Fletcher’s Ghost
Liz Holliday
Manila, 1762
“Te amo, Maria,” Danny said. It was nearly all the Spanish he knew.
Maria stared at him out of the half-dark. The cold night air, the stink of the docks, the clamor of the nearby tavern all fell away from him as he thought at her: say it back, say it back.
“Don’t say such things, Danny,” she said at last.
“Please,” he said. “Come away with me. We can—”
“What would I, a Catholic, do in England?” she asked.
“It won’t matter. We won’t let it matter.” He reached out to touch her.
Someone grabbed him from behind and yanked him back. He flailed to keep his balance but slammed into the side of the tavern.
“Hands off, Inglez.”
Danny stared up. The Spaniard was enormous and there were two more behind him. Lantern light glinted on the knife in his hand.
“Don’t—” Danny started.
A strange moaning noise came from somewhere above them. The Spaniard looked up. Danny followed the line of his gaze and saw a figure silhouetted on the roof of the warehouse opposite. It was smaller than a man, larger than most apes.
The Spaniard moved towards Danny.
The moaning noise came again. The creature leaped down, pushed off the wall of the warehouse with one foot, and landed in a crouch between Danny and the Spaniard.
Danny stared into its face. The creature was surely human, though with dark eyes huger than any man’s, skin as white as the moon, and fingers that ended in hooked talons.
“Madre de—” one of the sailors whispered.
Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw Maria cross herself.
“Maria, get behind me,” Danny whispered, hoping she would understand him. She didn’t move.
The first Spaniard moved forward. The creature whirled round. Light flashed on the Spaniard’s knife. The creature lunged forward. A terrible rattling hiss came from its throat.
The Spaniard brought his blade up to meet the creature, but he was a fraction slow. The creature slashed at his arm with its wicked talons. Someone screamed. The blade flew out of the Spaniard’s hand and the creature caught it out of the air.
For a moment the Spanish sailors held their ground. Their leader nursed his injured arm. Blood, black in the dim light, dripped onto the ground.
The creature feinted towards him with the knife.
The sailors broke and ran.
The creature turned.
“Maria, get behind me,” Danny repeated. He stared at the creature. He wondered what it would do if they tried to get past it. “If you hurt her, I will kill you,” he said.
He thought of his father, laughing at him when he’d said those words. His fist coming down on Danny’s seven-year-old face. I’m not seven now, he thought.
The creature took a step forward. Now Danny saw that its arm was smeared with blood. Its own or the Spaniard’s? He could not tell.
The creature said something unintelligible. Its voice sounded rough, as if it hadn’t spoken in a long time. It tried again. “I have help you. You help me.”
“You can speak,” Danny said.
“Englis’. Yes.” The creature glared at him out of orange eyes. “Help me.”
Danny stared at it, assessing. He did not think there was any real chance he could get past it against its will.
“Let her go and we’ll see,” he said. The creature nodded slowly. “Go,” Danny said.
Maria hesitated. Then she slid past the creature and was gone into the darkness.
“Now,” Danny said. “What do you want?”
“I have hear others say—you are fletcher? Fletcher is arrow maker, yes?”
The question was so unexpected that Danny laughed aloud. “Me? I’m no arrow-maker, man. My grandfather, now, he was. And his grandfather before him.”
“And he have taught you?”
“No. Yes. Well, that’s to say I watched him, sometimes. He made arrows for competitions. For his lordship, d’you see?”
If the creature understood, it gave no sign of it.
“Then you help me?” The creature held out its hand.
“No,” Danny said. “I can’t help you.”
“But you must. Must make arrows. If not you, who?”
“I don’t know,” Danny said, his patience exhausted. “Someone will, I expect.”
In daylight, Maria was even more beautiful. Danny watched as she stowed bundles of clothes onto the cart. He was afraid her family were going to join the Spanish rebels in Bacalor. He wished they would just leave, though the thought of her going threatened to tear his heart in two. Anything would be better than her getting caught up in the fighting.
“Let me help you,” he said, as she struggled to tighten a rope across a ragged bit of sacking.
