The Weight of Feathers

He wondered if his grandfather ever thought of leaving with him. But after the plant fired him, Pépère had fallen in with the family, given up on getting another engineering job, knowing he’d never get a good reference out of the Almendro plant. The only place for him and Cluck was with the rest of the family. The once-engineer, and le cygnon who did not turn white as he got older but only grew darker.


In the dark, Cluck couldn’t tell if they’d reached the part of the woods closer to his family than hers. He waited for some shift in the air, like the trailing edge of a cold front, wet warmth turning to ice crystals.

Lace gripped Cluck’s arm, stopping him.

“What?” he asked.

A figure stepped out from behind a tree. Cluck recognized the broad shape.

“You back for more, chucho?” the figure said. He hadn’t gotten close enough for Cluck to make out his face, but the word he remembered. Chucho. The two syllables called up the feeling of getting kicked in the stomach, his grandfather’s collar coming undone.

Two more figures stepped forward, their silhouettes showing against the trees. Lace’s cousins, the ones from the liquor store.

Now his wings told them he was a Corbeau.

“And you brought your girlfriend this time, huh?” one asked.

If they knew she’d been with a Corbeau, they might kill her, treat her like a fallow deer a wolf had gotten its teeth into.

“Run,” Cluck said, low enough that the three of them wouldn’t hear.

But the break in his voice betrayed him, told her that if she ran, he wouldn’t.

“No,” she whispered back. “Justin,” she said to the biggest one.

But Justin didn’t hear her, or didn’t care.

They didn’t recognize her. Her makeup was too heavy, covering the red heart on her cheek. In the dark, they didn’t see past her wings.

Cluck walked up to their line. He wasn’t taking anyone, Paloma or Corbeau, standing in front of him anymore.

“Get out of my way,” he said.

The oldest one laughed. The other two went at him.

Lace’s cousins had not been the ones to call the police about Pépère. But their parents or grandparents might have brought the police to the hospital, where the officers accepted Lora Paloma’s writhing and sobbing as a statement. Lace’s cousins carried the blood of everyone who kept him from his mother.

This time when they hit him, he hit back. Every time one of their fists went into him, his hands returned the blow. Feathers rained from his wings. The salt of his own blood dried out his mouth. This was what his hate could press against. Their hate, and the pain in his own body.

Lace called their names, trying to pull them off Cluck. One tugged on her dress to get her off him, and the fabric tore, exposing her slip. Cluck shoved him and he fell. She kicked another one, and he backhanded her to flick her away. The force knocked Lace’s right wing out of place. Cluck hit him in the jaw, a clean copy of how he’d gotten the risk manager.

Lace gripped the biggest one by his shirt collar and yelled into his face, “Justin, look at me!”

Her yelling, almost breaking into screaming, made her cousins freeze. The two younger ones let go of Cluck.

Their stares all met on her face. They stepped back like she could burn them.

“Lace?” the biggest one said, the word choked like Lace had her hand around it.

She looked at Cluck. “Run.”

Cluck grabbed her hand to make her go with him. The fildefériste blood in him shook awake. The wind shifted, the air sharpened with the scent of iodine. He had never been to the towns in Provence where his great-grandparents strung their wires. He had never walked a tightrope between a town’s tallest tree and steeple. He had never waved to the crowd gathered in front of a village church. But these trees were his wires. He could climb higher and faster than anyone in the show.

They’d hide in the cottonwood tree. They could get high enough in the branches that no one could reach them.

He let Lace get ahead of him so he could see her, make sure she didn’t turn back. The trees blurred. The moon barely reached the ground. His lungs cramped and stung, but he told her to keep going. The undergrowth crunched and snapped under their steps, the sounds scattering night birds.

But Cluck didn’t find the cottonwood trunk standing alone. Another familiar shape broke its line.