Dream Lover

by Kristina Wright (ed)

  He reaches in his pocket and hands me a crumpled paper. On it, in an inky scrawl, is a numbered list:1. Don’t open his cage.

  2. Don’t sing in front of him.

  3. Never ever kiss him.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I laugh. “How can you clean him if you don’t open the cage? And as for singing in front of him or, god forbid, smooching him—well, not that it’s likely, but why on earth not?”

  “He doesn’t need to eat or shit.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I tell him. “Poor thing will want to stretch his wings. And I only follow rules when there are reasons.”

  Over the course of the day, I grow fond of this bird. I buy it some seed and a tiny mirror, which I hook inside its cage so it can see itself, but it shows no interest, just keeps gazing my way. I put my face to the bars. “My, you’re a handsome fellow.”

  It dances on its perch, ruffling its feathers.

  “You big flirt,” I laugh. “If you were a man I’d run a mile.” I give the bird a playful wink, but there’s truth in what I’m saying.

  Since Derek left, last summer, I’ve given up sex—deprived myself completely. I mean, how could he make love to me, when, every Wednesday after Quiz Night down the pub, he was rutting the barmaid on the sly? He’d been inside her before he slipped it to me! Why didn’t he dump me as soon as it started? That’d be honest, at least.

  “Men get you hurt,” I tell the bird, “but loving a bird—now that’s fine.”

  The sweet thing gives a kindly look, as if it’s hoping I’ll confide some more.

  “Your owner,” I begin, “wasn’t the sensitive type.”

  I tell the bird how three years back, when I’d first moved to the village, eighty-year-old Faye had me round for coffee. She claimed she could tell my fortune using Tarot cards and tea leaves and I’d always been curious about such things. But when she revealed, bluntly, that I couldn’t trust my Derek, I found it hurtful. I said, “When you give hard news, Faye, be kinder about it. What if you’re wrong?”

  She folded her arms and said she wasn’t ever wrong. “You’ve chosen a no-good man. Not my problem.”

  On my way home to Derek, I decided not to believe her. She can’t be trusted, I told myself. Besides, Derek’s not the cheating type. All the same, I felt this twisting in my belly, as if my gut knew better. Then, one Wednesday, I caught him outside the Queen’s Head, his hand up Bev the barmaid’s skirt.

  Later, at home, pacing the kitchen with a brandy, he told me, “I didn’t want to hurt you, Hetts. It’s just I find you so closed off.”

  He went on and on about the things I hadn’t told him, like the fact I didn’t like my job at the bank and the time I found that breast lump and went to the hospital alone. “What if it had been cancer?” asked Derek, knocking back a swig of brandy. “Would you have told me then?”

  I said, “Not if I’d known you were screwing the barmaid.” I mean, Jesus, he’d been at it with Bev for a year. “You could have come to me, honey.”

  He paused in front of me, softened, took my hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I felt like I’d already lost you.” He reminded me how he’d first fallen for me because I was so fearless, speaking my mind, always looking on the bright side. “You made me more outgoing,” he said, “but since your father died…”

  I knew what he was getting at. I’d never had a mum—she didn’t make it through childbirth—but Dad always seemed better than two adults put together. I suppose I moved in with Derek because he was similar to Dad, a good-time guy who liked to party. The two men got on well—in fact, on my twentysecond birthday, they schemed together to plan a dinner for me. Dad was on his way to our place when the heart attack hit him. By the time the hospital called, he was dead.

  After that, it was as if my inner flame had been dampened. Derek always said, “You’ll pick yourself up.” We’d been living together, in our city flat, for three whole years and I knew he wanted the old me back—but with Dad in the ground, I couldn’t face fun.

  Using my inheritance, I bought this lovely village cottage, determined to escape the memories of Dad; the bank I worked for transferred me to a nearby town, and Derek, who was selfemployed and could work wherever he liked, came with me in the hope that the change would do me good. We were fine for a year or so, though I guess we grew apart. Derek didn’t enjoy walking in the woods, and I didn’t like drinking with his mates, and when big things happened, like the breast lump I found, it wasn’t that I didn’t trust him with the crisis—I just thought he was there if I needed him. See, these days we loved each other in a quiet way, watching films on TV, buying plants for the garden. And the sex was great—we’d always been lively in the sack.

