Conjured

I listened to the agents search the house. Their footsteps were sharp, heavy, and angry. They slammed doors, and I felt the reverberation of each slam. Through the walls, I could feel where each agent was—six of them, guns drawn and wearing bulletproof vests, in every room.

At last they left, and the house felt silent.

The silence sank around me. It permeated the walls. I felt as if the house were sighing, easing into the soil, relaxing. I breathed with it, slow and deep, if one could call it breathing. I sensed the other birds around me, a persistent tingling as if they were extensions of my paper skin. The light from the window moved across me, and I felt it only on one side. My other side was cradled against the wall, nestled tightly as if held by arms. I let the minutes slide away. Somehow, I slept.

Waking, I was certain I was alone, though I couldn’t explain how I knew. The house felt empty. Carefully, I peeled myself away from the wall. The glue hurt as it pulled, and I widened my beak in what would have been a scream if I’d had a voice. My fingers spread, and my wings expanded.

I poured myself into my memory of my body—smooth skin, golden hair, green eyes. I knew I had those correct. The rest … I wasn’t certain how tall I was or what exactly was the shape of my head or my chin. But it didn’t matter. I had my eyes, and that was enough.

I took a step toward the bed, intending to lie down before the vision overtook me.

I didn’t make it.

* * *

I am in the wagon.

Bottles clink together. Skulls rattle, their loose jaws opening and shutting as if they still have screams inside them. “Once upon a time,” the Storyteller says.

I clap my hands over my ears, though I know it’s a useless gesture.

She pulls my hands away. I am surprised at her strength. Her arms are so thin that she looks as though she could not bend a piece of straw, much less move my hands against my will, but she pushes them down as if I’d offered no resistance. She looks young today, a waiflike slip of a girl with cornflower-blue eyes and full lips.

“Once upon a time, a girl set out to find her fortune …”

“Where are we going?” I ask.

She grips my arms. “Once upon a time, a girl set out, and she was quick and she was silent and she was lucky and she was strong.”

Her eyes seem to blaze until the rest of the wagon dims. I feel the wagon slow as if it has reached its destination.

“I have done all I can for you and less than I should,” she says. “Someday you’ll forgive me, or you won’t.” I open my mouth to say I don’t understand, but she presses a red scarf over my mouth. Taking a needle, she sews it into my skin.

I cannot scream.

And then I am on the stage beside the Magician. He flips cards onto a table and hums to himself off-key. I cannot see the audience, but I hear them inhale and exhale, nearly as one. The lights above glare on the stage and prick my eyes. I look again at the cards. He has spread them on the velvet—the image of a blindfolded woman, a dead tree beside a tower, an owl with a snake in its talons. “Take one,” he says. I think he talks to me.

I try to reach for a card, but I am bound by ropes that crisscross my body in a pattern as intricate as a spiderweb. Only my fingers can twitch.