The Girl With Borrowed Wings

by Rossetti, Rinsai

  He. Does there have to be a he? It seems weak and unoriginal, doesn’t it, for stories told by girls to always have a he? Well, not in my life, nor in the lives of my friends. It’s a very unusual thing for us. For my friends at least, their first relationship begins on their wedding night. It’s a culture of arranged marriages—now, look, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and keep in mind that an arranged marriage is not the same as a forced marriage. Most of my friends are looking forward to the day when they will be shown a picture of their future husband.

  But I won’t have an arranged marriage, at least not officially. We all know that my father won’t arrange anything for me, he’ll simply . . . guide me, pulling the strings in the background, his finger pressed into my back, and everything will magically turn out the way he wants it to. So you see, for there to be a he in my story is a very unusual thing indeed, but then, the circumstances were unusual too, and the boy himself, if you can call him that, even more so.

  When he came, things changed. There was no longer the shadow of my father in the background—or, at least, for a time, it was less noticeable. There was no longer the maddening proximity of walls on all four sides. Instead there were black skies, and sharp, stinging stars, and a window creaking open.

  But first, I have to tell you how the thing came about.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In Which My Father Casts a Spell

  The time: a year ago. Early morning, in an effort to avoid the full heat of the day. It was a Sunday, near the start of the week—weekends are on Thursdays and Fridays—but we had a short holiday off school, in respect of some Sheikh or other. This was common enough. Sometimes students get whole months off without warning.

  The setting: the Animal Souk. It was my first and last time there. Needless to say, I was escorted by my parents. As I’ve told you, it was rare for me to go anywhere beyond my school or my house or the car. This was the first time in months, and then only because my father had decided that I should. Otherwise, left alone, he knew I would read, and he felt I did too much of that.

  My father’s colleague had an interest in camels, and by some twisted thread of logic, their rivalry had apparently metamorphosed into an undeclared I’m-more-knowledgeable-about-camels-than-you competition, somewhat in the spirit of men showing off their cars. This had resulted in my father’s sudden decision to pay a visit to the Animal Souk. He wanted to compare it to the Camel Market, that sprawling gathering of thousands and thousands of snorting, bored dromedaries that clotted the hard-baked highways each Friday. The Animal Souk had camels too, but also goats and miscellaneous, mysterious animals packed together in stacks of cages.

  My father got out of the car and closed the door behind him with a polite click. My mom slammed hers, accidentally. He turned to stare at her, but I couldn’t see his face. Still, I shut my door extra-softly. Chaos and loud noises hurt him, like lightning flashing into morbidly sensitive eyes.

  In front of us was the main body of the souk, a low white building streaked with dust and wild pigeon droppings, and all along its base the lurid red sand was creeping up and eating away at its walls. An arched doorway was a solid block of shadow against the overwhelming light. Inside, I could just make out a mass of people moving through the relative blackness.

  You might think I’d look forward to trips like these, since they get me out of the house. No.

  It happened the minute I stepped into the souk. Hundreds of men were milling through the long white tunnels, weaving around the closely packed stalls if they were buyers, or standing by their walls of cages and shouting out if they were sellers. Eyes snapped up and fixed on me. As if in a spotlight, I walked between my parents and looked around uneasily. I tried to find another girl in sight, but I couldn’t.

  Back then, my black hair was long enough to reach my waist, and I wore contact lenses instead of glasses. The hard thin body of my childhood was just beginning to miraculously soften like the cracked ground of a wadi when rain falls. I knew I didn’t look the way a girl ought to look, at least in the oasis. My hair wasn’t bushy, my face wasn’t painted with makeup, and I didn’t smell of strong musk and incense—I was too skinny, too delicate, and my straight hair was too flat. In some countries people like the way I look, but here, not so much. Not that it mattered. The men stared anyway; being female was enough. I tilted my face downward, hoping that their gazes would slide off it onto the floor.

  “Stop slouching,” ordered my mother.

