Feather by Feather and Other Stories

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  Introduction

  You Were Mistletoe

  Changeling’s Time

  Sharing Chocolate

  Feather by Feather

  Sea Foam and Silence

  The Little Engine That Couldn’t

  Maybe

  Breadcrumbs

  The Thing with Feathers; Or, The Hope of Oak Town

  All Our Good Intentions

  Goose Maid

  The Passage of Pearl

  Trinity

  Seventeen Pocket-sized Journals and Counting

  Whiskey and Water

  Swanheart

  Umbrellas

  A pair of haiku

  Time

  Beauty and the Beast

  Highway Green

  On attempting to write a poem

  The First Deed of Coen of the Stars

  Where the Last Ripples Meet

  Phee

  The Frog Prince

  The Choices of Persephone

  Heartache

  Reflections on my reading habits

  The Swan Maiden

  To the Moon

  Haiku courtesy of a summer’s day

  The Bobble Hat

  Confidentiality

  The Witch and the Changeling

  Blue-dust, Red-dust

  As under a Green Sea

  What I Like

  To Love a Cat

  The Thing about Autumn

  Saeftinghe

  Needle, Needle

  Biscuits for the Demon Chorus

  The Princess who Didn’t Eat Cake

  To Sleep for a Season

  How to Write a Triple Sestina

  Self-interview

  Bonus: Made to Be Broken

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Thank you for reading!

  For all my friends,

  without whom this collection would not exist.

  Back in 2013, I chose to do something exciting. Something terrifying and amazing. It didn’t quite turn out the way I’d dreamed it would, but that’s the way of the world. Anyway, I was realistic enough not to expect it to.

  In 2013, I published my first book. I made a lot of mistakes, some were intentional and some were simply down to enthusiasm and inexperience. Most of them to enthusiasm and inexperience, perhaps. People like short story collections. Online magazines have given short stories a new lease on life. But most people don’t want to read them if they don’t know your name and very few knew mine.

  My biggest regret about the choices I made in 2013 is that, knowing I’m a pretty slow and entirely unknown writer, I collected all of my short stories and novelettes into a single volume so I had nothing left to send to magazines or submission calls. (Don’t do what I did.)

  But what is done is done and I’m proud of Feather by Feather and Other Stories. I strongly believe that the way I handled publishing the first edition of this collection was necessary on a personal level, to get me comfortable with both indie publishing and making mistakes, to give me something that could counter my anxiety.

  In the three years since I first released Feather by Feather and Other Stories as an ebook, I’ve learned a lot. I picked up book and graphic design anew, for example. Both of those are subjects that I was involved in as a teenager or were part of my minor at university and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed working on design and learning to create something visually pretty when I can’t draw to save my life.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I love the creative control that indie publishing gives you. There is something intensely satisfying about holding a book that you’ve designed front to back.

  I also love the internet’s ability to be in touch with readers and fans. Social media is a double-edged sword in that sense. You hear so many horror stories about authors, especially indie and self-published authors, behaving badly to fans. I’m deeply grateful that my earliest experiences have been entirely positive and I hope they may long continue that way.

  This second edition of Feather by Feather and Other Stories has seen a few changes. Most notably, I’ve completely rewritten the introduction and story commentary. I’ve also finished the superhero revision project and replaced it with the final draft, but I’ve included the story as I originally published the collection as a bonus for those readers who wanted to keep the version I published back in 2013.

  And typo fixes, of course. There always seem to be more typos no matter how hard you look or how many people get involved.

  This collection is still a kaleidoscope of stories. You’ll still find it’s a delicious hodgepodge of genres, so there should be something for everyone in it! You’ll still find slice-of-life (Sharing Chocolate, Heartache), epistolary (Confidentiality), realistic fiction (To the Moon), secondary world fantasy (Changeling’s Shadow, To Sleep for a Season), poetry (Blue-dust, Red-dust, Breadcrumbs, Needle, Needle), fairy tales (The Swan Maiden, The Witch and the Changeling) and more!

