And maybe that was the thread for the series, Maeve thought. Fantasy birds, things that belonged in fairy tales and medieval bestiaries, feathered refugees from mythology and legend scattered throughout a modern city that refused to see them there.
She could paint that. It would be a series of paintings that would let her do something powerful if she got them right.
Maeve sat at her computer, and began compiling image files of harpy and cockatrice, phoenix and firebird. There were, she thought, so many stories of dead and vengeful women returning as ghost birds, but nothing about men who did so. Not that she thought what she had seen was a ghost, or that she was trying some form of research-based bibliomancy to discern the story behind the bird (the man) she kept seeing, but she wouldn’t have turned away an answer.
“And would it have made you feel better if you had found one? Because hallucinating a ghost bird in Manhattan is so much better than if you’re just seeing a naked werebird? Honestly.” She shook her head.
Though it wasn’t a hallucination. Not with the picture on her phone. Why it was easier to think she was losing her mind than to accept that she had seen something genuinely impossible was something Maeve didn’t understand.
She printed out reference photos for all the impossible birds she hadn’t yet seen, and taped them over the walls.
In the beginning, when the curse’s claws still bled him, and Sweeney had nothing to recall him to himself or his humanity, he would fly after Eorann, who had been his wife, before he was a bird. She was the star to his wanderings.
Eorann had loved Sweeney, and so she had tried, at the beginning, to break the curse. Unspeaking, she wove garments from nettles and cast them over Sweeney like nets, in the hopes that pain and silence spun together might force a bird back into a man’s shape. Even had one perfect wing lingered as a reminder of his past and his errors, it would have been change enough. More, it would have been stasis, a respite from the constant and unpredictable change that, Sweeney discovered, was the curse’s true black heart.
When that did not work, she had shoes made from iron, and walked the length and breadth of Ireland in an attempt to wear them out. But she was already east of the sun and west of the moon, the true north of her compass set to once upon a time. Such places are not given to the wearing out of iron shoes.
Eorann spun straw into gold, then spun the gold into thread that flexed and could be woven into a dress more beautiful than the sun, the moon, and the stars. She uncurdled milk, and raised from the dead a cow that gave it constantly, without needing food nor drink of its own. If there were a miracle, a marvel, or a minor wonder that Eorann could perform in the hopes of breaking Sweeney’s curse, she did so.
Until the day she didn’t.
“A wife’s role may be many things, Sweeney. But it is not a wife’s job to break a husband’s curse, not when he is the one who has armored himself in it.”
Those were the last words that Eorann had spoken to him. From the distance of time, Sweeney could admit now that she was right. Still, from the height of the unfeeling sky, he wished that she had been the saving of him.
“Well, they’re different. That ’s certain,” Brian said, walking between the canvases.
“If different means crap, just say so. I’m too tired to parse euphemisms.”
Maeve only had one completed canvas—the man transforming into a bird. But she had complete studies of two others—a phoenix rising out of the flame of a burning skyline, and a harpy hovering protectively over a woman.
“They’re darker than your usual thing, but powerful.” Brian stepped back, walked back and forth in front of the canvas.
“They’re good. I’ve a couple galleries in mind—I’ll start making calls.
“You’ll come to the opening, of course.”
“No,” Maeve said. “Absolutely not. Nonnegotiable.”
“Look, the reclusive artist thing was fine when you were starting out, because you didn’t matter enough for people to care about you. But we can charge real money for these. People who pay real money for their art aren’t just buying a decoration for their wall, they’re buying the story that goes with it.”
Maeve was pretty sure no one wanted to buy the story of the artist who had a panic attack at her own opening. No, scratch that. She was absolutely sure someone would want to buy that story. She just didn’t want to sell her paintings badly enough to give it to them.
“Well, then how about the story is I am a recluse. A crazy bird lady instead of a crazy cat lady. I live with the chickens. Whatever you need to say. But I don’t interact with the people buying my work, and I don’t go to openings.”
“You’re lucky I’m good at my job, Maeve.”
“I’m good at mine, too.”
Brian sighed. “Of course you are. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. But I don’t understand why you don’t just buy yourself a pretty dress, and have fun letting rich people buy you drinks and tell you how wonderful you are.
“Let yourself celebrate a little. It’s the fun part of the job, Maeve.”
It wasn’t, not for her. Of course, Brian wouldn’t understand that. Maeve worked too hard to keep her panic attacks hidden. She had an entire portfolio of tricks to keep them manageable, and out of view.
Out of the apartment was fine, as long as she didn’t have to interact with too many people. Crowds were okay as long as she had someone she knew with her, and she didn’t have to interact with the people she didn’t know. When she had to meet new people, she did so in familiar surroundings, either one on one, or in a group of people she already knew and felt comfortable with. Even then, she usually needed a day at home, undisturbed, after, in order to rest and regain her equilibrium.
A party where everyone would be strangers who wanted to pay attention to her, who wanted her to interact with them, with no safety net of friends that she could fall onto, was impossible.
Even after Eorann had told Sweeney that she could not save him, it took him some time to realize that he would need to be the saving of himself. More time still, an infinity of church bells, of molting feathers, to understand that saving himself did not necessarily include lifting the curse.
In search of himself, of answers, of peace, long and long ago, Sweeney had undertaken a quest.
A quest is a cruel migration. This is the essence of a quest, no matter who undertakes it. But Sweeney had not known what to look for, save for the longing to see something other than what he was.
The Sangréal had been found once already, and though lost again, it was the kind of thing where the first finding mattered. The dragons were all in hiding, and Sweeney had never particularly thought they needed to be slain.