The Early Bird
by Seth Wade
His papa was tacked to the ground like a pin through a bug, the prongs of a rusty pitchfork lancing through the back of his leg, but the old woman wouldn’t let Willie stop running. Before he could take a second look at his father, the old woman had whisked him deep into the woods. The roar of the mob was a distant rumble, their torches like ruby fireflies in the thick dark of night.
The old woman had called herself Granny Gobbles. Nobody from the village liked her. She wore a heavy pelt of bear fur and replaced a few of her teeth with stones. Granny smelled foul, like if honey somehow rotted, but Willie held his tongue. Granny Gobble told funny stories and his papa always took him to her whenever his sickness flared up. Last night, Willie was so sick he thought he’d die—but he woke this morning feeling so much better. Granny Gobbles toiled over her stew and his papa had waited by his bedside, relieved to see him wake. Willie felt so much better, though slower, his senses duller. He couldn’t smell anything at all.
Granny Gobbles hums over her pot, stirring mushrooms and rabbit for dinner.
I know you’re lying, Willie says.
Outside the windows of her cabin: a wedge of moon in the great maw of night, the undersides of leaves glowing phlegm from the candlelight inside.
He’s dead because of me.
Now just stoppit. Granny clangs the ladle, glops of stew spritzing the floor. No more talking. After I fix supper, straight to bed. What you need is sleep.
Why were they trying to kill me? What’s wrong with me?
Granny’s shadow grows over Willie, and for a moment Willie mistakes Granny’s shadow for Granny herself, her shadow so dark and bristly and real, like if he reached out her shadow would feel furry like her cloak—but then a bony hand gently directs his head so he’s facing her face, just visible from inside her hood. Curly white hair, emerald eyes darting around like fireflies at night, looking deep into his.
Eat.
Willie sleeping, Willie’s thoughts jumbled up. First the dream: he and Papa with Granny Gobbles after breakfast, looking over the lake. Papa fishing. Granny stroking Willie’s hair, pointing over the water, at the sky. With one knobby finger she taps a cloud. It bursts. Tendrils of green flame branching out with a boom, so loud and pretty that Willie just gawks. Then the nightmare: villagers calling poor Willie unnatural, papa’s workbench on fire, poor Willie lost in the dark, papa arguing with villagers, papa curled up in a pot.
Seth Wade studies English and philosophy at the University of Vermont, where he’s currently working on a novella. He’s previously been published in McSweeney’s and The Gateway Review, and was a finalist for The Southampton Review’s Nonfiction Prize for 2020.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Early Bird”? The origins for “The Early Bird” bubbled up during the first pandemic lockdown in New York. I was reading Junji Ito for the first time and learning how to debone fish for the last time. It was a dark time for me, as it was for many, but I kept my spirits up by playing D&D with my friends over Discord. It’s with part pride and part humility I disclose that Granny Gobbles was, in fact, my level five tempest cleric, though I always imagined her as a hag of the woods. I became fascinated with this character. Over multiple revisions I tried to hone in on the beautiful horror of what Granny Gobbles was doing. As I compressed my story, I tried to reveal as much as possible through particular images, the last of which I hoped would produce a lingering impression on the reader.
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