‘This way,’ I said, wondering what I would find there.
Small shops huddled on either side of a narrow, crooked street. Even at this time, the warm smell of bread drifted from the first doorway. Opposite, the sound of a cobbler tapping his hammer rang out. We passed a toyshop, and I paused to admire its colourful puppets hanging in the window and the handmade wooden trains on the shelf beneath. I was reminded of home, and of the puppet I had destroyed in my childish temper. How young and silly I had been all those years ago.
‘Look at those sweets!’ exclaimed Leo. I turned to see the window of a real confectioner’s lined with pyramids of sherbet and liquorice sticks and lollipops bigger than stirring spoons. Marzipan cubes and dusted slabs of jelly were enough to dazzle the eye and make the teeth chatter. A giggling congregation spilled through the door clutching their paper bags in glee. A little girl with wide worshipping eyes tugged on her mother’s sleeve begging to be taken in to the sugar shrine. Her mother shook her head and hurried them away, the girl could do nothing but scowl in disappointment. We followed the curve of the street and I could see the low dwellings on the right suddenly fall away. There was one left, standing slightly apart from all the others. My heart stopped, and I knew at once this was what I was meant to find. It was small with a white front and a red-peaked roof from where a small square window gazed out across the sea to the sky. It was like the doll’s house I never got to play with. The bird that had led us here was now watching us from the tiles; it looked like a tiny weathervane. Then it hopped into the rain gutter, and away.
I gasped, touching its walls. Shielding my eyes against the glass, I tried to peer through the grime to see what lay within. It was dark inside and empty as a shell.
‘It’s to rent,’ said Leo, reading a sign on the door.
I stepped back to read the words and, although I didn’t yet know why, I sensed that it was for me to find. Still twirling the feather between my fingertips, a curious idea suddenly flew into my mind, as bright and entertaining as a juggling ball.
‘Do you want to rent a shop?’ he asked in bewilderment. ‘What on earth would you put in it?’
I smiled knowingly. ‘Why, feathers of course!’ I replied.
It happened so quickly. As soon as I told Sybel my plan, she announced that she knew not only the shop, but its owner, a gambling man with too many debts to pay. The following day, she had arranged a meeting where the negotiation was brief, and in my favour. By the end of the week, I was back outside the shop and this time I clutched the keys in my hand.
Upon opening the door, a conspiracy of dust leapt up from the floor and scurried its secrets into the furthest corners. The smell of sawdust made my nose twitch. Inside, it was just as I had imagined it would be. Large enough for a display counter at the front and the back was the perfect size for a workspace, where I could stitch and mend and gloss my feathers to my heart’s content. Up a rickety ladder to the rafters, I found there was room enough for a bed, and the window was wide enough to welcome the morning sun. Its ledge would be a perfect place for the starlings to rest in the gathering dusk. Once all the windows were polished and the floor had been swept clean of dust, I could see how light-filled it would become. It reminded me of how I used to be: fearful and hidden and so full of secrecy.
‘Wake up little shop,’ I murmured, gently tapping the bell above the door and listening to the tinkle of its laugh float high into the air.
I filled the place with feathers from the university. Leo hadn’t yet unpacked them from their crates and I arranged for them to be brought across the lagoon in a boat. After they arrived, I stored them carefully in glass cabinets and plucked them as I needed to. I washed each feather in hot soapy water, and pinned them up like bunting until they were dry. It was enough to begin with.
The plumassier had taught me her skills in the whorehouse. She had shown me about the art of willowing and how to lengthen the flues to create long and sweeping feathers, curled fancifully under the steam of a boiling pot. I remembered it well. There were enough feathers to last me for months and whenever one of my own moulted, I would save it alongside the rest. When the time came, I would seek out a boat sailing further east or back west, and order a shipment of the finest feathers to be brought back to me in an array of flamboyant colours and sizes. But there was one feather I would never touch. It lay under a glass lid, on a velvet green cushion, like a sunset sky over a little hill. Maybe one day I would send it back to Lemàn, but I wasn’t sure what good it would do to stir her settled heart once more. For now, at least, I would keep it. It was my beginning and there was little bright or special left in the world with it gone.