  Now, swigging his brandy, with my hand in his, Derek said, “I loved you, but where did you get to?”

  I opened my mouth, but I didn’t have an answer.

  He put down his glass and left.

  As if it wasn’t enough that I’d lost my man, Faye told everyone she’d tried to warn me about Derek, but I’d told her she was wrong. Now, each time I went to the village shop, the women glared. “That Hettie,” they snipped. “She brought it on herself.”

  “Faye did try to warn me,” I tell the bird. “Maybe I’m too hard on her.”

  And blow me down, if it doesn’t shake its head, lowering its eyes like it’s sorry.

  Later that night, I take the bird up to my bedroom and set its cage on my dresser. I leave the window ajar so we can hear the trees—the whisper of leaves on the air. When Derek first left, I’d walk through those woods, listening to the birdsong, inhaling the pine. Some say there are bird men who live there—old wives’ tales, I know—and after Derek had left I’d imagine these winged beings flying between the treetops as I took my evening walk.

  I’d also find comfort in music. That’s why, before I go to bed, I still play CDs. Now, with the bird watching, I play “Achy Breaky Heart”—my own personal favorite. As the music rises, I open the cage, wondering if my little guest would like to stretch his wings, but he sits where he is like he’s waiting, and while I undress, he gazes right at me, blinking really slow as if he likes the view. Once I’m in my pajamas, I blow him a good-night kiss. Only then do I remember the boy’s instructions: Don’t open his cage; don’t sing in front of him; never, ever kiss him.

  “Well, there,” I say, as I climb into bed. “I’ve done all three, and the house is still standing.” I flick off the light.

  I wake suddenly.

  The room is flooded with moonlight.

  “Achy Breaky Heart” is still playing, except it isn’t Billy Ray Cyrus’s recording. There’s just a deep voice, all soft and unaccompanied.

  Dear god. Someone’s sitting on the end of my bed.

  I look up at the stranger, clutching the sheets to my chest. That’s when I notice what looks like red blossom dancing in the breeze from the open window; the petals swirl near his flesh, veiling him, as if he’s beneath a shedding tree. Through this dappled pool, I can make out a sweet snub nose, large brown eyes, and Mediterranean skin—his expression is filled with a dreamy sort of sorrow. I shiver when I see he’s shirtless, with some kind of cape down his back. Does he think he’s Superman? Why’s the room full of petals? If he’s here to assault me, what’s with the singing?

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  He turns, suddenly. “You released me,” he says. He holds out his hands. “Two whole years, and now I’m free.”

  My heart starts thumping as I glance toward the birdcage. The drape has gone and a moonbeam shines in like a spotlight. The cage is empty. Suddenly, I feel the scarlet blossoms brushing my face, but they’re too soft to be petals—that’s when I realize they’re feathers. “Where’s my bird?” I ask, rising. “What have you done with it?” Then I remember how I left the window open. I rush across, the night air cool. “Dear god, did you make him fly away?”

  My intruder steps in front of me, grasping my shoulders. “I wouldn’t fly from you.”

 
; His eyes are a deep brown, with whites as pale as pearls, and I can’t work out where I’ve seen them before. Then I hear a noise like a billowing sail. Something dark cuts through the moonlight, and I notice he’s backed by two enormous shapes, which throw feathers around us, tickling my face. I realize it isn’t a cape he’s wearing—no , it’s a pair of vast, scarlet wings. “What on earth…?”

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, reaching for me. “I should have hidden—we usually do—but…I know you love music and I thought if I sang, you’d feel safe enough to see me this way.”

  I circle him, inspecting his wings, then run my hands down the feathery growths, which are tense and solid beneath the furze; when I touch the muscles where his wings meet his back, I feel him arch with pleasure. “Oh, mistress,” he sighs, “it’s been so long….”

  I continue to massage him there, enjoying his warmth, before reaching down beneath his wings, lingering there in the small of his back. I feel a smattering of feathers covering smooth flesh. Lower still, I explore the rounds of his buttocks. It’s been a year since I’ve done such a thing.

