It is a question faced by all backyard farmers who house hens for their sporadic and speckled fresh eggs: What to do with the bird once the laying’s done?

Magda had been mentally weighing this question over Goldy, her Buff Orpington hen, for a few weeks now. Goldy, like her name, was a gorgeous glossy yellow. She pecked in the backyard with the two other hens. The girls, as Magda called them, made her laugh as they squabbled with one another over the feed she set out for them, then made up. Goldy had laid an egg nearly every other day for 10 years, which was an astonishing rate. A few months ago, she stopped completely.

This story appears in Issue 24 of Alta Journal.
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To Magda it seemed intolerably ungrateful and cruel to let Goldy loose, lock her out of the coop, and leave her to be preyed upon by the coyotes, who were never too far away in the hills behind them. Magda supposed the more humane way was to quickly break her neck, then perhaps coq au vin? Magda shuddered at the thought of killing, plucking, and butchering this creature who had given her so much joy: eggs for huevos rancheros, eggs for hard-boiling and deviling, eggs for cakes and custards and meringues.

But such was life.

She had never hesitated before. Briefly, she thought of asking Walter, her husband, to put Goldy down, but something stopped her.

Was it possible to wring a hen’s neck with love, tenderness, and gratitude? Magda sighed. She supposed not. Still, it must be done. Magda trudged out the back. The chicken coop was set up on struts against the hillside. Her hens got plenty of sun. Their eggs were like golden sunshine on top of fried corn tortillas, or toast.

The other two girls pecked in the protected yard outside the coop. Magda squatted and duckwalked inside. Goldy seemed to doze where she sat.

“Come on, girl,” Magda said, pulling the hen gently toward her, feeling for that delicate fissure where she would twist.

Goldy’s eyes opened. Accusingly, Magda felt, as if she knew what was about to happen.

“Please don’t,” Goldy said.

Magda fell backward with the shock, dropping the hen, who squawked like a proper chicken.

“You can speak!”

“Yes, well, when I have something to say.”

Magda got up and dusted her backside. “Goldy, my dear, I won’t ever be able to harm a feather on your body.” Magda reached for Goldy and stroked her tiny head.

Goldy leaned in and said, “A little to the left.”

magda’s hen illustration
Victor Juhasz

That evening, over a simple dinner of potato tacos and steamed zucchini that Magda had grown, she told her husband what had happened. When she was done, Walter looked up from his phone and said, “And then what?”

“She went back to sleep.”

“Is that all?” He looked at her with the face of disapproval she knew too well. She was always failing him in some way. The salsa wasn’t spicy enough, the beef tough, the tortillas cold—that was, when he had the time to look up from his phone screen. Which was what he was staring at right now. Had he always been this way?

She looked at the backs of her hands. Her veins were thick chains that had sprung up over the years. They hadn’t always been this way. Neither had she. She sighed.

Walter glanced up. “Says here, you should’ve asked her for something. Magical creatures, this says, should be able to give you a wish.”

Magda nodded. That made sense. What would she wish for? She looked around her home. It was simple, but it was clean and well loved, at least by her. She liked the sturdiness of the wooden floors, the texture of the rag rugs she had placed on them. She liked the thick walls, from when houses were made of wood and lath and plaster. She looked at her husband. He had developed jowls across the years, and now they were dark with hair coming in.

“We could really use a big-screen TV,” he said.

“That might be nice,” she said.

In the morning, after she gathered the eggs from the girls and after she scattered the grain, she crouched inside the coop.

“Goldy,” she whispered.

The hen had been sleeping, but her eyes snapped open like shutters and blinked.

“My husband said, wanted me to ask, thought it could be a kind of thank-you gift. Um, could we have a big-screen TV, please?”

There was a slight tremor that rippled through the hillside like a small earthquake.

“He already has one.”

“Thank you, Goldy.”

The hen’s eyes were closed again.

“Magda! Magda!” It was her husband’s voice. Walter sounded panicked, stressed, terrified. Magda scooted out of the coop, fluttering the hens out of her way, and ended up in their home, which now seemed tiny and cramped because there was a huge television screen that took up one entire wall.

“Look, it came with everything! Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro! This is amazing!” Magda smiled at him. Now he would be happy. She went outside to work in her garden.

Things were lovely then. He rarely scowled or scolded her, or even gave her that look of disappointment and disapproval. He was so busy playing those games that, she felt, he barely tasted or noticed his food. That was fine by her.

magdas hen illustration
Victor Juhasz

A few months later, he said to her, “I’m bored.”

She drank her tea and said nothing.

“Go tell that bird. I want to be the best gamer in the world. The best streamer on Twitch.”

“I already asked her for something.” Magda drew her shoulders in. It seemed rude to ask for something else. Wasn’t the TV enough? And all those games? What was “Twitch”?

“She should consider herself lucky you don’t chop her up and turn her into tacos. Go on! I want to be internationally famous, with endorsements, contracts, celebrity! I want all of it, baby!”

Magda glared at her husband. Where had he gotten such ideas? He was 58 years old, with the paunch of a man who drank too much beer in the evenings. She wondered what other “streamers” looked like. She never paid too much attention to all that stuff. She preferred using her hands to accomplish concrete tasks, like gardening, cooking, housekeeping.

“Don’t you have enough?” she said.

“The very best gamer in all the world,” he said. “With contracts! Endorsements!” he shouted after her.

She had treated her hens as before. The only difference was maybe she did give Goldy a little extra, maybe she did spend some time scratching at the base of her skull, the spot Goldy enjoyed the most.

