ARC: Feather Bound

by Sarah Raughley

  Just as Hyde had.

  He’d checked the sky. He’d checked it twice, maybe more. He’d begged me to leave when days ago he’d have done anything for me to stay.

  He’d held me by the candlelight in a room he’d booked just for us. He’d touched my cheek and heated my lips with kisses. And then he’d given his company away.

  The young man sees them from behind the trees. Their beauty enchants him.

  I thought of her – Beatrice. I thought of her anger as she was spurned by him – and then of her smug smile as she stood triumphant in the bathroom. Of Hyde’s anguish. The envelope she handed him.

  Blackmail.

  A feather was all it took for Anton to put me in chains. A secret. Just one cost me my freedom, cost me nearly everything.

  Quietly, he comes back and sends his dog to steal the feather robe of the youngest. The seven sisters cry out and fly off into the sky. But the youngest cannot.

  Now she is his.

  The last four words simmer and dissipate – and suddenly I remembered the way Hyde had looked up at the sky so desperately, and shuddered a gasp so violent I felt it throb against my chest.

  Once of the heavens, she is now bound to the earth. Bound to the young man.

  It couldn’t be.

  He builds a house and they marry. Their children sing every day.

  It couldn’t be.

  My mind was racing – the secret smiles, the seductive touches, the tender feelings. Memories of Hyde. I sifted through them until I was left with just one: the one of Hyde in Beatrice’s room. His hollow eyes.

  And then I knew.

  19

  CURSED

  “Hyde, pick up.” My back pressed against the lock on the bathroom door. My hands shook so badly my cell almost slipped through my grip.

  “Hyde, pick up, please.” Each ring went unanswered. I wanted to yell and toss my phone against the wall, but it was 4 o’clock in the morning and there were three other people in the house, plus a particularly temperamental baby. Gritting my teeth, I held myself back from kicking the door and dialed Hyde’s number again.

  “Please, Hyde.” I shut my eyes to keep them dry, but they welled up anyway. Still no answer. He wouldn’t. No, he probably couldn’t. Hyde was ashamed – just like I had been when my feathers first came out, and when Anton had threatened me. But I couldn’t just leave it alone. I needed to hear it from him. I had to see him.

  No answer. I’d have to leave a message instead. “Hyde, can you please call me back? Please. I need to talk to you. It’s OK, I’m not mad. I just need to…” Tell him, a voice hissed in the back of my mind. Tell him you know. My voice wavered and without meaning to, I hung up.

  Power. That was the explanation Anton had given me that night – one word, simply uttered, while his face broke into a horrifying grin on the other side of the iron bars. There were so many ways to cage someone. So many ways to take what you wanted from them. But swans were different. Each feather in your hands was a guarantee of absolute obedience, a contract they didn’t make, but one they couldn’t break. It was absolute power, both tantalizing and horrific. And Hyde… Hyde was…

  I buried my face in my hands.

  The day passed without a word from Hyde. I wouldn’t give up. So, at 5 o’clock the next morning, I slipped on my shoes and walked out the door, dialing Hyde’s number. “OK, this is the last time I’m going to call you. Meet me at Grand Army Plaza in front of the Bailey fountain at half-past five. If you don’t come, I promise I won’t bother you ever again. But you have to come, Hyde. You have to. Because I’m like you. I…” I paused, clamping my mouth shut. “I have them too.” I clicked off. Was it too vague? It was too vague. I could have told him what I was – what we were. But saying the word just made it all too real.

  No point in chickening out now. I sat down on the bench and waited calmly, mesmerized by the monotonous flow of the fountain’s stream. Years passed. Centuries.

  I wondered what it had been like, the first time they sprouted from his back. What made it happen? How much pain had he been in? How old had he been? What did he do afterwards? How did he deal? Who did he tell? The questions kept coming, louder and fiercer by the minute. I just needed to see him. All of the words he’d refused to say since seeing me for the first time in nine years. I needed to hear them now. I felt as if I’d break into pieces if I didn’t.

