“I’m uh, I’m fine,” Sassy stammered. Was that a lie? No, not really. She felt fine, preternaturally fine, in this place. “How are you?”
“Just as fit as a fiddle, ma’am. It sure is a purty day.”
Like an overtaxed music box jerking into motion, Sassy’s mind began creakily to function on some practical level, and she realized that here was a person who spoke English. He. Spoke. English. Finally, somebody she could ask for directions. She babbled, “Excuse me, but—where am I?”
“Somewhere in the territories, ma’am, near as I can figure.”
“Oh. Um—the territories?”
“Humdinger of a woods. Why? You lost?”
If he was speaking English, why could she not understand him? Why, in the context, did “lost” not seem like the right word for where she was? She hedged. “Uh, no. I’m looking for a parakeet.”
“A what?”
“A little green bird.”
He nodded. “Lots of birds hereabouts.”
From somewhere deep in Sassy’s TV-Western upbringing rose the correct response. “Yeh. You might say.”
“Sure ’nuff. I’ll keep an eye out fer it,” he told her. “You haven’t seen hide nor hair of a little lost dogie, have you?”
“No.” Knights in shining armor or their American equivalent were supposed to help, drat it, but this one was not helping, in Sassy’s opinion. All she wanted was a sense of where she should go, how she should proceed. “I followed a feather here,” she said, “but—”
“A feather!” His eyes widened. “What feather?”
“Just—just a big shiny feather—” Which had taken a notion to zoom back into the treetops, abandoning her.
The cowboy pushed back his hat and scratched his tawny forelock, gazing at her. “Now I wonder,” he said very softly. “They say there’s something up there …” His gaze shifted to the labyrinth of green overhead. “Something big, with wings. Kind of a manito. A spirit no one dares put a name to. Did you see it?”
“No. I mean, I—I’m not sure.”
“They say there’s no better luck in the world than seeing it.” He turned back to her, peering at her intently. “Except if you can catch a feather. That’s even better. Then you ain’t lost no more.”
This was getting way too deep. What place was this? Limbo? Perdition? Sassy bleated, “All I want is my parakeet!”
“Waal, I’ll keep an eye out. Kind of a canary bird, right? Green?”
“Green with a yellow head.”
“Sure ’nuff. You take care now, little lady.” He touched his hat again and wheeled his Spanish stallion away.
“Wait!” Sassy called after him. “What’s your name?”
But without turning or answering he rode away, his saddle making cricket noises, his spurs jingling. And what did it matter whether he had a name, anyway? He was just an eidolon. A cowboy. They were all pretty much interchangeable, in Sassy’s experience.
Maybe he even meant to help—but he was not going to. Sassy knew better. Men. The big frauds. Riding into the sunset. Where had all the real cowboys gone?
“Poop!” Sassy cried.
Perched in sweetleaf treeplume, hidden in greenfree that matched his own green coverts, Kleet sensed more than heard the faint cry of his deity. It seemed to come from the shadowland beneath the canopy, but—could it be? Could Deity really be such a nearflight away?
Joy lifted his wings. Instantly he flew, searching.
FIVE
This was a place where unicorns ought to live, Sassy decided. As perhaps they did. Perhaps a unicorn had dipped its magical horn in the water she had drunk from the stream below the cataract, and that was why she felt so peaceful. Wandering, with no feather-with-a-mind-of-its-own to lead her, she ought to have been worrying about dire and pressing agenda items such as Something To Eat and Finding The Damn Parakeet and Getting Back To Her Own World, but instead she stood and watched a vast flock of rosy doves flow through the treetops, a river of wings so deep it darkened the turquoise sky. She watched a horseman ride through the forest, a blond giant who wore chain mail and a midnight-purple mantle and severe golden crown; he lifted his gauntleted hand courteously but did not speak. She saw a tawny streak arc tree to tree—a puma? She saw in a valley a young man of ineffable beauty lying amid moss and ferns with his head in the lap of a young woman even more lovely; they gazed into each other’s eyes, and Sassy wanted to cry. He wore a velvet doublet and she wore a silken gown, but afterward Sassy remembered nothing about them clearly except their Romeo-and-Juliet faces. Rapt in the afterglow of their passion, she grew aware that she was wandering uphill and down aimlessly, in circles most likely, but she did not care. She saw a great stag with antlers like the lifted hands of a god. She saw two Grecian-garbed women walking arm in arm, their cameo profiles turned toward each other. She saw intimations of soaring mountainside through the trees. And everywhere, glimpses of bright wings. Everywhere she heard the singing of birds unseen. And she heard the golden notes of a horn. And something, wolves maybe, baying like bells. And from somewhere, a thin skein of lute music. And—
“Sassy!”
