Ornithogonia, or Five Featherings

The first time you plucked a feather from your lover’s skin, you did so laughing.

I laughed with you, my laugh as true as yours was false, and—though you could not hear me, Korone, my sweet-bitter girl—I think you knew I was watching, didn’t you? Your shadow. Your once-and-always goddess.

Your only goddess, you told me once, on your knees before my statue. For I will never love another, you vowed the day you swore yourself to my service, never, not ever, I promise.

You spoke the words like you believed them, then. Oh, how I believed you.

“A feather?” Helen asked, pretty forehead creasing as she reached for her shoulder. You caught her hand in yours before her fingers found the spot where the crow-dark plume had been.

“We must have knocked it from the pillow,” you said, and laughed another liar’s laugh. “I beg you to stay the night and you answer by defeathering my bed? Wicked, wicked woman!”

When she fell back against the sheets, more distracted by your mouth than by your words, her shoulder left a smear of blood against the white. The smallest mark. Too small a thing for her to notice.

You thought you could hide my wrath from her. But you could not hide your heart from me. I knew, Korone. I knew you had fallen in love.

* * *

The second feather, like the first, appeared beneath your hands. Not in bed, not this time. No, no—you were curled together beneath the mulberry tree by the riverbank, her heavy-laden limbs sunk so sorrowfully low—oh, as if even mulberry trees knew to weep for you and for your Helen.

Did you think to hide from me? Did you think blooms and branches would be enough to keep you from my sight? Or did you think I had forgotten your promise?

You could not pull the second feather from her skin quickly enough. When you reached for her, Helen recoiled from your touch.

“What is it?” she asked. I thought that a silly question. What could it be but a crow’s feather, sprouting from her shoulder?

You did not seem to find it silly.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I’m so sorry.”

* * *

With the third feathering—a jolt of plumage that blackened her shoulder all at once when first I heard you whisper words of love and always—you could not keep your curse a secret any longer. It would have been cruel to do so, wouldn’t it? As cruel as you thought me to be. No. You had to tell her the truth.

I have betrayed my goddess, I imagined you saying, those words I longed so desperately to hear: I must repent. I must go to her. I cannot love you, for I have sworn to serve her.

“It is the goddess,” you whispered instead, reaching for your Helen with shaking hands. “I have angered her by daring to love another. I had not thought her so petty. I was wrong.”

Helen tore one feather from her arm and inhaled, sharp, at the sting. She did not attempt to pull another loose. “Have I angered her, too, then?” she asked. “By—loving you?”

You took the feather from her and crushed it in one white-knuckled fist.

“You have done nothing wrong,” you said. You pressed a kiss to her jaw, to her brow, to the crown of her head. “This is the curse she has given me, mine and mine alone. Whatever I love will fly from me.”

* * *

Helen did not return to you for some time.

I was glad. In her absence, I thought, you might return to me. You might fall before my statue, weeping, pleading, making promises you would not break.

You did not come.

At last, the night came when you opened the door to find your Helen waiting there, wrapped in a cloak the color of grief.

“I meant to stay away,” she said. “I tried to spread rumors that I loved another. That I had acted unjustly towards you. I hoped—with time, you might cease to love me.”

“I have tried,” you said. “I cannot.”

“I know,” she said, and let her cloak fall away.

In the darkness, even I could not quite see your face. Not clearly. But I heard the way the sob broke from your throat at the sight she had kept from you. I could see her left arm. The wing that had been her arm.

That was the fourth feathering.

* * *

The day she flew from you, you came to my temple and stood before my statue, your cheeks red and raw from weeping.

“Fix her,” you begged. “Fix her! This should be my curse, not hers!”

“Ah,” I said, pleased to see you draw so near to understanding. “And do you not feel cursed? Is your heart not broken?”

“Please—”

“You will repent,” I said. “You will never again worship another. Only me. Only me.”

You were still you, though your heart was broken, and you looked at me with your violent eyes aflame. “If you will not bring her back, then let me go to her.”

Oh, Korone. My once-and-always girl. You would not repent. You would not say the words. But you had come to me, hadn’t you? You had returned to me: weeping, pleading, trusting I would answer. How could I deny you something so small?

I breathed the stone of my statue to life and stepped from my pedestal. I took your cheeks in my hands, black feathers blooming beneath marble-white fingers, and kissed your forehead once, twice, again. And when you were not you—when you were only a crow—I cradled you in my hands just a moment longer.

Even then, you must have thought me cruel. You thought you were alone in your curse. But the curse I gave you was my own, for it is every god’s curse:

Whatever I love will fly from me.

* * *

Ⓒ M. R. Robinson