  Another year. Two more. I looked down at my watch, shocked to find that a single hour had passed. Was he with her now? Were they tangled under the sheets, nothing between them but sweat and misery?

  I bit my lip.

  And then I saw him approach through the rippling water. Hyde.

  Hyde was here.

  Holding my breath, I stood up.

  “Hyde…” His eyes were sunk into the deep black circles carved into his face, bulging as if haunted by the fresh nightmares that had stolen his sleep. I didn’t know where to start. For a time, I stared at him, waiting for him to speak, to utter a sound. But when he didn’t I knew it was up to me. And I had to start somewhere. “Hyde–”

  The moment he was within reach, he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to him. The sheer intensity of the desperation etched into him kept my eyes locked onto his. I couldn’t look anywhere else.

  “Is it true?”

  His voice chilled me from the inside. Low and hoarse, the weakness of it made me shake. His fingers dug into my skin.

  “What?”

  “Did someone hurt you? Are you…?” At once he let go, shaking his head, pacing in front of me. He paced, and paced, and paced. “Oh God.” He shook his head again. “I didn’t know… Did someone–” He stopped, hanging his head, though I could see his lips pursed, trembling. Before I could blink, he rounded on me again, this time shaking me by the arms. “Deanna, did someone hurt you? Did someone take them?”

  “No, no!” I pushed him away, wrapping my arms around myself. His face flamed a deep red, his coarse fingers sliding through his hair as if that one action was all that kept him from falling apart. “I’m… No one’s… no one’s taken them. My…” I paused, letting a rush of air fill and empty my lungs before I told him. “My… f-feathers.”

  I’d practically mouthed the word and yet even the breath of it broke Hyde in two. He visibly drooped; his arms fell limp at his side. For a moment, all he could do was shake his head.

  “I didn’t want this for you,” was all he said, after a lifetime. “I never, ever wanted you to have to go through this. I–” He stopped to breathe, long and deep. “When?”

  “When did I find out?” I swallowed, hoping it would unclench my throat just enough to let the air through. “At Anton’s birthday party.” Now that I was finally, finally telling Hyde the truth, the words seemed to tumble off my lips. My pulse raced. “It was when I fell into the table, but my back had been hurting for days before then. Adrianna took me home, but I was still so messed up… That’s why I didn’t answer any of your calls.”

  Hyde’s fingers twitched. “I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. I was ashamed.” I leaned over, searching his eyes. “But you know how that feels, don’t you?”

  Hyde wouldn’t look at me. He stared at the fountain instead, silently considering the cascading streams, his lips pressed tight to keep the secrets in. It was the last seal to be broken. But I knew it wouldn’t give easily.

  “I’m not even sure how I figured it out,” I said, my dry hands frigid against my bare arms. “There were just too many broken pieces, and too many holes to fill. I woke up one night and… No. I’m not even sure how I figured it out.”

  Hyde’s head rose, slightly, but he still didn’t look at me.

  “I remember when we were kids,” I continued. I needed to say it: “You… you were my best friend.”

  Hyde turned away. “Yeah. You were mine too. My only friend.”

  “Then tell me.” I took his hands in mine, not sure whose were shaking, or rather whos
e were shaking worse. “Tell me what happened to you. Tell me the truth. Please, Hyde.” Tears trickled down my cheeks. “I know you don’t want to be with her. Beatrice. I know what she’s doing to you.”

  It happened fast. At the mere mention of her name, his eyes dulled. All their passion and life and light sunk into the depths until there was nothing left but two empty holes. His jaw clamped shut. His face was still, but his lips started to quiver. I could tell they were fighting against something, some invisible force, but the spell that bound them was too strong. It was exactly as Shannon had described it while she told me about her own secret horrors: the reason she’d stayed by her rapist’s side for all those years with nary a whisper as to what he was doing to her. It was the curse of silence. The curse of loyalty.

  The swan’s curse.

