Feathertide Read online

  In a panic, I scrambled back towards the canopy, feeling the betrayal and the sting of tears in my eyes. As I wiped them away, I saw something moving in the shadows hidden from the audience by a second tent flap and a giant folding partition. On a table lay a woman who was being inched and squeezed into the large silver-blue tail of a fish. It had been stitched to a wide flesh-coloured strip of elastic, and attached seamlessly around her waist. She was clearly the star attraction, but she wasn’t real, not like the Bear Boy. Once securely fastened, they lifted her from the table and hoisted her over the top of a large glass tank, then with a quiet splosh, they dropped her into the water. One of them reached up to spill the contents of an ink bottle into the gloom and the woman inside swished her tail and swam round in little circles swilling the ink until the water inside shone a luminous blue.

  Strange patterns waltzed across the ground and leapt up the walls of the tent, before quivering back down again in nervous retreat. She perched on the edge of a giant nautilus shell, which must have been carved out of marble. Mesmerised, I watched as her hair tumbled and wrapped itself around her, glittering like golden tinsel in the water. It shone with pearls, each one like a tiny iridescent moon. She reminded me of the doll I had seen on my first visit to the market, the one given to the little girl by her papa. A mermaid. Her bare flesh gleamed and shimmered, and I was held captive. It was then I felt her soft gaze fall upon me, and I stepped back until I could feel the canopy wall of the tent behind me, and I could go no further. This was a beautiful act, but it wasn’t real. Slowly she raised a finger to her mouth and pressed it gently against her lips, and I swear I could hear the sound of the sea. It felt like I was drowning, there in the watery gloom where I could no longer separate myth from reality.

  ‘Here’s another one!’ yelled a voice in disgust.

  It was then that I noticed the heckler from the audience was scowling down at me as I sat on the ground. Other faces had begun to turn their attention my way and they all wore the same expression, one of revolt and pity. The liquorice-sucking girls stared wide-eyed with wrinkled noses, as though they could smell something unpleasant. Then they scurried away as though I might fly towards them and peck them both to death.

  The man rolled his eyes in exasperation and turned away from me. Then he clapped his hands and rubbed them together as though in readiness to devour some delicious feast. ‘Who cares about the rest of these freaks with fur or feathers! They just get stuck in your teeth, which is why you must first pluck a goose before you can eat it!’ His words were followed by a loud cheer of agreement. ‘We want the mermaid!’ he cried, rousing the audience once again. ‘Mermaid! Mermaid! Mermaid!’

  I thought I saw the dark shadow of a giant feathered wing pass over me just as I felt a firm hand clasp around my wrist and pull me backwards out of the tent.

  CHAPTER 6

  The hand belonged to Lemàn; she had found me crouching under the tent and was hauling me to my feet.

  ‘You must never do that again!’ she threatened in a tone that I had never heard her use before, dragging me all the way back to the top of the hill in breathless anguish. ‘You do not understand the cruelty of this world.’

  ‘But I stayed away from the lonely woman in the forest.’ I protested, biting back the tears.

  ‘The danger is not in the forest,’ she replied, shaking her head.

  Visibly shocked and trembling, she led me to the cellar and quickly shut the door on my questions. This time, it was my heart that pounded relentlessly, not Lemàn’s, but it wasn’t with fear; it was with anger and something else that I couldn’t name then, but later I learned it was the first pang of desire. The feelings that freedom could bring.

  There was something about the girl in the water that I couldn’t forget. For some reason, I wanted to touch her, but not in the same way I wanted to touch Bear Boy, to see if he was real or not; I already knew she wasn’t what she was pretending to be. I had watched her being stitched into her disguise and seen the breathing tube lowered into the water after her. This was something else, something more urgent, and more incessant, and I couldn’t possibly have known the trouble that desire would bring.

  Lemàn had lied to me for all these years. She had hidden me because I was an ugly little secret, ugly enough to be mocked and ridiculed and paraded around inside a circus tent like the Bear Boy. More monster than princess. For a long time, I refused to come out of my room, and whenever I heard her footfalls on the stairs, I turned my body against the wall.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my little firecracker,’ she would whisper night after night into the unwelcoming dark.

