Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 85

I guess it doesn't need a beak after all, because the dogs go from growling and snapping to yelping and running just like that. I slide my backpack off one shoulder and grab it by the strap in the hand that's not full of ice.

It's heavy and I could hit something, but I don't swing it in time to stop one of the dogs knocking into me as it bolts away. The puke splashes on my leg. It burns like scalding water through my tights.

I stop myself just before I slap at the burn. Because getting the puke on my glove and burning my hand too would just be smart like that. Instead, I scrub at it with the dirty ice in my other hand and run limping towards the harpy.

The harpy hears my steps and turns to hiss, eyes glaring like green torches, but when it sees who's there it pulls its head back. It settles its wings like a nun settling her skirts on a park bench, and gives me the same fishy glare.

Wash that leg with snow, the harpy says. Or with lots of water. It will help the burning.

"It's acid."

With what harpies eat, the harpy says, don't you think it would have to be?

I mean to say something clever back, but what gets out instead is, "Can you fly?"

As if in answer, the harpy spreads its vast bronze wings again. They stretch from one end of the dumpster to the other, and overlap its length a little.

The harpy says, Do these look like flightless wings to you?

Why does it always answer a question with a question? I know kids like that, and it drives me crazy when they do it, too.

"No," I say. "But I've never seen you. Fly. I've never seen you fly."

The harpy closes its wings, very carefully. A wind still stirs my hair where it sticks out under my hat.

The harpy says, There's no wind in my kingdom. But I'm light now, I'm empty. If there were wind, if I could get higher- I drop my pack beside the dumpster. It has harpy puke on it now anyway. I'm not putting it on my back. "What if I carried you up?"

The harpy's wings flicker, as if it meant to spread them again. And then it settles back with narrowed eyes and shows me its snaggled teeth in a suspicious grin.

The harpy says, What's in it for you?

I say to the harpy, "You've been my friend."

The harpy stares at me, straight on like a person, not side to side like a bird. It stays quiet so long I think it wants me to leave, but a second before I step back it nods.

The harpy says, Carry me up the fire escape, then.

I have to clamber up on the dumpster and pick the harpy up over my head to put it on the fire escape. It's heavy, all right, especially when I'm holding it up over my head so it can hop onto the railing. Then I have to jump up and catch the ladder, then swing my feet up like on the uneven bars in gym cla.s.s.

That's the end of these tights. I'll have to find something to tell Mama Alice. Something that isn't exactly a lie.

Then we're both up on the landing, and I duck down so the stinking, heavy harpy can step onto my shoulder with her broken, filthy claws. I don't want to think about the infection I'll get if she scratches me. Hospital stay. IV antibiotics. But she balances there like riding shoulders is all she does for a living, her big scaly toes sinking into my fat pads so she's not pushing down on my bones.

I have to use both hands to pull myself up the fire escape, even though I left my backpack at the bottom. The harpy weighs more, and it seems to get heavier with every step. It's not any easier because I'm trying to tiptoe and not wake up the whole building.

I stop to rest on the landings, but by the time I get to the top one my calves shake like the m.u.f.flers on a Harley. I imagine them booming like that too, which makes me laugh. Kind of, as much as I can. I double over with my hands on the railing and the harpy hops off.

"Is this high enough?"

The harpy doesn't look at me. It faces out over the empty dark street. It spreads its wings. The harpy is right: I'm alone, I've always been alone. Alone and lonely.

And now it's also leaving me.

"I'm dying," I yell, just as it starts the downstroke. I'd never told anybody. Mama Alice had to tell me, when I was five, but I never told anybody.

The harpy rocks forward, beats its wings hard, and settles back on the railing. It cranks its head around on its twisty neck to stare at me.

"I have HIV," I say. I press my glove against the scar under my coat where I used to have a G-tube. When I was little.

The harpy nods and turns away again. The harpy says, I know.

It should surprise me that the harpy knows, but it doesn't. Harpies know things. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the harpy only loves me because I'm garbage. If it only wants me because my blood is poison. My scarf's come undone, and a b.u.t.ton's broken on my new old winter coat.

It feels weird to say what I just said out loud, so I say it again. Trying to get used to the way the words feel in my mouth. "Harpy, I'm dying. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But probably before I should."

The harpy says, That's because you're not immortal.

I spread my hands, cold in the gloves. Well duh. "Take me with you."

The harpy says, I don't think you're strong enough to be a harpy.

"I'm strong enough for this." I take off my new old winter coat from the fire department and drop it on the fire escape. "I don't want to be alone any more."

