NATHANIEL LED ME to the back of the house, where a fire blazed. The fireplace was made of stacked stone and ran from the ceiling down to the floor, where it yawned into an opening large enough that I could feel the heat of the fire from the hallway. A pile of newly cut wood was stacked beside the fireplace, the ax delicately tipped into the top log.
I’d never actually been in anyone else’s house before — not even Cardigan’s. It was strange, doing things that other people — normal people — did. But the thing was, being in that house didn’t make me feel like everyone else. Instead, I felt as if I were acting out a part in a play, a fictional character playing a role that someone else had written for me. When it was over, I would take my place at curtain call, and then I would go home to where I was real again.
Marigold Pie’s living-room floor was covered with a soft brown carpet. There was an olive-green couch and a glass-topped coffee table in the room. A tall table in a corner held glass bottles of different shapes and sizes, each containing a fluid of some color or another. An impressive ship in a bottle was displayed on the mantel. The only thing that I wasn’t sure about was the huge needlepoint kitten staring at me from over the mantel. I figured that was just an isolated lapse in taste.
Nathaniel leaned his umbrella against the metal screen in front of the hearth and walked over to the table of bottles. “How about something to drink? Might help with the cold,” he said.
I hesitated for a second. “Okay.”
I stood quietly in front of the fire, the warmth of the flames wicking through my calves and my outstretched hands until I stopped shivering. I pulled off my socks and shoes, hung the socks on the fire screen, and stretched the tongues out from my shoes before setting them in front of the fire. I pulled Rowe’s coat from my shoulders and draped it, lovingly, next to my socks. I shook out my wings, scattering little droplets of water across the room, sprinkling pictures and furniture.
“Some brandy should warm you right up,” Nathaniel said, handing me a glass. He sat down on the floor in front of the fire.
I sat down next to him, watched the way he swirled his drink and placed his nose at the edge of the glass before drinking the gold liquid. When I tried to do the same, I inhaled too deeply. My nostrils burned and I could already taste the brandy in the back of my throat. Determinedly, I took a sip. It stung my lips. When I swallowed, my tongue wanted to spring from my mouth. But then a warmth, like slow-burning honey, ran through me. It was not entirely unpleasant, but I didn’t drink any more.
The fire crackled; the flames faded to short purple triangles. Nathaniel added another log to the blaze, and I watched the fire grow with a sharp hiss. He settled next to me and tipped the last of his drink into his mouth, then got up and set the empty glass on the fireplace before sitting down next to me again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.
I could smell the tang of the alcohol on his breath, the stink of unwash on his skin. I was suddenly very aware that I was alone in a strange house with a strange man I hardly knew.
“Where’s your aunt?” I asked.
“She’s around,” he said noncommittally.
“I should go,” I said, pulling away. “I need to find my mom.”
“You can’t go yet,” he commanded, and grabbed at one of my wings, making me yelp. A dark look crossed his face. But when he looked down at the handful of feathers in his hand, he laughed a little and let go. “I have something to show you,” he said, his voice amicable once again. “Just wait for a minute.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I lied.
I jumped up as soon as he left the room, knocking over my glass of brandy. As quietly as I could, I wandered up the hall. I took a wrong turn and found myself in a room where I could just make out the shapes of furniture in the dark — a couch, a lamp, a chair. I stepped in farther and felt the floor under my feet dip and change. I crouched down to peer at the carpet. A path that ran the length of a large center window had been worn into the carpet, like a trail cut through a forest grove.
I stood back and looked up. The window provided a clear view of my house, of my bedroom window. Then something on the windowsill caught my eye. It was a feather — not brown and white like my own — but jet black and as long as my arm. The feather was beautiful, shiny and gleaming. I reached for the floor lamp standing next to me and switched it on. Then I saw them.
Birds. Littering the floor, covering the chair and the couch, piled around the room in stacks of ten or twenty. Some had been pinned to the wall with wings outstretched, as if in flight; others hung upside down from the ceiling by tiny bits of string wrapped tightly around their curled feet, as if being punished for a terrible crime. Some had been stripped of their feathers, some stripped of their wings. Others were missing their eyes.
The once-warm brandy turned cold in my stomach. I gagged, then swallowed fast to keep from vomiting.
“I didn’t intend for you to see them.” Nathaniel had come up behind me. He gently plucked the long black feather from my hand. He sighed.
“What do you mean?” With growing dread, I noted that he was between me and the door.
He picked up one of the dead birds and shook it in my face. “Masquerading as a holy creature,” Nathaniel said with disgust. Then he dropped it back onto the floor, where it landed with a sickening thud. It was a spotted towhee — a male — with black-and-white wings and a patch of red on each side. The bird’s insides dribbled from a wound in its belly.
