Nor had he known the map with which to travel by, save for one that would take him to a place other than where he was. He took wing. Over sea and under stone and then over the sea to sky.
Maeve saw the bird at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine again. Cathedrals, churches, museums, libraries, they were useful sorts of places for her. When the walls of her apartment pressed too tightly, these were places she could go, and sit, and think, and not have to worry about people insisting that she interact with them in order to justify her presence.
“I came here for peace and quiet, you know. Not because I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of you naked.”
The bird did not seem to have an opinion on that.
When she sat, Maeve specifically chose a bench that did not have a line of sight to the bird’s current perch. Not like it couldn’t fly, but it was the principle of the thing. And she really didn’t want to see it become a naked man again.
Stories about artistic inspiration that came to life and then interacted with the artist were only interesting if they were stories. When they were your life, they were weird.
The bird landed next to her on the bench.
Maeve looked at her bird, at her sketchbook, and back at the bird.
“Fine. Fine. But do not turn into a man. Not in front of me. Just don’t. If you think you’re going to, leave. Please.” She tore off a chunk of her croissant and set it on the bird’s side of the bench. “Okay?”
Maeve was relieved when the bird did not answer.
There was a package from Brian waiting for her when she got home. The card read, “For the crazy bird lady.”
Inside was a beautiful paper bird. A crane, but not the expected origami. Paper-made sculpture, not folded. Feathers and wings and beak all shaped from individual pieces of brightly colored paper. It was a gorgeous fantasy of practicality and feathers.
Maeve tucked it on a shelf, where she could see it while she painted.
He hadn’t answered her today, the red-haired painter. Sweeney could speak in bird form—he was still a man, even when feather-clad—but he had learned, finally, the value of silence.
This had not always been so. It had been speaking that had first called his curse down upon him.
He had called out an insult to Ronan. Said something he should not have, kept speaking when he should have driven a nail through his tongue to hold his silence.
Ronan had spoken then, too. Spoken a word that burnt the sky, and shifted the bones of the earth. A curse, raw and dire. That was the first time the madness fell upon Sweeney. The madness, and the breaking of himself into the too-light bones that made up a bird’s wing.
When it came down to it, it was pride that cursed Sweeney into his feathers as sure as pride had melted Icarus out of his. Pride, and a too-quick temper, faults that dwelt in any number of people without changing their lives and their shapes, without sending them on a path of constant migration centered on a reminder of error.
Curses didn’t much care that there were other people they could have landed on, just as comfortably. They fell where they would, then watched the aftermath unfold.
Some days were good days, days when Maeve could walk through her life and not be aware of any of the adjustments she performed to make it livable.
Tuesday was not one of those days.
She had taken the subway, something she did only rarely, preferring to walk. But a sudden hailstorm had driven her underground, and sent what seemed like half of the city after her.
Maeve got off at the second stop, not even sure what street it was. Her pulse had been racing so fast that her vision had gone grey and narrow. If she hadn’t gotten out, away from all those people she would have collapsed.
Her notebook, her most recent sketches for her paintings, was left behind on the Uptown 2 train. It had to have been the train where it went missing. She had been sure it was in her bag when she left her apartment, and it was clearly not among the bag’s upended contents now.
Forty-five minutes on the phone with MTA lost and found had done no more than she expected, and reassured her the odds of its return were small.
And though it had smelled fine—she had checked—the milk with which she had made the hot chocolate that was supposed to make her feel better had instead made her feel decidedly worse.
The floor of the bathroom was cool against her cheek. Exhausted and sick, Maeve curled in on herself, and fell into tear-streaked sleep.
The bird was in her dream, and that was far from the weirdest thing about it.
The sky shaded to lavender, the clouds like ink splotches thrown across it.
Then a head sailed across the waxing moon.
Sweeney cocked his own head, and shifted on the branch.
Another head described an arc across the sky, a lazy rise and fall.
Sweeney looked around. He could not tell where the heads were launching from, nor could he hear any sounds of distress.
Three more heads, in rapid succession, and Sweeney was certain he was mad again. He wished he were in his human form, so that he might throw back his own head and howl.
Five heads popped up in front of Sweeney, corks popping to the surface of the sea.
Identical, each to each, the world’s strangest set of brothers.
They looked, Sweeney thought, cheerful. Certainly more cheerful than he would be, were he suddenly disconnected from the neck down.
Each head had been neatly severed. Or no. Not severed. They looked as if they were heads that had never had bodies at all. Smiling, clean-shaven, bright-eyed. No dangling veins or spines, no ragged skin. No blood.
Sweeney supposed the fact that the heads were levitating was no more remarkable than the fact that they were not bleeding. Still, it was the latter that seemed truly strange.
“Hail.”
?“And.”
??“Well.”
???“Met.”
????“Sweeney,” said the heads.
“Er, hello,” said Sweeney.
????“A.”
???“Fine.”
??“Night.”
?“Isn’t.”
“It?” Their faces were the picture of benevolence.
“Indeed it is,” said Sweeney.
“We.”
?“Would.”
??“Speak.”
???“With.”
????“You.”
As they seemed to be doing that already, Sweeney simply bobbed his head.
????“Do.”
???“You.”
??“Not.”
?“Remember.”
“Us?” The heads circled around Sweeney.
He tried to focus, to imagine them with bodies attached. Nothing about them seemed familiar. He could not see past their duplicated strangeness. “Please forgive me, gentlemen, but I don’t.”
“We.”
?“So.”
??“Often.”
???“Forget.”
????“Ourselves.”
????“Or.”
???“Perhaps.”
??“We.”
?“Haven’t.”
“Met.” They slid into line in front of him again, the last one bumping its left-side neighbor, and setting him gently wobbling.
“Can you read the future, then?” It seemed the most likely explana tion, though nothing about this encounter was at all likely.
“Yes.”
?“And.”
??“No.”
???“Only.”
????“Sometimes.”
Sweeney appreciated the honesty of the answer almost as much as he appreciated the thoroughness.
????“Listen.”
???“Now.”
??“Sweeney.”
?“Listen.”
“Well.”
“No.
?“One.”
??“Chooses.”
???“His.”
????“Quest.”