“If you would help me, go,” she said. “My father will be angry if he sees you.”
“Then I’ll beg him for your hand,” Danny said.
“And I will say no, as I said no before,” said a voice from behind Danny.
Danny turned. Senor Ramirez was a bull of a man, and his face was red with fury.
“Sir, I implore you to reconsider,” Danny said. “Our two countries are at war, it’s true. But must war between nations be echoed in war between those who might otherwise be friends—”
“Entrar la casa, Maria,” the older man said. “And you, cabron. You leave, now.” He clicked his fingers. One of Maria’s brothers stopped what he was doing and started across the yard. A knotted rope-end swung from his hand.
Danny felt his face burning, but he turned and left. He had only got a few yards past their gate when he heard a faint hissing sound.
Darkness moved against deeper darkness in the shadowy mouth of an alley. A heap of rags resolved itself into a figure. Danny found himself staring at the creature he had met the night before.
It came at him. The brilliant sunshine turned its pallid skin fishbelly gray, but its orange eyes were hazel. Its injured arm dangled uselessly. It was swollen, with streaks of yellow forming around the wound.
“Help me?” it said.
Danny pulled a coin from his pocket. He ran his nail over its edge to make sure it was only a copper. As a ship’s carpenter’s mate he was tolerably well paid, but there were limits.
He tossed the coin at the creature’s feet. “Take that, and my thanks for your trouble, and be off with you,” he said.
“But I not wants penny,” the creature said. Danny walked away. “I wants arrow. Must have arrow.” The creature’s voice rose to a wail behind him.
“I’ll do what I like,” Danny’s father said, but the woman he was threatening was Maria.
Danny tried to push her behind him but there was someone else there.
“You touch our women, you die,” said the Spaniard.
He held up his knife. It was as long as Danny’s forearm and wickedly sharp.
“I won’t,” Danny said. “I promise you, sir, I won’t.”
But suddenly the knife was wreathed in blood and Danny couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t breathe, and the Spaniard was laughing, filling up Danny’s world with his voice, his face.
Danny’s eyes flicked open.
The creature was kneeling across his chest, crushing him. It stared down out of orange eyes.
Danny looked around. The men he was sharing the room with were still sleeping, or seemed to be. In the bunk above him, fat old Tom Winters turned in his sleep, making the underside of the mattress bulge alarmingly.
The creature nursed its injured arm, now horribly swollen, in its good hand.
“You helps me,” it said. “Make arrow.”
“I can’t!” Danny said, and flinched at how loud his voice was.
“But you must,” insisted the creature. “I have help you.”
Much more of this and the others would wake, Danny was sure. Heaven knew what would happen then.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll help you. But not here.”
“I have place. Good place. I show you,” the creature said.
He clambered off the bed. Danny followed him to the window. It was a short drop to the ground below. The creature was surprisingly nimble, considering its bad arm.
Danny followed it through the quiet streets. A glance at the moon told him it was past three in the morning. He could only hope they weren’t caught out so long after curfew.
But luck was with them and soon they came to a burnt-out warehouse. Danny followed the creature inside. The smell of charred wood overlaid the older, ingrained scent of the fruit that had been stored there. It wasn’t unpleasant.
The creature had made a camp in one corner: a few rags piled on a straw pallet for a bed, a surprisingly neat stack of cooking things, and a circle of stones around a firepit where embers still glowed orange-red in the darkness.
“You live here?” Danny asked. It was a far better home than he had expected.
“Yes yes,” the creature said. “Sometimes here. Sometime in the forest, in a proper hut up above the ground. But I knew to find arrow maker I must be here, in the whitefolk-city. Look. I show.”
He went to a corner in darkest shadows and moved aside some rags. Beneath it there was a heavily carved box. He tried to open the lid but winced against the pain.
“I cannot,” he said at last. “You helps—”
“I know,” Danny said. “I help you.”
He went over to the creature.
“Is my box,” the creature said. “All my important things. Treasure, yes?” Danny nodded. “You not take,” the creature said, as if this possibility had only just occurred to it.”
Danny flipped the lid open. There were several bundles inside, each one wrapped in oiled sacking.
