Not only was she turning into a bird, she was turning into a seagull. A dirty, loud seagull. Felicity opened the bottom drawer of her vanity, pulling up short with the feather hovering over the opening. Emptiness hit her like a physical blow, knocking the breath out of her.
Her whole world had been in this drawer until yesterday: her awl, her ivory, her half-finished scrimshaws. Now ribbons, combs and an elaborate silver hand mirror Mother gave her as a betrothal gift littered the polished wood. Felicity scraped her nails along the bottom panel until they caught in a seam. She pulled, and part of the drawer’s underside gave way. Nestled in the gap sat her little treasure box, the only thing Mother hadn’t taken. Felicity laid the feather next to it and slammed the drawer closed.
A rap at the door jerked her to her feet and she smoothed her hands down her front as Mother swept into the room.
“Of all the days to laze about—Felicity!” Mother’s mouth dropped into a horrified ‘o’ and she grabbed the bedpost for support. “What have you done?” Her hands flew to her own face, pocked with silver scars. Felicity drew herself straight, swallowed the furious words clanging behind her teeth.
“I didn’t do it,” she said instead. “I just woke up and . . .”
“You did something. You must have.” Mother gestured to her face. “How could you disappoint me like this? And after such wonderful news last night. Do you want me to be ashamed?”
“No.”
“Then what did you do?” Felicity shook her head and Mother’s eyes narrowed. “Lying won’t help, my dear. Don’t forget what happened to the von Moren girl. Do you want to shame me like she shamed her mother? Tell me what you’ve done!”
Felicity turned her hands out, but white down tufted between her fingers, so she curled them again. “Nothing. I retired early last night and never left my room, you know that.” A fierce ache curled behind her breastbone and she pressed her fist against it, felt it hammer against the skin. Mother grabbed her chin, fingers slipping over the feathers, and grimaced, turning Felicity’s head left and right.
“Filthy.” She pulled a handkerchief from inside her sleeve and wiped her hand. “It was those hideous carvings, wasn’t it? If I find that you’ve been scraping about with those vulgar bones again—”
“You threw them out before the party.” Felicity glanced towards the vanity drawer, pulled her gaze away again. “You threw them all away.”
Mother’s lips pursed. She twirled her finger. “Let me see you.”
Felicity turned an obedient circle. Mother sighed.
“With long sleeves we should be able to hide the worst of them. We have to pluck your face, though. Sit.”
“But Mother—”
“Sit!”
Felicity sank back onto the stool, fingers knotted in her lap as Mother tilted her face up, angling it this way and that with frowns creasing her face. She grasped a feather under Felicity’s left eye, and hot pain flared as it ripped free. Felicity jerked back. “That hurts!”
“Hold still.” Mother seized her chin again, grabbed another feather, the barb buried behind Felicity’s ear, and yanked. Tears stung Felicity’s eyes and she swallowed another protest.
“You will not disappoint me”—three more feathers fell to the floor, and Mother wiped her hand—“by mooning over those silly”—another feather—“vulgar”—another—“toys!” Felicity could feel blood trickling over her cheeks and down her neck. The holes left by the barbs burned.
“Our only grace,” Mother continued, “is that there aren’t too many on your face yet. Be dressed and downstairs in an hour; Ernest called on the house this morning to take a walk with you.”
She nodded and Mother wiped her hand again, sighed, and left. Felicity turned to her mirror, stiff and breathless, and blinked at her reflection. A pale face stared back, freckled with red like a pox. She opened the drawer and retrieved her treasure box, egg-shaped and small enough to fit in her palm. The rusting hinge squeaked as she pried open the lid, and she pulled out her last scrimshaw.
A year ago, she had bargained for a handful of bone pieces and an old awl from a sailor, in exchange for a length of satin ribbon for his sweetheart. Now only this remained: a piece small and rough, the beginnings of a bird with a bit of rope clenched in its beak etched into the ivory. Her hand ached to hold the awl again, to make the delicate, meticulous strokes from which a beautiful picture could emerge. Her head throbbed at the memory of the loss. Unfair it was mine it was beautiful not vulgar. Her hand closed over the scrimshaw, and her fingers itched as feathers rubbed between them.
