry and hang them up immediately in case the boys came ripping through and there was a horrible incident. The tea set had been their grandmother’s, and the boys would be torn asunder for shattering her prized possessions.

“Flighty thing she was,” Mother mused, cup of tea in hand. “Stole the set from one of her suitors and ran off with my father.” At this she shook her head grimly and took a sip. “Could’ve had a matching set of dinner plates.”

Any spare moment her mother’s back was turned, Fiadh would escape down side streets and dirt roads to find the thicket of forest that pressed Port au Choix against the shore. There she would map the ventured land with trails of small stones, forage for leaves and abandoned bones wedged in rotting mush, and sometimes sit and talk to the forest. It was easy—a little confiding and innocent flattery and Fiadh had charmed the soft- spoken forest. Only in the quiet and still, cradled away in the palm of twisted roots could she speak aloud what weighed heaviest in her chest.

The wind swam through her hair, the leaves danced as she skipped by, and eventually, the forest began to share its secrets with her as well; it hummed gently to her when everyone else had fallen asleep.

—

When Fiadh was nineteen, her mother sent her to the docks to purchase mackerel for dinner. Fiadh wandered the wharf, strolling past tables piled with smooth mussels and Atlantic salmon. A cold wind skipped off the water’s surface and billowed through the market, and Fiadh was sent sprawling into the unsuspecting arms of Captain Thomas Byrne.

Strapping in his pressed shirt and with a shock of hair dark as Earth, Thomas amused her with tales of his escapades at sea, of storms and ships and bulging nets full of shimmering fish. After a pint at the local pub—Thomas one more than she—and the mackerel well forgotten, Fiadh’s mother found her daughter sauntering dreamily up the road, her head lost in a flurry of butterflies and stolen kisses.

Nobody in the town of Port au Choix was surprised, Fiadh’s parents least of all, when Thomas Byrne sat down in the kitchen with her father and asked for her hand.

Her father couldn’t believe their good fortune, of course, and immediately went calling on the local minister, giddy as anything. Her mother looked, tight-lipped, into her daughter’s face and regretted finding no excuse to keep her there. She pressed her dead daughters’ shoes into Fiadh’s arms and held her hands tight. They stood there for a while, lapsing into each other.

Two months later, Fiadh pilfered her mother’s teapot, and followed Thomas down the western coast of Newfoundland to Dovekie Harbour.

Dovekie Harbour sat along the shores of an inlet, accessible only by one road. The harbour was encircled by towering hills and forestry that dwarfed the colourful salt boxes by the rocky shore. Thomas and Fiadh Byrne’s maroon-trimmed, one-and-a- half story house sat higher inland. It was nestled in the crook of the hillside, overlooking the harbour and its busy comings and goings. Thomas himself toured her along every bowing hill and secret crevice of the bay. They would hike up the thin path leading from her back stoop to the woodland that hugged the village’s edge. She introduced herself to the pines and the brambles and the larks, and the forest remembered her.

In the beginning, the locals regarded her with wry suspicion. It wasn’t natural for a young wife to be out exploring when she should be busy at home canning, salting, and knitting little booties in anticipation for a young one to occupy her days. Quietly, Fiadh longed for the same, although not for lack of trying. Fiadh and Thomas had a tendency to abandon any chore in a heartbeat, and for the first while, went away with each other as often as they could.

As it turned out, Captain Thomas Byrne was not a captain at all. He worked as a crewmate on the Robin, a plump fishing trawler with a red belly, and black and grey rags flying from the mast. Unfortunately, the cork—as he was known—had a much smaller salary than the Captain, which was dependent on the catch of the day, if they caught anything at all. Fiadh bit her tongue. At least he had work.

After their first year together, their perpetually empty cradle became public knowledge. People began offering their condolences to Thomas after church. Someday, someday, they said. You’ll be gifted a strong child, I know. I trust.

Fiadh was reminded of her own family in Port au Choix, and remembered the kitchen, how it lit up with laughter and sticky fingers and warmth. And the weight in her chest ached.

