Broken Wings (7 page)

Holly’s eyes widened improbably. “Astronomical. The Lightning Tree gallery is
one of the most famous in Noonpine, isn’t it?”

“It has something of a high profile,” Flora said. “I know the owner. Letty
Elmwood. She’s showing one or two of my pieces there.”

“Astronomical,” Holly said. “Rye is an utterly stinging cook. Her maple malt
sauce will slay you. You have to come to dinner, Ms. Withe. You’d really like
it.”

Flora smiled. “Well, perhaps I might then. But only if I’m allowed to make a
contribution. How about I bring some food? Although, I must admit that my
culinary knowledge and skill stop somewhere around boiling water.”

Rye hid her smile behind her mug of tea.

“Maybe you could draw me up a list of ingredients?” Flora said. “Or perhaps you
could come with me, Holly? And help me buy what Rye needs.”

“Me?” Holly said. “Oh, yes, please! That would be scathing.”

Holly accompanied Rye when she escorted Flora out to her carpet. Rye could only
exchange looks of amusement and gratitude with Flora. The carpet zoomed away far
too fast. Small wonder Flora collected traffic tickets like other people did
beer mats.

“Shit,” Holly said.

“Language,” Rye said.

“I left my body when I saw Ms. Withe sitting in our crappy kitchen. Ms. Flora
Withe! And I’m going shopping with her! Me, Holly Woods. I simply have to tell
Daisy!”

Holly dashed for her bedroom. Rye shut the door and grinned. Flora’s plan was
already working.

On Fifth Day, Holly spent all morning repeatedly changing her clothes. Rye did
her homework assignment, cleaned the toilet, and sorted the laundry. When Flora
picked up Holly, Rye would take the clothes down to the machine. She would make
a lightning shopping trip to the hypermart for her weekly groceries before Flora
and Holly returned, since there probably wouldn’t be time to get to the market
and back.

Holly burst in with a magazine.

“I meant to show you this,” Holly said. “Daisy gave me it.”

Rye took the magazine. It was one of those expensive glossy women’s ones.

“It’s a couple of months old,” Holly said. “But it shows that Ms. Withe is – Oh!
That must be her at the door. Page thirty-one.”

By the time Rye stepped into the hall, Holly had let Flora into the apartment.
Under a tailored casual jacket, Flora wore a lacy top that looked more like
underwear to Rye. Rye also had trouble keeping her eyes off Flora’s tight pants.

Holly bubbled with enthusiasm as she climbed in the carpet. Flora winked at Rye
before flying off. Rye grinned and went back to her piles of dirty clothes. She
scooped up the magazine to read while she was down waiting for a machine in the
laundry root.

Half the machines were out of order, so Rye had to join a queue. She pulled out
the magazine. Cosmetic, diet, perfume, and clothes ads were occasionally
interrupted by bursts of text. Page thirty was the start of a section called
Needle’s Eye. It was a gossip column. Rye didn’t recognise any of the names of
who was with or without whom. She turned the page. At the bottom of page
thirty-one she saw a photograph of Flora in a long evening gown. Flora looked
stunning. She looked like she was at a glittery party.

ShadeForest City’s rising weaving sensation,
Flora Withe
, attends
Gale
Purslain
’s birthday ball at Aspen Falls in the company of
Frond Lovage
,
fresh from the triumph of her latest play. Are they an item again? We’ll keep
our Eye on this couple.

Rye scowled at the woman in the photo beside Flora. Rye hadn’t noticed her
before. Frond Lovage was a skinny dryad taller than Flora and with a thinner
face, reddish-brown skin, and a twiggy look. Her gown was more showy and less
attractive than Flora’s.
An item again?

“Hey, wake up.” The squat pixie woman behind Rye prodded her in the arm. “If’n
you don’t want that machine, I do.”

Rye stuffed dirty underwear, smelly shirts, and stained pants into the washing
machine as she thought about Flora and her sleek dryad companion at a rich
party.
An item again?

Rye frowned all the way around the aisles at the hypermart.

She propped the magazine open on the table where she could see Flora’s
photograph as she put her groceries away. It made sense that two dryads get
together. Frond Lovage looked rich and successful.
Triumph of her latest play.
The skinny stick probably flew an expensive, sporty carpet like Flora’s. She
wouldn’t work two jobs and live in fear of being deported. Rye slammed the pot
of honey on the shelf so hard that the wood creaked.

