“You’ve got the look,” Anna said, smiling.
“The look?”
“Of the hooked. The enchanted. You’re one of us now.”
“Just like that?” Emily looked dubious. “By running away from the blockhead?”
“It takes all sorts. I can’t wait for you to see Lynette. She’s usually on towards the end.” Anna fiddled with a napkin. “She’s… Something else. I could go on and on about her and not be able to say how.”
“Are things...” Emily hesitated. “I mean, is it okay if I ask...”
Anna shrugged. “Things are things. The weirdness is mainly between Kel and me, but obviously Lynette’s involved too, she can’t not be. But — I can’t really talk about it, sorry.”
“That’s totally fine. I don’t want to pry! I just don’t know what to expect, at all.”
Anna chuckled. “That’s probably for the best.”
Once the applause died down, the emcee stepped forward to announce the final act, and encouraged everyone to stay precisely where they were.
Then the lights went out.
The cafe buzzed for a minute until a spotlight clicked on, shining up from the floor, illuminating a woman seated on a tall stool. But not completely — shadows striped her face and body, and as Emily took the scene in, she saw that the spotlight was shining through an ornate bird cage, projecting its bars against the wall and woman together.
When Anna said Lynette would be dressed as a bird, Emily had imagined something a bit camp, a bit silly, maybe a bit sexy into the bargain. She hadn’t expected this tall, solemn, slender creature of angles and air, delicate golden–brown feathers sprouting from the shoulders, hips, and hem of a long white dress worn over slightly incongruous brown boots. Thick dark curls were piled on top of her head, against which leaned a high, feathered fascinator. There was an air of honey and copper about her, a shimmering sweetness. Emily’s breath caught at the sight.
Lynette Byrd lifted her chin and regarded her audience coolly, head sharply tilted. When she parted her glittering lips and spoke, her voice was a sweep of warm light in the dim.
“Green finch and linnet bird! Nightingale! Blackbird!”
“How is it you sing!” shouted the audience members as one, making Emily jump a little in her seat. Lynette smiled.
“An oft–repeated question. Why does the caged bird sing? Why does it not embrace silence in protest, refusing to give up the thing for which it was imprisoned? Why, day after day, does it warble and sway from perch to perch, trilling its essence out in unrepeatable sequence for the benefit of its captors? I am trusted,” she laughed, suddenly, a sound like glass bursting, “with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage.”
With that she closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against the feathers on her shoulder, looking for all the world like a bird asleep.
Silence, then. Emily looked at Anna uncertainly, wondering if she should clap, but Anna was gazing at Lynette in rapt adoration. No one else seemed to think it was over, either. An uncomfortable minute passed, then two. A few people closed their eyes; a couple were staring intensely at their phones; one man nearby was moving his mouth without making a sound, and Emily realised he was counting. She looked back at the stage. Lynette remained completely immobile. The sound of the bartender wiping crumbs from the counter became noticeable. She heard people shifting a little in their seats, though none spoke.
Emily frowned and looked down at her own phone. Had it been four minutes? Four minutes of —
Her eyes widened in sudden understanding. Before she knew what she was doing, she had gasped “OH!” out loud, to the shock of just about everyone else in the room.
She clapped her hands over her mouth in a panic and looked at the stage, but Lynette hadn’t moved — it was only every other head in the cafe that had swung towards her, some frowning, some biting down a laugh, some laughing outright. Anna stared at her in an astonishment that bordered on reproach. Cheeks flushing, she fixed her eyes on the floor and tried to will it into melting away and taking her with it.
But only for another thirty seconds, as Lynette’s performance of John Cage’s “4’33” came to an end. As people began to clap, Emily raised her head again.
Lynette had opened her eyes and was looking directly at her. She seemed amused.
“The reason, ultimately,” she said, stretching her neck from one side to the other, and rolling back her feathered shoulders, “is that silence is terribly boring, no? Let us jubilate.”