And—someone calling her name?
“Sas-sy! Where the hell are you?”
Sassy stood with her mouth open, blinking as she attempted to place the voice she was hearing. A voice from another world.
“SASSY!”
With a wrenching effort, Sassy got her slack mouth shut, then functioning. “Here,” she replied. The vocalization came out as little more than a whisper.
“SAS-SY!”
“Here!”
Crashing like a charging buffalo, Racquel ran stumbling toward her between the trees.
Sassy stood as if in a dream, watching him topple nearer, his arms flapping. In this place she saw Racquel for a moment not as Racquel but as another bright mystery, another eidolon. Bird-man, she thought, admiring his proud black crest gilded at the apex, his flashing eyes and rich curling hackles, his shimmering crimson—dress, she realized with a jolt, back into her usual perspective. Racquel wore a tight shiny dress slit up to his thigh, for crying out loud, and ridiculous strappy gold heels with his painted toes sticking out, and—what in the Lord’s name was that on his back? He tripped, clung to a tree to stay upright and swung around—Sassy gasped. The back of that so-called dress was bare practically to his rump—Sassy saw a hint of cleavage down there, and arising from that very spot, a cascade of feathers that took her breath away, an arcing train of sickle-shaped bronze and vermilion feathers apparently boosted from a rooster, trailing almost to the ground. Racquel was a weird piece of work, but that—that tail was glorious, Sassy admitted to herself with a pang. She would not have minded having that tail, if only to keep in the closet.
Racquel righted himself and limped up to her. “Where the hell have you been!” He did not give her time to answer, however. Evidently in a volatile emotional state, he seized her bodily and slung her over his shoulder. Sassy felt his breast against her thigh, conical and unyielding and unnaturally hard. That breast levered her away from his body like a fulcrum.
“Hey!” Sassy kicked, impacting only air. “Let me down!”
Instead, Racquel swung around and strode off with her, panting, “I am taking no chances.”
“Stop it!” Sassy pummeled his bare back. From her vantage on his shoulder she was looking right down his—goodness. She closed her eyes and pounded harder. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Run off, will you?” Racquel gasped, stumbling over a root or something. “Leave me holding the bag, land me in jail? That’s what I get—”
“Let me down before you drop me on my head!”
Top-heavy and losing his balance in a serious way, he dropped her on her tush, actually, as he fell, landing almost on top of her.
Flat on her back, Sassy had the presence of mind to seize a rock. “You touch me again, I am going to conk you!”
“Fine.” Lying with his face in a patch of puce mushrooms, Ra
cquel went slack and closed his eyes. “Kill me and have it done with.”
“What in mercy’s name is the matter with you?”
In a tone as if spelling it out to a rather dull child, Racquel said, “The cops think I murdered you.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re a missing person and they found your stuff—”
“For goodness sake, I’ve only been gone a few hours!”
Racquel sat up and stared at her. “You’ve been gone a week and a half!”
“No, I haven’t! I just got here!”
This could have gone on for a while, and indeed, Racquel had his mouth in motion, protesting Sassy’s alternate reality—but Sassy did not hear him. Her focus attracted by flits of green swooping low, and scarlet, and one of iridescent blue, she gazed past him. Her hand softened, letting go of the rock; her mouth softened with delight.
“I’m not the only one who likes your tail feathers,” she told Racquel.