  I’m very proud of these stories and the collection I put together. Every aspect of this book asked me to challenge myself and my abilities. Every aspect has made me confront something that I was scared of or hadn’t allowed myself to think about (and was scared of).

  Thank you so much for purchasing this collection and joining me on my writing adventures for at least this little while. I hope you’ll enjoy the stories as much as I have.

  Happy reading!

  Lynn E. O’Connacht

  August 2016

  I see you.

  I saw you then, dappled with the shadows of a thousand ages, white as dandelion fluff, red as the roses around us. Your hair was dark, sparkling sapphires where dew drops should have been. Your eyes were like a fawn’s. Or like a wildcat’s. Free. Your smile… Your smile could rob a miser; what chance did I have?

  I see you.

  I saw you, then, like a ghost haunting what was mine by rights. Pale as silver, tangled as the ivy around my well. You looked no different, and I thought that I would die. Only… I could not. You were mistletoe then, and I the hawthorn. Or perhaps the rowan. You warned me.

  I see you now. Changing…

  I saw you then, still and silent as stone. I knew it was you by the tilt of your head, by the way you rode the moonlight. I have known you scarce a year and all my life. For you are me. As I am you.

  I see you. Not with eyes, but I see you. I know you. I sense you. Yes, I see you. The way the shadows fall on your face, the withered flowers woven into you hair, the cobwebs pretending to be fine silk, the rise and fall of your chest telling me that you are yet alive… I see the calluses on your hands and the wildness in your eyes.

  Oh, I see you.

  And I will hold fast.

  I love the story of Tam Lin. I think it’s largely the role reversal of the hero and the heroine. It’s Janet saving Tam, not Tam saving Janet. In every version. And in most of them Janet saves him while pregnant. Janet has such an incredible amount of agency in all versions. I love that.

  Tam Lin, as you undoubtedly know, is a ballad. Which means it has a lot of scope for interpreting the world-building when you’re retelling it.

  As a short piece of poetic prose, I didn’t have room for a lot of elaborate world-building. What I aimed for with You Were Mistletoe then was to show a slightly different side of Janet and the love we see in the ballad. Awesome as Janet is, she can also be selfish and possessive and most retellings I’ve seen don’t really focus on that aspect of the love we see in the ballad.

  The storm hit without warning, not with a pelting of rain but with a whine of wind and a crackle of thunder. Nightshadow excused himself to Keeper Greywing and started hurrying back to his mothe
r’s nest. She wouldn’t have returned from foraging below the boundary line yet, so his fledgling brother would be alone. Nightshadow fought against the gale, narrowly avoiding getting slammed into tree trunks several times. When he finally got to the nest in the Mother Quarter, he struggled to stay aligned with its entrance. The tree was swaying; whether it did because of Nightshadow’s own problems staying in one spot or because the wind was just that strong, the peeweww couldn’t say. Some of the branches surrounding the nest were whipped against the hole again and again. Nightshadow tried to avoid them as best he could, but when he was on the ledge one of the branches hit him hard and sent him sprawling into the nest. His alarmed cheep was all but eclipsed by his brother’s own frightened sound-voice. It certainly eclipsed the storm.

  “It’s all right,” Nightshadow told the fledgling, trying to impress visions of a soothing breeze onto his brother’s mind. It didn’t seem to help. Starglow just continued to cheep loudly from the far end of the nest. The fledgling huddled there, leaf-thin wings wrapped around his body. Snapped off twigs and leaves were scattered throughout the nest and Nightshadow chittered in irritation. He hopped his way over to his brother carefully, so as not to lose his footing. Nightshadow flared his wings whenever a blast of wind found its way inside the nest and threatened to send him sprawling onto his face. “Mama will be back soon.” Stars, let her have found shelter. He didn’t truly hold much hope, but Starglow was so young… Nightshadow crouched over the fledgling as best he could, wrapping his tail around his brother’s still-stubby one and squeezing its tiny leaf lightly.

