The Weight of Feathers

Thanks to Lace, a little of la magie noire ran through his blood. A trace of what made her a Paloma had gotten into him.

He liked it, that sense of something new and sharp and alive. If he forgot for a second that Lace and that woman who made him think of Mémère were Palomas, it made him feel safe and awake. Like when everyone was gone in the afternoon, and Cluck slept for that one quiet hour before call time, knowing Dax and his mother were far from the blue and white trailer. He’d wake up and splash cold water on his face, ready for all the evening’s noise and little lights.

But just because he liked what Lace had done to him didn’t mean he’d let it go one way.

It was time he returned the favor.



Qui craint le danger ne doit pas aller en mer.

He who fears danger should not go to sea.

He didn’t remember finishing, or falling asleep.

The sun came through the Airstream’s curtains, needling his eyes. It lit up the worktable, and the hundreds of leucistic feathers wired into wings. They had the same frame as the other wings, bent metal standing in for humerus, ulna, radius. Carpals and metacarpals. The leucistic peacock’s back coverts, molted each season, shaped the grain of the feathers.

The sun showed the faint washes on the eyespots. The sheer yellow of a lemon slice’s inner curve. A blush of pink and violet. The blue and green of certain chickens’ eggs.

He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck, stiff from falling asleep at the table. He hadn’t been able to use the wire frame he’d salvaged after the accident. Those were for men’s wings, too tall and broad for Lace’s body.

He checked the blue and white trailer. “Lace?”

She wasn’t there. She’d smoothed the sheet on the built-in, folded the blanket. Her suitcase was flopped closed but not locked.

A point of light winked from the floor. He picked it up, held it to the window. A plastic sequin, pink and translucent as a grapefruit segment.

He took off toward the woods. If that sequin had fallen off what he thought it had fallen off of, he had to find her before Dax did.

He ran toward the river, listening for the sound of her splashing over the soft rush of the current.

Through the reeds, he spotted the pink of her costume and the wet black of her hair. She turned in the water, the sun glinting off her body. It made the drops on her shoulders and arms glow. It glimmered through the beads and sequins on her costume. Her fin flicked the river, a petal off a tulip tree.

Her skin was healing. Though still dark as new blackberries, the heart on her cheek had grown small as an apricot. The burns on her back had lightened and started to scar over.

She dove down, staying under so long he thought of the colanders catching her tail.

“Lace?” He took off his shirt to go in after her.

She surfaced, blinking the sediment from her eyes. How did she tread with that tail on? Wet, with all the beading, it must’ve weighed ten pounds.

His family would tell him countless men had lost their lives this way. In stories, soldiers and travelers neared ponds and rivers, drawn by les feux follets, those luring lights, and the laughter and singing of water spirits. Some were like Melusine, the river spirit whose legs became fins every Saturday. If a mortal man caught her in her true form, she would turn to a serpent and kill him.

These were his family’s bedtime stories, those evil women with scales on their bodies and fins for feet. Where other children were told not to play with fire, Cluck and his brother and cousins were warned off water. When Cluck was thirteen or fourteen, his grandfather cautioned him against the nivasia, mermaids who became pregnant by mortal men and then murdered them.

All those stories ended the same. She was beautiful. A man loved her. She killed him.

Lace saw him, but didn’t startle.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“You said you wanted to see it.” She flicked her tail, and water sprayed his forearms. “I thought if I showed you, you’d tell me what happened to your hand.”