Right now, the sun beat bright against the hillside and their fenced-in area. She stepped past her other girls and peered into the coop. Goldy, who’d been sleeping, opened her eyes wide.

“Goldy, my dear,” Magda said in an apologetic tone. “I don’t know how to say this.”

The hen stared at her, and tilted her head.

“I don’t want to appear ungrateful. But my husband would truly, desperately like to be the best gamer in all the world, with all the contracts, trappings, and endorsements. Please don’t think me rude—”

The hills shook with a tremendous, troubling rage. Magda flung herself to the floor of the coop, praying and begging for forgiveness. The earth continued a long, slow rumbling until Goldy said, “It is done,” and shut her eyes.

Magda turned and gazed upon her home—which was unrecognizable. No longer the humble, tiny cottage, it now sprawled and towered palatially.

Fortunately her vegetable garden was untouched. Thank goodness! The tomatoes were turning bright orange. And her flower garden! Still there. Magda pawed at the gladioli and ranunculus, then turned to face the mansion that was now her home.

To reach the front door, she passed soaring columns that upheld a bright white cupola. Once inside, she stood in an entrance that could hold 50 people easily. There was a lushly carpeted circular stairway, which Magda followed: on the wall, many framed photographs of her husband posing with different gleaming, shiny products, while gripping the controls of a console. She shook her head.

After an hour’s search she found her husband in a room lit by television screens, heavy thick curtains keeping out any interruptions of daylight.

“Magda! You are now married to the man!” He waved at her while holding firmly onto his controller. He smiled excitedly, briefly in her direction, then returned his concentration to the screens.

Magda left him to his realm, and closed the door quietly. She found an immaculate kitchen with unfamiliar and intimidating appliances. She found a wide range of provisions, shiny, enticing, plastic wrapped, but she didn’t feel hungry at all. She dug around in the overstocked pantry and found her familiar tea bags. She made herself a cup of tea and carried it with her throughout the house. There was a private theater room. A pool table room. A sewing room. A room dedicated to gift wrapping. And on and on and on and Magda shuddered at the thought of the dusting and cleaning that these rooms and the multiple bathrooms would require. Upon further exploration, she found her bedroom, old and humble down to the braided rugs. She sat down in her favorite armchair, and sipped her tea.

Things were fine. Magda occasionally got lost in the rambling home, but she kept herself busy in the yard (there was a fountain also, where marble dolphins cavorted!), and her husband, when he emerged from the dark den, appeared tired, and haggard, but in a happy way.

That lasted a few weeks.

Late one night, he burst through her bedroom door, holding the controllers to different consoles, and announced, “You think Elon Musk cares who’s the best gamer in the world? Do you think Jeff Bezos does?” He threw the controls against the wall. “Hell no! Because it’s not good enough! I want you to talk to that bird. I want—I want—”

Magda dug herself deeper into her bed, pulling the covers over her head.

“I want to be more important, more powerful, than Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates combined!” he bellowed.

Magda pretended to go back to sleep. All she wanted was a quiet life.

magda’s hen illustration
Victor Juhasz

The next morning, she went to the chicken coop. Goldy, wide-eyed, appeared to be waiting for her. Immediately Magda regretted not bringing her something special. There were blueberries in their capacious refrigerator that she hadn’t even touched.

“Goldy—”

“Seriously,” the hen said. “What could he possibly want for now?”

Magda was taken aback by her attitude. Goldy had always been such a sweet laying hen. Magda cleared her throat, to give herself a moment to gather her thoughts.

“I’m not asking for myself, Goldy. I’m asking for Walter. He would like, and I kindly ask your indulgence, to be ‘more important, more powerful, than Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates combined,’ so please—”

Magda’s pleas were interrupted by a horrific rumble that built and built to a terrifying level of noise while simultaneously the earth beneath and the world around her shook in the most monumental way. Magda covered her head, and crouched, and clutched a spindly post in the chicken coop while the world around her wailed, moaned, groaned, and erupted in a fierce argument that Magda knew they would all lose. Magda realized she would soon die. Within the crashing, the shaking, the monumental movement, Magda heard Goldy’s voice squawk “It is done” and a colossal flapping of wings as if Goldy were flying through the rubble.

Followed by the most profound silence Magda had ever endured in her life. Not a sound filtered through the dust-laden air. No trill of birds or hum of insects. Silence. Simple and profound.

Magda found herself outside the coop on the ground of the hens’ sheltered yard. She and the two hens were covered with a layer of dust and debris. She spent moments scraping the silt off herself before she noticed a single yellow feather of Goldy’s.

She turned and saw her home. Her plain, humble, simple cottage, bordered on one edge by her vegetable garden, on the other by her flower garden. She called out for her husband. No response. She quickly searched her tiny home. No Walter.

It was very peaceful, she had to admit. And life was not so very different from before, when he had spent his nights and days online. But where was he?

Magda read, in the days that followed, that scientists had recently discovered a new galaxy many million light-years away. “God’s Image?” read the headlines. Much was made of the almost human appearance of the galaxy. To Magda, the photographs very much looked like the unshaven face of Walter.

That night, she brought a cup of tea outside and peered up into the sky. “I hope you’re happy at last, Walter,” she said.

She sipped her tea. Everything was so pleasant and tranquil. Magda decided the next hen she bought would be a Speckled Sussex. They were known for being particularly trouble-free.•

Headshot of Désirée Zamorano

Désirée Zamorano is the author of the novel The Amado Women. Her historical-fiction novel Dispossessed is forthcoming from Rize Press.