Feather by Feather and Other Stories

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  “Sun!” he shouted and carefully, even more carefully than usual, he felt his way back up towards the opening of the nest and clambered onto the ledge. He shifted his wings, oil trickling over his skin, and he twisted his tail up to his wingclaws to examine it. “What did you do that for?” Starglow’s wingclaws turned slick with spit and oil, but he couldn’t feel any ruptures on his skin or smell any blood. Thank you, Stars.

  “I was… dreaming.” Starglow heard the soft scrape of claws on wood, though with the wind outside picking up he couldn’t tell if Sun had moved or merely shifted her position. “Demons…”

  “You thought I was attacking you?” Incredulous, Starglow clacked and soon Sun’s sound-voice joined his own. When their laughter had subsided, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “You know that. Better. Fed. I still miss the Stars.”

  Starglow’s wingclaws flexed at his throat and his tail twitched. He hopped into the tree’s heart.

  “Why do you live so far down?” Sun asked.

  Starglow was silent. The nest was quiet, save for their breathing, the wind, and the sound-voices of other peeweww. Eventually, he answered, “My brother believes the Stars have deserted us, so he has deserted Them. They talk to me, as I told you. Don’t tell him, please.”

  “Why not? Surely he knows They would not cease speaking to him if They didn’t have a reason?”

  Starglow hesitated, hopping in the direction of Sun’s sound-voice. His brother’s feelings weren’t his to share, but… “I thought Their plan was to send us here to find you, but Nightshadow still can’t hear Them. I’d hoped your story could have told me more than it has.”

  Again, there was silence. Sun shifted her wings, rustling the air. A peeweww came and went to leave a basket of berries for her. Starglow declined her offer to eat some of them. Sun munched; he was quiet. After a while, Sun said, “I bring bad luck.”

  Starglow’s tail swished. Sun moved away from him again, though the nest was small and she couldn’t go far.

  “But I was allowed to stay as the Heir Keeper. Then… During the great rains, the Stars sent Their punishments, but They were so severe, so much more than normal. We had to flee, all of us. All of us struggling to save only ourselves and those dearest to us. I fled down, fled away. I knew the colony’d blame me.”

  Starglow’s tail reached in the direction of her sound-voice’s chirping and he wrapped it around hers briefly. “Nightshadow struggled to allow me to stay too,” he said. Brief and awkward, Sun wrapped her tail around his in return. “You don’t do this?” He didn’t really expect her to answer and she didn’t. “There was a storm many Changeling journeys ago when I was just a fledgling. The night we fled down was the night I was blinded. Many of us were killed, our Keeper too. My brother blames the Stars for massacring his people even more than he blames Them for abandoning him. Sometimes…” He hesitated, felt Sun’s tail wrap around his own again. “Sometimes I think he believes the storm was his fault.”

  Nothing. Again the silence-not-silence of the forest fell between them. It was raining now, loud enough for the steady drop-plop of water meeting water and the patter of water meeting leaf to be heard over all the rest.

  Sun said, “It sounds like home. What do you think?”

  Starglow chittered, distracted by the faint visions of his brother’s thought-voice calling to him. “Of what?” he asked, trying to sort both her images and his brother’s.

  “Of the Stars.”

  He had to laugh again, mirthlessly so, and Sun did not join him. “You heard me. They help me to see, sometimes, over the lake, but nothing I do can convince my brother of that. I could – I have described the lake to him, the trees around it, the ground, the sky… But he refuses to believe me. Like the Darkness from legend, he drives us from the Stars.”

  “They betrayed us, Glow.” Nightshadow’s sound-voice chirruped from somewhere behind him. Starglow startled and it took him a few moments to determine where Sun and his brother were in relation to one another. When he knew, he settled between them. “I thought you might be here.” An angry click lay underneath the thought-voice.

  “Perhaps Sun is why the Stars sent us down.”

  “You hear memories, Glow. Memories of when you were a fledgling, memories like how you piece together the forest through the thoughts of others.”

