Heat flushed through Felicity’s body, making her limbs burn and her vision blur. The scream sang, she’s right she’s right she’s right, until it drowned out all her other thoughts and Felicity inched away, shaking her head.
A flash of black at the far end of the harbor froze her where she stood. Ernest picked his way through the maze, eyes scanning the harbor.
He would see her. He would see her with this strange woman and be disappointed, so disappointed. He wouldn’t want to marry her anymore. He would tell Mother and Mother would be disappointed. She had to throw away the scrimshaw and leave, quickly. She could feel more feathers growing, longer and faster. Her fingers stiffened, numb, and the scrimshaw slipped through them. She locked eyes with the woman, then gathered her skirts, turned and ran.
Not until late that night did she allow herself to believe Ernest hadn’t seen her at the harbor. She had gotten rid of the scrimshaw bird, and now the change would stop. She stood naked before her mirror and pulled feathers out one by one. Relief, comforting as a warm bath, suffused her with every patch of flesh the feathers revealed. She wouldn’t be the filthy, loud seagull, but Felicity the girl, who made people proud. She smiled at her reflection. For the first time in years, the scream didn’t respond.
• • • •
For the next two weeks, she threw herself into planning her wedding. She visited the dressmaker with Mother, touched silks and velvet, and stood before a full-length mirror in her tight corset as a seamstress took her measurements and murmured what beautiful posture she had. Mother’s proud smile over her shoulder as she stood, arms outstretched like an elegant doll, brimmed her with relief.
The scream said nothing. The feathers still grew, but fewer and further between. Mother assured her that this might persist, but the worst had passed. She soothed Felicity’s face with cool compresses and a gentle kiss on her brow.
Only once, as she walked past the harbor, she felt the familiar ache in her chest, the buzz in her head. She avoided the harbor after that, and worked even harder to fill the ship-shaped hole its absence left in her day. But time always found her empty-handed after a while, and she passed it sitting in the drawing room window, staring in the direction of the distant masts.
She had just settled on the window seat when Ernest arrived, flushed and disheveled. He declined a chair, and paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. Wrinkles curled his clothes, and mud caked the bottom of his trousers, streaked his shoes. Short brown feathers stubbled his jaw and the sides of his face. He stopped, mopped his brow.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I must break off our betrothal.”
For a moment, it felt as if the floor fell away, leaving her unmoored and breathless. Inside her, the scream stirred.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I—we—I made a mistake.” He paced again, four steps left, turn, four steps right, turn. “I have great affection for you, please don’t doubt that. You are a charming woman and very attractive.”
“Then what’s the matter?” The scream climbed her ribs like a ladder, heading toward her throat.
“I’m in love.” Ernest dropped onto an ottoman, head hanging. He appeared stunned by the declaration, rubbing his neck with one shaking hand. “It’s horrible, like my body and mind are no longer mine.”
Did the window seat roll like a ship’s deck? No, only Felicity, weaving in her seat. He saw her after all, that day at the harbor. She had disappointed him but he wanted to be gallant, place the blame on himself. She steadied herself. “Is this because you saw me at the harbor? I haven’t been there since, I swear. You’ll have no cause to be ashamed of me—”
“Harbor? What—no, Felicity, listen.” He stood, sat, stood again, sat and grabbed her hand between both of his. “You are sweet, very sweet, and very good. But . . . this woman, she’s intoxicating.” He sucked in a breath and shook his head, eyes distant and fevered. “She’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Please don’t think you did something. You did nothing.”
He stood, mopped his face again, and nodded to her. His hand rested on the doorknob, and he looked desperate to escape. “I’m sorry. I’ll show myself out. Please don’t think too ill of me, if you can.”
She remained on the seat even after the heavy front door closed, the weight of his words pressing down on her. You did nothing. Her wedding dress, half-finished, wouldn’t be worn. You did nothing. Mother would be heartbroken, so disappointed in the daughter who let a fine husband slip through her fingers. You did nothing. Hadn’t she ignored her scream until it went silent? Hadn’t she tried enough? You did nothing.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Her voice bounced around the drawing room, rough-edged and ugly. Her whole body prickled, invisible insects crawling over her skin. She lurched to her feet, raced from the drawing room and up the stairs. In the safety of her room, she approached the mirror and swallowed a wail.