Business was slow at first and I began to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake. Then I remembered the lady on the boat with her feather-filled hat worn with such pride, and how heartbroken and haunted she had become after it was lost in the storm. So, I held my nerve.
Sybel’s tongue held attentive ears and soon ladies started to come through the door asking for a simple hat trimming, or a boa to be worn for a special dinner. As my skills improved and word spread further, I was asked to fashion corsets and stitch feathers to a selection of fine materials. I sculptured feather bouquets to be displayed at important events and even children brought their dolls’ hats for me to decorate with cockades of tiny feathers. I was asked to create carnival masks and costumes to seduce a lover. Giggling girls would bound in and ask me to quickly curl a limp feather on their hat while they waited, before scampering off to be the envy of their friends or the object of a gentleman’s affection. It kept me busy and for a while, at least, I was content.
One afternoon, I was returning to the shop with packages of new fabric and buttons for a cloak I had been commissioned to make. Upon reaching the door, I felt eyes skitter over me, like sun-drenched lizards, and I turned to see two women huddled together in gossip. They stared at me and I could see the cruelty in their smiles. I left the packages on the doorstop and approached them so unexpectedly that they stumbled back into the gutter. I looked from one to the other, waiting and watching as a mixture of alarm and guilt twisted their faces into masks of ugliness.
‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ I exclaimed.
They shuffled in shame and glanced nervously at each other. After that they lowered their heads to the ground, no longer knowing where to look.
‘Would you like to touch them?’ I teased, relishing the effect I was having.
Laughing I stepped back, and with mumbled apologies they scuttled away like rats; there was nothing to feast on here. Three girls had been watching the spectacle unfold with great fascination, and the tallest one stepped forward.
‘Excuse me, could we have a go?’
‘Have a go at what?’ I asked frowning.
‘Of your feathers,’ she replied. The other two girls exploded into nervous giggles and she jabbed them hard with her elbow. ‘She won’t let us touch them if you keep laughing,’ I heard her hiss.
Smiling, I knelt down on the ground and beckoned them over. They nudged each other, trying to decide who would go first.
‘Are they soft?’ one asked.
‘Why don’t you find out for yourself,’ I encouraged, and so they did, right there in the middle of the street. Their eyes were wide with enchantment as they swept their hands through my feathers and I saw their little mouths fall open in gasps of delight.
‘They are softer than rabbit fur!’ announced one, in astonishment.
Their faces beamed. Then the smallest one rested her head on the top of my arm, closed her eyes and announced it was the fluffiest pillow she had ever felt. In that moment I was exactly where I needed to be. Smiling, I stood up to signal the end of the merriment, and the girls skipped away, happy at their discovery. Quickly I scooped up my packages and went inside. I was too distracted to notice the two familiar figures who had just appeared in the street.
In the back room I began to sort through the spools of thread and tangle of ribbons, deciding whic
h feathers I would need. I suspected the woman who had requested the cloak was having an affair, and so I had selected only owl feathers. These were known for their secrecy: soft and barbed, to muffle the sound of movement. At night the city could drop cold and she needed to be kept warm and hushed as she flew through the streets in pursuit of what she most desired. As owl feathers were so short, I would have to knot the flues together to create long sweeping feathers. As I began to count out how many I would need, I heard the jingle of the bell, and knew someone had entered the shop.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ I called, but before the last word had even left my mouth, I felt my feathers lift and quiver.
There was something familiar in the air, and for a moment, I tried desperately to remember what it was; something from so far away. Then it smoothed into place, like the last feather settling on a wing. The scent of a rainy day and lemons soaked in sunshine gave them away, and although I couldn’t see into the front of the shop, I knew what would be waiting for me when I got there. I closed my eyes and the enormous rush of memory toppled me to the floor.