  Starglow felt a thin, faintly ticklish tail brush past his own and he wished he could thank Sun for the gesture then and there, but with his brother doubtlessly watching he dared not. Morningshade was gossip enough and he did not need more rumours to spread, nor to be shepherded all his life, told to be silent, or told to run all his life. Neither did Sun. Starglow clenched his wingclaws and wrapped his tail around Sun’s for the support of her presence. Enough was enough.

  “You don’t want to listen to opinions other than your own, Nightshadow. That’s why you left the elders behind all those years ago. Not because they would have been a burden, but because they would have spoken out against you. The Stars admire you for your courage in renouncing Them, but how could I tell you? You’d never believe me.” Starglow shifted, his sound-voice rumbling.

  “Would you have left the canopy if you could have heard Them? Would we have found Sun? What does everyone else want, brother? You won’t let anyone come near the leaves, but why not? Why not? Because you’re afraid of being wrong. Because you’re afraid, Nightshadow.” Oil beaded down Starglow’s skin and his cheeks had puffed up. He was standing as erect as he could, head brushing against the top of the nest even at the angle he held it. His brother was growling too and there was so much Starglow hadn’t yet said.

  “Starglow…” Sun squeezed his tail again, sound-voice chittering and thought-voice wavering. Air tickled past as she moved closer. “Maybe you should both ask the colony what it wants.”

  “Fine.” Nightshadow let himself fall from the perch. Some of the rain was blown inside against Starglow’s skin as the wind was much stronger now. Starglow reached out for Sun, pulling back when his wing brushed against hers and he felt her shiver.

  “Go.”

  “Come with me. Be my good luck.”

  Her sound-voice whimpered softly, but still she responded, “All right.”

  By the time the whole colony had answered Nightshadow’s summons and was gathered around the lake, the rain had stopped and the shadows were greying. A prowler was lapping up water, but the peeweww stayed well out of its reach. Nightshadow swayed a little above the others, waiting for his brother. When Starglow emerged from the trees, Sun was with him, shining even brighter with the oil gleaming on her skin. Yet she didn’t join him; she stayed in the darkness at the edge of the clearing. Stars, talk to me. Please. Is this proof Glow is right? Or is it just coincidence?

  Nightshadow puffed up his cheeks. Am I losing you, Glow? His own skin felt sticky and slick and he could feel his heart beating like a fledgling’s wings. The peeweww were talking amongst themselves, veiled images and soft sounds joined by the whisper of leaves and the cries of birds and prowlers. Nightshadow knew what it looked like, what the eldest of the colony would be reminded of, and he was nervous.

  “Some of you,” he called out, his sound-voice cry wavering and cracking. “Some of you remember a life different from the one we are leading today. Some of you with more fondness than others. I know the rumours that have been spoken this last journey of the Changeling and those spoken before. I’ve heard the rumours about my brother.” He paused, wishing he could take a sand bath and feel clean. The colony was silent. “And those regarding our visitor. For many journeys I have counselled against seeking out the Stars. I forbade it.

  “But perhaps my brother is not completely wrong.” He paused again; he’d forgotten how to breathe. “The truth… The truth is that for a long time… For a long time the Stars have not spoken to me, but Starglow claims that They speak to him. Can They? I don’t know, but I must at least acknowledge the possibility. I know, though you hide it, that many of you are interested
in my brother’s views. We have lived here and found little of the danger our legends speak of. We have found a place where we are safe and from which we can still see the Stars and reach out to Them.

  “Starglow believes that perhaps the Stars sent us down to find Sun, to learn that we are not alone.”

  Again, Nightshadow fell silent, wingclaws clenched, tail swishing. His head was tilted as he studied the colony and he felt heavy as a stone. So many wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t know how he’d failed and betrayed them. Others would be shocked. He half-expected his brother to speak or the colony to fill the silence, but nothing happened. His wingclaws dug into his flesh and when he could stand the silence no longer, he continued, >“I will never be able to forgive the Stars for what we lost, but truth cannot be found in restriction. Many of you still know the songs in praise of the Stars, either because I led you down with me those years ago or because you were taught against my orders. You all know how we came to be here. We will lose each other if we cannot accept each other. Our world has been turned into a carcass before. It must not happen again. We cannot let it happen again!”

