Feather by Feather and Other Stories

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  “Wild night?” Janne asked. In answer, Maeve saluted her with an empty mug. “You need to teach me some time.”

  “Sorry. Trade secret.” Maeve laughed and licked her lips — no taste left but her own sweet water — before pouring herself some coffee at the counter. Janne simply shrugged and turned her attention back to the paper. Taking a sip, Maeve grimaced. It was already old and it tasted of blood.

  “Famous fairy lover?”

  “Tam Lin.”

  “Doesn’t start with a T.”

  “Sure it –” Maeve stopped to throw a still-damp towel at her friend. “What does it start with, small-fey-brain?”

  “B.” Janne tilted her head back, causing the towel to slide onto the tiles.

  Maeve snorted. “Brónach.” She took another sip, hoping the coffee would taste better the second time. It didn’t. Waving her mug at her roommate, she said, “You can pay attention in class for me for that. I have a headache.”

  Janne put the pen down and studied her, arms resting on the table. “You look like you’ve gone through the hells to get here.” Then she frowned a little. “You didn’t when you walked in. Did you?”

  Maeve shrugged. “It’s the caffeine hitting the system.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have coffee then.”

  “Yeah…” She poured the remainder of her coffee into the sink and watched it swirl down the drain. “Can you tell the profs for me? I’m going to lie down.”

  Not waiting for an answer — she knew what it was going to be anyway — she inched her way past the door again. One day, she was going to convince them to replace the iron-damned thing. Feeling tired and heavy she swayed, caught herself on the door and winced. It hurt. She hurried into her own room and dropped onto the bed, burying her head under the pillow. Today, she was going to be sick.

  Poor Robert. He’s having a particularly bad day. This piece is actually all about Maeve and who she is. She’s particularly nasty. She’s eaten my protagonist (or viewpoint character) in every story she’s appeared in.

  I might return to them one day. Whiskey and Water is part of a larger verse and I wrote it to get to know Maeve’s personality a little better. She’s one of the antagonists, so it was pretty important to have a good handle on who she is as a person.

  For avia,

  because the world can never have too much magic in it.

  They tell you to take her skin. To take it and hide it, and she will be yours. Selkie-girls, swan-maidens… They will love you, for doing this. They will bear men sons and daughters, never commit adultery… Try to be human when they are anything but. All I have to do is reach out my hand and, the stories say, she will be mine.

  All I have to do… But looking at her (wild, fey, wondrous, free)… How? Kill that which I love to have a husk. A shell. A corpse before her time. Can I? Always searching, pining, hearing the call of her kind and never, never, never – No. I can’t. But… For all days to be like the winter I met her, injured, and took her in and nursed her…

  She trusted me because she must. Because the wild, too, seeks to live as long as it may. Each year she comes, we talk a little at the lakeside or share our moments in quietude. So easy. It’d be so easy. She’s not looking now, and the others trust the way wild creatures do: ever watchful, ever wary.

  It amazes me, how they never tire of the water. How comfortable they are with their shapes, their nakedness around others, how much a bird their movements still… Oh, the little ones are ungainly in their child-form, splattering each other, but they are… They are beautiful. So… Breathtaking. No words I have can capture it.

  Take it. Just take it, and she will be yours (mine) even after she finds her feathers and flies. Look how easy it is…

  But no. I’ll tell a different tale. I will.

  Swanheart is a flash fiction piece that later grew into The Swan Maiden (also in this book). As such, it’s the initial exploration of Eliza’s character. She changes a bit in the longer story.

  Swanheart focuses entirely on the greed inherent in the myths about swan maidens and selkies. Eliza is aware of those stories and determined not to end her love with the swan maiden similarly.

  It’s a tale of how easy it is to be tempted and how difficult to resist.

  Have you ever felt the wind in your face? Of course you have. Have you ever dreamt of flying by umbrella like Mary Poppins? Let me tell you, that isn’t as pleasant as it sounds. You don’t have wings, so you can’t control your direction. You’re tossed about so much you can’t see where you’re going because you’ve got your eyes closed shut. And if your umbrella can’t withstand the force of the wind, well… I believe the onomatopoeia used is SPLAT. I’m not sure about that part, but you can trust me on the rest of it.

