Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (34 page)

the coat from his shoulders and set it on its hook. He passed a hand

• 280 •

• Nathan Ballingrud •

over his weathered face, rubbing warmth into his cheeks. There was

a splash from the kitchen, and he entered it to see dear, round Olga, naked as a nymph, reclining in the tub with the steam rising around

her as though she were taking her constitutional in some Icelandic

spring.

“Horrible woman,” he said. “That was my bath.”

“The water was getting cold while you were out there chasing

birds, you old fool. I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. Did you catch it?”

“I did. We had a wonderful conversation, and then I let it go.”

“One bird brain to another. It doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

“Ach,” he said. “Have you used up all the heat yet? By God, I need

some heat.”

“As it happens, I’m about finished,” she said. She rose from the tub, this plump old woman, this mother to his children and companion

of his life, glistening like some bright mineral wrested from the

earth, steam rising from her wet body as though she were a creature

of some fabulous mythology, filling his home with heat as the snow

fell softly beyond the glass.

••

Nathan Ballingrud
is the author of
North American Lake Monsters
, from Small Beer Press. Several of his stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies, and “The Monsters of Heaven” won a Shirley

Jackson Award. He’s worked as a bartender in New Orleans, a cook

on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and a waiter in a fancy restaurant.

Currently he lives in Asheville, NC, with his daughter, where he’s at work on his first novel. You can find him online at nathanballingrud.

wordpress.com.

••

• 281 •

•

Author
A. C. Wise
grew up obsessively reading and re-reading fairy tales from a lovely phone book-sized and phone book-style

compendium containing several volumes of Andrew Lang’s fairy tale

series with appropriately color-coded pages. Ever since discovering

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s retold fairy tale anthologies, Wise has aspired to writing (or rewriting) fairy tales of her own.

Fairy tales are a gateway, they hint at larger possibilities and worlds begging to be explored. They are skeletons wanting skin. Why did

the heroine/hero/witch/evil step-relation/magical talking animal

real y
take that course of action? Fairy tales, as brilliant as they are in their own right, are also fresh stories waiting to be told. “The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings,” was born of the desire to give a voice to the cursed birds of the original story, while suggesting that not all of them might be innocent victims.

•

• 285 •

The Hush of Feathers,

•

It’s Liselle’s pain that brings me back.

I’ve been gone a long time. Sky-drunk, back to belly with the

clouds, it’s easy to forget. With the city all small and gray, laid out quilt-wise below me, why would I ever touch the ground?

For Liselle. Because her pain smells of nettles, pricked fingers, and blood. Because it sounds like patience and silence. Because it feels like ice forming a skin across the pond, like winter coming too soon.

And I’m afraid I’m too late.

“What do you want more than anything in the world?” the witch

asks.

She plants a foot on my shoulder, holding me at the bottom of the

bed. She told me to call her Circe, and said it wasn’t her name.

“You.” I try to move, but she shifts her foot, ball planted against my collarbone, toes curled to dig in.

“Too easy.”

Light slants across the bed, pools at her throat, slides between

her breasts, and drizzles, crisscrossed by shadow, over her belly like honey.

“Can’t you tell?” I grasp my cock, grin.

Just the edge of a frown tries her lips. They’re dark, darkened

further as she sips wine from a goblet by the bed. Her eyes are the

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• The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings •

color of lightning-struck stone, ever watchful. I can’t tell her age.

Maybe older than the world. She is beautiful, and terrifying, and if I don’t give her the answer she’s looking for, she’ll burn me to ash without ever raising her hand.

She pushes me back, setting me off balance. “Try again.”

Bells chime at her ankles. She swirls the wine in her glass, never

taking her eyes from my face. She dips a finger into the glass, sucks ruby droplets from its tip, then slides it between her legs.

Blood pounds, deafening me; my cock aches. I say the first thing

that comes to mind.

“Freedom?”

“Hmm.” The witch arches an eyebrow, weighing me.

The words tumble now, a babble that may or may not be a

confession. I don’t know what I
want
; right now, I can’t think past desire.

“I’m sick of George controlling the purse strings. Our parents left

the money to all of us, but he acts like he’s in charge.”

I’m breathing hard, harder than I should be.

“Seven brothers in all, yes? And you’re the seventh?” Even phrased

as such, it’s not exactly a question, but I nod. “And a sister?” I nod again. I haven’t told her anything she doesn’t already know.

At last, Circe relents. She lowers her leg, tracing her toes down my chest, and through the hair on my stomach. When she plants her foot

on the bed, her legs are slightly parted, welcoming.

I crawl to her, ashamed of myself, and not caring. Thirsty, hungry,

eager, I suck the lingering ghost of wine from between her legs. Her sex tastes of cinnamon and copper—a penny placed on my tongue

for silence. The witch winds her fingers in my hair.

“Interesting,” she says. “When I asked your brothers the same

question, they all wanted power.”

Folding wings tight, I dive, trading the clean smell of cloud and

wind for smoky, roasted nuts, horse shit, and overflowing trashcans.

Whatever else I may be, whatever else I’ve done, there’s always this: I

• 288 •

• A. C. Wise •

will come when she calls. What kind of brother would I be otherwise?

Not the brother she deserves, certainly. I took her gift, and threw it back in her face. All because I fell in love with the sky, and when she came to save me, I refused.

