Feathertide Read online

  Tentatively, I lifted the feather from the page and twirled it between my fingers. The vane was the length of my wrist to my elbow, longer and darker than any of the feathers that grew on my body, but the colour was similar, the smouldering flame of a late summer evening. I held it to my nose; caught on the barbs was the smell of cool mountain air, of rain-filled afternoons, and storm-swept nights, of drifting smoke and shivering treetops and something else I couldn’t name, but if sadness had a smell then this would have been it. This feather held all the coordinates of loss. A precious offering, I didn’t want to let it go, its silkiness soothing my fingertips.

  ‘Was he really a bird?’ I whispered, scarcely able to believe what I was asking.

  ‘More that than anything else,’ came her reply.

  Lemàn was no longer a beautiful woman – her body was too misshapen and her face was too grief-etched – but in that moment I saw her eyes sparkle and shine, and her face transformed into something all-knowing and translucent, just like the night I was born. She collected up her memories like breadcrumbs leading her back to a place of happiness.

  ‘I went back to the City of Water, but he had vanished. It was like he had never really existed, but was just a strange and delightful dream, and for a while I thought I was mad, but my growing belly convinced me otherwise. He belonged to the air and the sky and I knew searching cafés and courtyards would reveal nothing but disappointment. I even took ballooning lessons, so convinced was I that he had flown away and lived amongst the clouds.’ She tapped the book by way of explanation. ‘Me, my balloon and my basket heavy with fish to satisfy my constant craving. But I think it was you growing inside me who wanted the fish really. I flew so high I could have polished the stars, one by one, but none of them would have granted my wish.’

  All these years she had been carrying a sorrow so large and looming that it created shadows all around her, yet I had known nothing of it. But then what good would my knowing have done? Maybe I was comfort enough, the piece of him she could still hold on to. The piece that brought her peace.

  ‘Every time a gust of wind swept my balloon from the ground, my heart would lift with it and together we would soar, but I was foolish to think I could find him. The migration of a bird is long and far and constant. A simple balloon is no match for the wings of a bird; I could never have followed his path. I was a fool to think otherwise.’

  ‘How long did you look?’

  ‘I spent months searching the skies for your father, but each time I returned with nothing more than the smell of damp mist clinging to my hair. Still I flew, even when my belly had swollen with you inside. One day, an unexpected wind came and the weight of you sent me hurtling to the ground. I never returned after that; I had you to think of.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for me, do you think you would have stopped looking?’ I suddenly felt overcome with guilt, as though I had become her anchor, weighting her to the ground. She could have continued her search, if she didn’t have me to think about.

  Sensing my guilt as only a mother can, Lemàn wrapped me in her arms again. ‘If it wasn’t for you, my little firecracker, I would never have even started.’ Then she kissed the top of my head and I heard her sigh happily. Finally, she let go and, taking the feather, she replaced it lovingly between the pages of the book and then slapped it shut as though she should never have opened it at all.

  ‘Come on, my little one. It’s late, time to dream,’ she said, rubbing at the aches in her back.

  ‘Little one?’ I said, and we both laughed, for I had grown much taller than her years ago. ‘I have one last question.’ She paused. ‘What did your token say?’

  She smiled. ‘The City of Miracles, and for me it most certainly was.’

  As we left the kitchen, too full of memories, I knew Lemàn wouldn’t sleep that night; even the rum bottle wouldn’t be enough to soothe her mind. The indelible print of my father and my past lay not just on her skin, but in her bones, her cells; it lay behind her eyes and flowed through her veins, it filled the whole of her heart and it was the beat within. I longed to know more, but she had finished their story, and the rest was for me to find.

  Even though Lemàn still called me her little one, I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was time for me to leave, but leaving would break her heart and I didn’t know how to tell her. I was torn between head and heart, between girl and bird.

  I confessed my decision, and with it my fear, to Professor Elms. It was our last secret.