The creature reached in and touched one. “See?” it said. “I have collect all what you need to make arrow. I try before, but I spoil, so I need to find someone. Fletcher, they say. Fletcher makes arrow.”
“Yes but I—” Danny had intended to say—but I really don’t know how to make arrows even if I did watch Grandpa a time or two. Yet the desperation in the creature’s eyes and voice stopped him. He looked around for anything to put off the inevitable. The creature cradled its wounded arm against its chest. “Let me see that,” Danny said, more roughly than he intended.
“Is nothing. Not hurting,” the creature said, but it held out its arm.
The wound was hot and swollen, the edges of the wound black with red and yellow streaks coming off it.
“Doesn’t hurt, my arse,” Danny muttered. “Here, let me help you—”
“Yes yes! Make arrow!”
“No—let me see what I can do for your arm. Then we’ll talk about the other thing.”
The wound was going to need lancing and cauterizing, he thought. He’d helped the ship’s doctor a time or two when they’d skirmished with the Spanish. He’d poured rum down a man’s throat then held him down while the doctor sawed his leg off then tarred the bloody stump.
The memory bought bitter bile to his throat. This wouldn’t be that bad. He could do it. Though he had no rum and only his little pocket knife . . .
He squatted down, pulled the knife out and stuck it into the coals to heat.
“What you do?” asked the creature. “You not need hot knife for arrow?” It looked at its arm. It was beginning to understand, to panic. Danny could see it tensing.
“No,” Danny said. “Don’t think about it.” He put a snap into his voice. “Sit down here. Talk to me—” He cast around for something that would hold the creature. “Tell me why you need arrows.”
The creature sat down. It never took its huge eyes off the blade in the embers. “It a story that begins long ago. Long before the white people come here, yes? Before the dark brown people and the yellow people. Only people here the color of nuts then. And in those days was magic.”
“Okay,” Danny said, suddenly feeling at ease. Clearly the creature was just some poor simpleton. He would clean up its arm, make something resembling an arrow for it to soothe its obsession and send it on its way.
“Long ago, then, one day before I was born, my father was out hunting with his dogs but he had caught nothing and so as the sun went down he started home. There is a lake a few miles from Talubin—big lake, very beautiful. But this day my father he heard a big noise. So he get down and creep close to see what it is. He think maybe it is birds and he can catch some, yes?” Danny nodded, wondering how long the story would go on and how long the blade would take to heat. “My father, he was a great hunter. He crept close and what you think he see?”
“Birds?” Danny asked. “Animals?”
“No!” said the creature triumphantly. “Hundreds of ladies, all naked, bathing in the lake. Their clothes were left all around on the banks, like white flowers.”
“I’ll have none of your filth,” Danny said, though thoughts of Maria came to him unbidden.
“Is not filth. For they were not girls like you think. And their clothes were not dresses, they were wings. They were star-maidens, come down to earth to bathe in the lake.”
“I see,” said Danny. “And I suppose he knew because his dogs told him?”
“No, he know because even while he watch some more star-maidens fall like fire from the sky—”
Danny laughed. He couldn’t help it. The story was so ridiculous and the creature so earnest.
“You make fun. I not tell no more.” The creature turned away and glared at the fire.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said. He really didn’t think the knife would be hot enough yet, and it would be worse than useless if it wasn’t. “Tell the end of the story. I won’t laugh anymore.”
The creature turned back. Danny wondered how long it had been since it had anyone to tell its ridiculous tale to.
“Well then. The star-maidens were very beautiful. My father had a bad thought. He send one dog to fetch a pair of the wings. None of the star-maidens saw. As night fell, they came out of the lake and they sang and they danced to the rising moon. And then they put on their wings again and flew up into the indigo sky. Can you imagine that?”
“No, I can’t,” Danny said truthfully.
“But one of them, she not have wings—”
“Because your father stole them?”
“Yes,” the creature said. “But he not bad man, not really. How not to be entranced by such a woman . . . but you know this. I have seen you looking.”