  I kept my shoulders the way they were. Slouching was the best way to avoid attracting attention. I was too tall for a girl. Almost five foot six. My friends teased me about it sometimes, calling me a giraffe. They wouldn’t believe me when I told them that, in some parts of the world, my height was normal.

  “Stay close,” ordered my mother as my father led the way through the crowds. The footprints he left in the sand-strewn floor were perfectly even, as though he’d planned his steps ahead of time.

  Hours passed. The day grew hotter. The sun, visible through an open area in the ceiling, throbbed like a migraine in the sky. There was no air-conditioning, only a few fans that lazily wafted the smell of fur and feathers from one stall to another. My father was absorbed in his new hobby. My mother played her part. She stood there and smiled and nodded and made silent faces. Superfluous, I trailed behind them like a dog on a leash. Dizziness began to spread through my head. I saw the world blurred through waves of sparkles and recognized the symptoms of dehydration, but I was used to them; I’d been through much worse before while waiting for my father after school. Sweating, I concentrated on the suppressed thump of my heartbeat. My wings—I pictured them as bronze-and-black falcon’s wings, usually—lay sleek and imaginary over my shoulders, and fluttered once in a while when I had trouble breathing.

  That is where I found the beginnings of freedom. In a hot, crowded souk, with the giddiness of dehydration beginning to bear down on me, where I waited, surrounded by walls and walls of cages, in a sea of trapped animals.

  There were goats and camels on rope tethers, and stacks of cats—all skinny, flea-bitten, and probably half feral—in cages too small to stand up in. There was a bucket of baby crocodiles (there must have been about thirty in that bucket alone) balanced on the dirty floor next to the wall. There were parrots in cages and parrots on stands, hissing at anyone who came too close. Hamsters and rabbits and guinea pigs, no more than limp bundles of fur packed into boxes. But I felt most sorry for the dogs. There were only two that I could see, long-limbed, lithe desert-dogs in cages barely big enough for cats, and the men were gawking at them as if they were the most exotic animals there. In a way, they were. Here, dogs were regarded with a deep-seated fear, and the men tending them were treated as though they had the bravery of bear-wrestlers. There was no way those two dogs would end up with a good life. They would probably be bought by some macho man desperate to prove his courage.

  Next to the dogs was another row of caged cats. The stacks of crates protruded out from the smooth white wall of the souk like a curved rib, and on the other side, behind the curve, was an area of filth and shadows. At the end of the row, I noticed one cage in a patch of darkness deeper than the rest; in it, a bundle of fur either dead or dying. The heat was killing the cat, squeezing it like a pulse in a tightened vein.

  “Excuse me?” I said to the owner of the stall. He hurried over to me and nodded. It was clear he didn’t speak English. First I glanced over my shoulder to make sure my parents weren’t looking. They were still a short distance away, fussing over a rabid-looking baby camel. I swallowed. Then, quickly, I pointed at the cage.

  He could see what I meant immediately.

  He opened the door and reached inside. When his hand came back out it was gripped around the neck of the cat. It dangled in the air as he surveyed it gloomily. I wanted to point out that that probably wasn’t the best way to hold it, but I kept my mouth shut.

  The cat was enormous, about half as big again as the largest cat I’d ever seen
before. The imprints of the cage wires were still in its fur, mixed in with dust and dead flies. The eyes were partly open without focusing on anything. They glowed yellow-gold, and the color stood out like a shock against the rich jaguar-black of its fur. The tip of a tongue lolled out of its mouth, bright red and flimsy, ready to be bitten off. The seller shook his head and tossed it onto the floor, where it would be hidden behind the row of cages. It hit the ground with a thud.

  “Hey!” I said without thinking. But the seller had already turned away. He had no time for sick animals. I had seen that happen before, in a shop I’d visited with my father near Dawar Roundabout a few years ago. I had seen a dying chick in a cage full of baby chickens whose fluff had been stained green, red, and blue . . . the dye had seeped through its skin and poisoned its system, so it was lying on its side, one leg clawing at the air. I’d pointed it out to the owner of the pet shop, who had taken one look, pulled the still-living chick out, and dropped it into the garbage. I’d been too afraid to interfere. I had let the chick die. And, for weeks afterward, I had called myself a coward. Shouldn’t a life be more important than my inhibitions?