Just before I hit the ground, I pull the trick the witch taught me and change. It’s not a rational thing; it’s just a different way of thinking—

trading feathers for skin. But it gets harder every time.

It hurts more each time, too. Bones splinter and twist, going from

hollow to full. Feathers draw blood, pulling out of my skin. The

weight of my body nearly crushes me. Then I’m standing, panting, in

gray clothing the same color as pigeon feathers. Which, if you look at them just right, are so many colors it will break your heart.

“Hi, Sis.” I lower myself to the bench beside her.

My voice is rough. It cracks on human sounds, my lips, too, and I

lick blood.

Liselle doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t spoken in at least fourteen years. Maybe more.

Her down coat is too big. Inside it, her wrists are thin, and her

shoulders hunched. She reaches into one of the pockets, and it

almost swallows her hand before she pulls out a note pad and a stub

of pencil. She scribbles, tears off the sheet, and hands it to me. Her eyes, too large in her face, remind me of ice creeping in around the edges of a pond, freezing toward the center.

Liselle’s scrawl is childish, unapologetic. Even cruel. Or maybe it’s just because her fingers are stiff with the cold.

I’m dying.

I turn the note over, read it again. There’s nothing else, just the

stark words, charcoal as the sky.

“What?”

Liselle doesn’t sigh, doesn’t make a sound, but I see the impatience as she scribbles again, and passes another ragged sheet my way.

Cirrhosis. No transplant=dead.

Liselle turns away, and scatters a handful of breadcrumbs from

the bag in her lap. Pigeons squabble at her feet.

• 289 •

• The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings •

“We’ll get you help. We’ll fix this.” I grab her wrist.

She shakes me free, and this time she nearly tears the sheet in half handing the paper to me.

NO.

I stare at the blocky capital letters. “What do you mean,
no
?”

She snatches the paper from my fingers, underlines the word, and

thrusts it back at me. Her eyes are all ice now, the black water at

the pond’s center swallowed up and the summer girl she used to be,

drowned.

I don’t know how long I’ve been gone; I can’t tell how old Liselle

is, but in this moment, she might be as old as the world. If I don’t answer carefully, she will freeze my heart, and shatter it with a touch.

“Liselle . . . ”

But I get no farther. My sister stands, scattering the last crumbs

from her lap. The birds at her feet take flight, filling the air with the startled sound of their wings. The wind catches the empty bag, swirls it up to snag in the branches stretched over the pond. There is rage in every line of Liselle’s body. Rage she has never spoken aloud.

The sound of all that silence is ice cracking, deep in the heart of

winter. It’s a vast oak, snapping under the weight of snow. Thin as a twig, Liselle is hard as stone.

I know exactly how hard she is, exactly how strong.

Seven years of silence, one for each brother. That was the witch’s

price. And Liselle paid it, laying a sister’s love against the lure of sex, sweat-slick skin, and the taste of cinnamon, copper, and wine.

The taste of freedom and power, against summer sunlight and

raspberries picked from the brambly wilds of our parents’ backyard,

against woven daisy chains, and scrapes healed through the magic of

Band-Aids.

Seven years, she swallowed her voice, her love and fear; seven

years, she pricked her fingers to the bone sewing nettle shirts, one for each of us. Seven shirts, seven years, seven brothers who had become dirty, gray pigeons by a witch’s curse.

And one who chose to stay that way.

• 290 •

• A. C. Wise •

It’s too late to tell her I’m sorry. Besides, she’d know it was a fucking lie.

I reach for her, but she’s twisting, gone. She can’t fly, but she can still run.

“This is freedom,” the witch says.

Circe stands me in front of the mirror. I’m naked, sweat cooling

on my skin, but hard again the instant she touches me. She ignores

my need, and runs her fingers down my chest, down the center of my

body, nails catching ever so lightly on my skin.

“I’ll show you what you are,” she says. “Inside your skin, what

you’ve always been.”

My skin splits; it isn’t blood that pours out, but feathers. There’s no pain, but that doesn’t mean I’m not horrified, terrified, as my flesh peels from my bones. I try to scream, but it emerges a strangled,

rusty coo.

Panicked, I flap wings. My heart hammers against hollow bones,

reverberating to deafen me. I want to ask her what she’s done, how

she could betray me. The witch only smiles, and bends low to gather

me in her hands.

She holds me in cupped palms, wings pinned to my sides.

“Hush,” she soothes. Her breath smells like wine; her lips skim my

feathers.

The kiss stills me—not with desire this time. But, because she is

predator, and I am prey. If I move to displease her, those lips will reveal white teeth, and like a carnival geek, she’ll snap my head off, and crunch up my bones.

Holding me against the warmth between her breasts, so I can feel

her heartbeat, Circe goes to the balcony and opens the doors wide.

Her apartment, the jewel in a spire of green glass, a needle thrust

up from the city, overlooks Central Park. Naked, she stands at the

railing, and puts her lips close to my feathered body again.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “You can change back any time you want. It’s only a different way of being, a different way of thinking.

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• The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings •

You’re free; no one can tell you what to do, or what to be. It’s up to you to choose.”

The witch leans over the rail, stretches her arms out and me with

them.

“But,” she says, and even though my body is suspended over the

city, I still hear her as though her lips brush against me. I still feel the stir of hot breath over feathers. “If you tell anyone, it won’t work anymore.

“This,” she says, “is freedom.”

She opens her hands, and casts me into the sky. It is flat gray. It