In the soot-stained alleys of Ironcross where the factory whistles drowned out prayers and children's laughter turned to coughs by age twelve there perched a sparrow that sang only the notes no one could hear
Its feathers were the color of faded newsprint its beak slightly too long—almost like a tiny nib dipped in ink The urchins who slept in the textile mill's steam vents called it "Maestro" though its true song had no name
For when Maestro opened its beak:
— Dying men sat up in their sickbeds suddenly recalling their mother's lullabies
— Broken clocks shuddered and chimed the exact hour their owner had passed
— The factory's great iron presses paused mid-stroke as if listening
The mill foreman offered a shilling per sparrow head desperate to silence the unseen harmonies that made his workers weep at their looms But the boys who threw stones found their arms moving slower each day until they could barely lift them at all—as if the very air had turned to molasses around the bird
Then came the day the Black Lung Choir gathered beneath Maestro's usual perch—dozen of wheezing children from the dye pits their breath already half-gone They stood in perfect silence as the sparrow sang a single glass-clear note
and every set of diseased lungs in the crowd echoed it back the sound resonating through ribcages like a tuning fork struck against bone
By sundown the children's coughs had vanished But the foreman's wife awoke screaming that night claiming her husband's chest had become transparent —his lungs now visible through his skin each breath inflating tissue blacker than the bird itself
Now when the factory whistle blows at dawn the workers pause just a moment—listening for a faint trill in the steam pipes And if you press your ear to a dying man's lips in Ironcross you won't hear a death rattle
but the unmistakable rustle of tiny wings taking flight.