An item again?
Flora and that Frond creature had been an item before. Dating.
Dancing. Frond Lovage would be able to buy Flora more than one drink in an
evening. And wouldn’t have holes in her socks when she took her shoes off to
have sex with Flora.

Rye stomped back up the stairs with her bag of clean laundry and dumped it on
the couch. She would bet every piece she was ever likely to earn that the
triumphant Frond Lovage never did her own laundry.
An item again.

“Crap.”

Rye banged the kettle too hard on the stove when she set it to boil. She flung
the offending magazine into a cupboard and stomped back to sort her laundry.

The front door opened.

“Rye?” Holly called. “We’re back.”

Rye glimpsed Flora as she walked past the doorway to the hall on her way to the
kitchen. Frond Lovage would not make Flora come to a dismal little one-bedroom
apartment in the Lower Eastside.

“Rye?” Flora appeared in the doorway joining the lounge and kitchen.

Rye found herself smiling. Her seething inadequacies and speculations
miraculously evaporated to insignificance as she looked at Flora. Flora winked.

“You’ll never believe what we got.” Holly stood behind Flora. “Come and see. We
went to the most astronomical shops.”

Rye jolted. She stood in her run-down apartment with her little sister watching
her. She ran a hand through her hair.

“Come on.” Holly beckoned impatiently.

“Um. Okay.” Rye stepped over her laundry bag and almost, but not quite, brushed
against Flora in the doorway.

Paper bags crowded the table. Most bore names which included the words emporium
or gourmet. A ripple of deepest unease made Rye’s wings clench. She should have
known that Flora wouldn’t shop at the open-air market.

“Look at this one first.” Holly thrust a bag at Rye.

Rye unwrapped generous wedges of three different kinds of cheese and released
mouth-wateringly sharp scents. Two were splendid for cooking with. The third
would make a killer accompaniment to the right dessert. Rye had only ever
handled them briefly during her stint working in a restaurant and in her
imagination when she prepared dream meals.

“The woman at the shop said that these were fairly versatile,” Flora said. “I
confessed that I was hopeless and had no idea what you might want to cook. Well?
Did we do okay?”

“Wow,” Rye said. She couldn’t help mentally pricing the three and coming up with
an uncomfortably large number.

Bag after bag disgorged expensive, fragrant, and exotic fruit, vegetables,
spices, and sauces. Rye’s anxiety soared apace with the estimated price. The
last bag was from a butcher. She peeled back paper wrapping to reveal three
large fillets. They looked fresh, succulent, and with just the right traces of
fat through them. It looked suspiciously like ferret meat.

“Holly and I weren’t sure what to get,” Flora said. “So we picked what looked
nicest. It’s ferret. According to the butcher, it won’t need hours of
preparation or marinating.”

Rye shook her head and reverently set the package on the table. Her gaze darted
across the other raw materials of the dinner. Possum milk cheese. Yellow moss.
Lavender honey. Silver fern fronds. Roasted raspberry seeds. Dried white Cabbage
Tree berries. Almighty King and Queen of the Fey, she had never had ingredients
like this before. This was going to be the best meal she’d ever prepared.

“If there’s anything else you need,” Flora said, “I can fetch it. It’s no
trouble.”

“Um. Thanks.” Rye squeezed around the table and knelt to rummage in her tiny
cooler. “Holly, did you eat the last of the kahikatea seed paste?”

“No,” Holly said. “You won’t get a sensible answer out of her now, Flora, until
we sit down to eat. She goes into this trance-like state where her eyes go blank
and you expect her to start dribbling at any second. Sometimes it can be hard to
spot from normal Rye, but trust me, I’m an expert. She’s in cooking frenzy. If
we’re really out of luck, she’ll start singing.”

Rye did sing, and hum.

At one point, Rye turned around and saw Flora leaning in the doorway. Flora
smiled.

“You really enjoy doing that, don’t you?” Flora said.

“Um. Yeah.”

Flora sidled around the table and slid a hand into one of Rye’s back pockets.
“You look very sexy wearing that tea towel tucked into the front of your pants.”

Rye’s gaze snapped between both doorways as she eased away from Flora. “Not
here.”

“What’s wrong? Oh. Holly’s in the bathroom.”

Rye peered down the hall. “She’ll be out soon, then.”

