Feather by Feather and Other Stories

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  She took the old crone’s bone meal and sprinkled it on the shiny-sticky paste then kneaded it again, repeating until it had all been worked into the mix. She wove strands of her mother’s honey-coloured hair, of the crone’s grey wisps, of her own. She nestled the light-dough in a bed of owl and crow feathers and sang over it, songs of wisdom, songs of lullaby…

  Then she sculpted the dough into a shape and wove some of her mother’s life into the figure. They both sang and chanted as they had always done and as they had never yet before done and they filled the world with their magic, and they cawed as the crow, and hooted as the owl, and neighed as the horse, roared like the lion, whistled like the dolphin.

  Until there were three once more.

  As you can probably tell, Trinity is based around the concept of a triple deity (most notably a triple goddess). I love the sense of mystery in it and how many questions it makes me want to ask about the story.

  It’s quite different from what I usually write, or at least it feels like it’s quite different. I had a lot of fun playing with the symbolism in this and trying to capture the cyclical nature of life and death.

  For jjhunter, without whom this poem would not exist

  My mother she died, and out of her I grew.

  She left me many things, but none so curious

  As the collection of journals before me.

  The first is filled with artwork,

  Scratches that must make up a tale.

  Doodles I can’t read. At least not yet.

  The second is filled with words

  That tickle at my soul, unknown but

  Like I should know their whole heart.

  My mother she died and out of her I grew.

  She left me many things, but none so curious

  As the journals I can’t comprehend.

  The third and fourth are empty.

  Straight lines on age-crackled pages

  Guiding my eyes to nothing.

  The fifth is filled with meaning,

  With a glimpse of who I am,

  Though what may be more correct.

  My mother she died and out of her I grew.

  She left me many things, but none so curious

  As the journals scattered in the room.

  The sixth and seventh are drawings

  Again, but these aren’t scratch-marks.

  They’re things I can understand.

  The eighth and ninth are a diary

  Of when my mother was young.

  Funny that it sounds so much like me.

  My mother she died, and out of her I grew.

  I am like my mother, but it’s not so curious

  As the way her journals read to me.

  The tenth of them was a cipher

  That let me read the first.

  Our story so much older

  Than the eleventh would suggest.

  Magic fills its pages

  And skips the twelfth unread.

  My mother she died and I was born

  Though I don’t know how it works

  And these journals haven’t told me.

  The thirteenth talks of death

  And dread, and immortality

  That lingers in the lines.

  The fourteenth smells of smoke

  And indeed is somewhat burnt.

  It talks of fear and fire, when it talks at all.

  My mother she died and birthed me

  Despite the fright and the ache.

  She left me all these journals to read

  And at fifteen I’m almost through.

  It describes what I am and will be

  And the last of my days to come.

  The sixteenth fills one with wonder

  Of sights we cannot dream, but

  It ends with hairline fractures.

  My mother she died and so I lived.

  She left me many journals,

  And I have but one left to explore.

  The seventeenth is instruction,

  Answers, questions, and all. But

  Mostly it tells me what I must do.

  My mother she died and birthed me

  As has been and will be again.

  But for now this life is mine alone,

  Until I share it with my own.

  I’ve always thought that Seventeen Pocket-sized Journals and Counting was a bit of a creepy poem. It’s the way those journals seem to dictate the narrator’s life.

  Maybe you’ll read it differently, though! I deliberately left it open to interpretation. (As I said elsewhere, I really like ambiguity in my fiction.)

  “Whiskey straight,” Robert said, settling at the far end of the bar, near the corridor to the toilets. The pub stank of cigarettes and sweat, the music surprisingly, mercifully soft. When Connor, eyebrow cocked, put the glass in front of him, he paid.

  “Thought you’d given up drink, Rob.”

  Robert didn’t answer, pretended to ignore the barkeeper’s stare by fixing his eyes on the wall instead. Same old plaster and beams, though the picture on it was new. Two horses prancing in the sea foam. The water was tinged rose pink with the light of a setting sun.