  ‘She is stronger than you think,’ he reassured me, and when I looked into his face, it wasn’t just her sadness I was worried about. I shook my head in doubt. ‘Sometimes, being too close to something means you can no longer see it clearly.’

  I had emptied my birthday jar, spreading the gifts over my bed, sorting through them one by one as Lemàn appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Seventeen,’ I said, letting the last one clatter back on the top. We both gazed at the jar. ‘It’s almost full.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, not meeting my eye. ‘It is.’ We both knew what that meant, but neither of us wanted to say the words.

  ‘Maybe there’s room for one more.’ There was a tremble of hope in her voice.

  ‘When you gave me this jar, you said that once it was full, I would have a decision to make.’ I nestled it on my lap and pretended to study the contents, although I had seen them all so many times before. For so long I had been keeping an ocean inside, but now I wanted to sail away upon its waves.

  Lemàn sighed deeply. ‘Yes – I remember.’

  ‘Well, I have decided.’ There was a crack in my voice, a fissure of guilt that I couldn’t hide. She seemed to have aged before my eyes and I had never really noticed before. Her jaw was slack and saggy, deep furrows burrowed into her cheeks and across her forehead and she held her back often as though it ached every time she moved. I gulped back the guilt, still unable to find the words I needed. She sat down and began clasping and unclasping her hands as though she wanted to say a prayer, but wasn’t quite sure what to pray for. I spoke quickly before I changed my mind.

  ‘For my next birthday I choose my freedom.’ As soon as I uttered those words, I regretted them. I wanted to snatch them back, and swallow them up until they were all gone, but it was much too late for that.

  Then there was nothing but a heavy silence just like the one all those years ago after my discovery inside the circus tent. When I finally dared to lift my eyes to her, she was sitting motionless, as though she had stopped working, like the hands of Professor Elms’ pocket watch. I had fallen into a black hole, and a ladder weaved out of the Milky Way was the only way I could climb back out again.

  Lemàn pulled me close. ‘Well, that’s something that definitely won’t fit in a jar.’ She tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a long-held sob. I felt the warm tickle of her breath against my neck and my feathers ruffled all the way down my back, damp from her tears. My own fell fast and I let them. We sat in the growing dark, wiping away each other’s tears, until the last trace of light had tiptoed from the room.

  ‘I thought I wanted to keep you here with me always, but I do not want you to live a life like mine,’ she said solemnly.

  ‘Is that why you told me the story about the woman in the forest and the stolen children, so that I would be too afraid to leave?’

  She shuddered her final sob. ‘All I ever wanted to do was to protect you, but I know I can’t be there for ever. That story might not have been true, but there are many versions of it that are.’

  I nodded, trying to understand something I had yet to discover.

  ‘Risk can be beautiful. It is time for you to leave this place. The heart is a wanderer and you must follow it.’ She gave a small half-smile, but her mouth was uneven and I knew her happiness would always be a crooked thing.

  It was like opening the door of a cage to free a bird that had never been taught how to fly, and for a while I sat and wondered about my place in the world. Lemàn had only shown me
a small glimpse of the past, no bigger than the view from my window, and to understand the rest, I needed to find my father. Only then would I discover where I had come from and where I really belonged, and for that I had to go back to the start of the story.

  Later I asked Professor Elms how I could get to The City of Water.

  ‘Ah, for that you will need a boat,’ he replied, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

  CHAPTER 9

  I knew the sea visitors from the shine on their boots. Instead of leaving mud piles at the door, they left salty trails that led to the distant, unfathomable shores of the Scatterings. They didn’t pay with coins; they paid with barrels of rum, which I could hear clatter through the door and rumble down the corridor in readiness for a night of revelry.

  Restless in my room I sat and waited. Upon hearing the unmistakable sound of a rolling barrel, I waited some more, just long enough for the visitor who had brought the barrel to satisfy his needs, and then, slipping on my cloak, I left my room in search of him.

