Split Feather Page 17

  “Yes,” the humanish admitted, never taking her eyes from me. They were huge, soft brown and filled with longing. “Would you really trade her?”

  “I’d trade this old bag of feathers for living steel in a heartbeat,” the old woman said. The humanish girl spat into her hand and held it out.

  “Do we have an accord?”

  The old woman didn’t hesitate, and for that I would never forgive her. She spat into her own hand and grasped the girl’s, and I saw the bone-dust swirl around their grasp. I shook my feathers out, squawking with alarm, but the old woman looped a bit of rawhide around my foot before I could take off. As she untangled my claws from her hair I screamed in fright and in anger.

  Grandmother, I thought, way down deep in a part of me that I’d thought forgotten. Grandmother, don’t leave me! Don’t let her take me away!

  “Siggy,” she whispered into my feathers, and she kissed the top of my head. “Don’t forget, Siggy. Come back to me, Siggy.” She handed the other end of the thong to the humanish girl, and received the ax in return, and then she walked away, head bowed, feet dragging as if they weighed the world.

  “Aggy!” I screamed. “Aggyyyyyyyyyy!”

  “Aggy,” the humanish girl murmured. She held my leash and smiled at me as if we were in love. “Pretty name, Aggy. Pretty girl.” I pecked at her eyes and shrieked, but she just laughed and ducked away.

  “Manners!” she chided. “Come on then, Aggy, it’s getting late and the old woman will come looking for me if I’m not back in time to make her supper.” That confused me, because the old woman had just walked away. She stooped for an armful of wood, never letting go of the tether that held me captive. “If she has to come after me, she’ll be angry… and we don’t want that, do we?” She held me at arm’s length so I couldn’t peck her eyes, and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “No,” she agreed with herself, “we do not want to make her angry, Aggy. We really do not.”

  “Aggy!” I cried. “Aggy!”

  “Come on, then.” She turned, still holding me tight, and walked into the dark, into the silent woods.

  Come back to me, Siggy.

  “Aggy!” I screamed to the trees, despairing. “Aggy!” But they pretended not to hear me. I suppose they didn’t want to anger the witch. That was the old woman she meant.

  I was in her world, now.

  26

  The humanish girl carried me deep into the heart of the forest, where the trees had long since gone silent and there were no ravens.

  “You must keep quiet,” she explained to me. “Puyuk will eat you if she finds you. She is blind, but her hearing is very keen, and she can smell blood for miles.” We skirted the edges of a clearing full of twisted and torn-off tree stumps. “Puyuk did not like the things they said about her,” the humanish explained, “and now the other trees are afraid to say anything.”

  Trees don’t talk, I thought. But then again, ravens didn’t either, did they?

  Do they?

  We passed a stone squirrel clutching the trunk of a dead and blackened tree, and then a stone wolf that crouched, snarling, frozen in that moment of indecision between flight and attack. Two stone bears, one curled as if in sleep and the other standing on his back legs, one paw up, nostrils flared as if he’d just scented something troubling. The humanish girl flinched as she walked between them, and the breath caught in her throat.

  I tugged against the tether, but she held on tight.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered to me. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been so lonely.” The word lonely tumbled from her lips as a stone dropped into a dark well with no bottom and no hope of light. It shivered through the boughs of the too-still trees, lost among the brown needles and papery leaves. I pecked at the cord that held me, desperate to get away, but I was caught.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she told me with a sigh. And then, “Be still; we’re here.”

  We walked through a ring of blackened, blasted trees and into a wide clearing. There was ice on the ground, and snow—not a jewel-bright granular snow like that near my old woman’s hut, nor a light, powdery snow that might squeak underfoot and glisten in even this dim light. It was a dry snow, heavy and dull as bone-dust, snow that had fallen from a dead sky onto a dead ground.

  In the very center of this clearing crouched a low, dark hut, windowless and misshapen, with odd hollows and cracks and discolored patches upon its walls. As we drew nearer I could see that it actually was made all of bones—long bones and jawbones, finger bones and antlers, claws and teeth and hollow-eyed skulls. The smoke hole was ringed all round with vertebrae, the door was blackened wood inlaid with row upon row of teeth, and it was flanked by a pair of massive tusks, carved with symbols and runes that glowed in my raven’s sight.