  I glanced over at my parents. Their backs were turned to me. I shot a look at the pet seller. He was talking to a customer.

  It isn’t stealing, I told myself. He threw it away, so obviously he doesn’t want it anymore.

  I slid behind the wall of cages. Some of the cats watched me curiously. The others were too far gone and didn’t even blink their glazed eyes when I brushed past. The floor, normally tiled with white stone, was dusty here, stained yellow with some strange liquid in places. I didn’t want to think about what that might be. Trying not to touch anything, I crouched beside the cat. Its eyes stared off at nothing.

  “Hey, come on,” I murmured to it, so softly that the words came out more like a hum. “You’ll be all right, I promise. Poor thing . . .”

  I could see its sides heaving as it panted. Its tongue hung out like a dog’s, so far that it almost touched the filthy floor. “Yech, no, you don’t want to lick that,” I said, and, without considering whether I ought to or not, scooped it up. Ye gods (a phrase I’d picked up from some book), it was heavy. And completely limp, like a ragdoll. I shifted to get a better grip. As I did so, I noticed a tick on its back, close to my arm. And then another behind its ear. “Ye gods,” I muttered aloud.

  “Frenenqer!” my parents shouted in chorus, on the other side of the cages. I had been gone for all of ten seconds.

  “Here,” I called back before they could bring the entire souk down with their screams.

  “Where?”

  “Where?”

  Possibilities flashed through my mind. I could ask my father for the car keys—say I had left my bottle of water underneath my seat, tell him about my dehydration—then sneak the cat into the trunk without telling them. But when we got home, my father would be watching. I’d have to leave it in the trunk until I could creep down and get it at night. I worried it would die before then, and, in the heat of the car, it might even explode, like that stray cat that someone had run over outside our house last June, and which had stayed on the street, swelling, in the sun, for days until—

  What was I thinking? My father would never let me walk to the car alone. Either he or Mom, or both, would escort me. I was going to have to ask.

  As if that would work. I may as well give up now.

  But I didn’t. I stood up, clutching the jaguar-like cat in my arms. It seemed to be unconscious, but its upper lip was drawn back so that I could see its teeth. What kind of cat had fangs like that? And ticks . . . I tried not to imagine them crawling off the cat and under my clothes.

  I stepped out from behind the screen of cages. “I’m here.”

  My mother took one look at the thing I was carrying.

  “Put it back.”

  “I haven’t asked yet,” I mumbled.

  My father’s mouth twisted a bit as he looked down at the mangy ragdoll in my arms. “No,” he said. Just one word.

  Well, that was it. You have to understand, my father’s words have a way of shaping the world around him: Whatever he commands, somehow inevitably ends up happening. When I was younger I used to think he must be God. I was his creation, obviously. Just a part of his overarching plan. If he said I would grow up to be a businesswoman, I might as well buy the briefcase right now. If he decided I was ready to be married, then you’d better start planning the wedding. I was Frenenqer, the embodiment of his imagined, ideal daughter, and his imagined daughter did not pick up tick-infested, probably diseased animals, let alone bring them home.

  “Put it down,” he said.

  My arms began to tremble despite myself.

  “Don’t tell me you expect us to pay for that,” said my mother. “How dare you buy anything without asking for our permission first?”

  “I didn’t buy it,” I ventured, seeing a chink of light. “It’s free.” Well, that was one way of putting it.

  “No wonder,” said Mom. “Is it dead?”

  “No, it’s just sick.”

  “Sick? It might be contagious! Put it down right now!”

  “It might not be sick,” I said, backtracking hurriedly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just dehydrated.”

  “Put. It. Down.” My father’s voice was flat. He was already looking away, back to the camels.

  There. My father had spoken. The universe would obey.

  “No,” I said.

