The Weight of Feathers

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  “How’d you get out of that thing?” Cluck asked. “The night the mixing tank blew.”

  “How do you think?” she asked. “I ripped my costume.”

  He remembered putting the fabric and beading into the river, watching the water take it. “That was your tail Dax had, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  That was why she’d kissed him, because he’d taken something that had once been part of her out of his brother’s hands.

  “Don’t you hate me?” she asked.

  “For not telling me? I can’t blame you, seeing as how I took it so well.”

  “No, because you hate my family.”

  “I don’t hate your family,” he said. “I hate what they did.”

  “How do you know they did it?”

  “I wasn’t there, so I don’t. But my best guess is that they did.”

  “Your best guess is wrong,” she said.

  He wasn’t doing this again. Whatever happened twenty years ago, neither of them had been around to be part of it. Lace hadn’t even been born when the Palomas got his grandfather laid off. It wasn’t on her. Cluck was keeping the rest of their families outside the trailer door. There wasn’t enough room for everybody.

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “You tell me. If you knew for sure you were right, would you still want me here?”

  “If you knew for sure you were, would you want to be here?”

  She brushed her thumb over the cut on his lip. The pad was hot from the cup.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “It wasn’t my cousins, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Who was it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. There aren’t usually introductions.” He got up from the built-in. “Drink that, okay?”

  “Are you drugging me so you can go through my suitcase?” she asked. “I’ll save you some trouble. Yes, my costume’s in there. Not that I’ll need it anytime soon.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She rubbed her thumb over a cuff button. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “I’m not,” he said. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have wanted to know her. He’d never have known what it felt like to hold a girl with a fear of falling, to help her steady her weight on those high branches. He never would have met that woman who made him so sure what Mémère would have been like.

  He listened for the back door of the house opening or closing. He shouldn’t have had Lace in the blue and white trailer with him. But he was so far past “shouldn’t.” He’d held a Paloma girl close enough to feel the heat of her mouth through his shirt. He’d let a Paloma woman fix the splintered bone in his ring finger. If the Palomas’ magie noire was poison, he had more than enough in him to kill him. And if it didn’t, it meant there was so much in him it was turning him, his body folding it into its cells until he was immune.

  Cluck wouldn’t tell anyone about the Paloma who’d fixed his ring finger. They’d just call her une sorcière. He didn’t even know how to tell Lace without sounding like he was calling the woman a witch.

  “You want to come back to the show?” he asked her.

  Lace watched the lavender spin in the cup.

  “You’re good at your job,” he said. “No one wants to lose you.”

  She flicked the side of the cup with her forefinger, and the buds spun the other way.

  “No one has to know,” he said.

  “Half your family must have heard us.” She set the teacup down. “I think they already do.”

  “They didn’t hear what we were saying. My brother. He just thinks we’re, uh … You know.”

  She laughed and curled on her side, looking up at the trailer’s water-stained ceiling. Mémère’s dreamless cure was working.

  “Why’d you come after me?” she asked.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I went out for milk.”

  She shut her eyes. “What happened to your hand?”

  Even half-asleep, she kept trying.

  “Car door,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “Which car?” he asked. “It was this old Ford. It barely ran. We don’t have it anymore.”

  “Which hand, Cluck?”

  A hollow place inside him grew hot and tight, like the neutron stars in Pépère’s books. He checked his right ring finger. It bent and straightened. He flinched, wondering if Mémère’s tea let Lace see things, places now healed but once broken.

  Lace let her cheek fall against the mattress. “It’s not fair. You know everything about me now.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There’s stuff I want to know about you, and there’s nothing left you want to know about me.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “There’s plenty I want to know.”

  “Like what?”

  “How you look in that tail.”

  She smiled, not making it all the way to a laugh, and slept.

  The muscles in his right hand hummed, full of electricity as dry clouds. The bone knitting in his ring finger was new and restless. It wanted to act, to make something. So he collected the years of white peacock feathers off the floor, and took his wires and tools to the Airstream.

  Thanks to Lace, a little of la magie noire ran through his blood. A trace of what made her a Paloma had gotten into him.

  He liked it, that sense of something new and sharp and alive. If he forgot for a second that Lace and that woman who made him think of Mémère were Palomas, it made him feel safe and awake. Like when everyone was gone in the afternoon, and Cluck slept for that one quiet hour before call time, knowing Dax and his mother were far from the blue and white trailer. He’d wake up and splash cold water on his face, ready for all the evening’s noise and little lights.

  But just because he liked what Lace had done to him didn’t mean he’d let it go one way.

  It was time he returned the favor.

  Qui craint le danger ne doit pas aller en mer.

  He who fears danger should not go to sea.

  He didn’t remember finishing, or falling asleep.

  The sun came through the Airstream’s curtains, needling his eyes. It lit up the worktable, and the hundreds of leucistic feathers wired into wings. They had the same frame as the other wings, bent metal standing in for humerus, ulna, radius. Carpals and metacarpals. The leucistic peacock’s back coverts, molted each season, shaped the grain of the feathers.