  My bird’s heart beat so with fright that it pained me. The humanish girl lifted her heavy hair and drew it around me, like a sable cape.

  “Hush now,” she said. “Be still.” She pushed the door open. It was dark inside, and stank of dead snakes.

  “Puyuk,” she said, “I’m home.”

  “You’re late!” A voice came from the gloom, a voice thin and sharp as a whip-crack. “You were trying to escape again, weren’t you?”

  “No, Puyuk,” the humanish girl sighed as she crossed the dirt floor and dropped her load of firewood near the mean hearth. “I was chopping wood.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very big load. You were probably sleeping again, weren’t you? Lazy girl. Eating and sleeping is all your kind is good for.”

  The girl added wood to the fire and blew on it. As the light grew, I could see the inside of the witch’s lair. It was shadowy and rank, a long, low room with shadows dancing around the edges. There were two sleeping pallets, one near the fire and warmth, one at the far end and directly under the smoke hole, where the shadows and stench were thickest. Dried herbs hung from every beam and were laid out neatly on every surface, and there were jars and bottles and bowls of every description—glass jars and clay pots, bowls of wood and birch-bark and bone. One low shelf held a row of cups and bowls made of skulls, both human and animal, and a candle cradled in a wizened human hand.

  “Nevermore,” I hissed through my beak.

  “What was that?” the witch cried.

  The humanish girl turned, and I saw the witch Puyuk for the first time. The witch was seated in a high-backed chair covered all in furs: otter and beaver, wolf and fox and bear. She was a tiny old lady, smaller even than Emily—who is Emily?—and so insubstantial that a strong wind might have carried her away. Such a figure would stir in most humans the desire to protect, to serve, to draw a warm shawl around those frail shoulders and ask, in a gentle voice, whether she might like a nice cup of tea.

  Puyuk wore her hair in a long silver braid pulled over one shoulder and coiled in her lap, and this she petted and fussed over as if it were a purring cat. Her head nodded, her spotted hands shook with palsy, and she seemed likely to expire at any moment.

  She looked up, and I was so terrified I shat down the humanish girl’s parka. Puyuk’s face had been ruined with great violence. Her thin nose was askew, the upper lip torn and twisted, baring a gap-toothed yellow snarl. Worst of all, worst of all, her eyes had been put out. Bits of dead leather like a mummy’s skin stared from raw, bloodied pits. They stared, they wept, and they saw; of that, I was quite certain.

  I cowered, pressing my scrawny self closer to the girl’s neck, trembling all over.

  “What was that?” the witch asked again, stroking, stroking the coil of hair in her lap. “Did you bring me a gift, Pretty? A bowl full of berries, a fat little fish? A bit of meat for my dinner, and bones to pick my teeth?” She smiled, and I wanted to die, it was that horrible.

  “It was nothing, Puyuk. Only the wind in the smoke hole. It was the wind, and nothing more.” The witch settled back in her chair, muttering, but it seemed to me that her twisted lip hid a smile, her dead eyes a glint of knowing.

  “I’m cold,” she said. �
��Build the fire higher, Pretty. Higher! Heat these old bones till I melt. Throw me in the soup!” She laughed as the humanish girl caught her breath. “Throw me in the soup, heh. In the soup, heh. Heh.”

  The girl put more wood on the fire, and I knew her slow, deliberate way of moving for what it was—fury in the face of terror. I’d moved in such a way before, back when I was a girl and too afraid to kill. The girl served the witch, and it wasn’t like those days when I’d lived with my grandmother…

  What? I thought. What? But the thought skittered away like a little fish, slippery and too quick to catch.

  The humanish hated Puyuk, that much was certain. She wanted to kill that witch, strike her to the marrow of her bones. I could feel her fury in the quick way she chopped onions into the woman’s beaver-tail soup, the way she ladled out a portion just so, and broke the thin crust of ice to fetch drinking water. I knew this brand of fury—how could I not?—but she was too bound by fear to act, and so she remained a slave.