  No one spoke. Nightshadow flew up to a vine. He hung above the peeweww as they burst into hushed conversations and fluttered down to the forest ground, comfortable branches, boulders or vines. The clacking, clicking, chirping, cheeping, crying, and singing was all Nightshadow could hear, though he shut himself off from their meaning. Only his brother was still hovering above the lake; Sun had disappeared.

  Starglow sang. His echoing, haunting sound-voice made the peeweww fall silent even faster than Nightshadow’s cry had. “I have never spoken much.” The thought-voice wavered, indistinct; underneath it, his sound-voice continued, enchanting and mesmerising. “But I will say this. Sun has told me that her people have been struck by a catastrophe too. They may have survived like we have. There may be other colonies lost to us. We may not be alone. I can hear the Stars sing, truth, but about our future They sing nothing. We could search for survivors from Sun’s colony, for others. I don’t know if this is what the Stars wish us to do and I don’t know if you believe me. I do know that I’m not a Star Keeper. I’m not a leader. My brother is.” Starglow fell silent. The single marking he’d been named for glowed with oil and the Starlight falling on it, so bright it was almost impossible to see the shape of his body.

  Trembling, Nightshadow pushed his own thoughts and feelings aside, so he could take over again. His thought-voice and sound-voice were brilliant like Sun’s body, like his brother’s marking. “This is not a light decision! And it is not one to be taken alone or when we are in such turmoil. We have food yet. Let us think a while, with our families alone, about what our lives should be and we’ll meet here again when the Changeling begins its next journey to the dead. Then we will discuss what we will do together.”

  All Nightshadow heard, all he saw, was the forest. Then the cacophony began again. Startled, his right wingclaw slipped and he tried to shut all the peeweww’s thought-voices out once more. Morningshade flew up to him, chirping like he was a child being taught to fly. He didn’t know how to respond; he needed to be alone yet he could not leave before the rest of the colony had gone home. Stars, I’m tired…

  “Give him some time.” His brother’s thought-voice. No one bothered him after that, not even Morningshade, though he could see her perching on a nearby branch.

  When almost all the colony had left, Nightshadow let go of the vine and glided to the rock his brother loved so much. Neither his family nor Sun followed, but he heard them singing above him, drowning out the forest.

  To Sleep for a Season is the second of the peeweww stories and takes place a few years after Changeling’s Time. The challenges in writing it were very similar, though it added a complication in that the colony learns it’s not alone. There are other peeweww in the woods.

  These stories already took up a fair bit of effort because I’m not visually oriented. Now I’ve been getting to learn about evolutionary biology.

  I’m so grateful to all my beta-readers for helping out with these pieces! I look forward to figuring out how to continue the rest and finish them for you all!

  One of the family friends is a retired cook. As I was trying to work up the courage to ask if he might be interested in the recipe that was included as an extra in one of the books I’d been reading, my thoughts strayed into a completely different direction. I remembered that I’d seen more authors include little bonus things like recipes or sketches and I wondered if people might enjoy having a little something extra to this collection as well.

  Now, there are no recipes anywhere in this collection and my drawing skills are… rudimentary to be complementary of them, so neither of those are options for me.

  Feather by Feather and Other Stories does have something that you won’t often find outside of its pages, however: unusual poetic forms. Specifically, the form of a triple sestina, which is my own invention. So, instead of a recipe for something tasty, I’m offering up a recipe to write poetry.

  I’ll be offering up both a discussion of the form and schematics, so it’ll be easier for you to write your own pieces using them. I’ll also discuss what my best practices are in writing them. You may find that you need a different approach to the one I’m using, but hopefully this gives you a place to start.

