Plumage (27 page)

“He's in love with you,” Lydia said.

“He
thinks
he's in love with me. I'm not what he thinks I am.”

“He thinks you're still a blue parakeet, huh?”

“Not exactly …” But once again Sassy did not bother to correct Lydia's misconception. Sometimes a single inspired mistake is worth barrels of truth. Sassy turned to Lydia with wide eyes but did not dare to say what she was thinking:
that's it
! “Lipstick,” she whispered.

“'Scuse me, honey?”

“You got any more of those lipstick samples?”

“Sure. I got a truckload.” Lydia waddled off toward the kitchen.

“Kleet, sweetheart,” Sassy murmured to the parakeet, “I hope this works. Oh, I hope this works, poor baby.”

Lydia returned with a shoe box of even more dynamic proportions than the previous ones. Red Wing Work Boots, this one said. Sassy deposited Kleet back on the shelf in front of the mirror and opened the box.

“Oh, good,” she told Lydia or herself as she fingered ranks of tiny lipstick samples in almost as many colors as the birds of the glory forest. Thank goodness for punk fashion. “Okay. Here we go.”

She faced the mirror. Kleet's eye level as he perched on the shelf was about the same as hers as she stood looking past him. Sassy said, “Lookee here, Kleet,” and with a flare-red lipstick—Primary Red, the label said—she traced the oval of her own face. Not a perfect oval, more egg-shaped, but she had been through this before; perfection didn't matter. The size of the oval mattered more, and this one was about the right size for Kleet, she hoped. She took a Tropical Sunshine lipstick, basically a slick yellow crayon, and drew some filigree frills around her oval by way of an ornate frame. Fine so far. With the same lipstick, she began to draw a budgie where her face was.

Doing this was easy. For weeks on end she had seen a blue budgie in the mirror instead of her face; she just drew it there. Only she was no longer blue, so her budgie wasn't either. She drew it with a yellow head and a vivid green body, Jungle Green the lipstick said. And a touch of Danube Blue on the wings. And yellow uppers on the legs. And a coral patch around where the eye would be. With its Tropical Sunshine head cocked.

Just like Kleet.

Sweet Kleet. He had shown no interest while Sassy drew the oval frame, but as the parakeet in the mirror began to take shape his head came up and Sassy thought she heard a chirp.

“Do you like her, sweetie?” Sassy hoped it was a her. Most budgies, the genders looked just alike except for the cere color. Sassy did not know for sure what a female Carolina parakeet looked like, but she gave her lipstick parakeet a cute pink cere and hoped for the best. If only this worked …

Kleet craned his neck, ruffled his feathers, and cried “Kek!”

“Just let me finish her, honey.” Carefully Sassy gave her parakeet a sweet beady-eyed stare, then stepped back.

“Kek! Kek! Kek!” Kleet fluttered his wings, ducked his head, and sidled forward, twittering to the mirror budgie.

Watching him, Sassy felt a huge responsibility squeeze her heart in its fist-of-a-giant grip. “Oh, God,” she whispered to Lydia, who stood beside her, “I hope I'm not just teasing him.”

“It'll be okay,” Lydia whispered back.

Yeah, right, she'd say that. Sassy bit her lip, watching Kleet.

All the other budgies had gone quiet at the far end of the perch, looking on as if they knew something important was happening. Even the roomful of parrots and lovebirds and mynahs seemed quieter. Courting the mirror parakeet, Kleet did not yet dare to touch; he turned aside before he reached her and strutted along the shelf, showing her his handsome pointed tail feathers. He turned, fluttered his wings and stood on tiptoe.

Someone knocked at the apartment door.

“I'll get it.” Lydia turned and padded away, her weight creaking the floorboards. Sassy swore under her breath. Goddammit, whoever it was had better not bother Kleet—

“Hi. Sassy told me she was bringing Kleet here,” said Racquel's voice.

Sassy felt her heart warm even in the fist of fear; Racquel never left the shop in the middle of the day. She took a quick look over her shoulder—couldn't quite believe it was really him. But there he stood, teetering in four-inch turquoise-blue heels, his silver-lame gown dripping with bugle-beaded turquoise plumage, a stole of midnight-blue-and-turquoise faux emu thrown around his neck and shoulders. With his replacement boobs in place and his makeup on—a few sequins glued just under the eyebrow—and his hair done up in a silver-plated cock-hackle crest, he was stunning.

“Shh!” Finger to her lips, Sassy shushed across the room to him. “I'm over here.”

“Kleet's courting himself a missus,” Lydia explained.

Racquel tiptoed over as quietly as he could in his heels, explaining in a whisper, “Thought you might leave the little twit here, and I never said good-bye …” He stood by Sassy's side. “Bogus!” he breathed when he saw what the “missus” was.

Sassy hoped it wasn't too bogus.

And oh, God, she hoped Carolina parakeets mated for life.

