The Weight of Feathers

He held a pair of peacock-feather wings. The breeze stroked the feathers, and the gold and sea glass colors shimmered.

Lace caught the shine of bright aqua, the same blue as the nylon net, and her stomach clenched. She tried to forget that she’d come to apologize to the Corbeau who’d probably left that net for her, the boy who’d had no reason to be on the Palomas’ side of the woods except to put those nylon threads in the water.

Cluck didn’t see her in the door’s shadow.

“As-tu fini?” the woman asked.

He turned her around by her shoulders and tied the satin ribbons to her torso, crossing them over her front so they looked like part of her dress.

The woman slid her thumbs under the ribbons, checking that they’d hold. They were the same bluish purple as the bodice, and almost vanished against the chiffon. “Tu as de la visite.” She pushed the trailer door shut, throwing light on Lace.

Cluck jumped when he saw her. He pulled off the rubber band and shook a hand through his hair. Not like he cared what he looked like but quick, out of habit, like taking his hat off before going into a church.

The woman skipped off. Her wings twitched as she ran. The plumes all moved together like a field of oats, wind-rippled.

“Here to take another shot?” Cluck asked. Sadness tinged his expression. She couldn’t have hurt his feelings. The Corbeaus didn’t bother with any opinions but each other’s. As far as he knew, she was just some girl from Almendro. What did he care what she said about him?

She pulled her eyes down from his face so she wouldn’t have to see that look.

He had his sleeves cuffed up to the elbow. A thread of blue vein ran along the muscle in his forearms, like an irrigation ditch snaking through a field. It gave Lace an idea of what the rest of his body must have been like under the loose fit of those old clothes, the kind of thin muscle that made him strong but not as big as the other men.

Abuela would murder her for thinking about a Corbeau with his shirt off. Lace tried to make herself stop, sure that Abuela would sense the thought from across town. But the more she tried to force it aside, the more the thought came floating back, like a balloon bobbing up after being held underwater. It was like the game she and her cousins tormented each other with. Don’t think of a Christmas tree. Don’t think of an alpaca. And then all they could think about for the rest of the day would be a whole herd of alpaca, or a pine forest big enough for every Christmas tree in the world.

She shoved the watermelon and the bag of peaches into his arms and flicked away the memory of that net. She pushed down the knowledge that he put into the water something that almost killed Magdalena, and could have killed her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For what I said. For how I acted. I’m sorry.”

“Heavily medicated?” he asked.

“Something like that,” she said. “I just came to say thank you for what you did.”

“Anytime,” he said. “Well, not anytime. Never again, I hope.”

“So we’re okay?” she asked. The sooner he forgave her, the sooner the feather would heal. Her apology was the same as her cousins returning that Camargue colt.

Something behind Lace got Cluck’s attention. “Great.” He stopped a girl who looked about his age, wings on her back. He said something to her in French and set the paper bag and watermelon into her arms.

The girl eyed the watermelon. “I don’t think it’s ripe. It’s purple.”

“It’s supposed to be purple,” Lace said.

The girl startled, realizing Lace was there. Were they all this jumpy whenever anyone who was not a Corbeau came near the Craftsman house?

The girl eyed Lace, then took the fruit toward the house.

Cluck sprang toward one of the vanity mirrors, where the red-haired woman leaned over a pale-haired one, dotting color on her eyelids. The red blossoms on her flower crown almost touched the vanilla roses on the other woman’s head.

“Eugenie,” he said. “What are you doing?”