Plumage

by Nancy Springer

  Racquel had stopped eating and was giving her a look that she could not quite read. Frightened? Exalted? Shy? “It’s the bird-girl, right?” he said quite softly, as if this were a thing to be spoken of in a whisper. “The winged spirit who lives in the treetops? The one who never touches the ground?”

  Sassy jolted bolt upright, crying, “You’ve met her?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Racquel, I’ve got to find her again. I’ve got to!”

  “That shouldn’t be so hard.” Racquel sat still giving her that same strange look. “You don’t know who she is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know, uh, her name?”

  But this had to be the spirit no one dared to name. “How would I?”

  “Huh,” Racquel muttered, his gaze drifting down to the ground, his lowered eyes suddenly so grave that Sassy wrenched her attention away from her own wretchedness for a moment and wondered what was worrying him.

  Everything, probably. Good grief, look at the fix he was in. She had told him that someone had filed a missing persons report on him, that his gender was no longer a secret, that his employees were keeping PLUMAGE open—but how long could they do that? She said, “We’ve got to get you back to your store. Your life.”

  “No rush,” he said.

  Racquel had never felt a more solemn responsibility. All his own problems paled by comparision. In the tawny glow of the outlaw campfire he studied Sassy.

  “’Tis a hungry little barbarian!” Robin said to him with a belch, watching by his side as Sassy chowed down on hot venison and a trencher of bread.

  Racquel nodded, smiling—but his smile quickly flickered away. Barbarian—all too apt. Sassy reminded him of something he had read about people in some primitive culture who had never seen themselves. Did not recognize photos of themselves. Did not own mirrors. Had no idea what they looked like. It had sounded idyllic at the time—wouldn’t it be great not to know or care what you looked like? But the blind spot in Sassy was way more serious. How could she not recognize—her winged spirit, her soul, her self? She had lived with mirrors all her life; what had she seen in them before the budgie showed up?

  Robin asked, “Is it the custom of barbarians to whiten their hair?”

  Racquel gave him a surprised glance. “No.”

  With greater surprise Robin raised his fair brows. “But she is not old!”

  “She’s over forty.”

  “No! ’Tis not possible. Her back as straight as a girl’s, every tooth entire, scarcely a line on her face—”

  Racquel looked thoughtfully at his own half-eaten dinner and said nothing.

  In a voice that sank to a whisper Robin asked, “In your world, are all folk immortals?”

  The mood Racquel was in, remarks like that were enough to keep him awake at night.

  Sassy slept, he saw. Nothing like roast meat and exhaustion to make a person sleep like a baby. The parakeet perched on a limb just above her, drew one lavender foot up, tucked its head under its wing and slept. The outlaws slept—even the so-called sentries, Racquel noticed. He imagined sentries were just a formality anyway in this place. He thought about this and many other things as he sat staring, sometimes at the embers of the fire, sometimes at the gibbous moon, sometimes at Sassy, her face rapt and innocent in sleep. When had he become so very protective of her? Sitting guard over her, for God’s sake, trying to think how to help her—what was he trying to be, some kind of hero? Hearing the owls softly talking, he gave himself a rueful smile, knowing that wearing a jerkin and tights—well, the wretched cross-gartered garment they called tights—had something to do with it. Leaving aside matters of personal hygiene for the moment, he did like being an outlaw. He liked the company of manly mead-drinking men who accepted him with no questions asked. This was the forest of lost things; had he found something he had lost?

  Or was he himself a lost soul now?

  Toward dawn he lay down and dozed. When Little John greeted him with “Breakfast, Moor!” and he awoke, he found that he had reached no answers regarding himself, but he had come up with a plan of sorts for Sassy.

  “I need to find her,” Sassy was telling the outlaws over lumpy porridge. “Where can I find her?”

  “Anywhere,” Robin answered after a silence. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”

  Racquel’s plan required talk, not action. But he could see that he was not going to get Sassy to sit down and listen. He thought of his sore feet. He sighed and rolled his eyes when no one was paying attention to him. Then he told Sassy, “You and I can go have a look-see.”

  “Show me where you saw her!”