Feathers grew, fast, thick and silver-white over every inch of available skin. They popped out like spring seedlings, unfurling and blanketing her. Her mouth and nose puckered, and the skin around them tightened like she had been burned by a hot iron. She tried to touch it, but her fingers found only long feathers and soft down. She scrabbled at the feathers on her arms, trying again and again to pull them out, but her hands wouldn’t grasp. They teemed, too many, and her fingers disappeared. She tried to tear them out with her shrinking teeth, but they slid through. Her face and hair vanished as if under snow.
Tears blurred her vision as she sank onto her stool, only to leap forward when she noticed her eyes. Her eyes, the pupils widening, eyelashes falling out, her eyes were turning yellow.
Yellow, like the strange woman’s dress.
• • • •
She didn’t grab her parasol, or her gloves. She just ran, down the stairs, out the door, and down the street, feathers rustling in the afternoon breeze. Her feet felt too small in her shoes and she stumbled, tripped, landing on the hard cobbles and tearing the grey silk, scraping her hands and knees. She clambered back to her feet, kicked off the shoes, kept going. A red ache sang behind her eyes, inside her nose and throat, under her tongue and deep in her chest. She dashed across the harbor, dodging unaware sailors and merchants left and right, searching, searching for the telltale glimpse of dark hair and bright color.
She found them in the purple shadow of a full-rigged tall ship, Ernest’s face beseeching, the woman’s apologetic and remote. She played with a pendant around her neck and her yellow dress blazed in the gloom. Felicity ran toward them both and the woman’s eyes widened.
She would open her mouth, unleash the scream. They had been wrong, they had all been wrong, it had tried to protect them, not change them. Not listening to it had sparked the change, and letting it howl inside only made the change faster. She would shout at Ernest, didn’t he see that his new love had woken his up, and that stifling it propelled him closer to animal than man? Her shouts would bounce off the tall ship’s hull, echoing and sending the words skyward. The scream would stretch, cramped from so many years trapped, and soar through the air, whoop and twirl, while she raved on the ground.
And then, breath and voice ragged, she would tell the woman, the strange woman, who hadn’t turned into a bird, to run.
“You were right. You were right the whole time. Claudette lost her music. I lost my art. Run away before you lose yourself and change too.”
And then, spent, she would collapse in a flurry of molting feathers, chest heaving and whole body aching, but lighter than she had ever been before.
• • • •
She would have said those things, had she a voice. But she didn’t.
The scream ripped out of her lungs but her tongue, hard and pointed, clicked inside her beak and her voice wouldn’t, couldn’t form words. She plummeted in a tangle of wings and garments, skidded along the cobbles, and thrashed inside a monstrous whale-boned cage. She screeched, tiny lungs pressing against her feathered breast, but no words ca
me.
Hands plunged through the suffocating silk folds, grabbed her around the neck, under her gnarled, webbed feet, and lifted her as though she weighed nothing. A pair of wide eyes regarded her, a red mouth drawn into a grim, sad line. The woman cradled Felicity in her wide, long-fingered hands. Next to her, Ernest’s eyes darted to and fro, looking everywhere but at the pile of discarded garments.
“I think we should be away,” he said, fidgeting with his walking stick. The woman turned, Felicity still in hand, and her body vibrated with her voice.
“You saw nothing?” Incredulity laced her words. Ernest looked first at her face, then at Felicity. He shook his head.
“No. No. There is nothing to see. Drop that thing, you don’t know how filthy those creatures are.”
The woman drew back, her warm hand pressing Felicity into the soft wool shawl. “A woman turned into a bird right in front of you, and yet you see nothing?”
The brown feathers stood out on Ernest’s pale face and he swallowed. “Nothing.” His voice quavered.
