Plumage (24 page)

“Waal, paint me green and call me Gumby.”

“Paint me stupid! I wouldn't want him back if he came back, so what the—the—whatever am I trying to prove?”

“Waaal, dip mah balls in cream and throw me to the kittens,” Racquel intoned. “I'll be licked.”

“I can't believe I'm still acting like a—a—”

“Fricking-fracking,” Racquel suggested.

“A ding-damn dopey mopey
wife
!”

“What the hell do you think I've been trying to tell you?”

“Good grief!” She looked at him for the first time since the beginning of this outburst. “I'm stuck in a rut, Racquel.”

“No duh.”

“No wonder I—she—”

Silence. Sassy stood gazing upward. Racquel lifted his head also to scan the green-lacework jigsaw puzzle overhead limned with cerulean blue. He saw that, and flits of gold like a dusting of glitter—maybe warblers, maybe butterflies—and dusky sunbeams filtering down into gray-green shadow. Nothing else. But he knew what Sassy was thinking. Or rather, of whom.

“No wonder,” he agreed.

“I been looking at myself through foggy glasses.”

“Yeppers.”

Finally noticing his tone, she gave him a hard look. “Don't make fun of me,” she said. “Twenty-seven years is a long time.”

Oops. Yes, it was. Almost longer than he'd been alive. Abashed, he said nothing.

“Waaal paint me green,” Sassy murmured.

Racquel smiled; okay, she wasn't really mad. He'd just shut up now for a while. Somehow the two of them had started walking again in no particular direction, not admitting at this point to looking for anything, just wandering through the wonderland under the trees with Kleet flying circles around them.

“You seem to be a lot more adaptable than I am,” Sassy said after a while.

“I do?”

“Sure. You're a guy but you're a woman too.”

“Most people don't call that adaptable,” Racquel said. “Most people call it perverted.”

“Well, phooey on them. You're awesome. One day you're in retail and the next day you're an outlaw in the biggest Sherwood Forest there ever was and it doesn't seem to faze you.”

“I—I guess I've been through a lot of changes already.” Rejection, though he didn't say so. His family. One develops certain tools.

Sassy asked, “Do you like the Robin Hood thing?”

“Sure.”

“You like being a guy?”

He took his time answering. Had to think about it. Finally he said, “Here, yeah. I do like it.” Made sense. In this world behind the mirror he was his own reflection—no, he was behind his reflection; he was his own secrets. “You asked once what's my real name,” he said. “It's Devon. Devon Shelton.”

“I know.”

That startled him about as much as anything that had happened. “
What
?”

“I know. Cop told me.” She hadn't smirked. She hadn't even blinked. She just looked at him and she must have seen emotion in his face because she added, “It doesn't matter, Racquel.”

God. He wanted to hug her. But something, some shyness, kept him from doing it. They walked on.

“Do the outlaws call you Devon?” Sassy asked.

He shook his head. They called him Moor. “It would be okay here,” he said, noticing that his voice came out a bit husky. “But back home—nah.”

“Huh,” Sassy said.

“Once I get back, I won't be able to wait to get into a really bitchin' dress.”

“With a feather boa, probably.”

“You bet. And a cockfeather bustle, and a ruff, and …” He let the thoughts trail away, because her nodding acceptance was squeezing his heart. “Sassy,” he asked on impulse, “you still have some of those lipsticks on you?”

“Sure. Got 'em right here in my pocket.”

“Pretty me up a little bit, could you? And braid my hair for me?”

“Hey. Sure.”

She sat down, and Kleet perched to gaze down on both of them, and Racquel sat with his head resting between her cocked knees, cherishing the gentle touch of her hands working around his head.