The scream had done it, surely. It poisoned her, turned her insides ugly. She glanced down at her arms, layered with soft down. She grabbed a handful. Pulled.
• • • •
“You are looking very fine today, Felicity,” Ernest said, tucking her hand into his elbow. His watery blue eyes peered at her, skittering over the pale pink wounds on her face as if they weren’t there, as if they didn’t mirror the ones on his own.
“Thank you,” Felicity said.
“Did you enjoy our betrothal dinner last night?”
No. “Yes.”
He steered them toward the harbor, and Felicity dragged her feet as much as she dared. Wheeling over snapping lines and luffing sails, the seagulls spun and looped, shrieking and hollering, fighting with each other for fish, for space, for the merry hell of it.
“Filthy things, aren’t they?” She startled at the sound of his voice, saw him looking up toward the gulls, nose wrinkled with disdain. Sweat trickled down the feathers on the back of her neck, hidden under a stiff lace collar, and she resisted the urge to touch them.
“Yes.” She gripped her parasol until her fingers ached.
They stopped at the edge of the harbor, where clean cobbles gave way to mud and filth. Ernest’s voice droned in her ear, but it faded as she took in the graceful curves of a small sloop, a brigantine’s tall masts. The full harbor teemed with gleaming wood and crisp sails. Her nose stung with the tang of brine and pitch and she filled her lungs, trying to hold it inside.
Two sailors strolled by, one turning a smoothed piece of ivory over and over in his hands. Their faces, sweat-streaked and leathery, had only a few telltale scars. The seafarers never had as many feathers. Perhaps the ocean protected them.
Ernest guided her out of their path. The sailors nodded, and Ernest nodded in return. “Fine work, sailor.”
“Thankee, sir. For my sweetheart, this is.” The sailor held it out for Ernest to inspect, and she tried to stare without looking. From the ivory emerged the beginnings of a mermaid, all sensuous curves and come-hither smile. Ernest made a sound of approval and the sailors walked on. He pulled on her hand and she took a few hurried half-steps to catch up.
“Something very romantic about a sailor’s art,” he said. “What did you think of it, my dear?”
She wanted to chase the sailor down, rip it out of his hands, add frothing waves and steep cliffs to the mermaid’s empty world. She shrugged and Ernest patted her hand.
“You’re right, forgive me. I forget sometimes that the unrefined arts are inappropriate.” He flushed and patted her hand again. Felicity placed one foot in front of the other, toes pointing ahead even as every instinct begged her to go back.
They walked a few feet more before Ernest stopped again. Another artist? She followed his gaze and saw not a sailor, but a woman.
She stood in a canary yellow gown, without a parasol, her sun-weathered skin chestnut-colored under a white shawl slung over her elbows like an afterthought. She wore no head covering and black hair, loose-pinned, fell in luxurious, sweaty ringlets around her smooth, unmarked face. The sailor said something and she laughed, head back and teeth gleaming. Felicity’s face burned and she angled her parasol lower.
“Has she no shame at all?” Ernest asked, voice hushed. His hand on her arm dampened with sweat, and his fingers trembled. Felicity shook her head, glanced at the woman again. The scabs on her face stung a
nd feathers itched under her gloves, under her dress. She wanted to run. She wanted to throw her parasol at the smiling, shining woman who would have disappointed Mother, but whose face bore no scars. Bile rose in her throat, threatened to choke her.
“She isn’t a lady,” she said. “My mother will be unhappy if she hears we were watching her.”
Ernest shook himself, steadied his hold on her once more. “Of course.” He looked down at her and under his bowler hat, she could see a small, brown feather, poking through his hair. “You look quite pale. Let’s go back and get you a drink.”
He turned her away from the harbor, and glanced over his shoulder until the woman disappeared from view.
They returned home, where Felicity declined the drink, said a short lie-down before dinner would restore her, and hurried upstairs. In her room, she ripped the drawers out of her vanity, spilling their contents on the floor. Balling her fists and taking a deep breath, she knelt and sorted the shiny baubles, ribbon scraps, and sewing pins. She picked up Mother’s hand mirror and turned the glass toward her, running one finger over her cheeks. Soon, the marks would pale, look almost normal again. No one would remark on them, just as she didn’t remark on theirs, and life would go on.