  “Okay.”

  That was a damn devious thing to say. He did not know the way to the oval pool. He had a feeling that the geography in this place was fluid anyway, that the pool might not be where he had left it even if he remembered and could retrace his steps. But it didn’t matter. He just wanted a chance to walk and talk.

  Or limp and talk. Whatever.

  He could feel the outlaws smiling at his back as he and Sassy left. Sweethearts, they were thinking.

  Kleet rode on Sassy’s shoulder, silent and still. Not even nibbling at Sassy’s ear. Subdued, or maybe sulking. Hard to tell what a parakeet is thinking behind those little beady eyes. If thinking was the word for a parakeet’s cerebral processes.

  “What’s the matter with your parakeet?” Racquel asked.

  Sassy said, “Same thing that’s the matter with me sometimes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Everybody else seems to have a lovie.”

  Oh. Yeah, Racquel knew the feeling. And the damn sun was shining, making halos on the huge trees and even poking a few stray beams down into the shadows below, and every single bird in the damn forest—except Kleet—seemed to be caroling its fool feathered head off. The little birdies in this place didn’t just go tweet, tweet, tweet either. Some of them weren’t so little and they yawped, they squawked, they yodeled, they yelled, they barked and brayed and sang opera and whistled like hailing a taxi. Racquel saw flashes of tangerine cerise vermilion in the green canopy overhead, red orange yellow like every color of Sassy’s rainbow face yesterday and then some. Sassy’s face turned upward, wide-eyed, sweet and hushed, gazing at the birds, the forest.

  God, she loved this place and its damn birds. Jeez. But her gaze gave Racquel a thought of how to begin.

  “Sassy. If you were a bird, what kind would you be?”

  She blinked, detached her gaze from the treetops a moment and gave him a glance askance. “I seem to be a budgie.”

  “Forget that. If you could choose. What would you be?”

  “Huh. I don’t know.” She halted and turned to peer at him. “If you could have a tail, what kind would you have?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know. Like your cock tail.”

  “What?”

  She puffed her lips at him in frustration. “Would you have a quetzel tail or a coatimundi tail or a jaguar tail or what?”

  This was way more imagination than he had expected of Sassy. Maybe she wasn’t as bad off as he thought. “Honey, I got a black tail as it is.” Directing her back to his agenda, he said, “I asked first. What kind of bird would you be?”

  “I—I don’t know.” She faltered to a halt and stood staring at two yellow orioles doing the kissy-beak thing. “Mating season,” she murmured.

  Racquel bet it was always mating season here. But he said nothing. He waited.

  “I think I would be one that mates for life,” Sassy said. “A swan, maybe. I don’t know.”

  He knew it. He knew she was that kind of dreamer. He loved her for it. And hated it for what it had done to her.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “One of the look-alikes. You don’t want to be some drab little nest-sitting female.”

  The look she gave him was puzzled, almost shocked. She started walking away from his words. She turned the subject away from herself. “What would you be?”

 
Racquel thought fast. “I wouldn’t want to be a bird unless I was a duck,” he declared.

  “Huh? You want to waddle and quack?”

  “No, but—” But only ducks had dicks. And he’d finally figured out why; because they did it in the water. Which sounded like fun. “Cloacas just don’t cut it, you know?”

  “Oh!” She blushed, but then she actually smiled. “Racquel, you keep surprising me.”

  “What I do best, honey.”

  But then he couldn’t think of a way to steer Sassy back toward any topic that might help her put herself back together. They walked on in silence through mossy shadows, while Sassy gazed up into the trees again—this forest was just a huge mess of biggreen honeyleaf vine blossom moss birdsinging sun-shadow butterfly white yellow things flying all over the place, and in a cerebral sort of way he could see why she loved it, but it did nothing for him below the neck. It was all so damn—natural, that was the problem. Random. Ivy and stuff piled up every which way. You’ve seen one orchid, you’ve seen them all. Now Sassy stood spellbound, gazing at a pair of scarlet macaws, but Racquel found himself much less interested in the living birds than he would have been in their vivid feathers artfully arranged on, say, a red felt toque. Or a snakeskin belt. Or something earth-toned in batik. Or—

  Out of nowhere Sassy said, “I guess maybe I wouldn’t want to be a swan. I like bright colors too much.”