“It’s not the same,” Danny said. “Maria is—”
“Ah, ‘te amo, Maria,’ ” said the creature. “She is beautiful too, but she is different from you. Perhaps—maybe not more different than my mother was from my father?”
“Your mother?” Danny said. The creature stared at him out of those huge orange eyes that burned like coals and for a moment Danny found himself believing it was the child of a star maiden . . .
The creature nodded. “My father persuaded the star maiden to go home with him. To be his wife, because his first wife was long dead in the earth. And so she became and shared his bed and did all the things a wife must do. And she said she was happy, but her face turned every night to the stars, to her sisters.”
“And you came along?”
“Oh yes. I was the first, but there was another. My twin, you would say, though he was not a child of earth. There was nothing of my father in him, for he was born of the placenta that followed me out of my mother when I was born.”
“How lovely,” Danny said.
“You said not make fun,” the creature said.
“Yes,” Danny said. “I should keep my promise.”
“You must, for I need you to make arrow,” the creature said. “But I finish story. One day when we were between childhood and manhood, my brother found something in the garden hidden under a big stone: a package wrapped in a sack, but lighter than down. It was my mother’s wings. That night, we took them to her and she was so happy! Her face shone like starlight. I remember it so well, after all these years still.”
“What happened?” Danny demanded.
“She put the wings on and even though they were old and had been in the ground they bore her up. But we cried. Me and my brother. We loved our papa, but we did not want our mother to leave us.”
Danny nodded, though he could not imagine loving his father, or ever wanting to stay with him. If he’d been able to get his mother away from him . . .
But the creature was going on, “ ‘Hush,’ mama said. ‘Hush, you shall come with me, then, where there is no crying, in the great heavens with the stars.’ And she took us out into the garden and she got papa’s biggest spear, and she thrust it into the ground—”
“The point into the ground?” Danny asked. It was all nonsense, of course, and yet he found himself wanting to believe it. Wanting to believe in star-maidens who stayed with men who loved them.
“No no. She pushed the other end of the spear into the earth and then she told us to run up the spear and balance on the point and then to jump . . .”
“I can’t quite see that,” Danny said.
“It is because you are a man of earth,” the creature said. “I could not see it either. But my brother, he ran lightly up to the spear and jumped on it—his foot on the biting sharp point of it and yet he was not hurt—and sprang into the air. Smaller he grows. Smaller. Into the great heavens with the star-folk. ‘And now you,’ my mother said. And I tried. How I tried. But there was nothing to stand on, and I was afraid of the pain. And so at last she gave up and said farewell to me. And the story is told that she said I would leave these islands and travel far, and that I would have many children and from them the people who are white-skinned would be born—the people like you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Danny said.
“Is it?” said the creature. “My people, they likes this story. Yet I never did go anywhere. How could I, when perhaps-maybe my mother would come here again? But I tried many times to make a spear I could leap into the sky from. But I cannot. And then I see bows and arrows. I get bow. But I break all arrows. Lose them in forest. Now I have just some sticks and feathers. You make arrow and fire it from bow. I catch it and ride up to heaven to my mother and brother. Yes?”
“I suppose,” Danny said. “But first I’m going to deal with your arm. I’m not having you dying of that wound. I won’t have it on my conscience, hear me?”
“I hear,” said the creature. It looked fearfully at the fire.
Danny took his belt off. “Bite down on this,” he said. “It will help. And try not to make too much noise. I don’t want the soldiers coming to see what’s happening.”
The creature stretched its arm out. Danny put his knee on the creature’s hand to keep it fixed in place.
“Hurts!” said the creature.
“No, it doesn’t,” Danny said. He waited while the creature put the leather strap into its mouth and bit down.
“Get ready!” he warned. He pulled the knife out of the embers. It glowed in the darkness. Quick as he could he plunged it into the infected wound. Blood and pus sprayed everywhere, and there was the stink of cooking flesh.
The creature moaned. Tears glistened on its white cheeks.
“It’s done,” Danny said. “It’s over.”
Slowly, the creature turned its face to him. “Now you make arrow,” it said.