  I had timed it to perfection, as I knew I would, and found him standing by the door adjusting himself. His dark brown face was covered in a messy tangle of hair and dark tousled curls sprang from his head like a sea sponge. His shirt hung untucked and unbuttoned revealing sprouts of hair on his chest and down his large stomach, before disappearing beneath the top of his trousers. I could smell the salt on his skin and the faraway cities netted in his hair. Clutched in his hand was his jacket; the fourth looped stripe around the cuff told me that I had found a captain. Blushing, I looked away and shuffled back further into the shadows as he bent to retrieve his boots. Straightening up, his eyes found me and fell to the swell of my breasts, then to the curve of my hips, where they lingered a little too long and I felt myself blush again. My short hair was no longer disguise enough for his lascivious, dancing eyes; he seemed to be able to unpeel my layers no matter how tightly I pulled them around myself. I now had more to hide than just my feathers. I didn’t want to be touched, not even by his eyes, but the intention in them was clear.

  Then he laughed, shook his head and started pulling on his boots to leave. They hadn’t stomped through endless muddy fields, instead they reflected everything around him. Even the large polished buttons of his jacket gleamed and I could see in them the corridor stretching away behind me. In that moment I took my opportunity and stepped out of the darkness.

  ‘Do you have a boat?’ My words were barely audible, nothing more than a nervous whisper, and he gave no acknowledgment of having heard me. I tried to repeat them, but my mouth was too dry and I had to lick my lips before I could loosen the words. I had never spoken to a stranger without permission, and I kept my hands in a hidden clasp behind my back so he couldn’t see them tremble. Then I waited without daring to breathe.

  He stopped and eyed me curiously. ‘What if I do?’ His voice came suddenly, as coarse as a brush, and as deep as a cave. I wasn’t used to hearing such a sound, and it caused me to shudder.

  ‘I wish to sail to one of the Scatterings. Does your boat go there?’ Although my heart was pounding, I tried to keep the panic out of my voice; with a little tilt of my chin, I held his gaze in pretend defiance.

  He looked mildly amused at my charade. ‘There are hundreds of islands out there. Any one in particular?’

  ‘The City of Water,’ I said.

  With another tug of his boot, he stood up and stamped his foot inside. ‘I will be leaving for the east in three days, but it is a long way and it will cost you a purse bursting with coins.’

  He saw my face fall, and I opened my mouth to speak, but I had nothing to offer him. He shook his head again as though I was nothing more than a foolish child who was wasting his time. I had nothing to barter with and he knew it as he opened the door to leave.

  ‘Wait!’ I dropped my arms to my sides and rushed forwards, and without thinking I seized his arm.

  He turned and paused in the doorway, and I quickly withdrew my hand, more alarmed than him at my sudden outburst. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but I had at last got his attention again.

  I could hear the cogs whirring in his mind, and a flash of mischief appeared in his eyes. ‘You could offer me another type of purse, I suppose, and I will fill it for you.’ He grinned, revealing a golden tooth, so blindingly bright it was like staring at the sun. I gasped, for the meaning of his words was unmistakable.

  Just then I heard a noise behind me and a sudden movement. Reflected in the shine of his top button, I caught a glimpse of Sorren, standing, arms folded in judgement. I felt the scorch of her eyes like a high desert sun.

  ‘Three days,’ he repeated. Then he was gone.

  Without daring to turn around, I scurried back down to the cellar, but it was too late, Sorren had heard every word.

  I thought she would tell Lemàn about my encounter with the captain, but nothing was mentioned. She was keeping my secret, but I didn’t know why. Nausea burned in my throat at the thought of giving myself to a demon. Through keyholes, and at soirees, I had seen the whores perform their duties from beneath their ruffles of cloth and layers of fabric, without having to remove a stitch, but it was a risk I wasn’t prepared to take. If Lemàn found out – I quickly cast the shameful thought from my mind. I would have to find another way, even if it meant scrubbing the deck, setting the sails, securing the ropes and pulleys or lifting and dropping the anchor. I could sit high on the mast and watch. I would love it up there, like a bird navigating us through the water until we arrived. I had learned enough from the professor’s books and stories to be of some use on board a boat. Even if that wasn’t enough for the captain I had met, then surely there were other captains and other boats that would agree to my offer. I would just have to find one.