“Rye, I’m missing out on my Fifth Day fuck because of Mission Holly,” Flora
whispered. “You aren’t seriously intending to deprive me of a quick smooch and
grope?”

Rye’s wing buds tightened. She glanced between Flora and the bathroom door.
“It’s not that I don’t want – Fey. Here she is.”

Rye stepped away to pretend to look for something amongst her modest collection
of second-hand recipe books on the cooler. She heard Flora sigh. Later, while
Flora and Holly talked in the lounge, Rye opened the plate cupboard and
rediscovered the glossy magazine. Frond Lovage was out and loud for all to see.
She didn’t have to worry about what would happen to a gay woman who got deported
back to Fairyland. Or the equally nightmarish possibility that she had put her
little sister into the position of being the one to provide the testimony that
would condemn her to the fairy priestesses as a lesbian. Frond Lovage would not
have denied Flora kisses.

An item again
? Flora might still be kissing Frond. On those days when Rye
worked evenings, attended night classes, or stayed home with her little sister.
Rye jammed the magazine at the back of the vegetable bin before she began
heating the pan for grilling the ferret fillets.

The greatest shame about dinner was that Rye had to serve it on chipped, cheap,
mismatched crockery on a table in the cramped, dingy kitchen. Flora very
politely pretended not to notice. Holly was amazingly unlike her recent self,
even before Rye allowed her a glass of wine.

“Oh, Holy Elm,” Flora said. “This is fantastic. Rye, these acorns are making my
tongue want to expire out of pure pleasure.”

“I told you,” Holly said.

Rye grinned self-consciously.

“To the chef.” Flora held up her glass. “My deepest compliments.”

Rye blushed. “I think I overcooked the crumbed cheese. And used a pinch too much
manuka bark in the sauce. And the texture of the moss didn’t quite come out as I
expected. A little too gooey.”

“Mine’s perfect,” Flora said.

“She’s always like this,” Holly said. “Same with her school work. She gets so
many A’s that they must be running out of them, but Rye just shrugs and says she
could have done better.”

Flora gave Rye a look which made Rye reach for her wine.

After dessert, Holly voluntarily helped Rye wash the dishes. To Rye’s
astonishment, Holly then announced that she was going out. Rye would have bet
good money that Holly would have wanted to spend every moment she could in
Flora’s company.

“I told you,” Holly said. “I have to speak with Daisy.”

“Don’t be long,” Rye said. “School tomorrow.”

“I’ll be back by nine,” Holly said. “Exactly nine. Not a minute later or a
minute sooner. Promise. See you later, Flora. Thanks for taking me with you. I
had a crackling time.”

“You’re welcome, Holly,” Flora said. “I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”

The door thunked shut behind Holly.

Rye looked at Flora. Flora looked back. Rye’s wing buds twitched as if they
wanted to attract Flora’s attention. Flora smiled and advanced on Rye. Rye
hesitated for another look toward the door before succumbing to Flora’s
nearness. Rye’s aching fingers finally got to slide over Flora’s tightly encased
bottom. Flora’s clever fingers deftly deprived Rye of her shirt and undid her
pants while they kissed. The couch groaned alarmingly as they dropped together
onto it. Rye’s last coherent thought before she came was the realisation that
this was the first time she had made love with anyone else in her own bed.

“Oh, Elm, I needed that.” Flora eased her arm out from beneath Rye.

Rye kissed Flora’s shoulder and sat up. She pulled her clothes back on and
fetched their glasses of wine. She was relieved to see that Flora took her cue
and wriggled back into her pants.

“You don’t wear those often, do you?” Rye said.

“Do they make my bum look fat?”

“Your bum is perfect. It’s my eyes I’m worried about. They nearly fell out
staring at you.”

Flora smiled and lightly kissed Rye. “You say the sweetest things. Almost as
sweet as that maple dessert.”

“It was too sweet?”

“Not a speck. Oh, yum. It’s a good job I don’t have a supply in the cooler at
home or I’d end up as large as a stump.” Flora slid a hand up and down Rye’s
thigh. “That was the nicest meal I’ve eaten in an oak’s age.”

“Only because you live on takeaways and boil-and-eat packet meals.”

“No. I mean it. Laurel and I tried this new restaurant for lunch the other day.
The Red Vole. Dinner tonight was miles better than what I ate there. I’m not
saying that only because I want to screw the chef again.”