  Her words made my feathers bristle and we both suffered in the continuing silence. It was only once I heard the sound of her quiet retreat that I released my breath into a sob against my pillow. The midnight chimes had finally rung out and the spell was forever broken. The only person I spoke to was Professor Elms, and even then my words to him were angry and few.

  ‘Do you know how much Lemàn loves you?’ he asked in earnest, as I sat on the floor, sorting through my pine cones.

  ‘Lemàn is a liar.’ My words bit, hard as bullets. ‘They are all liars.’

  Professor Elms looked shocked. ‘They were trying to protect you.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, they weren’t. They made me believe I was special and beautiful and—’ I felt my voice break and fall apart.

  ‘And you are all of those things.’ He spoke softly. ‘Unfortunately, the world is not always such a welcoming place.’

  ‘You mean for someone like me? Someone with feathers.’ I scrunched my face in disgust, and threw the pine cones back in the box with a clatter. It was then that I noticed the egg. In a fury, I grabbed it and crushed it in my hand. I had expected there to be a yellow puddle inside, but instead it was dry and empty. Fumbling the lid closed, I shoved it back under the bed.

  ‘Some mothers are forced to sell their babies at birth … others have no choice but to give them away. Some are desperate for money, others desperate to—’ Professor Elms looked startled, as though he had suddenly revealed too much.

  ‘Others are desperate to what?’ My voice was filled with angry insistence; it demanded an answer, but none came. ‘Fine – don’t tell me then … keep your secrets.’

  There was a long pause, filled with nothing but the sound of dipping rain at the window.

  Finally, he spoke. ‘Others are desperate to escape the shame.’

  ‘See, I knew it,’ I snapped. ‘You think I’m something to be ashamed of too?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Professor Elms looked wounded. He came closer and sat down on the bed, his chin sinking to his chest. ‘Lemàn wanted to keep you with her, no matter what the risk was. Don’t you see – it is her lies that have kept you safe all this time.’

  ‘Safe?’ I spat the word at him.

  ‘The world doesn’t always understand things that are different. It was the fear of others, and not the shame of you, that made Lemàn lie. Her whole life, since you arrived, has been spent protecting you.’

  He left me alone after that, and I wondered about all the mothers who had given birth to babies they weren’t allowed to keep. I wondered about Bear Boy’s mother. How long had she been able to hold him or had she rejected him the moment she had seen the thick fur covering his body? Had she cried in anguish or in relief when they had come to take him away? Even the crushed egg had a mother who perhaps still wondered what had happened to it. Inside I ached. Although the world might see me as ugly, deep down I knew that when Lemàn said I was beautiful, she really meant it.

  That night, before Lemàn arrived, someone else came to my room and it was the last person I expected. Although the footsteps were unmistakable, and the waft of lilies familiar, I couldn’t believe it until I saw her standing in the doorway with her silent lips pressed tightly together, simply waiting. Her eyes offered no approval as they narrowed with intensity, making me pull the blankets over the tremble of my hands. What had brought her h
ere? It was a game of patience and the next move was hers.

  Finally, she broke the silence, but didn’t move further into the room. I realised then that I didn’t know her voice; it was strange to me. Sorren usually chose not to address me directly and I had heard so few of her words that I wouldn’t have recognised who spoke them from behind a closed door. Even now, she spoke briefly and with unquestionable authority.

  ‘You are being selfish,’ she said, bluntly. It was said with such assertion that no one would have dared to argue. ‘You do not think about the sacrifices Lemàn has made for you.’ She paused for a moment, holding me in her glare. ‘The sacrifices she continues to make.’

  If I had been dog, I would have whimpered and cowered in a corner, but instead I just nodded, burning hot with shame. Then Sorren turned and disappeared and just like that it was all over. Later, when Lemàn crept down the cellar stairs, I was already half asleep, but when I woke again some hours later, she was in my bed and I was in her arms.