  “You’re starkers,” I say, glancing at his groin, which, though it’s shedding feathers, is still somewhat encased. I can see the shape though, in the powdery moonlight: a well-hung bird.

  “I’m molting, dear mistress,” he says. He explains how he usually sheds his feathers after he’s transformed. “Literally, as soon as I’m human, I step from a pool of feathers. But I don’t know why I’m shedding so slowly today—perhaps I’ve been a bird too long.”

  He leans against my ear and slips his hands inside my pajama bottoms. Then he whispers, “Help me rub the rest away?” I smile as he cups my hip beneath the brushed cotton, his fingertips sending tingles through my flesh.

  “Don’t you stop,” I say.

  “I’ve wanted you,” he whispers, still caressing. “In that cage, your breath would brush my beak and I’d smell your perfume. You shared your secrets. I began to fall in love.”

  I laugh, winding in closer. He raises his hands, cups my face, and presses his mouth to mine. I stretch with pleasure, letting us merge, his hardness nudging my sex through layers of cotton and feather. In a moment, he lifts me and I feel us turn; without breaking our clinch, he sits me on the windowsill, where I part my knees without thinking and feel him step between them. And I allow it all—welcome it.

  When he pulls back, saliva threads between us.

  He tells me how the woods are full of bird folk. “Under a full moon, we switch into birds, but mostly we live as people with wings.” The bird folk are shy of people, he says, and hide in the branches where, safe from prying eyes, they make their nests.

  “Did someone magical trap you in your cage?”

  “A dark magician.”

  “The one at the magic shop?” I ask.

  “Faye said he disappeared, and I’m glad.”

  He gathers me close, peeling my hands from my head, and starts laying wet little kisses on my neck, telling me I’m safe. His mouth feels incredible as he kisses up my jawline and I lose myself in this honeyed sensation.

  He pauses, turns, and looks longingly out at the moon. “Tell me, mistress, would you like to fly?”

  Outside, in the garden, there’s a gentle breeze, and the moon shines full and white. The leafy trees ahead of us, beyond my lawn, murmur in the breeze. I try to persuade the bird man to wear an old tracksuit and cover up his nakedness, but he smiles and says, “Do you really mind us being seen?”

  I laugh, thinking of all the village women who I’d heard slander me once Derek had left, huddled by the village shop in their dressing gowns and curlers, open-mouthed as they point at the sky.

  Now, in my pajamas, with my soles cool on the lawn, I follow his guidance: reaching round his neck, I allow him to lift me so I’m sat against his chest. He smells of a beautiful heat and I feel safe in his grip.

  “I still can’t believe you’re real,” I say. “You’re sure you can fly?”

  “Let me show you,” he says as he turns toward the trees and begins to run along the lawn. In that moment, his wings stretch behind us, wafting feathers, and with my arm about his neck I feel his muscles flex. I bump in his grip as he runs faster and faster, and at first I think he’s going to rush us through the trees, winding to keep from hitting trunks; but halfway there, he’s moving so swiftly that I’m no longer jolting—we’re smooth, and rising. The dark trees grow smaller as we push away, and the lawn becomes a little, shadowed square; I gasp to feel the air swishing at my face, and see the stars spreading out, and the great, milky moon.

  “Oh my god,” I say, as the bird man flaps his wings, then glides smoothly on the warm night breeze. All of a sudden, I feel us shudder. Is he losing control? Am I too heavy? Then I notice he’s simply rocking with laughter. “What’s funny?”

  “It’s been two years, mistress, since I last flew.” When I ask him to tell me how he became a bird man, he says he was born this way. “My parents were bird people too.”

  “Were you born with wings, then?”

  “Yes, but a bird child can’t use them.” He had to learn to fly, he explains, as well as learn to shape-shift. At first, he only changed beneath a full moon, switching back automatically at daybreak. “Our family teaches us to use our talents. After a year or so, I could switch when I pleased.”

  “So you’ve family in the woods? Shouldn’t we go find them?”