Professor Elms and Lemàn found me collapsed on top of a pile of cloth and crumpled feathers. Kneeling down, I felt their arms wrap around me, and, without saying a single word, we held onto one another for such a long time. Then I told them everything.
CHAPTER 43
From the beginning, Lemàn had told me they would not be staying for long. Their boat was leaving in a few days and they would be on it. It didn’t matter when she left; days, weeks, months or even years from now … it would never be enough.
‘We are leaving all the clocks behind,’ she announced triumphantly, as though that could somehow stop time. When I asked her what they would do once they got there, she laughed and told me they would learn to make maps for lost lovers.
We spent our hours sitting by the water, filling in the long absence with touch and words and laughter. It was there that her questions finally found their long-awaited answers, and there was a lightness to her after that.
Professor Elms had been helping Leo bring crates of feathers from the tepidarium. I had them delivered every few months, brought over on merchant boats from distant Scatterings, some drifting so far away that they were at the very bottom of the world. I had learned that sometimes you had to search far and wide for something so special. Reading about them in books wasn’t the same as seeing them with my own eyes, and opening each crate was always a delight. The feathers shone with colours I didn’t even know existed; dipped in sunsets, brushed with honey and polished with the blue splendour of a summer’s day. They were such a thing of beauty, I thought as I placed them into my tissue-lined drawers. Everyone wanted to be seen with them resplendent upon their backs, fanciful in their hats or wrapped around their necks to keep out the cold, begging that I made them as pretty as a bird.
This is how I liked us, Lemàn and me, sitting side by side, staring across the lagoon. I rested my head against her arm, and for a while I became a child again. Looking at the sky, I wondered if it was really meant for me, ever hopeful of what it might bring. My heart hadn’t been broken – only dented – and not enough to let the water in, but always after a while, my eyes would fall to the sea. Lemàn recognised the sadness left behind, she knew it in only the way a mother could, and squeezed my hand in comfort.
‘We both wanted the impossible,’ she said, sadly smiling. ‘The elemental love of air and water and the suffering it can bring.’
‘She taught me so much,’ I said wistfully. ‘I imagine I see her sometimes, out there in the water.’
‘And Leo?’
His name made me smile. ‘Just because I think about her, doesn’t mean I want him less.’ I lifted my head from her arm. ‘You still think about Eddero, don’t you? Even though you have the professor now.’
Her face softened and I was reminded of the times we would sit on the bench overlooking the sea. Always, her mind travelled to a place called memory, and all those years ago I didn’t know the way. She was unreachable and I was left behind. Now, though, it was different; I knew longing and loss, and this time I could follow her there.
After a while she spoke again. ‘All this time I have been trying to catch a sunset and keep it in a jar. I should just have enjoyed the moment and then let it go.’
‘Like a bird in the sky.’
‘Yes, just like that. No one should ever try to catch something so beautiful.’
Keeping magic in the world was too difficult, and I knew that neither my father nor Elver would ever come back.
‘Do you remember when you used to sneak out of the house each morning before the dew had dried on the grass?’
‘You knew about that?’ I exclaimed in disbelief.
‘Ha! Of course I knew … we all knew!’ I could hear the amusement in her voice. ‘Those bolts on the door were so rusty they rattled louder than the barrels that rolled in.’
‘But if you knew … why didn’t you stop me?’ I asked.
She was thoughtful before she spoke again. ‘Because I should have been the one opening the door for you.’ She paused to watch Leo and Professor Elms wheel the crates up the street towards us. In front of them was Sybel; she had the strength of a bear and carried a crate effortlessly in her arms. ‘Besides,’ added Lemàn, ‘there was always someone keeping you safe.’
‘Do you love Professor Elms?’ I asked. Her face had warmed at the sight of his approach.