  The sun showed the faint washes on the eyespots. The sheer yellow of a lemon slice’s inner curve. A blush of pink and violet. The blue and green of certain chickens’ eggs.

  He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck, stiff from falling asleep at the table. He hadn’t been able to use the wire frame he’d salvaged after the accident. Those were for men’s wings, too tall and broad for Lace’s body.

  He checked the blue and white trailer. “Lace?”

  She wasn’t there. She’d smoothed the sheet on the built-in, folded the blanket. Her suitcase was flopped closed but not locked.

  A point of light winked from the floor. He picked it up, held it to the window. A plastic sequin, pink and translucent as a grapefruit segment.

  He took off toward the woods. If that sequin had fallen off what he thought it had fallen off of, he had to find her before Dax did.

  He ran toward the river, listening for the sound of her splashing over the soft rush of the current.

  Through the reeds, he spotted the pink of her costume and the wet black of her hair. She turned in the water, the sun glinting off her body. It made the drops on her shoulders and arms glow. It glimmered through the beads and sequins on her costume. Her fin flicked the river, a petal off a tulip tree.

  Her skin was healing. Though still dark as new blackberries, the heart on her cheek had grown small as an apricot. The burns on her back had lightened and started to scar over.

  She dove down, staying under so long he th
ought of the colanders catching her tail.

  “Lace?” He took off his shirt to go in after her.

  She surfaced, blinking the sediment from her eyes. How did she tread with that tail on? Wet, with all the beading, it must’ve weighed ten pounds.

  His family would tell him countless men had lost their lives this way. In stories, soldiers and travelers neared ponds and rivers, drawn by les feux follets, those luring lights, and the laughter and singing of water spirits. Some were like Melusine, the river spirit whose legs became fins every Saturday. If a mortal man caught her in her true form, she would turn to a serpent and kill him.

  These were his family’s bedtime stories, those evil women with scales on their bodies and fins for feet. Where other children were told not to play with fire, Cluck and his brother and cousins were warned off water. When Cluck was thirteen or fourteen, his grandfather cautioned him against the nivasia, mermaids who became pregnant by mortal men and then murdered them.

  All those stories ended the same. She was beautiful. A man loved her. She killed him.

  Lace saw him, but didn’t startle.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You said you wanted to see it.” She flicked her tail, and water sprayed his forearms. “I thought if I showed you, you’d tell me what happened to your hand.”

  “I never agreed to that.”

  The shape of her bare breasts showed, lighter brown than the rest of her. They floated like fallen oranges. He couldn’t tell whether the accident had scarred them. The refraction through the water kept him from seeing.

  The blue-black of the river made them look pale. They glowed like twin moons, turned gold from staying near the horizon.

  Heat crawled up the back of his neck. “You’re not wearing a top.”

  “What were you expecting? A couple of clam shells and a piece of string?”

  “Don’t give me that.” He’d seen the show. The Paloma women wore costume pieces that looked like bras covered in sequins. “If you all performed topless, the chamber of commerce would have you arrested before your hair dried, and you know it. You’ve got to wear something.”

  “We do,” she said. “And mine got ruined the night you found me.”

  She must have forgotten how much length her hair had lost that night. When she lifted her shoulders out of the water, the ends stuck to her breasts, but didn’t cover them. He looked at them so hard he could almost feel their weight in his palms. He wondered if the water would leave them cool, or if they’d give off the warmth that lived under her skin. He thought of touching her until there was none of the river’s cold left on her, just the heat of his hands.

  Those thoughts stayed on him. He felt them sticking to him like his feathers stuck to the back of his neck when his hair was wet. That feeling, strong as the prickling of vanes and barbs, made him want to check his body for some mark she’d left on his skin. There had to be something on him that would tell her how much he wanted to touch her, a thing clear and dark as the imprint his feather had put on her.

  “You’re blushing,” she said. “I thought you were French.”

  “Not that kind of French.”

  She flicked her tail again. The glass beads looked like the million bubbles of water just starting to boil.

  If any of the family caught them, they’d have worse trouble than stories about Melusine and the nivasia.

  “Get out of that thing before somebody sees you.” He knelt on the bank. “Where’s your dress?”

  She went under again, staying close enough to the surface that he could make her out. Her hair was as dark and blue-black as the river until the sun lit it up and turned it red-brown. Her back looked like a sandbar glinting with mica. He couldn’t tell the scarring from the rippled water.

  Her tail reminded him of raw pink salt. As she moved, the light found the clusters of glass beads.

  She surfaced. The sun on the water broke into pieces.

  She swam up to the bank and rested her forearms on a rock. “You coming in?”

  “I don’t swim,” he said.

  “You don’t know how?”

  “I know how.” He wasn’t going to win any contests for holding his breath, but he knew how not to drown. How to get out of a colander and how to fight a current. His grandfather had taught him so he would keep safe around rivers, not so he could swim in them. “I just don’t.”