Kleet turned and sashayed back along the shelf like a teenager doing the stroll. He dipped his wings then lifted them. He cocked his head and said, “Kek?” He faced her at a distance of three or four inches.

“Kek?”

Racquel advised under his breath, “Just do it, dude!”

Sassy whimpered, “What if it doesn't
work
?”

Standing lumpen on the other side of Sassy, Lydia said placidly, “It'll be okay.”

Sassy gritted her teeth.

“Kek! Kek! Kek!” Kleet bowed, sidled, hesitated, then approached. In the mirror his image superimposed upon the lipstick budgie so that it almost seemed like a living bird—

Sassy gasped.

Kleet kissed his mate gently, ever so gently, with his beak, and she tilted her head to kiss back. Kleet trilled to her and nibbled her cheek. Coyly she retreated. Kleet lifted his wings, gave a glad cry, and flew into the mirror after her.

Sassy breathed out.

Racquel turned and hugged Sassy. She leaned against him for a moment, then flung back her head and yelled, “Yee hah!”

She heard a similar screech from Lydia and a chorus of caws and cackling and squawks and whistles from the other onlookers, the ones with wings. Sassy was laughing, Racquel was laughing; he grabbed her by the hands and danced her around. “You are something else
entirely
!” he yelled. “Grab your hat, girlfriend. We're going shopping.”

She hugged him, then turned to grab her hat as instructed, but something, a thought, a breath, green-scented air from another world, halted her. In abeyance, a kind of psychic limbo, she looked to Racquel. “Is it real?” she asked.

“Say what, Sassy?”

“It—I—I don't know. For a minute there—some kind of déjà vu. Something about a rain forest, a parakeet—like I was some kind of a bird or something in another life.”

He gave her his tender cerise smile. “Were you? I didn't know you then.”

“What were you? In a past life, I mean? A Hollywood goddess?”

“Huh.” He blinked, stared at her with a puzzled frown and said slowly, “You're not gonna believe this, but I think—I think I was some kind of black Robin Hood.”

Sassy laughed, delighted, letting the distant, teasing dream-memory of an enchanted forest slip away; it didn't matter. She felt as lighthearted as a child. “Racquel, you're full of surprises!”

“That's one way to put it.” He stood there in the glory of all his plumage, feather boa and lovingkindness and turquoise-dyed turkey fringe and quail earbobs and friendship and emu fluff and wise brown eyes and cock-hackle froufrou and fidelity like a rock. He looked around. “You want to buy a budgie or something? Hey, Lydia, what's that lipstick on the mirror for?”

Lydia gave them both a slow, ineffable smile before replying. “Not a thing.” There was a whole world of secrets in her smile. A universe of hidden dreams. This was a woman who could do things she was not about to reveal. All she said was, “Just playing with the parakeets, that's all.”

“You want to buy a pair of lovebirds?” Racquel asked Sassy.

“What for? We don't need them.” Sassy scowled, scanning the small room alive with wings and singing, trying to remember something she'd forgotten, something about parakeets, then gave it up and grinned. She knew what she wanted to buy Racquel—a pair of stiletto-heeled marabou mules, if she could find any large enough to fit him. “Let's go.”

They closed the door gently, leaving behind them a simple lipstick oval the size of a human face on Lydia's mirror.

Kleet and Kek perched shoulder to warm green shoulder, hidden by sunny treeplume. By the foot of their tree gleamed stillwater, its shape a big egg, nest of sky. Whiteplume plants all around. Seeing these things, Kleet and Kek pressed together but did not speak because of humans down below, like walking trees in their browngreen plumage yet not quite like—her, someone or something Kleet could not quite remember, something of Deity, One Tree—the thought wafted like a dream, passed and did not matter. Down below, the humans made sounds he almost felt as if he should understand.

“Whence came that tree?”

“'Twas not there a fortnight ago, I'd swear it!”

“Any sign of the Moor and his little barbarian?”

“None.”

“They've gone back to their own world, methinks.”

“Of what kind is that tree?”

“I've never seen the like of it!”

“Not so tall—”

“Its leaves, like hands.”

“Like mittens.”

“But not all alike. Look. Some with two thumbs—”

“Some with one.”

“Some right hands, some left.”

“'Tis a three-handed monster tree.”

“Not so monstrous.”

“Perhaps 'tis a barbarian tree.”

They wandered off, still gabbling.

Kleet shrugged, fluffing his feathers. He turned to his mate, kissing her beak with his. He liked this tree because of water shining below and because it caught the sun and because—because of some call he did not understand. But with Kek by his side it was not important to understand. Softly he chirped to her, *Hometree?*

*Hometree,* she agreed.

About the Author

Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone with novels for adults, young adults, and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magic realism, horror, and mystery—although she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan and Nora), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and bird-watching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida Panhandle where the bird-watching is spectacular, and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2000 by Nancy Springer

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0939-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

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