  Racquel took a deep breath before answering. “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  He tried to sound very casual. “Hey, why don’t you dye your hair, Sassy?”

  She stopped staring at the birds, turning her head to stare at him instead. A stare with edge. “What for?”

  “You like color—”

  “So I should go around with magenta hair?”

  “No, I didn’t say that!” God, he’d hit a nerve. Kleet sensed it too, whirring off of Sassy’s shoulder to a perch on a nearby tree fern, from which he watched with his head cocked. Racquel eyed Sassy similarly. “I just meant, you know, dye it auburn or whatever. Jeez, you’re white, you’ve got all sorts of options. What’s your natural color?”

  Flat as roadkill Sassy said, “Gray.”

  “You were born with gray hair?”

  “No, I was born with no hair. I guess maybe I should shave it all off.”

  God, she was pissed. He hadn’t expected her to get so pissed. He’d never seen her so pissed, her face red and stretched like she wanted to cry. “Sassy—”

  She snapped at him, “I guess you think I should get silicone in my boobs, too?”

  Now he was getting pissed too. “They do it with saline these days.” Just to be annoying, he added, “I thought of having implants myself. But breasts can be a pain in the ass.” Or not in the ass, that would be a trip, but anyhow, they were a nuisance, they got in the way just reaching for something on a high shelf. “I decided to stick with detachables. How’d we get from hair to—”

  “And have my lips plumped?” Sassy cried so fiercely he almost stepped back from her, so sharply that the macaws took fright, shrieked and flew away, their squawks as harsh as Sassy’s voice. “I guess you’d like me to have my face lifted, right? And my eyebrows tattooed on, and a rhinestone surgically implanted in my belly button, and maybe some fat sucked out of my—”

  “Sassy, for God’s sake! All I said was—”

  “All you said was I’m not good enough the way I am!”

  “I didn’t mean it that way!”

  Tears started down her taut face but they seemed to just make her madder. She blundered away from him.

  Now what was he going to do? Follow, like Kleet fluttering after her, poor parakeet, keeping a safe distance? Better make like the bird, Racquel thought; he could lose Sassy forever in this weird place if he didn’t. But his pride kept him standing where he was. “Sassy, don’t be such an idiot!” he yelled helpfully.

  Turning her head to yell back at him, she tripped over a tree root and grabbed at a vine to keep from falling. “Go—go—” Instead of a shout, her voice came out a half whisper. She couldn’t seem to get words out. “You—go—” Go what? Knowing Sassy, probably something pretty mild. Go back where he came from? Go to hell?

  “Jesus jumpin’ on the water!” yelled a wild soprano voice from somewhere out of sight in the treetops. “If you want to tell him to go fuck himself, just spit it out!”

  Sassy felt like her heart was going to explode into jagged pieces flying all directions like her life falling apart. First there was Racquel in his macho outlaw getup, typical man, saying things just like Frederick—except Frederick had never said them, exactly, just looked at her with that pinched whiteness around his nostrils like she smelled bad before he turned away to ogle another chickie. And she had been such a good wife that she had never said anything to Frederick, exactly, just opted out of any cutie competitions, placing a silent curse forever on that shallow way of looking at things. She had hoped that he could learn to think differently, that he would see she was his wife partner helpmeet mate forever, not just some bimbo. I am your wife, she had said to him in every way she could, with her eyeglasses and her plain smiling face and her extra thirty pounds and her money-saving Wal-Mart clothes. I am your wife, I have substance, my devotion runs more than skin deep. With the lines around her eyes, with her gray hair. I am your wife, you are my husband. We are supposed to grow old together. She had grown old trying to show him what marriage meant. But he had not learned after all. So there was all that. And now—

  Now there was that voice from the treetops shattering her heart with a force of emotion she did not understand. She barely heard the words; the voice alone almost knocked her over, snapping her head back as she peered up, straining to see—nothing. Nothing but greenleaf and sunspokes and butterflies.

