Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(95)

Her apartment, the jewel in a spire of green glass, a needle thrust up from the city, overlooks Central Park. Naked, she stands at the railing, and puts her lips close to my feathered body again.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “You can change back any time you want. It’s only a different way of being, a different way of thinking.

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You’re free; no one can tell you what to do, or what to be. It’s up to you to choose.”

The witch leans over the rail, stretches her arms out and me with them.

“But,” she says, and even though my body is suspended over the city, I still hear her as though her lips brush against me. I still feel the stir of hot breath over feathers. “If you tell anyone, it won’t work anymore.

“This,” she says, “is freedom.”

She opens her hands, and casts me into the sky. It is flat gray. It threatens to swallow me whole. The city is too many colors, spinning up as I plummet down. Panic snaps my wings wide. Feathers arrest my fall. Chill as it is, the wind catches me, whips me over the park.

Winter-stripped branches reach for me, and grasp nothing. Far below, the pond winks with cold light, molten silver, spilled on the ground. The clouds kiss my back, smooth my fear away. People move below me, small as ants, small as I used to be. I never want to land.

I remember the sky, performing the witch’s trick in reverse. It’s easier than calling weight into my bones, stitching my feet to the ground. I let the aching wind knife open spaces inside me, let desire suck me upward, and fill those wounds with blue.

I’ll show you what you’ve always been.

I know what the witch meant by those words. She didn’t mean

this—wings snapped wide, drinking the sky. She meant the selfishness, the desire that keeps me flying, that makes it easier to take to the sky than remember the land.

George’s office has its own balcony, the prick. But it lets me bypass his personal assistant, and gives me the satisfaction of knocking on the glass, and giving him half a heart attack as I change.

He slides open the door, but blocks me, keeping me out of his office, which smells of expensive leather furniture, and Turkish rugs, hand-picked by an overpaid design consultant.

My brother doesn’t look happy to see me. And why should he? I ? 292 ?

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give him a big old grin, just to spite him.

“How ya been, Georgie?”

The frown lines around his mouth deepen. They’re the only lines on his face. Botox, or good luck? Even with November coming on, his skin is perfectly tan, too. If his lips weren’t pressed tight over them, his teeth would likely show even and white. George’s hair is still dark, only the faintest threads of silver here and there, probably carefully worked in by a stylist for effect.

“What do you want?”

“Do you miss it?” The words fly out of my mouth, not at all what I meant to say. I’ve never been too good at humility. Circe was the only one who could make me beg.

But with my big brother, instead of getting on my knees to grovel, all that comes out is bile.

“Bran.” He manages to make my name sound like a warning.

I hold up my hands, peace. “It’s Liselle.”

What happens to George’s face when I say our sister’s name is complicated. Guilt, yes, and some kind of brotherly love. But the affection is more remembered than felt, and the corners of his lips turn down in distaste. Liselle is an embarrassment to his current life.

She’s a reminder of feathers, squabbling after garbage, of filth and mites, and being no better than a rat with wings.

I wonder, even once, in all these years, has he checked on her?

Invited her for a family dinner? Stopped by just to see how she’s doing? Does he even know where she lives? Do any of them? Among all of my brothers, is anyone looking out for Liselle besides me?

“Make it quick,” George glances at his watch; it’s heavy and expensive, like everything else in this room. “My driver will be here with the car at precisely six o’clock. I’ve never had to make him wait, and I don’t intend to start today.”

“Liselle is dying. She needs a new liver,” I say.

George’s face goes through its complicated range of emotions again. Finally, he settles on impatience. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

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