“Huh?” He sat up and looked around. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
On the tree trunk just above him, two huge woodpeckers clung staring at him. Just beyond the woodpeckers, a large bird with fluffy mauve crest feathers perched on a vine, also fixated on Racquel. Something red green brown orange with laterally trailing tail feathers landed on the ground for a closer look. Sparrow-sized bits of cerise flew down. Something erect and brassy-feathered stalked closer between the trees. In the lowest branches Sassy could see blimpy canary-colored birds peering down, and sleek indigo ones with sweeping violet tail feathers, and—birds beyond remembering, and more gathering every moment, all staring at Racquel. Somewhere above, one of them piped a tentative note, but other than that, they all gazed without speaking. Sassy did not know what kind of bird any of them were. Fiercely she longed for her Peterson.
“What the hell is that?”
Racquel referred to the erect, brassy bird, which had stalked right up to him and was glaring into his face. Tautly upright, it stood almost three feet tall and looked as hard as steel, with two-inch hooked claws on its black feet. Racquel scrambled to his feet and backed away from it.
Sassy knew that one, at least. “That’s a cock,” she told Racquel. The kind they used in the cockfights in the bad old days.
“I know that!” Racquel stood brushing dirt off his dress with his hands, his voice rising to a peevish squeal. “I know a cock when I see one!”
“I bet you do.” Sassy got up also, noting that the cock’s hackles were bristling, maybe in answer to the similar feathers Racquel wore around his neck. “I think we’d better be going.”
“That’s my whole point! You get your sorry little ass back where it belongs and tell the cops let me alone!”
Although too annoyed to say so, Sassy saw the necessity to do this. Also, she was getting hungry. Graham crackers awaited her on the other side. “Whatever,” she grumped. “How do we get there?”
“Um, it’s over this way, I think.” Racquel led off. The birds followed, except for the cock, which lifted its head, gave a clarion squawk of triumph, and strutted, having won the ground. But the rest of them followed Racquel, swooping and fluttering from tree to tree and more flying in to join them, their many wings siffling like a rising wind. Like a roomful of schoolchildren, once they were in motion, they started to talk. Their excited chattering echoed through the forest.
Sassy had no trouble keeping up with Racquel, for he minced in his heels and tripped on rocks and roots every second step. She wondered whether he had ever been off a sidewalk in his life, then stopped thinking about him. Ambling along in her sneakers, she gazed at the birds, enthralled, living the green blue yellow of the moment, the whisper of wings and the fragrance of orchids. Sassy could not remember when she had ever felt so alive and at peace. Certainly not since Frederick had left. Every moment in this eden healed her of—
Racquel tripped, fell hard on his hands and knees, and bellowed, “I hate this fucking place! Aaaaa!” He reared back. “Snake!”
Sassy stood appalled not so much by his language as by his sentiments. Like a gold-satin ribbon, the snake flowed away between the ferns, more elegant than any necklace Sassy had ever worn. She could have sworn she saw a jewel, a jacinth, nestled between its eyes.
Racquel stood, his crimson silk skirt torn, his knee bloodied, and all his feathers ruffled. “Would you hurry up!” he yelped at Sassy.
“I’m not the one tripping and falling,” she told him. “Try taking those stupid shoes off.”
“And go barefoot?”
“You’d probably be better off.”
“I earned these Guccis, I ain’t taking them off!”
“Calm down,” she told him.
“I just want to get bloody home!”
“Fine.” Although Sassy meant to return to this place the minute she had talked with the cops and collected her graham crackers. “How do we do that?”
“It’s around here someplace,” Racquel muttered, swiveling to stare in all directions. In the trees, clinging to the boles, and on the ground all around him, more various than any Easter bonnets ever made, a congregation of birds turned their heads in unison to watch him.
“What are you looking for?” Sassy asked.
The mirror.
“It goes away the minute you’re through it.”
Racquel gawked at her. “What?”
“It turns invisible or something.”
He teetered toward her. “So how do we get out of here?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“How should I?”
“Oh, bloody God.”
“Oh, poop,” Sassy muttered.
That otherworld cry echoed through Kleet; his heart beat like butterfly wings, beat so hard that it shivered his breast feathers as he sculled mightily at the air.