  “My daughter made it,” Connor confided. “Made it for a – Ah, sorry.” The barkeep — leaner than Robert remembered — turned and went to serve the customer who’d called him. It was early yet, the pub still almost deserted. Resting his hands around the base of the glass, Robert gazed at his drink. Two years. Two years it’d been since he’d had so much as a drop of alcohol. Two years sober.

  He snorted. And for what? Catching his wife doing it with someone else? That’s not why you’re sober, he told himself and tried to focus on something, anything else. On the comforting fact that, picture aside, the pub still looked the same. Same old bottles along the wall, same old crooked dartboard, same old corner seats, though the leather looked too shiny… Hell, the same old, dark colours swishing at the corner of his eyes, gone when he tried to look at them more closely. Same old barkeep even, only leaner and older and balder. Old Tomas, though, was gone, his corner at the window looking forlorn and lonely.

  As a breeze blew in a group of people, the tang of rusting iron joined the other smells in the pub. Presumably the newcomers were students; they looked young. They were laughing, loud and grating, so Robert focused on the amber-coloured liquid in his glass. He could smell it just underneath the layers of cigarettes, sweat, perfume and, of all things, wood polish. Sticky-sweet. His throat ached. Whiskey-fire would drown it, heal it, burn it, make the whole world a more bearable place…

  She slept with someone else. Robert stared at the liquid, shimmering gold, moved his hand to clench the glass tighter. Then he let go, resting his fingers on the counter. No. He had the children to worry about now. Even if Adelais slept with half the city, he would still and always have his children to think about. He could not, not ever, not ever again, give into that tiny voice that said ‘just one sip, just one. Who does it hurt?’ Not even to drown out that last vision of Adelais –

  Instead, he imagined what it would be like to get so drunk he wouldn’t know up from down again. Tried to imagine whether the feeling would really be as wonderful as his memory said it would.

  And so he pushed the whiskey away from him. Pushed temptation away and gripped the edge of the counter. Furtively, he glanced around, but no one was watching him. Him, Robert, the oddball in the corner, who’d been staring God knows how long into the same damned glass of liquor without taking so much as a sip. In a bar. His hair was a mess, he knew. It always got messy in the wind and he’d been roaming for ages before ending up here with the smell of old days in his nostril. The rest of him probably didn’t look much better. If people noticed him at all, there in his hidey-hole corner, they were probably wondering why Connor had let in the fairy-fodder trash to begin with. Real good figure he made. No wonder Adelais –

  A shrill, piercing laugh cut through his thoughts. When his eyes fell on the group of students, he thought about chatting one of t
hem up. A glamour girl, if possible. Just to get even… Only one of the girls really caught his eye. She looked like a model: latest fashion, willow-slim, brunette hair so shiny you’d buy any shampoo she advised and swear by it even if it ruined your hair… Definitely a glamour girl, he thought, the way she stood a little apart from everyone else. So perfect he wondered what the price had been.

  He made himself turn back around to face his god-damned glass. He wasn’t like Adelais. He’d set a good example for his kids. Clenching his fists until it hurt, he focused on feeling his throat and lungs burn, thought of getting drunk enough to wander in front of a train or something. And wouldn’t she like that? Robert snorted. No point thinking of what she’d like. Her opinion could go all the way down to the hells and stay there, along with her adulterous body.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Not looking up, Robert shrugged. The woman probably wouldn’t listen if he told her ‘no’; the stool was already scratching on the stone. She was silent so long he turned to face her. One of the students. She wasn’t pretty, not with those buck teeth and the way her ears seemed lopsided, but he told himself that was a good thing tonight. He wasn’t Adelais.

  “I’m Maeve,” she offered, smiling slightly. Mechanically, Robert introduced himself. Her shoulders looked too broad for a girl’s, yet with those upper curves… He wondered, vaguely, what he’d do if she decided to come on to him. Laugh, probably. Weep. What other reason to approach the bum in the corner? Go away, he thought, but she ordered a whiskey on the rocks instead.