The harpy says, If you come with me, you have to stop dying. And you have to stop living. And it won't make you less alone. You are human, and if you stay human your loneliness will pa.s.s, one way or the other. If you come with me, it's yours. Forever.

It's not just empty lungs making my head spin. I say, "I got into college."

The harpy says, It's a career path.

I say, "You're lonely too. At least I decided to be alone, because it was better."

The harpy says, I am a harpy.

"Mama Alice would say that G.o.d never gives us any burdens we can't carry."

The harpy says, Does she look you in the eye when she says that?

I say, "Take me with you."

The harpy smiles. A harpy's smile is an ugly thing, even seen edgeon. The harpy says, You do not have the power to make me not alone, Desiree.

It's the first time it's ever said my name. I didn't know it knew it. "You have sons and sisters and a lover, Celaeno. In the halls of the West Wind. How can you be lonely?"

The harpy turns over its shoulder and stares with green, green eyes. The harpy says, I never told you my name.

"Your name is Darkness. You told me it. You said you wanted me, Celaeno."

The cold hurts so much I can hardly talk. I step back and hug myself tight. Without the coat I'm cold, so cold my teeth buzz together like gears stripping, and hugging myself doesn't help.

I don't want to be like the harpy. The harpy is disgusting. It's awful.

The harpy says, And underneath the filth, I shine. I salvage. You choose to be alone? Here's your chance to prove yourself no liar.

I don't want to be like the harpy. But I don't want to be me any more, either. I'm stuck living with myself.

If I go with the harpy, I will be stuck living with myself forever.

The sky brightens. When the sunlight strikes the harpy, its filthy feathers will shine like metal. I can already see fingers of cloud rising across the horizon, black like cut paper against the paleness that will be dawn, not that you can ever see dawn behind the buildings. There's no rain or snow in the forecast, but the storm is coming.

I say, "You only want me because my blood is rotten. You only want me because I got thrown away."

I turn garbage into bronze, the harpy says. I turn rot into strength. If you came with me, you would have to be like me.

"Tell me it won't always be this hard."

I do not lie, child. What do you want?

I don't know my answer until I open my mouth and say it, but it's something I can't get from Mama Alice, and I can't get from a scholarship. "Magic."

The harpy rocks from foot to foot. I can't give you that, she says. You have to make it.

Downstairs, under my pillow, is a letter. Across town, behind brick walls, is a doctor who would write me another letter.

Just down the block in the church beside my school is a promise of maybe heaven, if I'm a good girl and I die.

Out there is the storm and the sunrise.

Mama Alice will worry, and I'm sorry. She doesn't deserve that. When I'm a harpy will I care? Will I care forever?

Under the humps and pads of fat across my shoulders, I imagine I can already feel the p.r.i.c.kle of feathers.

I use my fingers to lift myself onto the railing and balance there in my school shoes on the rust and tricky ice, six stories up, looking down on the street lights. I stretch out my arms.

And so what if I fall?

Black is the Colour Black is the color of my true love's hair His lips are like a rose so fair The kindest face and the gentlest hands I love the ground whereon he stands Sunrise light glazed the oblong cobbles along the north bank of the River Clyde. The thump of music from a barge-turned nightclub had ended hours earlier. Only the river-winding between stark industrial buildings on the south bank and condominiums on the right-remained. The river, silence, and the morning chill.

And a white stallion's hunger.

He was not pure-white: rather a cobby piebald with a black face and a mostly-white body, more black spotting his legs, streaking his mane and tail and his heavy feathers. The red light sc.r.a.ped across the stones stained his coat also, turning blue eyes unearthly. His hooves were unshod, though old nail-holes could be seen around their fringes should one observe with care.

The stallion stood beneath a bridge so low that if he raised his head, he would strike it on stones-a human of average height could have laid hands on the arch-and he cropped small white flowers of hairy bitter cress from between the stones. Prehensile lips tugged the plants loose, his teeth grinding them to gritty pulp, roots and sand and all.

The picture of morning contentment, he was waiting for a girl.

Not one girl in particular. But not just any girl, either. She had to be a special girl, brave and clear-eyed. Thirteen or fifteen, innocently sociopathic, full of juice and life and solipsism. Wicked. Worthy.

That was the girl for him.

The Clyde had many moods, and the stallion in his time had waited through them all. He'd wait through more than rain and sun, dark and light, if need be. He was a predator, with a predator's patience. He'd wait a long while for the right one.

