Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(94)

Her down coat is too big. Inside it, her wrists are thin, and her shoulders hunched. She reaches into one of the pockets, and it almost swallows her hand before she pulls out a note pad and a stub of pencil. She scribbles, tears off the sheet, and hands it to me. Her eyes, too large in her face, remind me of ice creeping in around the edges of a pond, freezing toward the center.

Liselle’s scrawl is childish, unapologetic. Even cruel. Or maybe it’s just because her fingers are stiff with the cold.

I’m dying.

I turn the note over, read it again. There’s nothing else, just the stark words, charcoal as the sky.

“What?”

Liselle doesn’t sigh, doesn’t make a sound, but I see the impatience as she scribbles again, and passes another ragged sheet my way.

Cirrhosis. No transplant=dead.

Liselle turns away, and scatters a handful of breadcrumbs from the bag in her lap. Pigeons squabble at her feet.

? 289 ?

? The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings ?

“We’ll get you help. We’ll fix this.” I grab her wrist.

She shakes me free, and this time she nearly tears the sheet in half handing the paper to me.

NO.

I stare at the blocky capital letters. “What do you mean, no?”

She snatches the paper from my fingers, underlines the word, and thrusts it back at me. Her eyes are all ice now, the black water at the pond’s center swallowed up and the summer girl she used to be, drowned.

I don’t know how long I’ve been gone; I can’t tell how old Liselle is, but in this moment, she might be as old as the world. If I don’t answer carefully, she will freeze my heart, and shatter it with a touch.

“Liselle . . . ”

But I get no farther. My sister stands, scattering the last crumbs from her lap. The birds at her feet take flight, filling the air with the startled sound of their wings. The wind catches the empty bag, swirls it up to snag in the branches stretched over the pond. There is rage in every line of Liselle’s body. Rage she has never spoken aloud.

The sound of all that silence is ice cracking, deep in the heart of winter. It’s a vast oak, snapping under the weight of snow. Thin as a twig, Liselle is hard as stone.

I know exactly how hard she is, exactly how strong.

Seven years of silence, one for each brother. That was the witch’s price. And Liselle paid it, laying a sister’s love against the lure of sex, sweat-slick skin, and the taste of cinnamon, copper, and wine.

The taste of freedom and power, against summer sunlight and

raspberries picked from the brambly wilds of our parents’ backyard, against woven daisy chains, and scrapes healed through the magic of Band-Aids.

Seven years, she swallowed her voice, her love and fear; seven years, she pricked her fingers to the bone sewing nettle shirts, one for each of us. Seven shirts, seven years, seven brothers who had become dirty, gray pigeons by a witch’s curse.

And one who chose to stay that way.

? 290 ?

? A. C. Wise ?

It’s too late to tell her I’m sorry. Besides, she’d know it was a f*cking lie.

I reach for her, but she’s twisting, gone. She can’t fly, but she can still run.

“This is freedom,” the witch says.

Circe stands me in front of the mirror. I’m naked, sweat cooling on my skin, but hard again the instant she touches me. She ignores my need, and runs her fingers down my chest, down the center of my body, nails catching ever so lightly on my skin.

“I’ll show you what you are,” she says. “Inside your skin, what you’ve always been.”

My skin splits; it isn’t blood that pours out, but feathers. There’s no pain, but that doesn’t mean I’m not horrified, terrified, as my flesh peels from my bones. I try to scream, but it emerges a strangled, rusty coo.

Panicked, I flap wings. My heart hammers against hollow bones, reverberating to deafen me. I want to ask her what she’s done, how she could betray me. The witch only smiles, and bends low to gather me in her hands.

She holds me in cupped palms, wings pinned to my sides.

“Hush,” she soothes. Her breath smells like wine; her lips skim my feathers.

The kiss stills me—not with desire this time. But, because she is predator, and I am prey. If I move to displease her, those lips will reveal white teeth, and like a carnival geek, she’ll snap my head off, and crunch up my bones.

Holding me against the warmth between her breasts, so I can feel her heartbeat, Circe goes to the balcony and opens the doors wide.