  I tried.

  When I was a little girl, my parents had this enormous umbrella. You know the kind that will fit three adults? (It may not have been comfortable. I’ve forgotten.) It was that big, and I was a tiny slip of a girl.

  I loved going out into the rain and the wind with that umbrella and, because I was such a little, light-weighted person and the umbrella was so big, it didn’t really take much force for the wind to start lifting me off my feet.

  It was glorious.

  And it inspired Umbrellas years and years later. Long after I realised that the experience was actually pretty dangerous, so a cautionary tale it became.

  The poetic snob

  Knows nothing of good haiku.

  My skills. It ate them.

  Ah, morning cartoons.

  I cotton myself in your

  Sweet nostalgia.

  Haiku are how I doodle. I’m afraid I don’t really have a lot to say about these pieces. No silly anecdotes, no writerly inspiration, nothing.

  Many people, when they’re bored, doodle into the margins. I have a tendency to write short poems, usually haiku-sized. I do often like them. Doodling, after all, is not synonymous with ‘low quality’. Only relatively low because the doodler is not putting forth as much effort as they might.

  Anyway, these were not written out of boredom, but out of a desire to get back into poetry. Haiku are, for me, a good way of getting back into the mindset of writing poems.

  It wasn’t time to go. Tina knew that, but she went anyway. She wasn’t sure why, really, but it seemed important. They’d told her that it was important, and they were important men. Tina knew that too, and she’d been brought up to believe important men. Her mother had taught her that they were to be trusted.

  At that point in time, Tina wasn’t entirely sure because it hadn’t been time to go. It’d been time for lunch. They’d let her eat in the car, though, so she wasn’t hungry. Maybe important men came when it wasn’t time for them.

  Time is a piece that I’m sad refused to become something longer than a drabble. I tried! Sometimes stories don’t go the way you planned or wanted them to go and this is one of those cases.

  Once upon a time, the story says

  A merchant had three daughters fair

  And the youngest kind of heart, of course,

  For such is the way of it and proper

  Her desires. All she asked was a single rose

  To brighten up her bare and lonely chambers.

  The merchant stayed in sumptuous chambers,

  When he lost his way. Ghostly spirits said

  To be at home save for to touch a single rose

  Blooming, centrally, within the garden fair.

  Gifts for his eldest he had, but nothing proper

  To his youngest’s wish. Thus the story took its course.

  The bloom in hand the merchant coursed

  The forest. He found his daughters in their chambers

  Delighted to dress again in clothing proper

  To their former status. To his news the youngest said

  “Father, I’ll go in your stead.” She thought it only fair

  Since it was her desire that made him pick the rose.

  Long and far she travelle
d until a castle arose

  Between the trees. She stayed the overgrown course

  To find her new abode with its garden so grand and fair

  And ghostly voices showing her all the many chambers.

  The girl was free to go as she chose, the spirits said,

  Though not outside the gates. She was to stay on the grounds proper.

  After a time, it wasn’t lonely. The castle’s lord a proper

  Gentleman. They both had a deep love for roses,

  Though a deeper one bloomed for each other, the story says,

  For all that he never once showed his face to her in the course

  Of her stay. Only at night did he leave his chambers

  And went to tend his grand roses and his lady fair.

  The lady wished, just once, to see her family. Fair

  Did Beast think her request. He sent her there in proper

  Style. But no luck for her father’s trade. His chambers

  Were as bare as, in winter, are the branches of the rose,

  As when she had left them all to follow her story’s course.

  Her sisters begged her stay and only a magic mirror said

  “Go home. Go home. This is hardly fair

  On him who let you go your course. It isn’t proper

  To leave him lonely to his roses.” But she stayed in her chambers bare.

  Along with the haiku, the sestina is one of my favourite poetic forms. They can be incredibly challenging to write, especially if you’ve picked the wrong words to end your lines on.