  Almost, Robert offered her his glass, but he pulled it closer. It was his god-damned, life-destroying drink. Symbol of all that’d gone wrong in his life. Symbol of all his mistakes, all his folly, all his – Don’t go there.

  “Haven’t seen you around before. What do you study?”

  Kindness on her part, he suspected. Robert shrugged and let her talk without really registering what she was saying, merely letting her distract him. Her voice was soft now, almost husky. Like one of those swirly things you can’t help staring at. She was a medical student, he learned, specialising in paediatrics. He thought she said she’d come from a village down south, but the ambiance was too loud now and her voice too soft to make out. Her father was a butcher, unless it was something else. Robert couldn’t quite make himself care so long as she didn’t stop talking. The smell was making his nose itch. Stupid, really, since it’d never bothered him before. And his drink stared at him, enticing, beckoning. ‘One sip can’t hurt,’ it said. ‘One glass can’t hurt. Drink me and forget all your sorrows’. Like that boy who’d run into Faerie.

  “Wow.” He’d never noticed how stupid it was to listen to that voice inside of him. Maeve cocked her head, like he’d seen horses do. Only that was a stupid comparison because she looked far more like a mouse and just as nondescript. About as far from glamour girl as a person could get without nasty diseases. He wondered if she were just smart or whether she couldn’t afford the price. “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean…” Unsure whether he’d meant anything at all, he trailed off and looked down at his drink.

  Her eyes, though, lit up. “Oh, I have a scholarship.”

  He had no idea what she thought he was apologising for.

  “I’m used to it.” Maeve took a sip from her own glass; he heard the ice clinking together. Almost, not quite, he could taste the whiskey in his memory. “You going to drink that?” Her hand reaching for the glass startled him. He pushed it back to the edge of the bar, as far as it could go without toppling over. With the way things had been going, Robert wouldn’t even have tried to catch it. The girl’s arm — bare arm, he noted — was pasty-pale. She smelled, he realised, of ponds and that decided it for him.

  “I’m an alcoholic,” he whispered.

  Quirking her eyebrows, Maeve asked, “So what are you doing here not drinking?”

  “Trying to stay sober.” He paused. Closed his eyes against the sudden onset of dizziness and giddiness. Then, bluntly, “I walked in on my wife having sex with someone else.”

  “Ow. Sorry I missed the ring.” She downed the rest of her glass. Someone brushed past Robert on the way to the toilet, burning his skin with the contact, when the girl continued, “So you’re drowning your sorrows by not drowning them?”

  “Pretty much.” He’d expected her to leave, but she seemed as disinclined to move as ever. How she’d come to have his glass of whiskey and he a glass of water was hazy, blurred together with memories of how he’d tried to make an ice rink in the garden once because Adelais had wanted to skate.

  The water was sparkling, he realised, and he started to laugh when the bubbles went down. Maeve grinned at him. “No alcohol.” Her hand brushed past his, but the grin, or perhaps the grin and the contact both, sobered Robert. Something about that grin was unsettling. God damn you, Adelais. Can’t even fucking talk to a woman without seeing you.

  He took a sip from his water. “You’re hitting on me.”

  Maeve snorted, splurting whiskey back into the glass and couching. “Maybe,” she said when she’d recovered. She sounded uncannily like Adelais. “I pity your wife.”

  Startled, he asked her why.

  “Look at you.” Robert bobbed his head back, confused. No derision, nothing but an earnestness that set his mind spinning, begging him to let the moment go where it wanted, forget everything, abandon his rigid control, steal his ex-drink back, let go of responsibility…

  With a lot of effort, he pulled his thoughts away from where they were going to pay attention to what the girl was saying. “Here you are,” she continued, “sitting in a bar, glass of whiskey before you for who knows how long because your wife cheated on you. And you haven’t touched a drop.”

  It was the way she said the last sentence. Robert straightened and little and flushed with pride. “That’s right. I haven’t. Not a drop.” Except for his wrong-direction sparkly water. It tasted of apples.

