Fitcher's Bird

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a harmonium drone and a music-box turning slowly sour)

[Verse 1]
A sorcerer in a coat of feathers came knocking, soft and grand,
and one by one my sisters vanished at the touch of his hand.
He gave me the keys to a house of wonders — "open every door,
but the little room at the end of the hall, don't you dare explore."

[Chorus]
And there it is — the thing you're told to leave alone,
the door the mind can't stop circling, the curiosity in the bone.
I carried an egg through the whole bright house and I let the warning slide,
and I opened the little forbidden room to the wives who'd already died.

[Verse 2]
The egg fell in and it stained with the truth and no scrubbing would come clean,
so I hid it away and I played the bride, the sweetest he'd ever seen.
I sewed my sisters whole again, tucked them in a basket of gold,
sent them home on the sorcerer's back with the story his house had told.

[Bridge]
(the music-box winds down, then a bright turn)
Then I rolled myself in honey and down till I looked like a bird of the air,
and I walked past the wedding of all his friends, and he bowed to me on the stair.

[Outro]
His own guests torched the house at the end with the killer still inside...
some doors you have to open, love, to walk out the other side.