“I see,” the woman said, voice clipped. “Good day, sir.” She spun on her heel, and colors whipped a frenzied dance around Felicity. Her wings strained against their confines, desperate to take her high, away, far away from the noise, the horror of people stepping around her unnoticed clothes. The woman bore her through the crowds, and when Felicity cocked her eye upwards, she could only see the lifted chin, the regal slope of a neck. Men parted ways and the woman strode through them, looking neither left nor right. They stared, but their gazes skittered over Felicity, not seeing her. They saw a seagull.
Felicity fluffed her feathers and cried out again, tried to call for Ernest, Mother, tried to call out her own name. A seagull’s raucous shouts left her mouth, each one more frustrated than the last.
The woman stopped at the edge of the pier, and Felicity felt herself lowered onto a splintered dock pole. She fluttered her wings and wobbled, webbed feet dancing back and forth to gain purchase. The woman crouched over her, sticky tears coating her tanned cheeks. A familiar scrimshaw swung from her neck by a leather thong: a bird, with rope in its beak. Whose was it?
“I heard you,” the woman said, stroking Felicity’s feathers. “I won’t lose myself. I’m so sorry. I heard you.”
The scream died, taking Felicity with it.
The seagull shivered, ruffled its feathers. The woman’s mouth kept moving, kept making sounds, but the seagull’s eye drew to the water’s silver sheen, the sparkle of scales flashing beneath. Hunger filled the emptiness inside it, and the seagull spread its wings, dropped off the pier, and looped over the water, its loud voice joining the shrieks of a hundred others.
© 2014 by Kate Hall.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Hall is a speculative fiction writer and graduate of the 2013 Odyssey Writing Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Penumbra eMagazine, and Inscription. Growing up, she lived in Ohio, St. John’s Newfoundland, Chicago, and Amsterdam: all places which informed her writing. She now lives in Minneapolis with her husband, a horde of pets named after various deities, cupboards full of tea, and a great many books (because there is no such thing as too many books. Or too much tea).
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
Making the Cut
H.E. Roulo
I got lost flying over South Asia. Pilots could check their instruments; I didn’t even have a plane. Sighing, I banked my body to catch a glimpse of the land below, and zeroed in on the village I’d left so quickly this morning.
Hovering, I yanked on a blue shalwar kameez, which felt like a pair of oversized pajamas compared to my usual trim bodysuit. I swooped a scarf around my head, fussing with the folds. Even when battling criminals, I took pride in my appearance. I was a role model. And shapeshifters wore faces the way other people chose outfits. A bad picture in the papers meant I hadn’t given my appearance enough thought. But if these clothes could mollify local religious views, then it exceeded my mere superpowers, because I must see Aisha.
I sank through night shadows to the road. Their store stood boarded up for the night. In the upstairs living quarters, regular breathing indicated the rest of the family slept. Rumors maintained Aisha lived a solitary life within her family’s home. More importantly, she possessed superpowers.
I tried the back door, unsurprised to find it locked. Focusing, I thinned my substance and slipped between door and jamb. The top half of my body made it through but from the ribcage down I remained standing outside. Perhaps my unborn baby couldn’t shapeshift, or perhaps my body needed to keep the organs and muscles supporting the baby undisturbed, but I couldn’t sculpt my midsection anymore. Holding my breath, since my lungs remained compressed between wall and door, I slid my finger into the inner knob like a key. The lock clicked open. I slipped inside and gasped myself back into normal human dimensions.
In a narrow chamber, like a hallway, a woman draped in a black burka sat on a stool. Before her lay mounds of colored fabric on a workbench made from a pair of two-by-fours pressed against the wall beneath a small window.
She ran her finger along a strip of rust-colored fabric. Bare from nail to knuckle, the rest of her hid within cloth that ran from a small cap on top of her head to her hips. Another all-encompassing layer flowed to her ankles. As her finger lifted, shining black beads settled into place. The woman, who must be Aisha, lifted the reddish fabric and shook it. Beads dangled in tiny arcs from the shawl. She made a sound of satisfaction.