  I wish you a lot of fun in writing your own triple sestina! They’re great fun and delightfully challenging.

  What Is a Sestina?

  To discuss how to set up a triple sestina, we should first look at the form of a regular sestina. If you’re already familiar with the structure of a regular sestina, however, you can safely skip this section.

  Briefly, then, a sestina is a poem consisting of six stanzas, each of which is six lines long, and an envoi, which is three lines long. The end word of each line in the first stanza is repeated in a set pattern throughout the rest of the poem.

  My poem Beauty and the Beast is an example of a regular sestina, so you can leaf back to see the structure in action, as it were. On the next page, I’ve included a schematic breakdown for you.

  Stanza 1: A B C D E F

  Stanza 2: F A E B D C

  Stanza 3: C F D A B E

  Stanza 4: E C B F A D

  Stanza 5: D E A C F B

  Stanza 6: B D F E C A

  Envoi Line 1: B E

  Envoi Line 2: D C

  Envoi Line 3: F A

  In this schematic, each letter represents both a word and a line within the stanza.

  Originally, the structure of the envoi placed the first keyword (B D F) anywhere in the line and the second (E C A) at the very end, mirroring the end-of-line repetition that’s part of the main structure of the piece. Nowadays, poets are less strict about the envoi. As long as you don’t mess with the structure of the stanzas, you’re good to go.

  And that is, effectively, a sestina. A triple is much the same in shape. It’s just three times as long, similar to how a double sestina is twice as long.

  A triple sestina consists of 333 lines split over eighteen stanzas, including the envoi. For a modern poem, or judged by today’s standard, that’s an incredibly long piece and the sestina is a very strict and unforgiving form to use.

  The first 324 lines have to end on a specific word. The envoi lets you play around with things, but that, sadly, is all the leeway the form gives you. Any more changes and it stops being a sestina.

  My point is that a triple sestina is very long and very, very easy to mess up structurally. Because the triple sestina is essentially a much longer version of a regular sestina, I’m going to start out by looking at that. Finding information on a regular sestina is incredibly easy, but this way all the information is available in one place. Always useful!

  Tips on Writing a Sestina

  The structure of a sestina doesn’t look too daunting, right?

  Well, yes and no. When you write a sestina (nowadays), you also have the option of using your keyword as-is or using variations. So if, fo
r example, your first keyword is ‘fly’, you can choose to use it exactly like that in every single line, or you can use words derived from it. You can use other forms of the verb (flies, flying, flew, flown) or nouns that end in ‘fly’ (butterfly, dragonfly, etc). If you’re only concerned about visual rhyming, adverbs like ‘gruffly’ and ‘aloofly’ probably count as well. I leave that up to your discretion.

  As such, one of the biggest tips you can give for writing a sestina of any length is: pick words that have several different meanings and/or cover multiple word classes. If you use ‘fly’ only to refer to, say, a two-winged insect, it can be quite tricky to use it multiple times at the end of a line.

  Here’s the list of words I used to write Beauty and the Beast: say, fair, course, proper, rose, chamber.

  Using those words, you can get a decent amount of variation. In this particular instance, however, their use is also limited by the fact that I was retelling a fairy tale and needed to hit certain beats to make it feel like a proper retelling. That limits the amount of variation I can use.

  Another tip is to start the poem by writing your envoi. That will give you an end point for the poem you’re writing, but it may not work for you.

  You can also plot out the poem’s structure in advance. I cannot recommend this enough. By writing out the structure, you’ll have a chance to make sure all the words are in the right order before you’ve written the poem. The very last thing you want to do is get to the envoi and realise that every stanza after the third needs to be redone completely.

  Getting the structure wrong isn’t that likely to happen with a regular sestina. It’s only six words and very easily checked at every stage of your process. A double is a little trickier at twelve words, but a triple sestina asks you to track the switcharoo shenanigans of eighteen different words eighteen times. It’s incredibly easy to mess it up. I’ve done it multiple times while writing a triple sestina myself!

  The Triple Sestina Structure