  “They’ve left,” he sighs. “I must travel to them. We migrate at the end of the summer. They’re in warmer climes right now….”

  “Are you sure? What if they stayed?”

  He says he knows, through his instincts, that they’re flying out East. “I’ll join them soon. But there’s no rush.”

  “I wish my instincts were better,” I say.

  “It was your instincts, mistress, that told you to open my cage, play sweet music then blow me a kiss. All three things are needed to break a spell, and though you didn’t know that—you sensed it.”

  “How do bird men make love?”

  Gathering me close again, he answers, “I will show you.”

  The sensation is unlike any other. One minute, we’re kissing as we smoothly glide, and the next we’re plunging through the air, as if we’re lurching on a rollercoaster. I yelp into his eager kiss, then feel his wings beating superfast as he tries to correct us. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I must focus.”

  His words make me think. “Take me down,” I say.

  “Mistress?

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  He nods, then starts scanning the woods below us. “Instead, we shall sit in the branches. We will talk, up high.”

  He chooses a cedar of Lebanon, its leaf-tipped boughs like upturned hands. The bough bends a little as we light, but he balances on the balls of his feet, his great wings still holding us steady. Lifting his knees, he lowers himself so he’s sitting with me in his lap. I twist, staring into the leafy canopy, moonlight filtering through the leaves. When I look down, it’s too dark to see the path. “We’re so high,” I say. The smell of cedar fills my head, mixed with earthy damp. Nearby, an owl cries. Something scuttles in the leaves.

  The bird man takes my face and twists me toward him. “Please, what has changed?”

  “Nothing. Truly. It’s just…”

  “Your ex betrayed you with a barmaid.”

  I groan. “He said I wasn’t open enough. But apparently Bev was.”

  “Just because he wasn’t right, doesn’t make others wrong.”

  “Who needs sex?” I ask. “It isn’t worth the risk.”

  He runs a finger down my jaw. “Anything beautiful is worth it.”

  “Sex,” he explains, “can help us to trust. It can make us feel cared for, help us acknowledge who we are. I am a man with wings,” he says, “and you’re a wingless woman, yet when you woke I sensed our connection. This is special, mistress.”

  I run my hands down his chest, feel his strong arm around me.
As I tell him I can’t do this, I twine my fingers through his hair, and while I explain it isn’t personal, he presses his mouth to my neck. Closing my eyes, I continue to talk as he kisses a trail to my ear, then gently licks my earlobe, his breath flickering and soft.

  I lean into his kisses. “You’ll only leave,” I sigh, dropping back my head—I’m wet and wish to straddle him, to take and be taken. My shirt peels away. I glance down. My nipples are already hard.

  “Sweet mistress,” he says, dipping his head, clasping one breast in his open palm, while he licks the other with the tip of his tongue. “I will stop any time…”

  I allow the sensation of wetness on my flesh, of my nipple pressing against his open hand. Oh, I could just rub against him, my pajamas still on—does it count as real sex when you come in your PJs?

  I pause, forgetting—lost in his touch. He lifts my whole breast so it swells, globelike, slick from his saliva; but the sexiest thing is the noises he makes—tiny growls of pleasure.

  He looks up at me and waits, his tanned face calm. With the moonlight on his gaze, he reminds me of the bird, cocking its head to listen, with those brown, trusting eyes.

  “Gently,” I whisper. “Slowly, okay?”

  “Don’t worry, mistress.” He smoothes back my hair. “For a bird man, there’s no other way.”

  We kiss, mouth to mouth, for a long, long time. Though I’m topless, he doesn’t touch my breasts like before, but holds me against him, hands sliding down my spine, until he’s dropping on top of me, his weight pressing me backward. Before I know it, I feel the bark against my shoulder blades. He must have chosen this bough on purpose because it’s safer than the others—in fact, it’s actually two branches growing beside each other—we might as well be lying along a pair of hard bolsters. The leaves rustle above, swaying on their boughs, and the moonlight falls in patches, like lantern-light on our bodies. His flesh smells of heat and musk, his hair like an animal’s pelt. At times, I’m afraid of falling, but my bird man has me pinned.