  I listened to myself in amazement. I think the shock was so great that I had an out-of-body experience. Awestruck, I stared down at the skinny black-eyed girl as she stood on the crowded, dirty floor of the souk, holding a massive monster of a cat, and meeting the combined gazes of me and her parents. The cat must have done something to her, I thought.

  I wanted to warn her how much trouble she would be in.

  She heard my thoughts. What? What can they do to me? If I’m grounded, how will that change anything? There’s nothing to take away.

  She had clearly forgotten what my father had done the last time he was angry. I felt frightened for her.

  No, she said, I remember. She looked back at her parents. Then the moment was over and I was her again, sweating in the oven-hot air, clutching the impossibly heavy body of the cat.

  My mouth was dry. “Sorry,” I whispered to my father, who had been slowly expanding with anger until he was twice as tall as usual, “but nothing is more important than a life, right?”

  That was something my mother had told me, in one of her nostalgic, vaguely Buddhist moments. She recognized her own words and shifted guiltily from one foot to another. My father glanced at her. I saw the chink of light widen, and I began to talk faster. I felt as if I were balancing very high off the ground.

  “If I leave the cat in this place,” I said, “that’ll be the same as killing it. I can’t do that.”

  I tightened my grip on the animal. Unlike me and my mother, my father was a confirmed carnivore, so my plea didn’t have much effect on him. But I saw him glance at my mom again. She avoided his gaze, studying the ground, and I almost felt bad for pitting him against her. Then he turned back to me. “I told you before,” he said finally. “No pets.”

  “I won’t keep it,” I offered, still in shock at myself. “I’ll find it a home as soon as it gets better.”

  He grunted and turned away.

  Now pay attention. That part was important. I won, but I didn’t win. It’s impossible to win against my father. He let me have my way for once, but his words—“No pets”—had been spoken, and their vibrations were already running down the spine of reality.

  I carried the cat the whole time we were in the souk, even after my arms went numb; I kept it on my lap while we drove for three hours on a road through the desert to get back to our oasis; I pulled off all the ticks, waded through the books in my room, and laid it down on my bed; but those words of my father’s would spread right to the ends of the world and come crashing back in a tsunami. I think t
hat it was because of my father that things turned out the way they did. I think the universe couldn’t help but obey him, even if I had refused to. In the end, his words came true, as always. The cat wasn’t a pet at all . . . I’ll explain, and then see for yourself whether my father is all-powerful or not.

  It slept all day, curled up on the thin orange blankets of my bed. I settled it down so that its head was on the pillow, and it looked adorably luxurious stretched out like that, especially when I thought back to how I had first seen it in the Animal Souk—stuffed into its hot, tight cage. I began to enjoy my role as its savior. Inspired, I trickled water into its mouth. The water spilled all over my sheets and its fur, but it swallowed at least some. I saw its throat move.

  That night we had dinner in silence. As usual, my mom cooked, but she didn’t sit with us. She stayed in the kitchen, washing up, and ate her food there. When I was little, she did sit with us, but then, over the years, less and less. At some point she vanished.

  I set the table for three anyway, the way I did every night. My father and I sat opposite each other, chewing slowly. At first, the only thing he told me was to adjust how my fingers held the fork, and to sit straighter in my chair. Then, when we were done eating, he said very quietly, “I’m worried that your interest in animals is becoming ridiculous. I wonder if I should ask your mother to buy anchovies again.”

  I shook my head without looking at him. When I was eleven and had first turned vegetarian, I’d answered back one time too many, and he hadn’t let me leave the table until I’d eaten anchovies—whole, so that I could see their faces.

  “Maybe you’ll learn to be more moderate,” he said.

  He was just trying to stir up the memory. And it worked.

  In a rush, I felt again the little eyes crunching between my teeth, and the dry, twisted faces, and the brittle bodies breaking as I bit—becoming slime on the back of my tongue. Salt, and scales, and hot acid. My first days in the oasis were soaked in that taste. I could remember the enormity of heat outside, how the cool, empty dining room had looked—we’d just moved in; not much furniture yet—and my father waiting, and the tears plopping off my chin. Now I held on to the table and concentrated on not throwing up.