Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  She didn’t want to lie to Ali, but Cassie couldn’t let anyone get close. She just needed to make it through the next couple of days, then she’d get on a bus and disappear. She had to. And that meant she had to keep people away.

  She glanced up reflexively at the sound of the kitchen door swinging, but it was only Hong, carrying a plate in each hand.

  He stopped at the far side of the table next to Cassie. “Who’s got the beef and broccoli?”

  The man lifted his hand slightly and Hong set the plate down in front of him, sliding the other in front of the woman.

  “You’ve got chopsticks there. Do you need anything else?”

  The man glanced sharply at the woman, shook his head slightly, and she looked down at her plate.

  “Your food should be right out,” Ali said, leaning over to refill Cassie’s water glass.

  Cassie didn’t say anything, her face burning under the attention from the couple, who kept glancing at her between mouthfuls.

  Ali waited, then turned away.

  Cassie watched her as she worked her way around the room, filling glasses, laughing with the customers.

  “Here.”

  Cassie turned. Hong was standing at the other side of the table, supporting a huge bowl with both hands. “I thought maybe some noodles for you today. Lots of vegetables. Some pork. Chicken. Well”—he smiled—“whatever was in the kitchen, really. I just threw it all together.”

  Cassie’s mouth had been watering since the first smell of the steam. “Oh. That sounds … Thank you.”

  Hong slid the bowl in front of her. “You eat. And remember, it’s on the house.” He looked at the couple at the next table, who were trying to look like they weren’t watching. “For you, it’s always on the house.”

  Unable to speak, Cassie watched him as he walked away, as the door to the kitchen swung behind him.

  “He means it, you know,” Ali said, still holding the pitcher in one hand.

  “I know,” Cassie said quietly.

  Ali put her other hand on Cassie’s shoulder and squeezed it gently.

  Cassie’s first impulse was to lean into the touch or put her hand over the waitress’s. But then she thought of Skylark, and of the sound she had made falling into the snow. The shudder of resistance as she had twisted the knife in Sarah’s throat.

  “Thank you,” she said, knowing she would never see Ali, or Hong, again.

  It was the warmth of the restaurant, Ali and the way Hong had welcomed her that made Cassie return to the camp that night.

  She had planned on avoiding Skylark until she had enough money to leave town, but she knew it would be better if she could talk to her one last time and say goodbye. She took a deep breath, hitched her backpack up and walked into the light.

  Skylark was at the far side of the breezeway. As Cassie manoeuvred around people, between groups, muttering, “Excuse me. Sorry. Excuse me,” she was met mostly with nods of recognition. That made her feel a bit better.

  The crowds seemed to part to usher her through to Skylark.

  She had no idea how the other girl would greet her, how she would respond to Cassie’s running away that morning without explanation. And she didn’t know how she would respond to Skylark if things—

  “Oh my God,” Skylark cried out, dropping her knapsack to the ground and running toward her.

  The force of the girl’s hug almost knocked Cassie over, and she had to hold Skylark tightly to keep her balance.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered in Cassie’s ear, still holding her tight. “God, where did you go? I was so worried about you. Why …?”

  “I’m all right,” she lied. “I’m okay.”

  “Where did you go?” Skylark asked, pulling back a little. “Was it something I did? Why did you run away like that? Did I—”

  Cassie was stunned to see something she had never seen in Skylark’s face before, a wideness around her eyes, a tightness of her cheeks. It was only there for a moment, but Cassie recognized it instantly: Skylark was afraid. Not for Cassie, though: Skylark was afraid she had done something wrong, that Cassie’s running away had been somehow her fault.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It wasn’t anything you did, I swear. I just had to go.”

  “Because you had a bad dream?”

  The thought of the dream—of all her dreams—made Cassie feel like she was going to be sick.

  “No, it’s got nothing to do with the dreams.”

  Neither of them said much as they waited in line at the Outreach van.

  Cassie had to deliberately keep her hands in her pockets to fight the desire to bite her fingernails.

  She didn’t want to lie to her friend—she knew that if she could tell anyone, it would be Skylark.

  But she couldn’t tell anyone. Not even Skylark.

  But if she was never going to see her again …

  “So,” she started slowly, once they were both finished eating. Cassie, still full from her lunch, had given Skylark her bowl of soup, munching on a dry dinner roll while her friend ate. “I’m sorry for running away this morning,” she said. “I should have said something. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

  Skylark touched her leg. “It’s okay,” she said, leaning toward her. “I’m just glad that you’re all right.”

  Cassie took a deep breath. “That’s the thing, though. I’m not all right. I haven’t been all right for a while.”

  Skylark just looked at her, not saying anything, giving her space to talk.

  “I …” She didn’t really know how to start. She had never had to tell anyone any of this. “I did something. Something terrible.”

  Skylark leaned closer to her, her face tightening with concern. “Are you okay?”

  Cassie shook her head. “It wasn’t …”

  She took another deep breath.

  “My father …”

  She stopped as Skylark squeezed her lips tight, shook her head.