She giggled and rolled her eyes, and I saw for the first time what she would have been like as a young girl. Her beauty then was so much clearer than the sky.
‘He brings me much happiness.’ She smiled at the thought of him. ’But love after loss is always that little bit more fragile – like a bird with a broken wing trying to fly again. There should be a word for that kind of love.’
‘You both deserve to be happy,’ I replied, realising that her smile seemed less crooked than before.
‘We all do.’
She was a reminder of all I had left behind and I suddenly remembered so much I had almost forgotten. ‘How is Sorren?’
Her answer came quickly. ‘She left … not long after you did.’
‘Left?’ I was stunned, seized by an emotion I couldn’t name. ‘But where would she go?’
‘In search of what she once gave away.’
‘I—’ but my question slipped away, like snow melting off a rooftop. Some things were a secret then and were still a secret now. A locket closed on a memory. It made me sad to think she would never read my letter, and that she would never know how much she meant to me.
‘You have always been such an inquisitive soul, so curious about everything. So much about you has changed, but not that.’
‘Then what?’
‘You seem less afraid. Being here has opened you up and made you stronger.’
‘Gutted me like a fish, you mean!’
‘What is it with you and fish?’ she exclaimed affectionately. ‘All those months waiting for you to be born and I couldn’t stomach anything else: bread, cheese, milk – none of it!’
I rested my head back against her arm and reminded her of the stories she used to tell me as a child. ‘Tell me one more,’ I said, closing my eyes.
‘You always did believe in fairy tales,’ she said laughing, then she began. After she had finished, she grew quiet and we sat listening to the murmurs of the city. ‘Sometimes the end isn’t where you think it is, and you have to travel further to discover the rest.’
Until that moment, I thought I was where I belonged, but her question opened a door I didn’t even know was there and through it I heard Elver’s voice; You will find your way, I am sure of that. It is within you … all you have to do is follow your instincts.
Inside, I felt the tiny flutter of an idea slowly begin to spread its wings. Sybel had spoken of unity in the end, but perhaps there was something so far-reaching that even she hadn’t been able to see it. But if Sybel couldn’t sense it, then how could Lemàn?
‘Perhaps you have the instincts of a bird,’ I teased, feeling unsettled by her words.
‘No, my little firecracker.’ She laughed, batting away my words with her hand. ‘I have the instincts of a mother.’ Then she stroked her fingers through the long flames of my hair, and sighed. ‘It is just as beautiful as I imagined it would be.’
This goodbye was no easier than the last one, and as I stood watching them leave with the sun, the scent of lemons lingered still and stung my heart.
In the silence of Leo sleeping, I sat in the window and waited for morning to come. A little before dawn, I lifted the latch and pushed it ajar. The familiar murmurs of the water came first, followed by the sleepy nocturnes of the slowly waking birds: an irresistible sorcery. The sounds filled the rafters and Leo began to stir. I left the window and sat beside him on the bed, stroking his hair until he finally opened his eyes. He smiled at finding me there.
‘Do you remember the promise I made to you – the promise to always be truthful?’ I asked into the soft dark. So close, I could hear the steady tick-tock of his heart – my timepiece – against which I would measure all else.
He mumbled, not quite awake enough to make sense of what I was saying.
‘There is somewhere I must go now, but one day I will come back to you.’
Wiping his face, still creased from sleep, he lifted himself up, hinged on both elbows. There was a question on his lips, but before he could ask it, I silenced him with a kiss and the promise of my return. My wings might spread out their tips to touch two different worlds, but my heart stayed in the middle.
Then I told him the ending to my story – the final chapter – my happily ever after.
EPILOGUE
Hours pass uncounted until the mist finally appears in the distance, as though summoned by my very longing for it. Had I not been sitting in my window, perhaps I would not even have noticed it, for it was nothing more than a little wisp of a promise kept. My boat is ready.
Feathertide Page 29