Many years ago I dreamed about a magical, savage bird. It was unlike any other dream I’ve ever had. It’s as if someone tore a page out of a book of wisdom fairy tales and slipped it into my sleeping head. It changed the way I write in an instant.
In my dream I was the first to wake up in our summer sleeping cottage uphill on our land. We had several beds in a communal space, enjoying the play and freedom of kids on summer break. Immediately upon waking I saw a strange bird zipping by the glass doors. It was built like a predator, thin and hard, hunting other birds no bigger than itself. Streaking across our land it pierced a bird, harpoon it, ripped it apart and ate what it could before quickly discarding it and moving on. It was completely savage, without remorse. Who knows how many birds it had already killed while we slept?
I had to do something about it, I had to stop this bird. I headed down to the house to find some solution. Just as I arrived it slammed itself into the screen door I was opening. It struggled relentlessly, digging in deeper, shredding the screen. I quickly grabbed it and examined it. Its beak looked lethal, part bone, part spear, but it was also beautiful. Each feather was layered with rainbow colors that seemed to glow. I knew that despite its extraordinary nature I was going to have to kill this creature, it was decimating the bird population.
Sure enough my hatchet was right there, leaning up against the door. I grabbed the bird and laid its head on a stump, and though it hurts my heart to kill anything, I cut it right across the neck. Its head dangled, barely attached by a dab of skin.
I went into the house to discover my wife already in the kitchen. We’d invited guests over and they would arrive soon. I hastily prepared a meal, adding the bird I’d just killed as part of a rich stew. We had a homestead and prided ourselves on using as much of what we’d raised as possible.
In no time there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, a husband and wife were waiting with their future son in law. Their daughter would be there shortly. It turns out she was late because she had a peculiar habit of turning into a bird every day to hunt.
“Yes, we know it’s strange but it’s part of what makes her so unique. She’ll be done soon, turn back into her human form and join us,” they said.
My heart fell to the floor. I realized immediately what I had done. That lethal bird I killed was this family’s daughter, this man’s fiancé. We were all destined to eat her in the meal I’d prepared.
I couldn’t let that happen. I had to tell them.
“I ahhh … you’re not gonna believe this but I just killed a bird, a bird I’m going to serve with dinner tonight. This is horrible I know but it sounds just like your daughter, just like your fiancé.”
“No,” they said, “it can’t be.” They were polite, they couldn’t imagine their host could do such a brutal thing. “Describe her.”
And so I did in great detail, the size of her body, no greater than my hand, her sharp semi-transparent beak, the rainbow feathers that seemed to hover between worlds. I left out no detail, even though it broke my heart to say the words.
“No no no, ” they said, “that’s not her. It doesn’t sound like her at all. Now where is that dinner? It sounds delicious!”
I knew what would come to pass: each one of them would eat their share of this young, magical woman I had mistakenly, stupidly killed. She would get inside them, gather in their bellies. Then and only then would they be struck by the horror of what they had done. They would know that they’d eaten her and surely go mad with grief. I would sit there, watching them feast on the meal I’d made and see their illusion shattered.
Then a voice whispered in my ear, it said “isn’t that just what writing is like?”
I was stunned awake by the realization, sitting bolt upright in our sleeping cottage, my wife and kids still in their own dreams. As a writer it is my job to take something true, perhaps a hard, savage truth, and serve it to those who do not understand it. I was here to serve people, but to serve them something that could crush their denial, slay them. I had been too precious in my writing, I needed to be willing to add more painful things to my stew.
We might to feed it to them carefully, sensuously, even though we know that when it settles in their bellies they’ll feel like they’re dying. Indeed, some half truth would die.
Transformation is sometimes hard, it can involve brutal truths, but it cannot be avoided forever.