Danny held the feather against the shaft of the arrow he was making, waiting for the glue to dry. The creature watched him as it had watched every move he had made since it revealed his treasures to him—four wooden sticks of the right size and length for arrow shafts, the wing feathers of some hapless bird for fletching, and two coils of hemp string for the bow.
The bow itself was a revelation—not a pretty thing, but made of good English yew without affectation. Danny demanded to know where the creature had acquired it.
The creature had refused to look at him, and in the end he had given up asking.
The creature shambled over to him. Its arm looked much better now; the swelling was down, and there was no pus in it.
“Arrows are made?” it asked.
“Two of them,” Danny said. He had no idea if he had done a good enough job. He had only common-sense and his half-memories of his grandfather’s workshop to guide him.
“Is enough,” the creature said. “You not have time to make more today and I want to go to my mother tonight!”
Danny followed the creature past a jumble of small wooden houses that crammed together near the edge of the city. The creature seemed not to need a lantern and Danny was glad of it. If they were caught out after curfew . . . if they were caught leaving the town . . . Traitor, he thought. They’d call me a traitor.
I shouldn’t be here, he thought. And yet the creature led and he followed.
They came, at last, to a quiet place where palm trees gave way to sharp-bladed grass and then white sand. The sea beyond was inky, and above it the starstudded sky stretched away.
The creature waved its hand expansively.
“My mother,” it said. “She is there.”
“Which one?” Danny asked. He couldn’t resist it.
“I not know,” the creature snapped. “Now you shoot arrow!”
Danny took the bow. It had been a long time since he had handled one, but the old memory, the muscle-memory, came back to him.
The creature stood in front of him. “You shoot up,” it said. “Up.”
For an instant, Danny entertained the idea of shooting the creature. He could be free of it. But it trusted him, and who was to say whether it had a soul—whether shooting it would be the same as killing a man?
So Danny aimed high, and on the creature’s mark he fired the first arrow. The shaft sailed over the creature’s head. It made a half-movement, as if it wanted to jump but something restrained it.
The arrow was lost in the darkness.
“Again,” the creature said.
Danny breathed out and found stillness.
He loosed the arrow.
It flew up. The creature leapt for it.
Impossibly, the creature grabbed the arrow in both hands. For a moment there was a hint of white light, the merest flicker around the creature’s fingers.
In that instant it seemed as if the arrow might lift the creature up.
“No!” Danny murmured. If it were possible, everything else was wrong, everything he knew. And yet part of him wanted the creature to go, to fly up, to be all that it could be.
And then the creature and the arrow fell back to earth. The shaft of the arrow split in three pieces along its length.
The world settled back into its old familiar patterns around Danny.
The creature sobbed quietly. Light glittered on the tears that coated its cheeks.
“Almost, it work,” it said. “I go to my mother . . . you make other arrow. I go to my mother.”
“No,” Danny said. “Enough.”
“You make arrow, I get your Maria for you,” the creature said.
“No,” Danny said. But the thought intrigued him and he said almost immediately. “What do you mean, you’ll get Maria for me?”
“So she will come with you. Follow you. Be good girl, do what she told.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” the creature said, nodding rapidly. “She be good girl.”
“All right,” Danny said. “You bring her here at sunset and I will have your arrow for you.”
It will be all right, Danny thought as he slit fletches from a pinion feather. I’m not going to hurt her. I’m just going to . . . but he couldn’t think of what he might do, if he could do anything.
The dying sun splashed crimson across the sky as Danny went down to the beach.
For a moment he thought they were not there. Then he saw them, where they stood in the shadow of three big palm trees: the creature and behind him, Maria.
He went towards them. The creature smiled, stretching thin lips across yellowish teeth. But Maria . . . Maria never moved, never smiled. Never said his name.
“See?” said the creature. “I have brought her for you. And now she is good girl. Will do whats you tell her.”
Danny went to her. She stared at him impassively.
“Maria?” he asked. There was no response. He reached out and touched her on the cheek with the side of his thumb, as he had dreamed of doing so often but had never dared. “Te amo, Maria,” he said.
She should have protested, should have teased him. Something. Anything. But she said nothing.