“Blessed with wings like God’s messengers, and what do they do with them? Soil them in birdbaths and mud puddles. Eat garbage.” He kicked at a pile of carcasses near his foot. “These monstrosities are the reason no one sees you for what you are.”
He reached out and stroked my wings.
“But I’ve never been fooled,” he said, gently now. “I’ve always known.”
I made a move to step around him.
What I remember most vividly was that he told me he loved me before he grabbed me.
“Please!” I begged, struggling against him. “Let me go!”
I kicked at him wildly. When my foot made contact with his shin, he tightened his grip. I threw my arm back and cracked his rib with my elbow. He dropped to the ground with a shout, and his grip loosened enough for me to break free. I ran for the door, but he caught me and wrenched me back.
He pulled me by my hair back to the room with the fireplace. He seemed surprised to find me so strong; to be honest, so was I. He wrestled me to the ground, shoved me flat on my back, and pressed his knee against my sternum. The pressure against my lungs made it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was the fear choking me. I tried to scream. He gagged me with one of his handkerchiefs. Hot tears streamed from my eyes.
“I wish you didn’t make me do that. You have such a pretty mouth,” he said, stroking my cheek.
He flipped me on my stomach then, my face pressed against the carpet and my arms trapped beneath me. Keeping a firm grasp on my wings, he undid his belt. My wings shuddered. I felt as much as heard my own screams, so wretched and desperate that they sounded inhuman.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined this,” he whispered. “How many times I’ve been aroused by the thought of downy pillows and cotton balls and rain-heavy clouds.”
He rubbed my feathers between his fingers, then dipped his face to my shoulder blades. I could feel his breath on my skin. “Because that’s what I imagine an angel will feel like.”
I remember pain. White-hot searing pain. And shame.
Then, clutching my feathers in his fists, he began to cry. “You’re just a girl!” he wailed. “Jesus Christ. You’re just a girl after all.” Huge racking sobs rattled his chest.
“You stupid bitch!” he screamed, his voice hoarse with rage. He ripped feathers from my wings as he pushed into me deeper. Fiercer.
The ax blade was little — no larger than his fist — but it was sharp and when he yanked it from the woodpile, maybe he thought it would slice through my wings easily. But mine were nothing like the tiny bird wings he’d amputated before. My wings were strong and virile and had no intention of giving up without a fight. They thrashed and flailed so much that in the end he had to lunge and hack away at them like a crazed butcher.
When it was over, he tossed the ax to the floor next to my amputated wings.
“You tricked me,” he sneered. I moaned while he wiped the blood from his face.
Then he ran.
Emilienne made her way through a puddle in the hallway of her house with slow, cautious steps. In the kitchen she took a glass from the cupboard and placed it under the faucet. With a weary glance at the rain seeping in through the cracks around the windows, she realized that more water was the last thing she needed. One of the cats — the needy orange tabby — rubbed against her legs and mewed. What did Viviane call this one? Underfoot? Well, she thought, reaching down and lifting him into her arms, that seems fitting.
“Are the kids upstairs?” she asked the cat. He blinked once with his cerebral green eyes, which she took as a reassuring yes. As she was carrying him past the living room, the cat made a low moaning sound and jumped out of her arms, skidding on his hind legs as he fled down the hallway. In the living room, René sat on the harpsichord bench, his fingers tapping various keys in a silent song; he was alone.
Emilienne could still see the damage William Peyton had done to René’s face so many years ago. One eye stared blindly over her shoulder, the color muted by a white film; the other eye hung from its socket and rested on the sharp edge of his exposed cheekbone. Of his nose there was only a sliver of cartilage left. There was no mouth, no chin; his jaw hung at a crude and broken angle, which explained why his voice sounded so thick-tongued. As far as Emilienne could tell, he hadn’t a tongue at all. Or any teeth.
“Oh, René.” Emilienne sank down beside him.
Later, when remembering this moment, Emilienne would recall how morbidly suitable she found his deformed face, how apt it seemed to hear such horror related by such a gruesome source. Because it was horrific, what he was telling her. Indescribably, unimaginably horrific. She thought it strange that she felt nothing at all when he tried to hold her hand; his transparent fingers slipped through hers. When he finished telling her the terrible truth, she rose from the bench, smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. She walked out of the room and through the water in the hallway to the phone, dialed the number to the police station, and in a clear voice gave the operator the address on Pinnacle Lane where Marigold Pie lived with her nephew.
Before she left the house herself, she turned back to René. “Don’t you dare take her with you,” she pleaded.
“I don’t want to,” he croaked.