The Weight of Feathers

“I was trying to find Eugenie.” No flinch of lying in his face. Only the tired look of remembering. “The mixing tank blew, and nobody knew where she was.”


Maybe Cluck hadn’t put the net in the water. Maybe he wasn’t the reason Lace was late getting out of the river. All of that could not live inside his body. Enough malice to go trapping mermaids. Enough worry to keep track of his cousins. Enough fearlessness of the poison in that rain to help Lace when he did not know her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You said that already.”

But this time she meant it.

“Don’t worry.” He turned his head, his temple against the wall. “We’re good.”

They weren’t good. She owed him however long he’d make her stay, however many nights cleaning brushes and fixing eye shadow he wanted. She’d work off the feather scar, stop fighting against the debt and just pay it.

Cluck got up, smoothed out his shirt, held out his hand to help her up. Burns had reddened his palm, leaving his skin uneven as raw citrine.

That night outside the liquor store, she hadn’t known his last name. The night of the accident, she’d seen the feather, but her skin was too covered in poison to fight. But right now, she had no excuse. Taking his hand would mean touching a Corbeau on purpose.

But taking his hand was less of a betrayal to her family than touching any other Corbeau. These people, Cluck’s own family, hated him. They didn’t say it but she felt it, like heat under the earth. His hand looked like it had gotten broken all at once, maybe slammed in a door, or crushed under a costume trunk. If these people loved him, they would’ve gotten him to a doctor in time to save his fingers.

If she hated him, she’d be like them, their scorn of Cluck Corbeau the same as a shared eye color. It would make her one of them.

But she could defy this family by touching him.

She shut her eyes, took his hand, let him pull her to standing. The grain of his burns gliding over hers stung. The heat of his hand radiated through her wrist. If she squeezed her eyes shut harder, she could hear Abuela’s gasp like the rush of the river’s current.

But it didn’t kill her. And it didn’t make her father and Tía Lora feel any farther away.

“Nice work last night,” Cluck said. “You’re good. And fast. Where’d you learn?”

“Community theater on the weekends.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Sure, you are.”

“Seventeen.”

The raise of his eyebrows showed the swelling along his temple. If he didn’t keep ice on it, he’d get a bruise.

“In September,” she said.

“Does your family know where you are?”

“No,” she said.

“Are they looking?”

“Fat chance.”

He shrugged, a look telling her he wouldn’t push it. He kept the ice on his jaw and stepped into the hallway.

“Cluck?” she said.

He turned around.

“All those feathers,” she said. “Do you kill peacocks for them?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“Where do you get them?” she asked.

He thumbed a blood spot off his lip. “You really want to know?”





Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée.

A door must be open or shut.

Cluck opened the Morris Cowley’s passenger side. He watched Lace stare into the truck cab. The look on her face wasn’t fear, the skittishness of a bitten animal, un chat échaudé qui craint l’eau froide. It was suspicion.

People always found something they didn’t like about his family. They were Romani. They were French. They were show people. The traveling kind.

“Did you think we brought a flock with us everywhere?” he asked. “If you want to know where I get the feathers, we’re gonna have to drive there.”

“What’s your real name?” she asked.

He laughed. He liked that she wanted to know that before she decided whether she was getting in the truck, but it didn’t mean he was gonna tell her. Everyone called him Cluck. His real name wasn’t any more of her business than her family was his.

“Sven,” he said.

“No, really. What’s your real name?”