“What’s the matter with her?” Danny demanded. “What have you done to her?”
“I haves give her to you, as I promise,” said the creature. “She is yours now. Will do as you say.” The creature’s eyes shone. It was proud of itself, Danny realized. “Or I say,” it added. It turned to Maria. “Tell to Danny you loves him, Maria.”
“Te amo, Danny,” Maria said immediately.
He had dreamed of this, of winning those words. But her voice was flat. It was nothing, meant nothing.
“How have you done this to her?” he shouted.
“Shh, shh. They hear. Soldiers hear. Very bad, they hear.”
“Yes,” Danny agreed, lowering his voice. “But tell me.”
“Is a gift from my mother. To keeps me safe. She loves me, my mother.”
“But then, why didn’t you do it to me? Or to the Spaniards that attacked you?”
“Is hard, hard. And the giving, it was long ago. The gift fades so I use it little.” The creature smiled again. Danny wished it wouldn’t. He had felt sorry for it and it had done this. “But you,” it said. “You make other arrow. I go to my mother. I not need gift.”
“And maybe I won’t give you the arrow,” Danny said.
“But I have got Maria for you,” the creature said. “She do anything. You wants kiss? She kiss. Look.”
The creature shambled over to her. It thrust its face towards her.
Danny shoved the creature away. Maria might have been made of stone for all the response she gave. She was so close to him now. He could smell her, the lemons she used to scent her soap, the underlying musk of her.
He could hear her breathing.
He kissed her, briefly, on the mouth. When she didn’t resist, he did it again more urgently.
Still nothing. And yet he wanted her so badly. He let his hands move across her still body. She didn’t move.
In his dreams, she’d been a willing partner. She’d whispered his name and held him close.
This thing he was holding was not Maria.
Danny pulled away. He turned to the creature.
“What have you done to her,” he screamed. “What have you done to me?”
“Dones to her what you asked,” the creature. “I don’t do nothings to you.”
“Yes, you have,” Danny shouted. He slapped the creature hard across the side of its head. It shrieked and turned away.
He grabbed it and hit it again and again with his fist.
“Why?” he said. He was out of breath. “Why?”
“Because it what you want. What you say.”
“You must have known I didn’t want that,” Danny said. “No man could want that.”
“I not know,” the creature said. “I not. She do what she told, like good girl. That’s what my papa say. Mother be good girl do what she told because—”
“What? But you said your mother was pleased to be with your father—”
“Mouth say she happy. Face say other thing,” the creature said. “But she good girl, do what papa say.”
“Or he’d make her,” Danny said. Most men would. His own mother was wise and funny when his father was not there, but when he was, she minded her manners. “She was scared of him.”
“Yes,” the creature said. “I scared. Brother too. That why we not want her go. But she go, and brother go, and then just papa and me. And he so angry. He hits me. Like you hits me. Then with belt—”
“Why didn’t you use your gift to stop him, then?”
“I did. But he just sit there. I have to feed him, clean him. I not likes. So in end, I . . . tell him to do a thing and then he no need feeding and cleaning.”
“You told him to kill himself,” Danny said.
The creature looked away.
Danny grabbed the back of its head and forced it round. “You killed your father, you wicked creature.”
“I not sorry. Not for that. He trapped my mother. He did. He did.”
“And you helped her to go and in return you got stuck with him,” Danny said. It must have been terrible, but murder was murder and a mortal sin however you looked at it. “It’s no wonder you don’t know right from wrong.”
“Oh I know I do wrong. Not first wrong thing I did.” The creature twisted out of Danny’s grasp.
“You did worse?” Danny demanded, advancing on the creature. He made a wild guess. “Did you kill your mother too? Is this all some mad tale to account for—”
“No no,” the creature said. “Not kill her. Worse. You not make me tell. You not.”
“All right,” Danny said. “I won’t make you tell me but you have to release Maria from your gift. Can you do that?”
“Oh yes,” said the creature. “I can. But I not. You shoot last arrow and I release her.”
“Oh, really,” Danny said. “What’s to stop you going back on your word?”