  The witch ate her soup, and drank her tea, all the while laughing her silent laugh and staring her blind stare. She clutched the beaver’s tail in one hand, slicing upward with an ulu, the sharp half-moon blade flashing wicked and quick so that it seemed as if she would slice off bits of nose along with her meat. When she was finished, Puyuk set the ulu aside and settled back with a belch and a sigh.

  “Bring me the box, Pretty,” she commanded, licking her sunken lips. “Bring me my pretty.”

  Pretty—for so the witch had named her—sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She turned, almost tripping, and from a niche above the witch’s pallet she drew a small wooden box. It was carved all over in bears and girls, dancing together round a pole, and the humanish girl carried it as if it was precious as the moon and twice as heavy. She placed it into the witch’s hands with all the eagerness of a woman giving over her own child.

  The old hands fluttered and twitched as they lay atop the wooden box. Afraid of the witch as I was, I craned my neck and peered through the girl’s hair, consumed with a strange sense of urgency. What is it, Pretty? I wanted to ask. Something precious, of that I was certain. Something beautiful and rare and good.

  The old woman released the latch and lifted the lid. Pretty held her breath, and I held mine, as the witch reached her long claws into the box and drew forth…

  A spruce needle. A single spruce needle, and nothing more.

  27

  The witch cradled the spruce needle in the palm of one wrinkled paw, clutched it to her breast as if it were a child, and her face shone with rapture and triumph.

  She uncurled her fingers just a bit, and let the humanish girl gaze upon her prize.

  “Go on,” she urged, voice full of malice and laughter. “Take it. Go on and take it. You are young and strong. I am old and weak. Take it from me by force if you would, throw it into the fire and be done with this. Destroy this, and you destroy me. Destroy this, and you are free.”

  “I cannot,” the humanish girl said, her face hard, eyes full of terrible grief. “I will not.”

  “Foolish sentiment,” the witch scoffed. “Do you think your daughter appreciates your sacrifice? Do you think she even knows? You remain a slave for the sake of a girl who has forgotten your name. A girl who hardly remembers her own.”

  I must have made some noise at that. The witch Puyuk twitched forward, peering toward me though I was hidden and she was blind.

  “What was that?”

  “What?” the humanish girl asked, in that condescending tone meant to infuriate old women. “This?” She rattled the dishes as she picked them up. “It’s only me, Puyuk. It is a mouse in the pantry. It is the wind rattling the jawbones, and nothing more. Nothing more.” She picked up a comb made of fish bones, and gathered up the witch’s silver braid.

  “Foolish,” the old woman snapped, but she leaned back and sighed as the humanish girl unraveled the long, long braid and began to tug the comb through her hair.

  As hideous as the woman was, her hair was magnificent. Silver as swift water it flowed, handfuls of the stuff sliding through the humanish girl’s fingers, gleaming and precious in the miserly light. The comb dragged through it, root to tip, over and over again, and the girl hummed as she sang. Her movements, and her voice, and the crackle-pop of the settling logs wove a blanket soft and warm and comforting. I floofed my feathers and dozed even as the witch nodded, eyelids fluttering and shuttering her hideous lost eyes. Her head lolled sideways, and a soft growling snore bubbled from her sunken mouth as Puyuk the witch slipped away.

  Where did she go, this wicked old witch, once she had shuffled free from her fleshly prison, free to dance about as she chose? What form did she take? Was she beautiful? Kind? Did she dream of a softer world, of lovers and kittens?

  I didn’t think so.

  The soft lilt of Pretty’s voice took on strength and cadence and purpose. Her hum turned to a song, and then a story, though the precise order of her words were lost to me as she brushed the old woman’s hair, and shadows pooled in the eye sockets of the skulls that watched us so carefully from their tidy shelves.

  “In the long ago,” she began, and her words took on a cadence.

  When Raven created the world, and all the animals in it,

  Moose and Caribou, Wolverine, Wolf, and Bear,

  Still he thought something was missing.

  So he made Woman, soft and clever,

  And then Man to plague her, lest her life be too easy

  And Mosquito to plague Men.