  I quite like the story of Beauty and the Beast (though I admit it was Disney’s bookish Belle that won me over forever) and have tried several retellings. So far this is the only one I’ve finished.

  For Maria

  Johnny rubbed at his eyes, staring at the highway. He blinked. He pinched himself. It hurt. His ma had told him that you couldn’t hurt yourself in your dreams after he’d had the so-manieth nightmare, so he couldn’t be dreaming. The road before him was genuinely green. Nothing else was and Bessie snorted below him, fair dancing with nerves. He held on tight to the reins, even though he dismounted and rubbed at her neck. “Easy, girl.” It was quiet too. The wasteland was always quiet, sure, but he couldn’t even hear the sounds of pursuit that had hounded him onto this road.

  And the road before him was green. A lush, vibrant green as far as his eyes could see. Only on the road. Beside it the cracked, dry sand spread out for miles and miles. Bessie tugged at her reins, flicked her tail. Johnny held firm. He had no idea, none, what was going on with the highway and he trusted it as little as Bessie did, but he didn’t have too many options. If he stayed, the mayor would catch up with him. If he rode Bessie off the highway, he was sure to lose his way and die of hunger and thirst. If he rode on… Well, who’d ever heard of that kind of greenery outside of children’s stories? He’d never seen it, though that wasn’t saying much.

  “Beautiful sight, innit?” a voice asked from behind him. Johnny whipped around, hampered by his grip on the reins. Bessie was not pleased with him. He put his hand on her shoulder in apology and narrowed his eyes at the slight man who’d spoken. He was dressed oddly, in weird knee-length trousers and a long, black coat. He sauntered past Johnny and held out his hand for Bessie to sniff at. Not wanting to lose sight of the man, Johnny circled with him.

  The stranger continued, “Used t’be all the land was like that, covered in green grass.” He grinned then, gap-toothed. “Your horse or your life.”

  And all Johnny could manage was “Beg pardon?” The man didn’t look armed. Anyway, Johnny was. He had a gun, and he was fast and knew how to use it.

  The man had taken a step back, his head tilted to look at Johnny’s face and his hands burrowed in his pockets. He frowned suddenly. “How’d you afford a horse, fine one like this, anyhow?”

  Johnny straightened at the tone. Bessie nudged him in the back and he stumbled forward. Just for a moment, the stranger’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “Won her in a poker game,” Johnny said, and he’d won her fairly for all that the mayor hadn’t taken quite gracefully to his loss. It was how Johnny came to find himself in the situation he was in, whatever that was. Surely, the men who’d been chasing him should be back in his earshot by now… He startled from his thoughts when the man spoke again.

  “And goin’ t’ride her to death in the desert?” The man quirked an eyebrow. He took a hand from his pockets and held it out to Bessie, white cube on the glove. Johnny lunged for it, but Bessie got there first. “Just sugar,” the man said as the horse nosed at his hand for more. “She deserves better, Johnny boy.”

  Johnny froze, just for a second. His hand went for his gun, but found only air. “F’sure.” He forced his voice level and his breaths even. Staying calm, that was something his da’d taught him. “You going to explain why the road ahead’s made of grass?” He was still groping around his holster for his gun, but he dared not take his eyes off the stranger.

  “Looking for something?”

  “Not at all.” He could take the man if it came to a brawl, Johnny was certain. He was a good head taller and a great deal wider, used to hauling heavy crates; his would-be robber looked about as skinny as a shrivelled grape. “Why’s the road made of grass?” he repeated, daring to glance aside to make sure that the rest of the world was still in order.

  “Oh.” The man waved a hand (an empty hand) at nothing in particular. Bessie nosed at Johnny for another treat. He had nothing, and he couldn’t afford to give her attention at present anyway, so he stuck his hands in his pockets, reins looping around one arm. Absentmindedly, he muttered something soothing as the man continued, “I told you, Johnny boy. Used to be the whole country was like this, before the great war. ‘Tis just… an echo like. If y’look at t’land at just the right time in just the right way, you can see it. Like now.”