Never in her life, Sassy mused, had she simply laid down on the ground under a tree to take an afternoon nap. And this was exactly what she and Racquel were doing. For some reason Racquel seemed very tired. He lay beside her sound asleep, his arms flung out as if he had been dropped from a height. She had dozed for a while but now she lay with her eyes open, gazing up into layers of leaflace and shadowlight, seeing the forest of lost dreams from a new angle. And in soft focus, like somebody had smeared Vaseline on the camera lens, since she had entrusted her glasses to a tree limb nearby. But she felt no urge to reach for them. Control didn't matter so much anymore. She lay listening to layers of silence and sound, birdcalls and midday peace and something else chirring and humming—tree frogs? Cicadas? Didn't matter. No urge to reach for an encyclopedia, either; it was sufficient just to be where she was. At peace. With Racquel close by. With sweet little Kleet perched close by. With—

At first a shining speck like a daytime star, then larger, spiraling lazily down, down, down like a maple wing, a white pinion floated toward her.

Sassy gasped and sat up.

The pearly shining feather halted in front of her face and hovered there.

“Racquel,” Sassy murmured. The hum of peace in the forest was such that she could not seem to speak aloud.

Racquel did not awaken. The feather, however, darted at her face as if to shush her, shaking itself like an admonishing fingertip.

“Just me?” Sassy whispered.

The feather withdrew, nodded in the air, wheeled and pointed.

Sassy swallowed hard, taking a deep breath. “Okay,” she breathed, getting up, a bit shaky. She put on her glasses and looked at Racquel sprawled there sleeping in his jerkin and hose and lipstick and Heidi braids, memorizing him in case she didn't see him again. In that moment she knew that there was only one thing in the world more important to her than Racquel, and this was it. She sensed in her bones, to the feathery marrow of her hollow bones, that this was it. “Coming,” she whispered, and she followed the glimmering pinion.

It led her a long shadowy way between towering trees jeweled with efts, butterflies, finches, fungi, orchids, ribbon snakes, passionflowers; past mossy boulders studded with fiddleheads and toadstools; under the green-gold lacework canopy through a twilight of lost dreams to the oval pool.

Sassy knew where she was going when she saw the sunlight beyond the greenshadow and her feet stumbled. Her glasses fogged as her face heated and chilled as if with fever. No. She couldn't do it. She couldn't brave that place again.

But maybe she wouldn't actually have to look into the pool. Right?

Or maybe it wasn't really the same place—

It was. The feather led her into the shadowy dingle—she could not mistake that fullmoon circle like a green eye looking to the sky, the oval pool the winking pupil at its heart—Sassy had once looked into some animal's eye with an oval pupil of that same fathomless blue; what was it? A cat, a lizard, a horse, a goat? She could not think. It seemed to matter tremendously yet it didn't matter. She walked down the gentle slope and her feet faltered even on the smooth sward. She slowed, but trudged on down the hollow, right to the edge of the still water, to the verge rimmed in slate-green and gray-blue and rose-colored stone; around that verge calla lilies bloomed instead of narcissus. Sassy stopped a few feet short of the edge, blinking like a child in the presence of that mirroring surface.

The guiding pinion shot upward and disappeared into sunlight, dismissing her. Good-bye.

“No,” Sassy whispered. She took off her glasses, wiped them on her sweatshirt, put them on again and looked around, anywhere except at the pool. Treetops looming as if they would fall in on her. Tiny blossoms in the grass, white, lavender, powder-blue. Something big and white flying over—her heart jumped. But it was only an egret, neck bestowed in an elegant S-curve, legs trailing like two sticks of spaghetti.

Nothing else.

“Hello?” Sassy whispered.

Only the distant chiming of tree frogs answered.

“Hello? Please? Where are you?” More loudly.

Nothing.

“Oh, come on. Please? Pretty please with peaches and cream? Come talk with me?”

Nope.

“Say something?”

Nope.

Sassy walked the rim of the oval pool, then turned and walked around it the other way, as if that might help. She called again. She looked around some more.

Nothing moving or shaking. Not even, seemingly, the sun in the distant sky.

“Oh, darn—darn—damn it all!”

She knew she had to do it. She knelt beside the pool. Please.
Please let it not be Frederick this time. Please let me be able to handle it
, whatever it was.

She looked.

The surface mirrored back to her only a blue budgie.

Blue. Like the sky. Like her mood most of the time.

“Huh!”

She stood up again and looked around. Nothing.

“Okay, you—”

You what? Okay, Sassy knew what she was, though she couldn't have explained it. But what was her name?

You must name me
.