With that, Lynette launched into the most unearthly rendition of Sondheim’s “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” Emily had ever heard. It was like sugar melting into caramel, hearing that bright, glittering song dimmed into a smoky minor key and twisted, stretched into so unlikely a shape. To listen was to feel her heart dragged over burrs, each turn of lyric snagging and pulling at her. By the time Lynette was asking the birds to teach her to be more adaptive, Emily had a pain in her throat and wet cheeks. Anna was quietly sobbing next to her.
Emily stretched out her hand without a word. Anna took it and squeezed.
§
It was like nothing else. She broke us open and read our entrails, I swear. It was like her art was a kind of sewing, a stitching together of things you’d never have thought could go together seamlessly. Hah. I just noticed how Seamstress is like a portmanteau of Seam and Mistress. Seam. Seem. Mistress of Seams and Seemings.
I’m pretty drunk right now by the way.
So she’s a Seemstress. She ended the show with a flick of her wrist, throwing a black cloth over the birdcage, and the spotlight clicked off. She didn’t take a bow. She’s drinking with Anna, now, they’re talking, and I’m hiding in the bathroom because I can’t bring myself to look at her even though I really want to talk to her and tell her how amazing it was. She came towards us after, and she looked at me in this way and said “I truly enjoyed your contribution,” and I just clammed up. I was so mortified. I don’t think she even meant it to be mocking but I couldn’t bear it. So I just sat there and got redder and redder and Anna took her attention off me, which is fine but I just felt like I’d failed, made the worst impression, and I just really needed to tell you about this right away, while it’s all still hurting, the good and the bad of it, all together. I needed to tell you. I always need to tell you and you’re not — you’re never —
I wish — I wish you could have been here. Everything would be better if you were. I wish we could be talking about it right now. I wish — God, Paige, I miss you so fucking much. I miss you.
§
The ceiling came into focus first, and it was wrong: much too high, and the familiar pale orange stain that usually greeted her when she woke wasn’t there. Then the smells: unfamiliar laundry detergent mixing with coffee like her father had it, with cardamom. The sound of water running, one wall over. Suddenly she bolted upright and took stock of the strange room, the strange bed, and the dull orange light coming through unfamiliar window slats from a street lamp outside. Still night time, then.
She felt sick. Still drunk, obviously; the room kept threatening to spin, and her vision was anchored to a slow, awful churning in her belly. Was this Anna’s place? Blearily, she swung her legs out of bed, and saw that she was still dressed. Quietly, she padded her way out of the room and into a dark hallway, toward the sound of water. She was thirsty. Her mouth felt full of sour cotton.
Light slanted into the hall from the half–open door to what she thought must be the bathroom; maybe Anna was brushing her teeth? She pushed it the rest of the way.
Lynette Byrd stood on one foot, lifting the hem of a white nightgown, one knee delicately raised above a bathtub filling with water. But her feet — Emily stared, blinked, shook her head, couldn’t stop staring.
From the ankle down, Lynette’s feet were the leathery, taloned, four–toed feet of a bird.
Lynette’s eyes met hers, and she tilted her head as she had in her performance, but it ha
d the look of a raptor now. Emily staggered back, watching Lynette’s upraised knee lift higher, those talons flexing, swivelling away from the tub and on to the floor, clicking.
“Seemstress,” she gasped, and the room spun faster and faster until she tumbled backwards into the dark.
§
When Emily woke again, it was to morning light filtering through the blankets over her head and whispering voices in the hall. She ventured a peek over the sheets, and saw Anna and Lynette in animated conversation, while someone who shared Lynette’s height, cheekbones, and colouring stood silently by with arms folded. Kel? They had short–cropped black hair, sharp cheekbones, and human feet.
Lynette’s remained disconcertingly taloned. She hadn’t imagined it.
Emily rolled over and burrowed deeper into the blankets in search of oblivion.
“Hey,” came Anna’s voice, gently, from beyond the duvet. “Morning. How are you feeling?”
Emily tried to part her lips to say something intelligent and managed a tiny croak of misery. Anna patted her shoulder.
“Have some water. Come on, we won’t bite. What do you remember?”