  Finally, just as he looked ready to break in two, he walked past me, sitting on the park bench. Bending over, he propped himself up by his arms, head bent low so that his hair obscured his face from me. He was silent for too long.

  “I didn’t go to Paris,” he said simply.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve never been.”

  “I know that too.”

  “I wasn’t a chimney sweep either.”

  “I figured,” though I said it with a smile. It was just Hyde. No matter how many secrets he kept, how many people tried to break him. Hyde was Hyde. It was a comforting thought, among the sea of dread drowning me.

  Hyde pressed a hand against his forehead. “It was because I found out about her. My mother. After she died and I found her diary. I started reading. A few weeks later, I pieced it together. It was all there in the silences. A swan can never speak out against her captor. But she can say everything else.”

  He paused and I wondered if he remembered every word, if he were recalling them now as he closed his eyes – the silent stories of his mother’s horror etched into his thoughts.

  “My mother… she never told anyone that she was a swan,” he said, his gaze low. “In the world that she came from, admitting that was nothing short of social death. She’d have never been able to show her face again. But I think… in her heart, my mother wanted others to know. In her heart, she did.”

  What would it mean to give away your secret? Anton knew mine, and he’d almost shattered me with it. There were too many risks involved in letting others know. For a swan, giving your secrets away could mean death.

  Hyde rubbed his eyes with his fingers, shaking his head. “It was Anton’s father. Her own brother. He and Dad were buddies at Yale. And it was while they were at Yale that Edmund gave my mother to him in exchange for a position at the company. My dad was pathetic and obsessed and in love with her, after all, and Edmund was barely getting by on scholarships. So he told him. He told my father what my mother was and the rest just happened. It was the desperation of a scumbag.”

  My stomach had tumbled so horribly I nearly let a moan slip from my lips. Did Dad know? Dad had his own circle of friends during his college days. He was still friends with most of them today. Ralph Hedley was his only friend from the upper class, the only one he talked to, and while he had his own friends, Dad had never really socialized with them. He told us as much during one of his drunken reminiscences. If Dad had met Edmund, I couldn’t imagine him being anything other than disgusted. And through it all, it was Clarice Hedley who had paid the price.

  I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. I wasn’t about to interrupt Hyde, not while the words were flowing so freely.

  “My father treated everyone like that. Commodities. Items for sale. He bought me out of convenience, plucked me out of an orphanage to play the happy, healthy son of a benevolent philanthropist who headed a company that promoted ‘family values’. And with my help, he secured an advertiser: Colemans. It was a business transaction. If anyone was going to get rid of me, I’d figured it would be him. But Dad...” Hyde laughed. “Dad was going to come clean. Edmund was the one who sold me.”

  I felt oddly empty trying to grasp the word that had come out of his mouth. Sold. It slipped through my fingers like tears. Sold. What did he mean? What could he mean? I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

  “I would have ruined him, after all.” Hyde straightened up, leaning against the back of the bench, staring blankly up at the night sky. “Once I found out what Dad had been doing to my mother, I was determined to confront him, but he’d just left on a business trip. It had to be face to face.

  “I found Edmund first. I hated him. I couldn’t believe what he’d done, what they’d both done. I told him that if he didn’t come clean, I’d tell everyone. He pleaded with me, bribed me, threatened me, but I didn’t care. He even tried to convince me, the bastard, that he was doing this all for her. For both of them. He was lifting them out of poverty. He was bettering their lives. He truly believed that. He truly didn’t believe he was a monster.”

  Monsters never do. My lips trembled.

  “But even still, I thought I knew what his limits were.” Hyde laughed, once, and though it was nearly imperceptible, the sound of it shriveled my insides. “I had no idea.”

  I took a hesitant step towards him. “And then…” My knees nearly buckled. “And then he sold you.” The words scattered across the cold ground.