  ‘I made a terrible mistake,’ she murmured into my ear. ‘Please forgive me for it.’ Her voice shook like a storm-filled wood.

  Reaching for her hand, I held it in my own, and pressed myself against her shoulder. I heard her inhale the scent of my feathers, and then she sighed as though she had been relieved of a great weight, one she could no longer carry without it breaking her back.

  ‘You must promise that you will always tell me the truth,’ I said.

  She kissed my ear. ‘I promise.’

  Feeling safe again, I snuggled deeper into the shelter of her arm.

  ‘To me you will always be beautiful, and I never lied about that, but people see things in lots of different ways and I can’t change that. If I had a magic wand I would; then the whole world would see you just as I do.’

  I nudged her in the side. ‘Enough of the fairy tales,’ I said, and we both quietly giggled.

  ‘What happened to your marionette?’ she asked, in alarm.

  Dawn light had begun to filter into the room, and in the corner she had seen the broken heap of my marionette; its feathers torn from the wood and scattered all over the floor.

  ‘I was angry,’ I replied, flatly. It had been such a foolish thing to do, just like the egg. In my rage, I had destroyed what I loved most and, in doing so, the only person I had punished was myself.

  ‘What a shame,’ she said, reaching out and lifting it from the floor and onto the bed. As she did, its leg fell off followed by a fluttering feather. It was such a sorry sight that I couldn’t bear to look at it.

  ‘Don’t worry; it can be fixed. See how beautiful it is under all those feathers, and how smooth? If we scrub away all that glue with warm water and then polish the wood with beeswax it will be a marionette again. Perhaps more of a giraffe than a bird, though,’ she said, trying to find its lost leg, which was somewhere under the bed. Giving up, she dropped the marionette back to the floor and held me close. Her breathing grew steady and I knew sleep wasn’t far away.

  ‘There is still magic in the world you know,’ she said, drowsily. ‘Often, it is spun by the heart and felt so deeply that you never stop smiling. Sometimes it is so bright that it makes you believe in the impossible. My wish is that one day you will find it.’

  I didn’t sleep after that. Her words kept me thinking and hoping, and, lying there in my bed, I allowed myself one last wish: to find the magic she had spoken of.

  Although I had forgiven her, my anger hadn’t gone away completely; instead it had turned to my feathers. Once I had thought they made me feel beautiful and special, but now I saw them as the enemy. Whereas before they felt light and fluttery, now they hung like a thick, heavy coat worn in summer. I had once loved their shine and longed for the whores to play with them in wonder; now I shuddered at their glances and shunned their touch, as though I carried a disease. My feathers were an affliction that could never be cured, and I hated them.

  One day, I was helping a whore soak her body in almond oil. Massaging it into her skin, soft and white as a boiled egg, I loved how my hands glided up and down her arms, how silky it felt beneath my fingertips. When I had finished, I secretly dropped the oil into my pocket and, later, in my room, I tried to rub it into my own skin, but the feathers stuck to my fingertips and then to each other until I was left with wet, sticky tangled clumps that looked like spewed fur balls. I remembered Lemàn’s words about my broken puppet: how beautiful it is under all those feathers, and how smooth and how it could be fixed. Once more, I was reminded of my ugliness. In frustration, I threw the jar of oil against the wall; it smashed and out spilled a memory.

  It was from one of my first visits to town. I was standing in the street by the open doorway of a shop. I could see white movement within, so much white that it looked like it was snowing inside, and I peered in disbelief at what I thought was a spectacular swirl of snowflakes. Searching through the blizzard, my eyes began to take in the scene within, and, to my horror, I saw a sitting man plunge a chicken headfirst into a bucket of boiling water. Lifting it out, he thwacked it across his grimy, grease-smeared knee and began to pluck out its feathers with furious speed, tossing flurried fistfuls of them into the air, creating the feather-storm I had seen from the street. I felt faint and had to steady myself against the wall. In a matter of minutes, all that was left was its pink, pimpled and puckered body, which he flung heartlessly on an ever-growing pile, only to begin all over again. It may not have been snow inside the shop that day, but it left me just as frozen.