  “The horse’s scared of going on.”

  “I gather.”

  Neither man spoke after that. There was silence. Far, far too much silence, even had Johnny not fled town with the mayor at his heels. The stranger rocked back and forth on his feet, idle as if he had all the time in the world. Johnny glared at him. He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, two men and a horse. Bessie nudged Johnny in the side and he started. The stranger grinned, like he’d been waiting for that.

  “Sounds like you’re running out of time. This yours?” The robber swung an object in his hand.

  Johnny cursed. “You know that damned well!” he snapped, bit back the demand for it. He wasn’t a child.

  “It was lying on the ground.” Johnny was sure it hadn’t been, but the man continued talking before he could interrupt. “I found it, fair and square.” He shrugged and straightened, aiming the gun straight at Johnny. “Now.” He smiled. “Your horse or your life, Johnny boy.”

  For a second, perhaps two, Johnny just stared at him. Then he pinched himself, hopefully in the other arm. It still hurt. It didn’t make any sense. His would-be robber just stood there, head slightly cocked and Johnny’s own gun pointing at him. Where the hell was the sense in that?

  When he guessed the man was waiting for Johnny to make a choice, he said, “Neither.” Without a horse he was as good as dead anyway. “I’m going to mount up now.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said that. It didn’t help ground him. It didn’t make the green road or the robber disappear. It didn’t make the mayor’s party seem to thunder ever nearer.

  “You’re going to ride on the creepy road? Great idea!” The man fair bounced from one foot onto the other. Johnny’d been out in the sun too long, had to have been. Heatstroke caused delusions, right? And that made everything make sense.

  “Sure,” he ventured as he got back into the saddle, then he leaned down and held out his hand. “Can I have my gun?”

  “My gun.”

  Johnny opened his mouth to argue, but just then a shot shattered the silence and snapped him out of whatever he’d been stuck in. He kicked Bessie’s flanks and
urged her off the highway. It wasn’t green anymore and the robber had vanished, but like hell was he going to take his chances on it.

  By the time Johnny’s provisions started to run out a few days later, he stumbled across an oasis. He had neither clue nor care how he’d survived that far, but the sight of sparse trees and an honest-to-goodness house cheered him and Bessie both. No one was there to greet him. Save for the cattails, the grass and the leaves, the only sounds came from him and Bessie. The house, as he got nearer, looked dilapidated, but the water looked clean and the cattails were food at least. Johnny half-slid, half-fell from his saddle and he struggled to get it off Bessie. He struggled to brush her down as well, but he did the best he could before collapsing under a tree.

  When Johnny woke, the stars greeted him. Bessie seemed to be asleep nearby. He felt a little better. At least, he thought he did. Well enough to eat and drink something anyhow. After that, he went back to his tree to sleep until morning. He hadn’t slept at all since the mayor had refused to pay him his winnings and he’d fled town rather than stand up for himself.

  The next time he opened his eyes, it was to dappled shade and a horse nudging his neck until he sat up and rubbed at his eyes. The oasis hadn’t disappeared. Johnny shivered and thought. If there was a house, it stood to reason that it was reasonably close to some civilised place. With how fallen-in the roof was and how quiet the oasis was, he had little hope of finding people, but if nothing else he and Bessie would be able to stay and recuperate somewhat from their flight. He could try to figure out what to do next.

  Though he had almost no appetite, Johnny made himself eat a little and set himself to caring for Bessie properly. She did deserve better. Afterwards, safe in the knowledge that she hadn’t bolted from the oasis before, he wandered up to the small house. He’d neither seen nor heard anyone yet and the doorway was a gaping maw, but that didn’t necessarily mean the house was deserted. The thick layer of dust inside that made him sneeze, however…

  Johnny squinted, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dark. The room seemed to be in good order. There were sturdy planks for a ceiling, though he couldn’t see any stairs to the second level. Apart from the thickness of the dust, the house seemed freshly abandoned. The room he found himself in served at least as kitchen and dining room, and the table was laid out for a meal. The furniture looked solid too.