  “The woman doesn’t know what she’s got.” The girl put her hand on his now.

  Robert didn’t know what to do. He should probably bolt. With some effort, he pulled his hand from under hers. “I’m not like her.”

  Maeve laughed. “I like you, Robert, but I don’t sleep with married men.” Well. That was a relief. Connor was staring at them, though. Pityingly. Robert didn’t need pity.

  “So what do you want?” he asked, turning back to look at Maeve. Eyes on her face, like a hawk. Make sure to find truth in it. She shied away from him a little, but resettled soon after.

  “Talk.” She shrugged with one shoulder, with the bare one her T-shirt had slid down from. “Make a new friend. Convince you to divorce an idiot who can’t see how good she’s got it.”

  Balling his fists, he said, “You would?”

  “Can’t make promises. I more meant to make you available for someone who deserves you.”

  Sighing, Robert slumped on his stool and dropped his arms onto the bar and his head onto his arms. He was starting to have a headache. “I need some fresh air…”

  When he realised the girl’d moved to let him pass, he gave her a watery, wavering smile and wobbled to his feet. Twice he tried to push himself away from the bar and only managed to set the room spinning sideways. “I’ll walk you home,” she said.

  Robert laughed viciously. “Now there’s a brilliant idea. Adelais’d love that.” He let Maeve drape his arm around her square boy-shoulders and walk him outside. It was darker with only the street lights, but also more colourful, all the shades of grey-tinged rainbows. For a moment, he wondered if you could get drunk on memories, then he just let Maeve lead him. When he caught his thoughts again, his voice sounded loud and shrill in his ears. “Take you home to fuck with her watching. That’d be justice.”

  He startled at the way the shadows shifted, missed a step and almost dragged them both down in a tumble. Maeve merely reach up and patted the hand on her shoulder. “I told you. I don’t sleep with married men. I play with them, though.”

  Ma
eve led him down the streets, down the deserted streets with every shade dancing just outside his vision, all laced with forest and grass greens. Eventually, she sat him down somewhere. He twisted around to see what she was looking at: a statue of a warrior, battling a water-horse. Maeve was digging around her pockets when he looked back and his vision solidified. “I’ll make you a wish,” she said. Robert thought she whispered it into his ear like a shy kiss, but he didn’t think she’d bent close enough for that. When she tossed in a copper coin, he watched it sink and join its brethren. “Do you know where the practice comes from?” she asked, settling beside him on the rim.

  “Everyone knows this is where Saint John died after defeating the fairy host.” Robert reached to stroke the girl’s hair. It shone copper in the moonlight, no colour save her hair in the photograph. Adelais had short hair; this was long. Pulling it from its tie, he watched it tumble into the water. It spread out like painted art nouveau vines stirring the water.

  “People used to give gifts to the water fey,” the girl continued. He was rapt. “Food and the finest of the stock, to keep them from feasting on the villagers. Your priests and your saints stole the old ways and twisted them, thinking that would appease the Fair Folk just as well.”

  As she talked, standing over him now, he craned his neck up and studied her. The way her body silhouetted against the night; the way she smelled of his youth and spring and summer and wet sand, so strong now that if he closed his eyes he would see the streams he’d used to play in; the way that smell intoxicated him more than any drink ever had. The wordweb around him that tugged at his memory insisted something wasn’t right.

  He wasn’t like Adelais, not at all. Still, he found himself kissing the woman before him. She struggled a bit, pulled away and down into the water. As he looked on her pale, almost silver face drifting in the water, he frowned. Are faces supposed to look like that? Then Maeve laughed and pulled him into the water with her.

  When Maeve returned home, hair tangled and matted, it was almost six am. As she’d expected, Janne was already up, nursing a cup of coffee. The medical student was staring at the newspaper intently, but she didn’t seem too startled when Maeve asked her whether there was more coffee. At the nod, Maeve edged her way into the kitchen past the door, trying not to touch it.