  “And then he sold me,” Hyde repeated, eyes dead. I stood there silently, waiting for him to continue, but he’d shut his eyes, fighting against the horror of it. The blood drained from my face. I didn’t even want to imagine it, but images played in my mind’s eye, horrible images. Images that had haunted me since Anton locked me in a cage, except now it was Hyde’s face I saw instead of mine.

  I couldn’t take this. I wanted to collapse onto the ground, but I couldn’t. I felt as if… as if it’d be an insult to him. As if I’d be making a mockery of the courage Hyde had summoned just to lay himself bare in front of me. And so I waited for him to continue. I’d wait as long as he needed me to.

  “Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, after all,” Hyde said finally. I knew it, but only because Anton had told me once, his eyes leering at me from behind steel bars. “They kidnapped me. The guys Edmund had hired. They kidnapped me and I…”

  Both his hands were pressed flat against his head. “I didn’t go to Paris, Deanna. I never left the country. For a long time I didn’t know where I was. They kept me in the parlor basement with all the others. Trapped like animals in tiny cages. It wasn’t enough to send me away, see, not if I could come back and screw everything up. He had to make sure I stayed away, and as much as an abomination as Edmund Rey is, I suppose even he wasn’t willing to cross that moral line by having me killed. But selling a swan is so appallingly simple for a bunch of assholes with money. And faking my death – he made that happen too, all while my dad was off in China. Having the right connections and shuffling a bit of paperwork was all they needed. Once the parlor owners had my feathers, I was theirs. I…”

  His voice faltered. For one, fleeting moment he stayed silent, though I could hear each ragged breath. But the dam couldn’t hold forever. He buried his head in his hands and started sobbing.

  Biting down the strangled cry that threatened to break out of me, I ran up to him, knelt down and threw my arms around him, but he shook me off, shooting to his feet. “I’m so sorry, Deanna. I didn’t want to tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t. When I got back to New York… I’d have done anything to make sure nobody found out. I was–” He clenched his teeth, shaking his head so violently I thought it’d come off his neck. “You especially. I couldn’t let you know. I was ashamed. If you found out, I knew you’d never want to touch me again.”

  “Hyde, no.” I wiped my face with the back of my arms, but I didn’t know what else to say. What else could I say? I stayed on the ground, my side twisted against the bench, fingers clinging to the wood.

  “One day there was a police raid at the parlor and I escaped. I ended up in a San Diego shelter. When I found out my dad was dying I came up with a
plan. I knew there were people from the company I could trust – people who hated Edmund. John Roan, for one. The sicker Dad got, the less he was able to pull his weight at the company, and the more Edmund’s power grew. Eventually he fired a string of people he thought would only hold him back. That’s what John told me.

  “My dad’s old legal counsel, thrown out into the street like trash. It was all over the news. I took a chance trusting him and it paid off. And after the DNA test, after everything…” Hyde paused. “After everything, I got to see my dad one last time before he died. I had no idea the old bastard was going to hand me the company before kicking it.”

  Quietly, I slid back up onto the bench and shut my eyes against the world. For Hyde to have suffered so deeply, for me to have used him, cursed him, and loved him all without knowing any of it... it killed me. My chest felt hollow, my heart scooped out and smothered.

  My eyes snapped open. I turned to Hyde, watching him avoid my gaze. “She found out, didn’t she?” When Hyde frowned and looked away, I stood up. “Beatrice knows. The envelope she handed you. That’s what she’s blackmailing you with. You just said it yourself, didn’t you? You’d have done anything to make sure nobody found out. So when she did, you gave her the company in exchange for her silence. But…” I swallowed hard, the tears welling up again. “But that wasn’t enough, was it? She wanted… she wanted more.”

  Hyde kept his back turned to me.

  “Oh God. Hyde!” I jumped up and threw my arms around his waist, pressing my forehead against the back of his neck. His soft hair caressed my skin as I squeezed and squeezed and let the tears drip into his shirt. “Hyde…” My fingers dug into his stomach.

  “See? That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  Gently, he pried me off of him and turned around to face me, holding my hands in both of his. “Deanna. Just do me this one favor. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”