  On the eve of my departure, Lemàn helped me pack a small case. There wasn’t much to fill it with, besides a few clothes, a sea sponge and a box of marzipan. Sitting on my bed, I watched as she meticulously folded my nightdress again and again until it was small enough to have been mistaken for a handkerchief lying on her lap. Suddenly she began to sob, and I lifted my nightdress to her eyes to wipe away the tears. Falling against her, she wrapped her arms tightly around me. She had always, until this moment, been my protector – my sea wall; my mother – but now my path led me away from her, and we both knew it.

  ‘You can grow your hair,’ she said softly, stroking my shorn head, as though that were reason enough to leave.

  I remembered all the times I desperately wanted to have long hair. I would creep into the washroom and rummage through the baskets of clothes, pulling out the cleanest pair of stockings I could find. I’d fix them on to the top of my head, holding my nose against the sweaty smell of feet, and I’d let the legs swing down my back like two ponytails, smooth and long and perfect. Now, though, it didn’t seem to matter.

  Lemàn kissed me so tenderly on the cheek that I had to swallow back the fizz of emotion bubbling its way up my throat.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I mumbled. The words left my mouth unexpectedly.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ she whispered in my ear. I felt her hand lovingly stroke my cheek and I lifted my eyes before finally finding the words.

  ‘I’m afraid of you not being there any more.’ She held me then, longer than she had ever done before, and for the first time since I was a child, I fell asleep with the pulse of the blue bird vibrating in my ear.

  The tender stroke of Marianne’s hand upon my cheek roused me from a deep sleep; she had come to tell us it was time to go. For a moment, I wished I could have stayed there for a hundred years like Sleeping Beauty, but that spell had been broken long ago. I turned to see that Lemàn’s eyes were already open and I wondered if she had slept at all.

  ‘I wanted to give you a gift before you leave,’ said Marianne, holding out a small object wrapped in pink tissue.

  Drowsily, I reached across and took it from her, it felt light in my hand.

  ‘Open it,’ she encouraged.

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sp; Carefully peeling the tissue back, I found, hidden within its layers, a small oval-shaped hair brush. The intricate design of a peacock had been painted onto the wood; its cobalt-blue body filled the handle and its train fanned into the casing, filling it entirely. Dozens of sparkling eyes of lapis lazuli haloed in a shimmer of jade and dipped in gold stared back at me. I knew that her long, slender hand had made it.

  ‘It’s beautiful, thank you,’ I murmured.

  ‘The bristles are made of curlew feathers,’ she added, smiling.

  ‘But I don’t have any hair to brush.’

  ‘No, not now you don’t, but soon you will.’

  Kneeling in my nest of blankets, I shuffled towards her and flung myself in her arms.

  ‘I just wish I could be there to help you brush it,’ said Lemàn, and the three of us held each other for the little time we had left.

  I wrapped the brush back in the tissue and placed it in my case on top of my nightdress, a damp reminder of an impossible goodbye. Outside I found twenty-nine whores sobbing into their handkerchiefs. Mourning without a death, a burial without a body. The professor seemed startled by their outpouring and pretended to busy himself straightening his cravat. Before I left, he handed me a red velvet pouch and told me to open it once I’d arrived. Thanking him, I dropped it in my bag.

  ‘Goodbye, Mama.’

  Lemàn clung to me like a wild vine and nuzzled into my feathers, her breath so warm and lemony. A familiar comfort that I already missed. ‘It’s time for you to go and find out who you really are. To find out all the answers I couldn’t give you.’

  I nodded against her neck.

  ‘Promise me one thing,’ she said, suddenly releasing me.

  I nodded again, and held her gaze.