  “He died. Last month. In a fire.”

  She looked down at the ground to avoid Skylark’s eyes.

  “It was …” Another deep breath, a leap into the dark. “I did it,” she said quietly. “I killed him.”

  She couldn’t bear to look, couldn’t bear to see the reaction on Skylark’s face.

  “I didn’t … I didn’t mean to do it. Not really. But he … I …”

  She stumbled over the words; there were things that could not be said. Not even to Skylark.

  She couldn’t tell her what her father had done to her, down in the furnace room in the basement, in front of the wood stove. She couldn’t tell her about how the chunk of firewood had felt in her hand as she had brought it down on the back of his head as he had stirred the coals.

  She could never tell anyone about the way the kerosene had smelled as she poured it over his body.

  Instead, she said, “That’s why I have to go. I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She braced herself, waiting for Skylark’s response. Every muscle in her body tensed, ready to launch herself away.

  Instead, she felt a tentative touch on her leg.

  “Cassie?” Skylark said.

  She refused to turn, refused to look.

  “Cassie, it’s okay. At least …” She heard the other girl sniff, and turned to her reflexively.

  Tears were streaming down her face.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said. “You don’t need to go.”

  Cassie looked back to the ground. “Yes, I do.”

  “Cassie, I want to show you something,” Skylark said.

  Cassie turned to her again.

  Biting the tip of a finger, Skylark tugged the glove off her left hand, then pulled the glove from her right. Fumbling with the buttons at her cuff, she rolled her left sleeves up to her elbow.

  “Here,” she said, extending her arm to Cassie, palm up.

  At first, Cassie didn’t know what she was looking at, and the lights of the breezeway made it d
ifficult to make out details.

  The inside of Skylark’s arm was a lattice of scars, criss-crossing over the soft flesh. Some of the lines were wider than the others, some longer. Some were so white as to be almost translucent, others were varying shades of pink. Some of the cuts were clearly old, others looked much fresher.

  She looked at Skylark, met her eye.

  “I tried to tell them that something was wrong, but they wouldn’t believe me,” Skylark said, rolling her sleeves back down. “They didn’t believe me about any of it. About him.”

  Cassie cleared her throat as Skylark buttoned her cuff again. “Who was it?” she asked, finally.

  “My uncle Ted,” she said, pulling her gloves back on. “My mom’s youngest brother. He was living with us for a while, going to school.”

  Cassie knew that words wouldn’t do any good.

  She thought of the insides of her arms, the scars there. Not as many. Deeper. Running the length of her arms from the heels of her hands to the insides of her elbows. Words wouldn’t have helped her, either. She knew what it was like to just want the pain to stop.

  “Ain’t we a pair,” Skylark said, and her face broke into a teary smile. “I just wish I had been brave like you …”

  “You are brave,” Cassie said quickly. “You’re … you’re smart and brave …”

  There was a deep sadness lurking in Skylark’s eyes. “That’s how I’ve been trying to live my life. There are some days, though …” She shook her head. “Sometimes it’s all too much. It feels like I’ll never get away from it.” She looked at the ground. “The cutting helps me get there, those days.”

  “Oh, Skylark,” Cassie said.

  “Laura,” she said, snuggling close to Cassie, so quietly no one else could hear. “My name is Laura.”

  She couldn’t leave after that. Not that night, at least.

  They stayed close all evening, close enough to touch. Most of the time they leaned together, Skylark’s head tucked in the nook of Cassie’s shoulder as they listened to Brother Paul’s sermon, as they shared Cassie’s earphones.

  Cassie kept a keen eye out around the camp. She didn’t know what she would do when she saw Bob and his friends, but she didn’t want to be surprised by them. She was never going to let herself be surprised again.

  But they didn’t come back. By the end of the evening, she had accepted that they weren’t going to return. Of course they wouldn’t come back: their whole lives were a hit and run.

  The thought of that handful of change stuck with her as she and Skylark made their bed and climbed in. She knew that this was temporary: she couldn’t leave that night, not with all that she and Skylark had shared, but she couldn’t stay, either. Not if she wanted Skylark to be safe.

  Not if she cared.

  And she realized, as they slid under the blankets, that she cared very much.

  “Here,” she said, turning onto her side facing Skylark. When the other girl seemed confused, she said, “It’s my turn.”

  She had spent a long time trying to figure it out. She didn’t want to take any chances with Skylark’s safety while she slept, so she needed to keep herself as immobilized as she could.

  She extended her left arm just under the edge of Skylark’s pillow. “Here,” she said.

  Skylark nestled herself along Cassie’s body, curving close against her. One arm snug under her neck and shoulders, Cassie wrapped the other around the girl’s waist, tucking her fingertips under her, doing as much as she could to lock both of them in place.

  She could feel her friend breathing in her arms.

  “Thank you,” Skylark whispered, and Cassie buried her face in the back of her neck.

  She didn’t want to open the door, but she couldn’t help herself.