  “It’s all right.” He’d keep his brother safe from the storm. Stationary and within the nest, Nightshadow couldn’t deny that the tree was swaying in the storm. Stars, keep us all safe, he repeated over and over to himself, to the Stars. The debris that had made it furthest into the nest hit, sometimes even pounded, against him. His back and wings stung with body-oil seeping into gashes and cuts and he squeezed his jaws together to keep his sound-voice from frightening Starglow.

  To keep his brother safe, Nightshadow nudged the fledgling down into the moss-bed and stretched his own wings wide, digging all four claws into the tree trunk to brace himself against the storm and to keep anything from crashing into the fledgling.

  Mercifully, none of the debris seemed to be getting past him. Why didn’t the Stars warn Keeper Greywing? he wondered. Or me? In between the solitary prayers and stuff hitting his back, worry gnawed on his heart like a tree-glider gnawed on nuts, but Nightshadow tried to push all of it out of his thoughts to focus on the peeweww he was protecting. His brother’s sound-voice grew fainter yet no less frightened or persistent only to get louder again some time later. Every time it did, the sound-voice fractured Nightshadow’s thoughts anew until he started to tell his brother legends and tales in the hope of distracting them both.

  He told Starglow of life above the canopy and how the Darkness had swept over the peeweww in a great storm and sent them hiding from the Stars. He told his brother of the wonders and miracles that had been part of that shining age beneath the Stars, and of those who had fought the Darkness and were never heard from again. He told his brother of the heroes that were yet to be, the Stars yet unborn, and the time when the Darkness would be defeated and the Stars would call Their children home again. He sang the songs of praise to his brother, sound-voice mingling with thought-voice and he didn’t care that it was forbidden; it distracted the fledgling from his fear. Starglow even tried to sing the songs with him, despite the storm.

  Eventually, the fledgling fell asleep, presumably exhausted, but Nightshadow still clung to his guarding position, praying to the Stars for strength. He shifted throughout the night, both to try and keep his limbs from cramping and to sway with the wind that reached him whenever it waxed. That he lasted until far into the day he could only attribute to the Stars.

  Then, when the weather’s assault stopped as quickly as it had started, Nightshadow was so exhausted he could barely unclench his claws. Oil covered every part of his body, had even dripped onto Starglow’s fading down, and Nightshadow wouldn’t be surprised to discover that blood had mingled with it. He managed to shift his body until he could see part of the nest behind him. It was a mess; leaves, twigs, bits of bark, even a thicker branch had been blown into the nest, but the peeweww had survived. Thank the Stars, Nightshadow thought as he collapsed into a heap.

  Nightshadow hurt all over; his body felt bruised, cut and heavy. He had no idea what time it was — bright enough to hurt his eyes, at least — or how long he’d been unconscious. Squinting to survey his surroundings he realised that he and Starglow were almost buried in the aftermath of the storm. Changeling, give me strength, Nightshadow prayed as he uncurled his tail from around his brother’s. His sound-voice hissed with the pain, and he began sweeping some of the debris towards the entrance of the nest and out of it. Stuff snagged on twigs or the big branch now sticking through the entrance; nothing would stay balanced against his leafless tail as he lifted things.

  Still, Nightshadow worked as hard and as fast as he could to clear some space in the nest. As Heir Keeper he would be expected to check on the colony, but if he left Starglow alone now the fledgling would hurt himself. In some ways, Nightshadow was glad of the work; the daylight brightness was hurting his eyes, so anything that confined him until twilight and nightfall was welcome, no matter the strain. Additionally the work gave him no chance to think either.

  By the time it was starting to get dark, Nightshadow had managed to clear most of the debris. What remained appeared to be moss, leaves, tiny twigs and the big branch blocking part of the entrance. It wasn’t thick enough to hinder access to the nest entirely, thankfully, but it was still wedged so tightly it would take more than one peeweww to move it. Things were as safe as Nightshadow could make them on his own.

  Starglow started to call out for food with his sound-voice and Nightshadow tried to shush the fledgling without success. “I have to go, Glow. You need to stay here and be quiet. Mama will be back with food as soon as she can.” Changeling guard her. He had to squirm his way past the branch and clamp down on his sound-voice, but he managed.