Perhaps it had been for her, Deity, that the One Tree had beckoned from the egg-shaped hardair pool. Perhaps it had taken no account of him at all. Perhaps that was why he was alone. Perhaps that was why she was here now, somewhere, and not in that other world.
Here—but where?
He flew swiftly, frantically, but at random. Far below him he heard a commotion of many birds but ignored it, for the cries echoed of merriment and mating; Kleet wanted no part of that, he who had no mate. He flew on.
He had found Deity and lost her and now she had summoned him once again and please—
*Please,* he begged greenplume treefree and azure worldegg as he flew, *Please let her skreek me once more.*
But only watertrickle and leafwhisper answered him. Deity did not call out to him again. Kleet flew until he was weary, searching, but glory forest is vast, shadowland is vast, sky even more so; he could not find her.
Sitting at ease against a mossy tree, Sassy watched the birds, which were in turn watching Racquel rampaging around. There were upside-down-on-the-tree-trunks birds like nuthatches with curved bills, something like a pheasant with a fluffy white turkey tail and a grotesque cobalt-blue head, something with a puff of yellow plumes on its back, a jay not blue but green, little shrimp-colored birds, a pair of knobby-legged storks, two big hen-shaped birds with blue faces and punk featherdos, two cassowaries—there were many many birds, but not the one Sassy was looking for. There was a pair of hyacinth macaws, but there was no parakeet.
The macaws perched side by side on a bowed sapling, making kissy noises through their beaks and nibbling at each other’s faces. Sassy looked away. Nobody was likely ever to nibble her face again. Nobody was going to love her ever again.
Arguably, nobody ever had loved her, except maybe her mother. Who now no longer even recognized her on the rare occasions when she forced herself to visit. Alzheimer’s was hell.
“If you would stand up and help,” Racquel yelled, “we’d stand a better chance.”
Sassy sighed. By “help,” Racquel meant blunder about trying to run into an invisible mirror. He had been doing so for some time. Sassy had su
ggested going to find somebody, the young couple perhaps, and ask for directions, but Racquel wouldn’t hear of it. In certain ways he was quite typically male.
“I know it’s around here someplace,” Racquel grumbled, feeling at the air, the broken feathers of his bustle rattling. “Sassy, c’mon!”
Sassy rolled her eyes and got up. Ambling dreamily, she made modern-dance moves at the air in order to placate Racquel. She felt none of his urgency, except that she was starting to get really hungry. “How did Alice do it?” she called to him.
“Huh?”
“Alice. How did she get back through the looking glass?”
He halted to look at her. “I read that book.”
“So did I, years ago, but I don’t remember.”
“Neither do I. Dammit!”
A pause while they stared at each other with knotted looks, straining to remember how Alice did it.
“Dammit,” Racquel grumped. “Hell. It was kind of a stupid book.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Yeah. It was just clever, that’s all.”
“Clever and political. Satiric.”
“Yeah. I didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to Alice.”
“That’s the way I felt! I’m glad there’s somebody else in the world who feels that way.”
The conversation had drawn them closer to each other until they stood face-to-face, surrounded by birds that continued to be fascinated by Racquel even though his feather-studded hair sculpture, Sassy noticed, hung broken and draggled like his tail feathers. “Your hair moved,” she remarked.
“Oh. I guess now your life is complete.”
Only later Sassy sensed providence in this sarcastic comment. Then, she knew only that she felt something, or someone, watching her—she, Sassafras, not her feathered friend. She looked past Racquel’s left shoulder and saw. Shy, behind all the others, in the shadows between the trees something human-sized gazed back at her. Sassy felt her heart startle like a deer and leap like a skylark as she saw a face like a magnolia petal, dewy smooth oval blush and cream, strange yet strangely familiar. She glimpsed hands lifting toward her, upsweep of dawn-colored wings, a shimmer of robe—or was it a cloak of heavenly feathers trailing down? She did not care; she noticed without knowing that there were no feet, that the presence floated, not touching the ground—but her gaze was all for that face too shadowed, too far away to recognize. She gasped, yearning. She reached out to run toward—
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