Slowly, Emily sat up, taking in the company. Anna, in pink flannel pajamas, looked concerned. Lynette without her make–up and feathers was still devastatingly beautiful: her black hair was a long sideways braid over her shoulder, and her light brown cheeks still had a hint of glitter to them. Her eyes were as black as her hair. She looked less like a magical bird–woman and more like someone from Emily’s own family now — as did Kel, who was looking at Emily with distrust.
She accepted a glass of water and took small, careful sips. “Lynette has bird feet.”
Anna winced. Kel muttered something under their breath that sounded like it was probably rude. Lynette waved her hand.
“We will speak of that later. I think Anna meant from earlier in the evening.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t given it much thought. “I remember — sitting with you both, and then going to the bathroom, and, um.” The shame of it, locking herself in a stall and crying, washed over her in a nauseous wave. “I guess Anna came in to check on me after a while. I don’t remember much else.”
“You seemed very upset.” Lynette looked at her curiously. “I was concerned that I had said something to hurt you. Then you fell asleep, and Anna didn’t know where you lived, so we brought you here instead.”
Emily bit her lip, stared into her glass. “I’m so, so sorry —”
“It’s no trouble, truly,” said Lynette. Kel snorted at that, and Anna smacked them on the arm and glared. Lynette ignored them, focused on Emily. “Did I hurt you in some way?”
“No, I’m — I was just so embarrassed. About the John Cage thing. Everything had been going so well until that point, and now I’ve fucked everything up, and you — you’re being so nice —”
“Emily.” Anna looked pained. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Emily looked at her, and felt something tightly wound in her release. She felt suddenly ragged with relief.
“Really? You’re not angry?”
“Angry?” Anna stared at her. “Emily, you just found out my girlfriend’s part bird and you’re worried about what I think?”
“I think,” said Lynette, “that we should have some coffee. Would you like that, Emily?”
“Yes, please.” She looked at Kel uncertainly. “Are you — are you going to curse me or erase my memory or something?”
Lynette blinked. So did Anna and Kel. All three of them looked at each other. To Emily’s discomfort, they all burst out laughing.
“That,” said Lynette, “would be terrible manners.”
“That’s — not a ‘no,’ though.” Emily had the feeling of being in a dream, of watching herself having this conversation. Lynette only smiled, looking as if she was enjoying herself.
“Emily, if you’ll forgive me the presumption, what is your surname?”
“Haddad.”
“Then we both hail from places where hospitality is sacrosanct, and one would not offer coffee to a guest to whom one intended any harm. Come. Let us have a sobhiya.”
The coffee tasted of home, of dawns spent with her father in comfort and certainty and safety. Kel remained quiet, and Anna’s focus was on them more than Emily, but Lynette was shockingly easy to talk to. Emily found herself pouring out the history of her last year: the Master’s degree in library sciences in London, how unbearable she’d found life in the city, how brutal the sarcasm that passed for affection, how she only hated herself more for not being able to banter with her colleagues and their friends, how she never felt entirely welcome among them.
“It’s like everything I took for granted about friendship, and language, about what’s polite and what isn’t — it’s not a default. We’re taught — I was taught — that it’s somehow universal, to be kind and open and welcoming and sincere, and it’s not. And worse, it’s not that it’s bad not to be that way, there. There, it makes sense, how closed off and distant and biting everyone is. It’s just a different way of being, that’s all. But it’s hard not to feel like everything about me is wrong — the way I laugh, the things I laugh at or don’t. My words, my accent, the things I think are cruel. It’s like, to live there, I needed to… Tailor myself. Cut off bits that don’t fit, or stuff them away, and sometimes I’d look in a mirror and just not recognize myself for the silence.”
Kel stood up, abruptly.
“I’m going to bed,” they said, gruffly, in a low voice. “Sorry. Long night.”
Emily faltered. “Okay.”
“I’ll join you,” said Anna, getting up. “Just for a bit.”
Kel muttered something by way of assent. Anna looked apologetically at Emily before following Kel and shutting the door behind them.
