The Weight of Feathers

“I do.”


“Then why did you do it?” Dax threw him down.

Cluck hit his lip as he fell. The Formica split it open, and blood trailed to his chin, hot as honey.

He slumped against the wall, holding his temples. He could have fought back, but didn’t. It always made it worse. Fighting back turned one bruise to four.

“You think we have rules for the hell of it?” Dax asked. “This, this kind of stuff is why we don’t date anyone who works for us. Because we don’t need anyone getting into some little prise de bec when we’re trying to run a show.”

Relief settled into Cluck’s chest. Dax didn’t know anything. He wouldn’t go after Lace. He’d smack Cluck around a little more and consider his point made. Clémentine and Eugenie and this family’s children would stay as safe as they could be.

“You slept with her, didn’t you?” Dax’s voice vibrated through the trailer.

Cluck wiped at the blood on his lip. Right thumb. Around Dax, he’d gotten used to using only his right hand. “That’s what you think?”

Dax crouched down and grabbed his hand. The blood seeped into Cluck’s thumbprint.

Just stay still. It was all Cluck had to do, and it’d be over. Dax would get bored with him, and leave.

“Why her?” Dax asked. “You could have gone after some girl in town. Why did you have to go after one who works for us?”

Some girl in town. Cluck knew what that meant. In each town where they stopped, he overheard his mother and her sisters make fun of girls with silly, hopeful smiles and too-short jean skirts. “She looks like a nice one,” his aunts would say. “You could give le cygnon to her.” His mother didn’t even bother checking if he was in earshot.

It was half-joking, half-planning. One day he’d be too old not to talk to girls, and when he was, his mother, no doubt with Dax’s help, would steer him toward one who would treat him like a thing to be tamed, controlled, contained. His family wanted him with a woman who would pet him and keep him from biting anyone. A girl with a drawer full of pink lipstick and a heart for some blue-eyed local who hadn’t liked her back. She’d get as bored with Cluck as Cluck would get with her.

Lace hadn’t bored him or gotten bored.

Dax jerked Cluck’s right hand. “Why her?”

Because it was hard to make her laugh, and hard to scare her.

“Why do you hate us?” Dax asked, sadness pulling at the corners of his eyes. Pity that Cluck had been born the thing he was. Frustration that he hadn’t fixed Cluck. “Why do you hate this family?”

“I don’t,” Cluck said.

Dax held Cluck’s hand open.

Cluck tried to pull it away. “Don’t do this.”

Dax held onto it.

This couldn’t happen again. As far as Dax knew, he’d broken him like a colt, made him right-handed. What else did he want?

Where’s the net, cygnon? The question from nine years ago knocked around in Cluck’s head. The nickname Dax tried to make stick.

Nine years ago Cluck had found a net hidden under his brother’s bed, bright blue nylon. His cousins had been leaving rope nets in the lake and river for years, and the Palomas always found them. But in the water, the nylon would be invisible. A mermaid could get caught in it, and drown.

It may have been the Palomas, but it was still killing. So Cluck took it, hid it. As soon as Dax found it gone, he knew. He threw Cluck into a wall to try to get him to say where he’d put it.

What did you do with the net, cygnon?

Cluck wouldn’t tell. He wasn’t letting there be blood on his family’s hands. The next blood drawn might be Eugenie’s, or his grandfather’s, or his younger cousins’.

But Dax had caught him fidgeting with a loose button, passing it between his left fingers. What are you doing using this hand? You’re supposed to use your right, crétin.

Now Dax spread out Cluck’s right fingers. “Which one did you touch her with?”

“I didn’t,” Cluck said.