Savage Abandon

Make the suns evaporate

And me laugh, cry and laugh,

Speak when I have nothing to say.

—Samuel Beckett

All was quiet at the fort except for an owl that sat on the roof of the cabin where Mia and her father now slept. Tiny sat watching them as a slow fire burned in the fireplace.

The owl’s hoot-hooting set Tiny’s nerves on edge, as though he sensed the creature’s strange song so early in the evening was an omen of some kind. It was indeed a haunting sound, causing goose bumps to rise on Tiny’s flesh.

But nothing was going to dissuade him from what he had planned. Exhausted, Mia and her father had fallen asleep before it was fully dark, and that suited him fine. He had a task that required secrecy.

With a cold, wicked gleam in his eyes, where the fire’s glow reflected like the flames of hell, Tiny turned his gaze to the covered cage sitting on the table.

Georgina, Tiny thought smugly to himself.

Yep, he had plans for that sonofagun songbird whose happy warbling would soon be silenced. He would never again have to watch Mia pamper it with pieces of apple or any kind of fruit that she found in the forest.

“You’ll have to find your own tidbits, little bird,” Tiny whispered, only loudly enough for the bird to hear.

Yes, he had mapped out a plan to take his vengeance against a young woman who rankled his nerves and who insulted him anytime she liked because he was the hired help, and beneath her.

He did not see why she had any right to behave so grand, when she was just the daughter of parents who enjoyed spending part of the year on water instead of in their home on dry land.

Yep, despite Mia’s pretty, innocent smile, she was nothing but a river rat.

Yep, he’d take her down a notch or two when she found the birdcage empty on the morrow.

Of course, she would know who’d opened the door of the cage, but that didn’t matter none to him. He knew his days were numbered under the employ of Mia’s father.

So be it.

So were her bird’s!

He reached for the cage, which was covered by a soft cloth that Mia carried with her only for that purpose. As Mia prepared herself for the night, she also prepared her beloved canary. She felt it deserved privacy as it slept, as did she.

Careful not to shake the cage as he lifted it from the table, which might cause the bird to squawk a warning to Mia, Tiny dared not even breathe as he tiptoed his way to the door. He had purposely opened it after he knew that Mia and her father were sound asleep.

Yep, he had mapped out a plan, and by jove, he would succeed. He could hardly wait to see Mia’s expression when she found the empty cage.

The bird was always the first to get her attention in the mornings. She would remove the cloth and feed the canary, then smile as the bird began its warbling.

To Tiny, the dratted singing seemed to go on forever. He would be happy never to hear that bird again. He would prefer Mia’s anger at him when she found the bird gone over the constant noise the creature made.

He had so often wanted to snatch that thing from its cage and wring its neck!

But this plan seemed better.

The bird would surely die quickly out in the wild. Perhaps, even, a hawk might sweep down from the sky at daybreak and eat the bird as its breakfast!

That thought brought a wicked grin to his whiskered face.

He tiptoed out of the cabin and took the bird cage beyond the open gate of the fort. When he reached the darkening shadows of the trees that sat back from the river, he set the cage on the ground, then chuckled as he opened the door and waited for the bird to fly out of it.

But the bird just continued to sit on its perch, eyeing Tiny with its small, black eyes. It looked at him so trustingly, Tiny could not help feeling a quick pang of guilt.

“You sonofagun, stop lookin’ at me like that,” Tiny said. He picked the cage up and shook it, hoping to loosen the bird from its perch.