The Weight of Feathers

Lace propped herself up on her elbows. A thin layer of silt coated her breasts.

The scales on her back caught the light. He counted five, each perfect, like the adhesive rain hadn’t touched them. The reaction between the cyanoacrylate and the cotton of her dress should have burned them as much as the rest of her, hiding them. Instead they arced across the small of her back, smooth as coins of scar tissue, iridescent like the leucistic peacock’s eyespots. She moved her hips, and a handful of colors showed.

The blade of that paring knife pulled back, the wound mending shut.

She moved, and the waist of her tail slipped down an inch.

He counted a sixth, a seventh, each iridescent as a blue mussel shell.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said, counting them again, this constellation of moons glowing under her skin.



árbol que nace torcido, jamás su tronco endereza.

A twisted tree will not grow straight.

Cluck took her right ankle in his hand. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”

His hair was still wet with river water. It dampened his shirt collar, graying the white cloth.

Lace’s soaked the back of her dress, turning the thin fabric cold. Her dress was a little like the one the adhesive rain ruined, off-white, saffron-colored flowers instead of blue. She was already forgetting the lost one. The details were falling away. How many petals the blue flowers had. Whether the agua de jamaica stain that stayed, stubborn, through so many washes was on the right sleeve or the left.

Tía Lora had made them both. Missing her clutched at Lace.

Now that she thought of her great-aunt, the act of showing herself to Cluck Corbeau in nothing but her tail felt like a betrayal. With her costume top gone, Lace hadn’t known what to wear on top—a bra? The camisole she slept in? So she’d just worn the tail, and the way Cluck looked at her made her feel brave and sure, like his stare was covering her so no one else could see her.

Cluck soaked a brush in a dish of iodine. It smelled like nail polish remover, salt, balsamic vinegar left out too long. Lace’s stomach tightened. Smells like that no longer reminded her of painting her nails, but of the solvents they used on her in the hospital, the morphine holding her under. The smell wrapped around her throat.

He ran the brush along the bottom of her foot. The feeling of bristles on her arch made her twitch.

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re ticklish, aren’t you?”

The iodine soaked into her foot, darkening the sole so it was almost as brown as her hair. “What’s this for?”

“It’s good for climbing trees.” He held her other ankle and painted the sole of her left foot. “It seals your skin. Keeps things from getting in, makes you less sensitive to the grain of the bark.”

The night she found him in his tree, the soles of his feet had been pale as his palms, shades lighter than the rest of him. They stood out like the moon. “You don’t use it.”

“I’ve been climbing trees barefoot long enough I don’t need to.” He rinsed off the brush, twisted the iodine bottle shut. “My cousins all do it. It helps with the show.”

The iodine dried, leaving the soles of her feet tight and leathery.

He pulled her to standing. “Close your eyes.”

She did. “Why?”

His fingers brushed her shoulders and set a ribbon against her rib cage. The heel of his hand grazed her right breast, a band of thin satin following after.

Weight pulled on her back. A feather skimmed her neck.

She stopped his hands with hers. “Forget it. I’m not one of your fairies.”

“Trust me, okay?”

“Are you trying to convert me?” She reached back and slapped at him, her hand hitting the thigh of his pants.

He gathered her hair and moved it to her left shoulder. “No.” He fastened the ribbon between her shoulder blades, his fingers warm on her dress. He tied the bow and knotted it. He moved her, turning her waist to lead her. “You can open.”