“Pretty,” I said.
Aisha turned on her stool and pulled her hands beneath the weight of black fabric.
“I thought you might return.” She straightened the burka’s edge, as if indicating she’d worn it inside the house in preparation for my arrival.
Since translating languages was another of my many kickass powers, I understood her.
“I didn’t mean to upset your family.” I said
When I’d dropped onto the street this morning, Aisha’s people had scolded me. Me, a superhero! I pinched the shoulder of my shalwar kameez to show I’d covered up.
I said, “I needed to see you.”
“I do not speak with anyone but my family.”
“I know, but—”
“They only wish to protect me,” Aisha interrupted, but her voice was soft. A gleam hinted at eyes hidden within the burka’s eyehole. “I . . . I have your trading card. You are Vixen.”
She slid off her stool and bent beneath the edge of the table, rustling through a roll of bedding.
I did a double-take toward my chest, checking for the emblem on my bodysuit before I remembered it was covered in layers of blue fabric. I puffed my cheeks out with disgust.
I’m too paranoid I’ll forget which identity I’m wearing.
I flipped flowing red hair over my shoulder and laughed, giving the little chest shake I’d practiced in the mirror, like Vixen always did.
Aisha spread the cards along the edge of her workbench. She pointed at candid shots of each superhero. As she slid a finger over muscled bodies covered in skin-tight outfits, she quoted their powers. Each familiar face added a weight of empty sadness inside me. At the end of the row, she’d unknowingly placed my favorite shot of my husband. My heart ached.
And I didn’t need to see pictures of myself. I’d chosen each curve and dimple with excruciating care.
Clearing my throat, I covered the cards with my forearm to interrupt Aisha’s recitation of catch phrases.
“We’d like you to join our ranks. You’ll use your powers to make the world better.”
She laughed violently. I stepped back, nonplussed. I’d saved people in dire situations, even visited Camp 14 in North Korea where children lived their entire lives imprisoned, but her laugh was the most hopeless I’d ever heard.
Aisha slapped my hand aside. “You see these girls? They are all alike—perfect. They fly. They have round eyes, straight hair, and clear skin. I am not one of them.”
/> My breath whooshed out as if punched from my body. I pressed between Aisha and the cards, afraid they’d reveal my secrets. But no one looked beyond the costumes. My breathing calmed, though my teeth chattered. My secret identity would stay hidden, even with the truth laid out like this.
“You don’t need to look like this to be a hero. It is your strength we need.”
“I have no strength,” Aisha sounded bewildered. “I cut cloth and string beads.”
“Oh, no!” I didn’t want to frighten her with my enthusiasm, but she had it wrong. “That’s all you see yourself able to do! Women who develop powers aren’t stepping forward and that must change. There are so many opportunities for—”
“Not for me.”
“But—”
“I will live my life in this room, dependent on others. It is all I have left.”
I rolled my eyes. Arguments rushed to my tongue, overriding caution. I had plenty to say about the obligations of power.
Aisha touched my elbow. Beneath the burka’s folded edge her golden wrist trembled.
My anger evaporated. “I don’t understand.”
Squaring herself, Aisha lifted her burka. Half her face looked boiled and put on wet. Strangely pale skin oozed smoothly, the result of burns and scarring. I struggled for a blank expression.
Rather than look at me, Aisha folded her burka and set it beside her. “When I was fifteen my cousin asked to marry me. My father refused him, because I was too young. But when I went to get water a few days later, two of my cousins splashed my face with acid, and blinded me in one eye.” She angled her face so the dead white eye could not be missed. “Perhaps I would be cast as a supervillain. Never a hero.
“Despite my disgrace, my father gave up his practice and moved us. My parents let me live here. Without someone to take care of me, I would starve and not be able to feed myself even by selling my body. Who wants a woman with a face like this? When they took my beauty, they took my heart and my voice.”
Fantasy Magazine Issue 58, Women Destroy Fantasy! Special Issue Page 3