“So,” said Lynette, sipping her coffee from a tiny porcelain cup, turning her attention back to Emily. “Where were we. You finished your degree, yes? Why not go home to Canada? Why come to Glasgow instead?”
“Oh —” she sighed, swirled her coffee around her cup, watched the patterns the grains made against it. “I love my family, and I miss them. A lot. But — I’m queer, and they’re not okay with that. I mean,” she rushed to say, “they’re not horrible or anything. We’ve had the ‘we’ll still love you no matter what’ talk and whatever. But I just — I never really dated anyone when I was home. At all. And suddenly here, awful as everything else got, I went on dates, I flirted with men and women, and — part of me is more me here, I guess. I’m not done with that yet.”
“Even though everything else feels wrong?”
Emily chuckled, not without bitterness. “Yeah. I’m crying you a river, I know.” She finished the rest of her coffee in a gulp. Lynette leaned forward and poured more.
“It’s the plight of the displaced, Emily. The stuff of song and story. People here are fond of saying that all the most loving songs about Scotland are written by those who left.” Lynette replenished her own cup, and lifted it contemplatively. “One leaves home, one misses it; one makes a home as best one can, with the materials at hand, knowing it will never be what one had; but there are reasons, always good reasons, why one left in the first place.” Before Emily could ask anything, Lynette smiled. “But, Glasgow? Why not stay in London?”
“Honestly?” She smiled a little. “I’d never been to Scotland yet, and I loved the names of Glasgow’s derby teams. Irn Bruisers? Maiden Grrders? Seemed like reason enough.”
Lynette laughed, and Emily found herself thinking of flowers. She took another sip of her coffee, and waited.
“Well,” said Lynette, a touch of amusement still there, “I suppose it’s my turn. Do you know what a Peri is?”
Emily blinked, brain flashing through Patricia McKillip, Doctor Who, and hot sauce. “Er —”
Lynette smiled. “That’s quite all right. Whatever you do, don’t read the Wikipedia entry. Nineteenth century Englishmen with their books and operas did more to secure ignora
nce about us than the Severing of Seventy Bridges. Suffice to say we are a kind of — what you would call spirit. We are not human, though we sometimes enjoy human form. We have a world, our own world, that overlaps and intersects with yours,” here Lynette clasped her hands together, fingers interweaving, “and in which we are ourselves. But without access to it —” Lynette fixed her gaze on somewhere just over Emily’s shoulder, as if the world she spoke of was just there, “—we are less. We lose our ability to shift our shapes, to fly, to be flame or water. We become solid, locked. We,” she drew her gaze back to Emily, “cut off bits that don’t fit, or stuff them away, and sometimes we look in a mirror and can’t recognize ourselves. We are wrong. We are less.” Lynette paused to sip her coffee, and licked her lips thoughtfully. “Though we are also sometimes more.”
Emily felt a lump rising in her throat. “How?”
Lynette lost, for a moment, the air of knowing amusement she’d worn for most of their acquaintance, and looked only wistful. “I was no performer, back home. I had no art. It was here, in this place, that I found my voice.” When she smiled again, it was soft, and pained. “I did not learn to sing until I was shut in a cage.”
Emily frowned. “Shut? But — didn’t you leave on purpose?”
She shrugged. “To the extent that being forced to flee is ‘on purpose.’ Kel and I — ”
“Wait, Kel’s a Peri too?” Emily stared. “But — Kel’s feet —”
Lynette chuckled. “We all have different tells. Were Kel to show you their back, you would see two lines of black feathers angled along their spine. May I continue?”
She flushed. “Please.”
“We were… ‘Exiled’ is perhaps not the right word. Our country is at war, Emily. We are, in a sense, refugees. We fled, and the door shut behind us. Kel wants nothing so much as to go back, to fight, to die, if necessary. I do not. As much as I long for wings again —” Lynette’s voice caught, and she looked down, and shook her head slowly. “— No. For better or for worse, I am making a life here.” She chuckled. “Though it is difficult not to laugh, or weep, when someone asks me where I am ‘from.’ ”
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