  “Where are you?” Sassy cried, her voice shattering like her heart, flying like the butterflies. “Come here!”

  “Come here!” mimicked the voice from up there somewhere, hidden, never touching the ground. “Come here, she says.”

  “Please!”

  “Why should I, pray tell?” drawled that voice Sassy felt to the marrow of her bones, knew somehow deep, deep yet could not recognize at all.

  Another voice, whispering, barely registered in her mind. “Sassy,” Racquel was breathing at her like he was trying to help her cheat on some awfully final exam, “think about yourself. How you used to be. How you used to look. Don’t you have old photos? Pictures of yourself before—”

  “Shut up, you!” the voice screamed, ricocheting nearer. Branches rattled, butterflies scattered, Kleet cried out, wrens and ibises and little green honey birds cried out in what might have been alarm or ecstasy, Sassy heard a cry that she only afterward comprehended as her own, she saw great shimmering wings, a gown the color of moss in shadow, russet hair flying wild, a fierce fey elfin face, and—there, hawk-plummeting, there, hovering amid a startled breathless silence, there, almost within arm’s reach, shimmering like a dream—there she was.

  She. The one, the—

  “You keep out of this!” the visitant flared at Racquel.

  He did not answer. His face, Sassy saw, had gone taut, his brown skin tinged with blue.

  She, the—what? Who? Sassy did not know.

  With an effort she took a breath, got her mouth moving. “Thank you,” she whispered. Just the sight of the winged spirit was—frightening, as she turned her face that seemed lit by an inner angry fire—but also somehow a blessing.

  “No thanks to you,” she snapped.

  “I—you—please, who are you?” Sassy still did not understand why she so desperately needed to court this uncanny being.

  “Who am I?” the bird-being mocked. “Who am I? I’m the one you blew off, idiot!”

  Sassy heard a frightened chirp. Maybe Kleet. Maybe a choked sound from her own throat.

  “It would be nice to have feet, you know,” the hovering bird-girl said with a kind of ferocious nostalgia, “and someplace to go with th
em, and somebody to talk with besides cockatoos—”

  “You’re mad at me!” Sassy found her voice, and with it a strong sense of the unfairness of life in general and people in particular. She wailed, “Why is everybody mad at me?”

  To her shock, the bird-girl made an absolutely gross gesture involving one dainty hand and her pert little nose.

  Sassy faltered a step back. “What’s the matter with you?” she gasped.

  “Me? Nothing the matter with me! You’re the one who’s been ignoring me for, what, twenty years?”

  “But I don’t even know you! What’s your name?”

  “It’s up to you to name me, twit!” Her wings kicked even harder than her words, rocketing her upward and away. One hand lifted in a single-digit salute that made Sassy blink. With a fake-friendly wave of her upraised hand she yelled, “Nice talking with you, moron!” The words dopplered away into echoes as she dived upward and vanished into the green veil of canopy.

  “Come back!” Sassy cried, tears starting—but why? Why should she feel such desperate emptiness in her heart over someone who abused her? And why did she want to cry when she was pissed off? She stamped her foot, furious at the bird-girl, herself, the world. She cried, “Did you see that? She flipped the bird at me!”

  Sounding a bit as if he had been punched in the stomach and was just getting his breath back, Racquel said, “How very appropriate.”

  “It is not!”

  “Because of all the birds, I mean. Lame attempt at a joke. Duh.”

  Looking at his worried face, Sassy heard in a kind of delayed reaction his whispered words still hanging on the air: Think about yourself. How you used to be. Before—

  Before what? Before Frederick?

  Before she had turned into a wife?

  Her thoughts ran crazed. Wife, waif. Waif, self. And hazily Sassy remembered a girl she hadn’t thought about in a long time. An elfin-faced, pert-nosed girl who liked braids and silly hats and dreamed of wild horses and love forever and flying—

  “Oh,” Sassy whispered. “Oh!” Realization struck like lightning all in one deep-searing nonverbal instant. She could not have explained, but in that thunderbolt moment she knew to her bones how very much she had lost for so very long, and she could scarcely bear it. “Oh,” she whimpered, and then the tears came.