  “Fine.” She wrung out her hair and let it all fall to one side of her neck, leaving one of her breasts bare under the water. He hoped the distance between them was enough to hide where he was looking. “But I’m not getting out until you get in,” she said.

  Pépère didn’t much care for water, so Cluck didn’t either. It had to do with the Romani traditions, what parts of their bodies they could wash at which places in the river, how if a man didn’t know the current, something clean could be made mochadi. Unclean.

  But Cluck had never learned all the rules. His mother had told him he was too young to understand, and then, when he was older, too stupid. That he shouldn’t worry about it because they were lucky enough to have running water. They didn’t have to think about the Romani laws that ran in his grandfather’s blood like silt in streams.

  Lace brushed a hand over his thigh, leaving her wet fingerprints on his pants. “You coming in, or not?”

  His shirt was already unbuttoned and off, from almost going in after her. So he pulled off his undershirt, his socks and shoes, but kept his trousers on. If his grandfather had worried over Cluck taking Lace’s dress off the night of the accident, he’d have strong words about Cluck pulling off his pants to swim. Going shirtless was bad enough. If Cluck wore nothing but his boxers around a girl, Pépère would know. He’d just know, the same way he knew, years ago, that Cluck was lying about having made himself right-handed.

  Cluck didn’t jump or slide in. He found where the bank sloped instead of dropping off, and waded in one slow step at a time. The water soaked his ankles, then crept up his trouser legs.

  If Sara-la-Kali and the Three Marys wanted to pull him back, he’d let them. But they didn’t, so he let the nivasi near him.

  Lace dove down again, too far for him to see her shape.

  He waded in up to his chest, the water cooling his skin. “Lace?”

  She grabbed him and pulled him down. He stumbled forward, and went under.

  He opened his eyes and saw the colors of her. The black of her hair, her skin the brown of river alluvium, the rose salt of her tail. Light streamed through her like she was made of water.

  He ran out of air fast. When he tried to get to the surface, she held him down. He fought her, and she held him tighter.

  The muscles around his lungs tensed and then cramped. She was killing him. The truth that she was a Paloma, a nivasi, dug into his skull. She would murder him before she would love him. She would keep him under and drown him.

  Water got into his throat, and he couldn’t fight her anymore. She wrapped her arms around his chest, pulling him into the dark. Then she dragged him out of the water and up onto the bank.

  The light stabbed into him. Air flooded into his lungs, shoving the water out.

  She turned him onto his side and held a hand to his back. “Breathe.”

  He coughed up the water.

  She held onto him. “Breathe.”

  He sat up and gasped to get his breath. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “I was trying to move you,” she whispered. “Look.” She turned his head.

  The muscles near his lungs eased and then tightened again. Two figures showed through the tree cover. Two of the guys from the liquor store.

  They threw pinecones into the river and pulled wild pomelos off a tree.

  “What are they doing here?” He didn’t have to try to keep his voice low. He didn’t have the air to break to a whisper.

  “Our families are closer together than you think,” she said.

  He hadn’t thought about it since the accident. He’d gone out
looking for Eugenie, and Eugenie never would’ve seen Lace if they didn’t share a band of woods with the Palomas.

  Lace’s cousins found all the ripe pomelos, tugged down each yellow-green fruit. The tree seemed to straighten its shoulders, free from the extra weight. Lace’s cousins moved on, toward the Palomas’ side of the woods.

  “What the hell can you do with those things?” Cluck asked. Pomelos were bitter as cough syrup, especially the wild ones.

  “Aguas frescas,” Lace said. “With enough water and sugar, you can make anything drinkable.”

  She pulled herself up on the bank, her tail dragging through the mud. “I’m sorry I almost drowned you.”

  His breathing evened, but the guilt of thinking she was trying to kill him made the tensing of his lungs worse. “Better you than them.”

  She lay on her back, squinting into the sun, and covered her breasts with her palms. The sun shone off her wet hands.

  “It’s because I was hungry,” she said, like he’d asked her a question.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The night we met. I was buying that much from the liquor store because I was hungry. I wouldn’t eat all day because if I ate I looked fat in my tail. Then after the show I was really hungry, so I’d eat everything. Then I had to not eat the next day. Same thing every day, trying to fit into my tail.”

  He looked at how the tail clung to her hips and legs. “Seems like it fits to me.”

  “Thanks to hospital food.” She patted her thigh through the fabric, her other hand sliding over so her arm covered her breast. “But these show everything.”

  She sounded like Clémentine and Violette with their honey and chili powder. The show’s filmy dresses floated near their bodies, hiding a lot more than that tail. It didn’t matter to them. They downed those chili powder mixes a few weeks before the show season started. We don’t want to be fat fairies, n’est-ce pas?

  It wasn’t just the women. Before the shows, the men oiled their chests, and after, they argued over who the girls in the audience had looked at most. Cluck had given up competing early. His body was strong enough to do what it needed to do. He’d never be much to look at, and he’d never be as big as Dax, but he could do his work. Pépère had taught him that mattered more than how a man looked with his shirt off and wings strapped to his back.