Sassy walked around the oval again, brushing her hand against calla lilies as she walked, tincturing her palm with saffron pollen. She reversed and walked back, brushing them with the other hand.

She looked up and said, “I name you Shadow.”

Nothing.

“I name you Sassafras tree,” she went on, for a being as important as Shadow could have more than one name. Many names. “I name you Perdita, because you were lost, and I name you Eureka, because I found you. I name you Freebird. I name you Rebel. I name you Deeproot, I name you Wonderwing, I name you Smart—Smart Alec. I name you Wise Child. I name you Sassy. I name you me.”

Nothing happened, exactly, but deep in the hollow of the sky Sassy felt something holding its breath. The air seemed to hum. She felt a silent thrumming vibrating the lacunae of her bones.

She strolled around the pool again. Childlike, singsong, she chanted,

I name you Shadow
,

I name you Tree
,

I name you Rebel
,

I name you Free
,

I name you Birdsing
,

I name you Wonderwing
,

I name you Sassy
—

What else? Sassafras? Smart alec? Wise child? Nah.

I name you Sassy
.

I name you me
.

The echoes had not yet faded when, with wingbeats like distant thunder and singing pinions and flying hair and a glad cry and a thump as she landed on her bare feet on the grass, Shadow stood before her.

“Uh!” Racquel yawned, stretched, sat up and looked over at Sassy.

She wasn't there.

He felt a jolt in his gut. Waking up alone, all too much like too many sad songs—but he was being stupid. Probably she was just taking a pee somewhere close by.

He stood up, yawned and stretched some more, and addressed the forest, “Sassy?”

No answer.

Damn. If she'd gone to the corner store for a quart of milk or something, you'd think she could have left a note. In lipstick on a tortoise, maybe.

“Sassy?”

No answer. Just damn birds singing like nothing was the matter.

Now his brain had kicked in he was really starting to get worried, because where could she have gone? She didn't know the way back to the outlaw camp. For that matter, neither did he.

Damn. What would Robin Hood do? Look for clues, probably. No, that was Sherlock Holmes.

Look for—something. Tracks. Yeah, right. But something. Broken branches. A trail of bread crumbs. Stuff like that. Racquel started to circle the shady dell where he and Sassy had snoozed.

Sometime later, he realized that he had succeeded in losing his way back to that place as well.

Even though he had napped, he was still tired. And now he was hot. He was cross. And he was scared. Sweaty scared. He felt sweat trickling down his spine to creep under his rudimentary waistband and into his ass cleavage. He hated sweat. He hated it most of all when it ran down his back into his butt crack.

He stood still and yelled so hard that his eyes squeezed shut, “God damn it all to hell anyway.
Sassy
!” Where the fuck was she?

As the echoes of his shout wavered away he heard a familiar sound he could not place. He opened his eyes.

Sweeeet. Kleet!

Chirping, the parakeet whirred up to him and landed on his shoulder. It was the first time Sassy's pet had showed the least friendliness to him. And gee, that feather-light weight and those little warm feet did feel kind of good. Bird better not poop on him, though.

“Hi, Kleet, honey!” And where Kleet was, could Sassy be far behind? Racquel looked all around, expecting her to pop out from behind a bush or something, but she didn't. “Where is she?”

“Twee,” said Kleet disconsolately.

“Has something happened to her?”

“Twee.”

“Yeah, Twee. Lead me to her, Kleet! What's that you say, Lassie, Timmy's in the well again? Good fellah. Lead the way, boy!” He shrugged his shoulder to dislodge the parakeet, then yelled, “Wait for me!” and loped after it. Yeah, right, probably it was on its way to a birdie gang bang or something, not to Sassy. But what the hell else could he do?

Sassy stood—a feather could have knocked her down, but luckily none offered to do so. She stood literally breathless looking at her second self. In this mirror world, her reflection. Yet she felt a sense that Shadow stood there more vital and real than she was. The girl's hair glowed like silk fire in the sunshine. Color glowed in her tawny cheeks. Her eyes shone. She stood—

Stood. Sassy caught a breath and gasped, “You have feet!”

“About time,” Shadow agreed, her tone more wry than harsh. “Why the devil did you name me Shadow?”