In the summer months that followed, Fiadh dug a garden further inland where the soil was dark and malleable and grew an array of vegetables, herbs, and wildflowers. She allowed the ivy to crawl over her house and mourned the hacked stalks of Queen Anne’s lace from the neighboring salt boxes.

The inhabitants of Dovekie Harbour kept careful note of her foraging and traipsing around town, envious of her inexplicable ability to produce bushels of rhubarb, beets, rutabaga, and alfalfa at a moment’s notice. The limp, yellowed quality of their own gardens was lackluster compared to Fiadh’s rampantly thickening plot, as she seemingly willed life from the dense, stubborn Newfoundland dirt. Some suspected she’d been siphoning something secret and intangible from the soil, but they smiled politely and waved, like good neighbors do, when she passed by with bushels of weeds and rocks tucked into her skirts.

At church, she managed conversation only in passing with the church ladies. In their eyes, she remained a bride from away, and Fiadh had a feeling that would always be the way of things.

While weeding a wild thicket of blackberry, Fiadh spotted Mrs. Murray, the minister’s wife, walking up the road. Her gloved hand clasped her mouth before she stooped by the ditch and vomited. Fiadh rushed over to rub her back in small circles and hummed in a familiar rhythm, like she had done for her older sisters when they were seasick.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Murray gasped, wiping her mouth clean. “The sickness has been tiresome.” Her hand drifted meaningfully to her stomach as she stood, huffing as she righted herself.

Fiadh considered the minister’s wife, asked her to wait for a moment, and went to rummage in her kitchen. When she came back, she pulled a small amber jug from her pocket, a thickened concoction of ginger, cranberry, and raspberry leaves.

“Take it in your tea,” she said. “For the nausea.”

After a moment observing the jug, Mrs. Murray tucked it into her apron, smiling tensely. She thanked Fiadh for her generosity and hurried down the road, her hat nearly whisking free.

The next day, the minister’s wife was at their back door, thanking Fiadh for her wonderful remedy and asking to purchase three more. Mrs. Murray held out a fistful of glinting coins, and Fiadh’s eyes went wide.

As Mrs. Murray’s good word spread through Dovekie Harbour, Fiadh had more visitors at her back door, ailing from all manner of complaints, including back pain, headaches, insomnia, cramps, and stiff bones. She started to make peppermint salves, stone soup broth, lavender tea, and a plethora of amber-bottled tinctures and tonics. In return, they paid her handsomely with jams, flour, and fish. Life got easier.

Although Fiadh received more friendly nods than she did before, she remained as lonely as ever. She made an effort to be grateful for the things she was given. She had her home, surrounded by a thicket of black spruce and flaking paper-birch, and her mother’s teapot, carefully painted with swooping grey sparrows with scissor tails that sliced sharply across the delicate surface. And she had Thomas, sometimes.

Thomas began to invest his earnings on rum as enthusiastic bouts of drinking drew him further from the house. Nightly meetings extended to weekend excursions, until he’d disappear completely among the rows of tin-roofed shacks, drinking himself senseless.

Sometimes Thomas would stumble back up the hill late at night and shove Fiadh onto the bed, “as was his God-given right.” One such night, he stumbled through the front door and hiked up her skirts while she was washing dishes. He pressed her to the counter, his liquor-infused breath hot against her neck. She swung a soapy frying pan at his temple, but fortunately for Thomas, he ducked in time and was chased out the front porch, the door locked behind him.

He didn’t like that.

Fiadh couldn’t remember a change, any distinct shift in his behaviour. He took his tea the same, wore the same cap slapped on his head, and he still stumbled home drunk and haggard. At some point, hacking coughs began to accompany him as he climbed the stairs. His once soil-coloured hair, now streaked with grey, was thinning across a sunburnt scalp. He shook slightly as he forced his swollen limbs up, up, up. Fiadh watched as she knitted from her rocker, unblinking.

She knew it was him, whose slanderous ramblings had bled for years into the minds of the men in the harbour. Staining her name, her hard work. Thomas had become well-known in the village as a willful, short-tempered man who believed his wife to be crazy and wasn’t shy about the fact. He didn’t understand her ways and didn’t care to.