  The memory gave me an idea, and, grabbing a fistful of feathers from my left shoulder, I pulled as hard as I could. The pain made me scream out loud, but their roots held strong and deep. I released them and lifted one up by itself, holding it between my finger and thumb, I tugged, but still it held firm. I tugged again until finally it loosened and then fell into my palm. But I could hardly pull them out one by one, there were far too many for that.

  Later that night, unable to sleep, I crept into the kitchen, and, taking a pair of scissors, blunt from cutting into too much fat, I chopped away at my feathers until I was left with nothing but ugly stubs, sharp as little daggers. Still, I didn’t have the silky, smooth skin I desired. My stubble reminded me of the demons who came to the whorehouse not just to satisfy their needs, but also sometimes for a clean and polish, like a tea set brought out for a special occasion. The whores would lather up their faces and take the sharp edge of a blade to their neck, scraping them clean of both foam and bristle. Afterwards, their faces would look pale and smooth like boiled potatoes. Men reduced to boys with the flick of a wrist.

  My frustration made me bold and reckless. I knew where the blades were kept and slid one from the drawer. I held the sharp, glinting edge against my upper arm and then without hesitation I sliced into my skin, too deep, right down to the bone. I didn’t notice the blood immediately or feel any pain as I continued desperately to slice up and down my arm, pleased as I watched the remaining bits of feather flutter to the floor. Then, slowly realising what I had done, I dropped the razor blade with a clatter. What started as a slow trickle soon became a dark flood and I collapsed to the floor.

  How much time passed, I do not know, but when I opened my eyes, I felt myself being rocked in Sorren’s arms, revived by the smelling salts which she held in a pouch under my nose. I could see her hands were smeared with my blood and patches of red soaked into her skirt like great flowery blooms. Then it was Lemàn’s face I saw in the doorway, crumpled in panic, her cheeks wet with tears. She rushed into the room and lifted me out of Sorren’s embrace and began to bathe and bandage my wounds. My feathers, which I so desperately wanted to hide, were now all over the floor as though a fox had feasted in a hen house, only this time the fox wasn’t to blame. Sorren said nothing, and when I looked round the room, she had gone. After that, I knew to leave my feathers well alone. Within weeks they had grown back again and had lost none of their shine, and no one would ever have known I had ever tried to cut them from my skin. It’s only
if you look very closely that you can see the silvery scars beneath, a permanent reminder of my mistake.

  CHAPTER 7

  As the years passed, my lessons with Professor Elms continued happily. He was encouraged by the curiosity of my mind and my inquisitive thoughts, and taught me so many things. Leaving my childhood behind brought a sad end to our secret walks in the fields and the wonder-filled woods, which were gradually replaced with the reading of articles, then books. Finally, he heaved great tomes up the hill so I could learn about things I might never get the chance to see: year-long battles; emperors who ruled the world from their palaces; nomadic tribes in their shelters of skin and bone, temples of worship and rivers of larva, deep oceans and distant stars. He tested my mind on solving impossible equations and different scientific theories, but my learning became stilted and slow, and, whenever I lost interest, my eyes would wander from the books to the oblong light of the window and yet another world I seemed to have left behind.

  One day, Professor Elms was trying to teach me about algebra.

  ‘It’s the reunion of broken pieces,’ he said, but my mind held no space for numbers and, sensing my distraction, he let the book fall shut with a thud. It woke me from my reverie. Then, reaching for one of my pencils, he began to draw.

  ‘There is so much out there,’ he whispered, as though whatever it was might hear us. ‘Beyond the lane and the woods and even the ocean, and further than the eye can see, lie the Scatterings.’

  ‘What are the Scatterings?’ I looked up, suddenly wanting to know what lay beyond the shiver of blue.

  ‘Islands … floating cities, lost at sea.’

  ‘Floating cities,’ I repeated his words. ‘How far away are they?’

  ‘Too far to count the number of days it will take you to reach them. They float in the many seas.’

  ’And where did they come from?’ I sat crossed-legged on the edge of my seat, as though this would somehow bring them closer.