Maybe she would get lucky and the change would stop here. Maybe she wouldn’t turn out like Claudette von Moren.
She pawed through the rest of her contents, found the scrimshaw in its box, and turned it over between her fingers. The scream thundered in her chest, and she placed the scrimshaw on the vanity, pulled her gloves off. Then she plucked handfuls of feathers out of the backs of her hands, between her fingers, up her arms like a butcher plucking a hen.
She would show that bare-headed hussy at the harbor. She would show Mother. She pulled harder, and her shaking, bloody fingers made the feathers slippery and hard to grip.
The whispers said that Claudette had turned into a nightingale for not listening to her parents, and that she sang and sang until she fell over, stiff-legged and open-beaked. That was what happened to people who didn’t behave as they should.
“But I do behave as I should,” she told her reflection, throwing sodden red clumps onto the vanity. “I don’t deserve to turn into a filthy gull. Let it stop here, like it does with everyone else. It stops when people are good, and I’m good.”
Not the point, the scream said. Good was never the point.
“Be quiet,” she said.
• • • •
She woke before dawn with more feathers, grey and black-tipped, longer, prickling down her back. Her arms looked scrawny, and her mouth felt stiff, lips waxy and jaundiced.
She spent two hours plucking the feathers, and then peeled the hard layers off her mouth, leaving her teeth stained scarlet. She washed and dressed, and went out into the early lavender morning.
The von Moren house stood at the far end of the green at the center of the neighborhood. Once it had been the epicenter of social events, windows aglow until late in the night. Now it hunkered between its neighbors, heavy shades drawn. Felicity strode over the grass, plucking bits of down that poked through her sleeves. Other people strolled by or read on the benches, faces scabbed and scarred, a few stray feathers clinging to chins and temples. One old man sat regarding a fountain, his hands, withered talons, curled in his lap. A little girl, no more than twelve, sat near her mother, playing with a doll. Red flecks dotted her throat like an elaborate necklace.
Felicity walked faster. She thought of Claudette von Moren, who had opened her first season alongside Felicity. Claudette, who had played the pianoforte like an angel, and for hours at a time, the wildest and most beautiful music anyone had ever heard. Felicity mounted the steps of the house, and dropped the tarnished knocker with an echoing thud. A tired butler answered, gave her a strange look, and saw her into the parlor where she used to spend countless autumn evenings, listening to Claudette play or whispering over cards. Now sheets covered the couches and mirrors, and dust motes twirled in the air, settling on the wood tables and sideboard. Claudette’s pianoforte sat in the corner, lid closed. Felicity ran a hand over the dull wood, leaving long streaks behind.
I have a scream inside me, Claudette had confided to her the day before she changed. She had peered at Felicity over the rim of her teacup, fresh scabs marring her white forehead, her brilliant green eyes muted and tear-filled. Feathers had poked through her sleeves, feathers that hadn’t started growing until her parents barred her from her instrument. It’s gotten so loud, I’m afraid I’ll explode. It wants me to play again. I want to play again.
“Can I help you?” Mrs. von Moren stood in the parlor door, small and bent under her black dress. Russet down grew in clusters over her face, and bright red feathers poked through her unkempt hair and under her sleeves.
“Tell me what she did wrong,” Felicity blurted. “I don’t want to turn into a bird.”
Mrs. von Moren’s eyes dimmed. She gripped the lintel with crooked, white fingers. “She disobeyed.”
“How? She played so beautifully—”
“It wasn’t beautiful.” The hand tightened and her mouth tightened with it. “Her music was too intense for a young lady. She wouldn’t stop, so we took the pianoforte away.” Her bony shoulders lifted, dropped, defeated. “She . . . she left us two weeks later.”
“But did she play again?” Pain warmed her thumb where she tore at the nail, and Felicity jerked her hand back to her side. “Did she play before she . . . left?”
Mrs. von Moren shook her head, and covered her mouth with one twisted hand. Felicity leaned on the pianoforte for support. Claudette hadn’t disobeyed, however she might have wanted to. And still, she had changed.