Over the years, he missed shifts and ran tabs and had idly whittled away whatever respect he possessed from the men of the bay. Good now only for a lark, they rallied with him only to drink in their drafty shacks.

Their words always found their way back to Fiadh’s ears.

A witch, that one. If you honestly think she’s helping us, you’re a fool.

I’ve always had a funny feeling about her, remember? Just a matter of time before she decides to poison us all, I’d bet my hat on that.

Together they sloshed over their cups, listening in rapture to Thomas bellyache over his wife.

Be weary b’ys, she sleeps with three eyes open.

—

Fiadh sat by herself at her picture window as she had for many nights in the bay. She considered her conversations with the forest, her collection of shoes that didn’t fit, the minister’s wife, and her beloved teapot of sparrows. She considered Thomas Byrne, his windburnt face and watery eyes. She thought of bruises, soapy frying pans, and empty bottles of rum rolling on the floor. As a low rumble rippled through the leaden skies, she felt a prickle on the back of her neck.

The wooden door snapped open as Thomas stepped inside, flushing the room with cold. His eyes bloodshot and hungry, he was clothed in grime and the ever-present stench that followed him everywhere. Fiadh’s nose wrinkled involuntarily.

He walked into the kitchen and began to rummage through the cupboards, a hulking bear foraging for food. A nagging tapping came from the window, a tree branch pushed by the gathering wind.

“This kitchen is empty.” He growled. His search grew into an agitated frenzy. “Where the hell is the tea?”

He looked at her. When she didn’t respond, he snatched up her teapot of sparrows by the handle and smashed it on the corner of the kitchen table. Cream-coloured shards scattered over the wooden floor.

“Get out.”

Thomas continued to pillage, appearing not to hear her as he nosed through her preserves.

“Get. Out.”

Fiadh’s face grew hot as tears welled in her eyes. The wind rattled the house, swelling, trying to get in. Her voice steadied, abnormally sharp. “This is the last time you will step in this house. Leave and never come back.” Once she said them, the words felt insipid and meaningless on her tongue, but she held her gaze.

The rattling receded, and for a moment everything was quiet, with Thomas and Fiadh standing at opposite ends of the kitchen, the ocean between them. By some will of nature, Thomas heard her and fled the salt box, slamming the door behind him.

Out the window, dark clouds accumulated as rain began to patter on the glass. Fiadh gripped the table, her heart hammering against her ribcage.

—

In the morning, Fiadh dragged herself from her bed, shuffled down the narrow staircase, and put on the kettle. Dark circles haunted her eyes, her joints submerged in tar. She sat at the kitchen table with her eyes closed until the squeal of the kettle pierced her aching head. She reached for her teapot, but withdrew her hand when she remembered what had happened. Before going to bed, she had collected the shards of her teapot and put them in a tin box with hopes of fixing it, though she feared its tea-steeping days were done. Fiadh poured the boiling water straight into a mug of peppermint leaves and sat back down, out of breath.

Outside, she could see a thin mist floating through the village and over the harbour. The dewy grass and disheveled trees were the only signs of the storm that shook the hollow house the night prior. Just as the clouds began to lift, she thought of her sudden declaration—her promise.

The pale sky darkened to indigo. Thomas hadn’t shown. For once, perhaps he had taken what she said seriously.

Mrs. Murray stopped by the house to offer her condolences. “My dearie, I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” Fiadh asked.

“Oh,” Mrs. Murray’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know.

They just found him. Fiadh, he’s dead.” She clasped her hands together importantly and held them in front, gathering her thoughts. “Well now, last night Thomas grumbled all the way down to the docks, yelling and cursing, worked himself into a real tizzy, he did. He must’ve curled up in the Robin to take shelter from the storm. In the morning, the boys came aboard, but Thomas wasn’t there. They hollered for him, but he didn’t show. So, they set out without him. He was in that boat all night and day and no one noticed ‘till they docked back for supper.”

Mrs. Murray reached for Fiadh’s hands, and said in a softer voice, “It’s over, Fiadh, my dear, my love.”

Fiadh was still, her arms felt slack, tethered only by Mrs. Murray’s reassuring hands. Relief bloomed in her chest. It overwhelmed her, and she cried.