  “But people had no fur to keep them warm, no claws and teeth like Bear or Wolverine, so he taught them how to hunt and skin animals for food and clothing, and for a while they were content. Before too long, however, they were crying out to Raven and complaining that it was too cold, it was too dark, and they begged him for light and warmth.

  “The great Whale told Raven about a far-off land where light could be found, so he set off flying far, far over the land, the trees and then mountains, till he came to a very strange place. There was a house there, a great longhouse where a great chief lived with his daughter and their people. Raven hid himself in a tree that stretched across the path to the river, and one day, when the chief’s daughter walked under his tree, he turned himself into a spruce needle and fell, plop! Right into her skin bowl. This made the girl pregnant, and by the time she got back home her belly was round and full, and that night she gave birth to a son.

  “The chief was delighted to have such a fine, strong grandson, and he spoiled the child, but Raven was a fussy, fussy baby. He cried and cried all night long and would not be consoled. The People could not sleep and begged their chief to quiet that baby. Finally the chief gave the baby one of three special bundles that hung on the longhouse wall, and for a while the babe played quietly, babbling in a happy way.

  “Then he chewed off the string that held the bag closed and pop! Out flew the stars, round and round his head they whizzed, till at last they chased each other right out the smoke hole and into the sky.

  “Now the baby cried louder than ever, reaching for the other bags. The chief refused at first, but the baby cried and the People begged, so at last he relented and gave him the second bag to play with. Just as before, he was quiet and happy for a while, but just as before he got that bag open and pop! Out came the moon. It floated up, up, up to the ceiling and then up, up, and out of the smoke hole, all the way up to the sky.

  “Raven cried louder than ever, reaching for that third bag. Again the chief refused him, but again he was pestered and badgered until he gave in, and the baby played for a while on the floor. Eventually, though, he got that bag open and pop! Out flew the sun. Though the chief and all his people grabbed at it—for the sun was their greatest treasure—it shot straight up and out of the smoke hole, growing bigger and bigger as it went till it filled the whole sky with light and warmth.

  “That baby clapped his hands, laughing, and pop! He turned back into Raven. Then he flew right out the smoke
hole and all the way home, where his people praised him with song and dance for bringing light and warmth to the skies.”

  Pretty paused in her combing to look down at the witch Puyuk. Her face was a strange tangle of emotions.

  “When I started this story,” she added softly, “the winter had just begun, and now I have chewed off a part of it.”

  Puyuk’s cruel hands relaxed on her lap. Wicked fingers meant for pinching and hurting uncurled slowly, slowly. One hand twitched as in a dream—I wagered that she’d caught one of the dream-kittens and was wringing its neck—and the spruce needle fell from her hand to lay in shadows upon the floor. The humanish girl plucked me from her hair and from the drowsy warmth of half-sleep, dropping me flapping and disoriented upon the cold earth.

  “Take it!” she hissed, in a wisp of a whisper. “Quickly, take it! Take it, it is yours!”

  I hesitated, staring at the spruce needle, afraid and confused. The last thing I needed right now was to be pregnant with some weird Raven-god.

  “Take it,” she insisted, too loudly. “This is your one chance. Take it! Siggy!”

  Siggy…

  Siggy.

  “Aggy!” I squawked.

  “Aggy! Aggy! Qa’hoq! Siggy!”

  The moment I remembered my name something clicked into place. I hopped forward and pecked the spruce needle, which was heavy and hot as iron laid in the fire, and it sang my name like a bell. I tucked it into the soft, deep feathers under my wing—there was no way in any hell I was going to swallow it—as the witch Puyuk woke with a roar like a forest fire come to devour us all. Her empty eyes snapped open and fixed on me, and she sprang from her throne of furs. Her hands were grasping, mouth gaping, hair thrashing wildly around the room like quicksilver snakes, hissing and whipping the air into a frenzy.

  Holy fuck, I thought, she turned them into stone. The squirrel, the wolf, those two bears… she turned them all into stone.

  Though the witch’s eyes had been taken from her, and with them a great deal of her power, I was half turned to stone myself with sheer fright. Pretty scooped me up in her hand and tucked me under her arm, and then dashed across the room like she was going for the world’s most desperate touchdown. If she hadn’t, I’d have been raven stew for sure.