Felicity half-ran home, skirts tangling around her legs, hurried up the stairs and knocked on Mother’s door, knocked and knocked and almost hit the maid on the brow when the door swung open. She pushed past the girl, dismissing her with a wave, and dropped on her knees before Mother, breathless and gasping.
“What am I doing wrong? I’ve done everything everyone has asked of me, haven’t I? I don’t listen to my scream. Why am I still changing?” She lifted her face, her hair sticking to her cheeks. Mother pushed it back into its pins.
“Your scream?”
“That’s what Claudette called it,” she said, voice small. “It wanted her to play, even though her parents didn’t want her to. You have one too, don’t you?”
Mother nodded, face solemn. “I did.”
“How did you stop it?”
Mother sighed. “I stopped listening to it,” she said. “I focused on being a good mother, a good wife, until it went away. Oh, at first the change seemed even faster, but it slowed with my effort. It will go away, my darling, if you try hard enough.”
“But I have!”
Mother tapped her on the nose. “Then why are you still changing?”
Back in her room, she dug up the scrimshaw and held it in her palm.
Before the betrothal party, Mother had taken all of them away, and Felicity had cried and promised never to engage in such a crude, violent art again. Ladies painted pretty watercolors and wielded sewing needles; they didn’t wrestle animal bone and scratch it with sharp awls. But she had saved just one, this one, small enough to hide in her hand as Mother stormed around the room and shouted.
She hadn’t ignored her scream. And now this had happened.
Felicity took the piece to the harbor, secreted inside her glove, its warm weight against her hand as she scurried down the boulevard. Silence met her at the shipyards; few people worked on a Sunday. She threaded her way through crates and pallets stacked high with sacks and barrels. She reached the water’s edge and pulled off her glove, held the scrimshaw up. Sunlight gleamed through the tiny hole she had once painstakingly bored through the ivory. She stretched her arm out over the dark water.
“What happened to you?”
Felicity jumped, feet slipping on the rotted wood. A long-fingered hand clamped down on her upper arm, pulled her away
from the water, and the smell of tropical fruit and vanilla suffused the air, warm and velvety. When Felicity regained her footing she saw the woman, arms crossed and a look of frank curiosity on her face. She wore sky blue today, her head still uncovered, her skin even more golden up close.
“You’re turning into a bird.” Her deep voice tolled like a bell. “What happened?”
Acid surged into her mouth and Felicity clapped a hand over it. The woman stepped closer; Felicity stepped back. The woman reached out again, warm hand on Felicity’s elbow to steady her, keep her from falling into the harbor. The heady perfume made Felicity’s mouth water and she swallowed the burning away.
“You’re all like this here.” The woman shook her head. “What is this place, that it turns broken people into birds?”
“We aren’t broken,” Felicity said through her fingers. “I listened to my scream. If I get rid of this”—she held up the scrimshaw—“I’ll be fine.”
The grip on her elbow tightened and the woman pried the scrimshaw out of Felicity’s hand. Sunshine limned the etchings in gold.
“But this isn’t bad,” the woman said. “It’s beautiful.”
“If you don’t try hard enough, you turn into a bird.” Felicity’s words ran together and she snatched the scrimshaw back. “I was wrong to keep it, I should have thrown it out with the rest.” She gulped for air and tried to pull away, but the woman held on. Dark eyes raked over her wounds, the straggling feathers she hadn’t been able to remove, the look like hot needles. The woman dropped Felicity’s elbow and stepped back, taking the delicious scents with her, leaving nothing but salt and wood in her wake.
“You think if you silence yourself, the changes stop?” She raised an eyebrow, and Felicity bristled as her voice acquired a mocking lilt. “It would seem most of you have stopped listening, and I still see feathers everywhere.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Felicity snapped. “You’re not from here.”
“No,” the woman agreed. “I am not.” She ran a finger down the side of Felicity’s face, leaving a warm, tingling trail. “Hold onto your art,” she said, serious now. “Hold it tightly. Your forced goodness isn’t saving any of you, but your art might.”
Fantasy Magazine Issue 58, Women Destroy Fantasy! Special Issue Page 2