This morning, he did not have to. The cold black river silvered and then greened with sunrise, though the city slumbered on. And a girl came walking, alone, swinging her book bag, her heels clicking on the rectangular cobbles and her school skirt flaring around her knees.

It was early for school, though, and she didn't walk purposefully. She staggered as if with tiredness, and her high-collared cardigan was b.u.t.toned over her throat, her left arm hugged tight to her torso as if to keep in a little extra warmth, or as if her ribs hurt her.

The stallion had a way of going unseen, if he stood unmoving. The light fell around him, draped him like green branches or window curtains, and drew the eye past. But he wanted the girl to notice, and so out of the nowhere from which he drew his clothing and caparison, he shrugged on a saddle and bridle-old, creaking, oiled leather-permitted a bit of hairy cress to protrude between his lips, and struck an unshod hoof on stone.

Lightly, lightly. He did not care to crack the cobbles, or his foot. Just to raise a clatter, enough of a clatter to raise the girl's head.

She was a pretty girl. That was good; he liked pretty girls best. She had long straight ash-fair hair and a pointed chin, and as she turned toward him sunlight refracted through her irises for an instant so her eyes seemed to glow.

He whickered, low and hesitant, and she limped a half-step forward, her black nylon bag dragging on the dew-damp stones. "h.e.l.lo," she said, when her eye fell on him. "You're a big one, aintcha?"

He made another sound, a breathy whuff, and mirrored her half-step. "Oh," she said, and let go the strap of her bag so it slumped against her ankle. She held out a hand, palm-up. "I'm sorry. I haven't an apple."

He minced another step, gravely, head bowed and neck tucked, reins dragging between his forelegs. Her narrow chest swelled as she drew in a breath and held it.

He paused, waiting for her to speak again. The trick was to make them think they were coaxing you.

"Come on, Boss," she said, and clicked her tongue. "What's your name, big fella? Did you lose your rider? Is that why you were hiding under the bridge? I know, it feels safer there-"

He tossed his head and stepped forward and then back. His hoof came down on the reins; he thought he even made it look accidental. And then the head-toss again-this time arrested by the tension on the reins-and the flattened jingle of bit swivels.

The girl's eyes widened. They were translucent, green, the color of the Clyde in a different mood with the sun high above it. "Shh," she said. "Shh, shh."

She moved more purposefully now, worried for him, but still cautiously and in increments, edging away from her book bag and talking low nonsense. He watched, ears forward and forelock fallen across his eyes, waiting for her touch.

She surprised him. She let him lip her palm, fingers flat, and then she touched his neck, low and away from his face, making his skin jump and shiver. Cautiously, she ran the hand along the crest of his neck, scratching under the heavy mane, and then slid her palm down his shoulder along the grain of the hair. She crouched, slowly, her hand still trailing down his leg, and grasped the fetlock just above the hoof. Burrs matted the dense coa.r.s.e hair of his feathers and her hand wouldn't close around his ankle. But she tugged, and he lifted, freeing the reins.

She caught them in her left hand and pulled them clear, winding the worn leather around and around her palm as she stood. "Good boy," she said, as he settled his hoof again.

She scratched his cheek. He leaned into it. "I wish I had an apple."

She had something better, of course. The smell of her was maddening. He rested his chin on her shoulder and lipped her neck, and she scratched harder.

She tasted of salt and unwashed girl. He was right; she had been out all night, and still in yesterday's school clothes. She was his, all his, whenever he wanted her.

He could afford the joy of antic.i.p.ation.

"Hey," she said. "That tickles." She pushed his muzzle away, strands of unbrushed hair sticking to his lips and nostrils. "You're pretty sweet for a stallion," she said. "And no shoes either." She looked down at his hooves. He clattered them on the stone, neck arched, inviting.

The saddle was right there, the stirrup a summons. She touched the cheekpiece of the bridle instead. "Aren't horses always supposed to know their way home?"

He snorted warm air softly across her cheek and brushed her with his whiskers. She smelled of blood, rich and tantalizing; perhaps she was on her menses. The bit made him froth at the corners of his mouth when he salivated.

"Yeah," she said. She cupped a hand over his eye, and he let her. "I know my way home too. And I don't want to go there either. I can't ride you in a skirt, Boss, and I don't know where to take you."

He wondered what she would do if he spoke, if he let himself slip into human form and gathered her in his arms. A calm girl, a brave girl, a sensible girl. One who knew a little about horses, maybe just from reading, maybe from trips out to the countryside.