Tinatsu Wallace

Her screams are what finally prove the old man right. A nahual, he'd said. A golden eagle. She had never been anything except a broad-hipped woman to me. But the cries that come from her are inhuman, the sharp shrieks of a hunting bird. To my sensitive ears, they are mind-stabbing. A blanket tied over her head quiets the screams, but her arms still flutter against me.

I hear her heart beating, soft and quick, a love song beneath the woman’s screams. Does it seem strange that after all these days I don’t know her name? Sweet heart, I call her. Mi corazon dulce. My lips tremble, imagining the moist, slick taste.

The first bat of a wing takes me by surprise, so intent am I on wedging the thin knife through her ribcage. From behind her shoulders, two broad wings stretch, thrashing against the straw-stuffed mattress and wooden walls, a fall of feathers buffeting my head.