The Weight of Feathers

Cluck and Lace stopped.

Dax stood near the tree’s base, still in his funeral suit. He would have heard the fight with Lace’s cousins, the noise in the stretch of woods both the Corbeaus and the Palomas considered theirs.

He took in Lace’s ripped dress, her bent wing, her tangled hair. Then he looked at Cluck. “What did you do?”

The pain between Cluck’s ribs brightened and spread.

It didn’t matter if Dax knew the truth, that this town thought Alain Corbeau had raped Lora Paloma. Whatever he knew or didn’t know, Dax had been waiting for years for Cluck to live up to his left-handedness and the red in his feathers. Cluck was le petit démon, the blighted thing that would ravage this family if Dax didn’t keep him caged.

Something had lit the green in Dax’s eyes. Cluck being with Lace. The white wings that might have been enough to make Dax realize she was a Paloma. The black and red wings on Cluck. Dax wondering if Cluck had been the one to tear Lace’s dress.

Cluck got in front of Lace. He’d made her part of this, so he had to stay between her and Dax.

But Dax didn’t go after Lace. He grabbed Cluck’s collar and shoved him against the cottonwood. The impact went through Cluck’s body. He fought to hold his breath in his lungs.

“You never listen, do you?” Dax hit him in the jaw.

The force rattled down through Cluck’s neck.

“I told you not to.” Dax got him again, left temple this time. “And you did it anyway.”

A seam of blood dripped down Cluck’s cheek. It stung like a spray of hot water.

He tried to get Lace’s eye, to tell her to run even though he couldn’t. Dax wanted him. He was the traitor, le batard. The evil thing that would ruin his family. If he let Dax pin him against this tree, hit him until he had to hold Cluck up by his collar, Lace could get away before Dax remembered she was there.



El que quiera azul celeste, que le cueste.

He who wants the sky must pay.

Lace saw the look, the flick of Cluck’s eyes telling her to leave. She ignored it. Blood streaked his face. It stained his collar. If she left him here, Dax would kill him.

So she kept searching the dark ground for anything to stop Dax. She wasn’t big enough to pull him off Cluck. If she tried, she’d make it worse, irritating Dax like a wasp. She needed something big enough to knock him out.

The sound of Dax’s fist hitting Cluck’s skin again made her stumble. Her hands found a branch, heavy and knotted. The bark felt rough as raw quartz. The rain had eaten at the wood. It wouldn’t have fallen if the chemical hadn’t weakened the bough.

“You always have to do something, don’t you?” she heard Dax say.

She picked up the branch and steadied her grip to go at him.

“I don’t know what you did,” Dax said. “But everything bad in this family starts with you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Cluck said.

The hint of a laugh in his voice made her look up.

She stopped, the branch still in her hands.

“It does.” Cluck half-smiled, blood trickling from his lip.

Dax stared at him, fist frozen at his side.

The fear left Cluck’s face. He opened his eyes, the moon a white fleck in each iris.

Yeah, it does. Those three words, accepting the things his family hated about him. Instead of letting them leave a thousand little cuts in him, he sharpened them himself, held them like knives.

It wasn’t true. Everything bad in these trees and that water lived there before Cluck took his first breath.

But Dax could think anything he wanted. The truth didn’t belong to him anymore.