  Eventually he was perched sideways on the entrance ledge. The cool evening air made him all the more aware of how dirty and aching he was, and his muscles protested against his scrambling onto the branch to find a spot he could easily take off from. At least Glow won’t be able to get out. May the Stars have been kind to us, Nightshadow thought to himself as he dropped into a current from his new perch. His wings ached, but he started a circle through the Mother and Mating Quarters to survey the damage.

  It was enormous. Some of the trees had been uprooted or even snapped in two. Nests had become either inaccessible or unusable, but most thankfully appeared to need only a good cleaning. Whatever the damage further up the colony was like, they would have nests to shelter in. Since only his mother had sought to birth recently, Nightshadow wasn’t worried by the lack of other peeweww; if the Middle Quarters he was in were any indication, it would be a while before anyone sought them out without his own prompting. Have we displeased –

  A wail cut through his thoughts. The Middle Quarters were far enough away from the rest of the colony that it could only be his brother.

  “Starglow!” Nightshadow made his way back to his mother’s nest as fast as he could. He fluttered around the entrance, trying to find a way in, but he had to climb along the tree to get close.

  “Starglow, stop!” Nightshadow called out as he squirmed inside. His brother was frantically trying to wash his face, clacking and cheeping as he did. Nightshadow hopped over to the far end of the nest and used his tail to push the fledgling’s wingclaws and tail away from his face. Starglow dipped his head, making it easier to reach and harder for Nightshadow to fend the fledgling’s limbs off. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Starglow was too young answer or even understand, but Nightshadow repeated the question anyway. Please, Stars, please. What’s wrong w
ith him? Tell me what happened, please.

  But the Stars were as silent as They had ever been. They wouldn’t even speak to Nightshadow to help Their favourite. The single, bright marking on Starglow’s back told him as much; he’d planned to talk to Keeper Greywing about it when his brother was a little older. Is this a punishment for my delay? I’ll talk to him now. Soon.

  As Starglow’s struggles against him grew fainter, Nightshadow became more reluctant to intervene. He needed to conserve his strength and the weaker his brother was, the less damage the peeweww would do. For a while, Nightshadow only acted when Starglow was scrubbing at his face too vigorously. His eyes. Starglow was trying to scratch at his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  It took another, albeit far shorter, round of struggle to get his brother’s face in a position where Nightshadow could look at it. Constellations! A sharp clack underscored the thought. Instead of cloud-dark, his brother’s eyes were bright like the Changeling. Nightshadow’s body stung all over as more oil beaded down it. He’d only ever seen one blind peeweww, and she’d been a dying Elder. Keeper Greywing had sent him to commend her soul safely to the Changeling.

  “I… I have to go, Glow,” he stammered, thought-voice flickering uncertainly. He had to get away, had to check on the colony, had to talk to the Elders and the Keeper. He had to find a way to get the Stars to explain to him how They could damn Their children so.

  While making his way back to the entrance, Nightshadow slipped on something slick. His wings flared out to keep his balance, one of them almost knocking over his brother. Nightshadow had to swing his tail to compensate his balance, but he managed to stay righted. Closer to the entrance, he cleaned off the claw that he’d put into the slickness. It tasted acidic and he clacked in dismay, using his tail to move a few leaves over the spot. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could see how the leaves and the moss were just a smidgen glossier than they should have been.

  “Stop trying to get at your eyes, Glow! You’ll make it worse!” But he had to hop closer to the fledgling and use his own tail to pin his brother’s down and keep him from scratching at his eyes again. This time, Nightshadow wasn’t gentle. I can’t go. He couldn’t leave his brother alone like this, but he couldn’t neglect his duty either. Nightshadow cheeped softly in despair. There was absolutely nothing he could do for his brother, so he worked his way out of the nest again to check on the rest of the colony. Changeling, look over him. Stars, Constellations, Daystar, someone please watch over him…