  She watched as her hand reached out, as it unfastened the hook near the top of the door, as her fingers curled around the cold of the doorknob.

  She didn’t want to do it. Something inside her was making her do these things.

  Making her pull the door open.

  The stairs to the basement were dark, but the light came on without her having to do anything, illuminating the rough, unpainted wood, the frail railing.

  Please no.

  Not this.

  But she couldn’t help herself.

  She stepped onto the first stair.

  The second.

  The door closed behind her.

  The wind cut through her like a thousand tiny knives, driving the cold into her so deeply she couldn’t catch her breath.

  She tried to focus, tried to count her breaths, but the numbers slid away, meaningless and fragmented in her mind.

  She could barely see: the blowing snow was thick as fog, the world little more than dark, vague shapes in the distance.

  Where was she? She was sure it was Centennial Square, but that wasn’t right … or was it?

  The fountain was to her left, Sarah’s body splayed, legs in the air over the edge. As she watched, Sarah’s hand came up clutching the knife, seeming to cut a trail through the driving snow.

  Sarah’s eyes were wide as she plunged the knife into the gaping hole across her throat. She could hear the sound of her twisting the blade over the wind, the ratcheting grind echoing through her hand.

  When she looked down, the knife was in her own hand, blood dripping from her fingertips, from the blade, splashing onto the snowy ground with a faint sizzle, tiny puffs of pink steam.

  She tried not to turn. Tried not to look. But she was helpless, her body pivoting of its own accord, turning to Skylark—

  —falling to the snow, blood gushing in a steaming blast from across her throat—

  “Laura!” she cried out, but her voice was stolen by the storm, swallowed up by the snow.

  “Laura.”

  The voice seemed to come from the storm itself, a low, barely audible whisper, deep and cold.

  “Laura.”

  An echo—

  She turned to try to find the voice, craning into the storm.

  In the distance, a shadow formed, a faint smudge against the white, there and not there. It seemed to pulse like a great black heart, a man, a blur, a shadow—

  —and it lifted off the ground with a rush of wings, a whomping against the air that sounded like thunder, a screech that sounded like—

  Sirens.

  Cassie burst into full wakefulness to the sound of shouting and running feet.

  When she opened her eyes, she didn’t know what she was seeing, bright red splashes of light bursting into the breezeway like flames, like blood. Shouting voices. Mechanical words.

  A megaphone.

  “It’s the police,” someone shouted.

  People were running everywhere, flurries of motion, shouts and cries.

  Cassie burst up, her heart racing.

  She looked for Skylark, but the bed beside her was empty.

  Cassie didn’t think—she grabbed her shoes and bolted.

  The concrete was cold, even through two pairs of socks, but she didn’t stop, didn’t look back. She just ran as fast and as far as she could.

  She didn’t stop until she was deep in Chinatown.

  She collapsed on the edge of the street planter in front of the restaurant to pull her shoes on, tie the laces.

  Red lights flashed in the distance, strobed along the faces of the buildings on the corner.

  As her breathing slowed, Cassie felt suddenly faint: her backpack was gone. Skylark was gone.

  Everything was gone.

  PART THREE

  We all carry the Darkness within us.

  But we also carry the Light.

  And it was through the Darkness I began to see the Light.

  Literally.

  At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. A faint glow around people, a brighter one around the kitten, so it looked like a puff of fluff inside a ball of flame.

  When I told my parents, they took me to a doctor, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me.
r />   Of course they couldn’t. There was nothing wrong with me.

  I had been blessed.

  It was a gift. And like all gifts, it grew in value over time, became more complex as I grew to understand it.

  There are different Lights. Different strengths, different colours, different consistencies.

  Everyone’s Light as personal, as identifiable, as fingerprints.

  Except there were some who didn’t glow at all, whose Light was so dim it may as well have not existed.

  I came to realize that these people were like me, their Darkness so strong, so great, it swallowed all Light, even from within themselves.

  And there are more of these people—of us—than you might like to believe.

  But that understanding came later.

  At first, all I knew about the Light was that I wanted it. It drew me to it. Compelled me.

  And I knew without knowing that the Light could feed me.

  I was right.

  As I held the kitten under the water, flinching as its claws dug into me, cut me, I watched as its Light flickered, faded.

  But it wasn’t merely extinguished.

  Science tells us that energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

  My fingers crackled as the kitten’s Light entered me. I could feel it in my veins, flowing through me. I swallowed the Light like it was a drug, though I didn’t make that connection, that metaphor, until much later.

  I was only six years old at the time.

  “Oh my God.”

  Eyes slit against the light, Cassie looked up at the voice.

  “You must be freezing.”

  She nodded slightly up at the shadow, the man who had stopped the last couple of days. What was his name again?

  “Cliff,” he said, fumblingly extending his hand in what must have been a reflexive action. “Cliff Wolcott.”

  “I remember,” Cassie whispered.

  “That’s—” Looking down at Cassie, curled into a tiny ball, her knees pulled tight to her chest, her arms wrapped tight around her legs, he lowered his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Isn’t there—”