“No no, I not. I not be here. I be in sky with mother. I not understand why you want Maria free, but why I not do it? I be so happy I do anything.”
“It’s what you do when it doesn’t work that worries me,” Danny said. But he couldn’t think of any other way of making the creature release her.
So, once again they stood in the darkness. Danny once again aimed over the creature’s head. And once again he thought of shooting for its heart. If he had been sure killing it would release Maria he would have done it. He thought he would. But he couldn’t be sure and couldn’t risk trapping her forever in that hell.
“Now!” said the creature.
Danny loosed the arrow. It flew up. The creature caught it.
Light blazed around the creature. For an instant, it hung in the air.
“Well I’ll be—” Danny said.
The creature crashed back to earth.
“No,” it screamed. “Not again, not again.”
Convulsive sobs racked its body. Danny was moved to pity despite everything that had happened.
He sat down next to it.
“Hush now,” he said, as if the creature were a little child. “Hush. There will be other arrows, other chances.”
“No,” said the creature. “No more. I can’t. Is useless. She not wants me anyway—”
“But you were so close,” Danny said. “I didn’t believe any of it, you know. Nothing. But you were almost flying. And you shone like starlight.” What am I saying? he wondered. Why am I encouraging this filthy little beast? But yet he patted its shoulder, soothing it as he might a feral dog.
“You not know. She hate me. She hate me, not want me. She take good child because she know I bad.”
“But you said you were too heavy to run up the spear,” Danny said. “How does that make you bad?”
“I say that. You believe? You stupid, then.”
“Most gracious of you to say so,” Danny said.
“No, you listen. She put spear. Brother go. She smile, smile, yes? But I go and she look at me. Hard look. Sometimes you look like that, but she look harder. Because she know. And I start to run for spear. But she looking at me and I cannot run. Because she know . . .”
“What? That you did something?”
“Yes. I not want her to go. And I know she want go, because who want to stay with papa?” the creature said.
Danny nodded. He’d left home as soon as he could but he worried about his mother constantly. “What did you do?” he asked quietly.
“I found her wings.”
“Yes. You said.”
“No, not then. I found them long before. Papa puts them in box under loose floorboard. It squeak. I think maybe if I fix it, he pleased. But I find box under, and in it her wings. All white and soft as baby hair.” For a long moment the creature did not speak. It stared at the ground and its bony fingers moved restlessly across its thighs. “I not want mama to go. You understand? Or I want go too. But there is one pair of wings and I did not know she had plan to take us. So I took the wings and I hid them in the garden. And every day I think of them, and the days are long, and weeks and months, and then a year and two, and I hurt inside from thinking. You understand?”
“Oh, I do,” Danny said, and meant it.
“And then my brother find the wings and there is nothing I can do. And all bad thoughts come true, because she goes and he goes and there is just me and papa and papa’s belt . . . you see?”
“I do,” Danny said. “But I do not think she meant to leave you. Why would she? She loved you.”
“But I bad,” the creature wailed. “I not mean to be. But I bad and I hurt her and I want—”
It’s a child, Danny thought. It’s a child, trapped in that unthinking moment of bad decision. It’s no wonder it did that to Maria . . .
“Did you tell her you were sorry?” Danny asked.
“I not. Not then. I too scared. She leaving. I want to say, I sorry. I love you mama. Not leave me, please not leave me.”
“Then tell her now,” Danny said. “She’s up there, a star. Surely they hear everything?” He had no idea what he was saying. He only knew he had to drive the creature to the point where it would release Maria, and he dared not mention that in case the creature retreated into grief and mania again.
The creature stood up. It raised its face to heaven. “I sorry, mama. I stole your wings. I bad, I bad. But I was scared you leave. I was scared I be left. I sorry.”
The air shivered.
The light came down from heaven, a blaze of glory that shimmered and coalesced until a woman stood there. She was so beautiful that Danny could hardly bear to look at her. She stretched out her wings and they seemed to envelop the sky.
“Oh my child,” she said, and her voice was like the shattering of crystal. “What has become of you?”
“I sorry, mama. I sorry I hid your wings.”
“Oh child,” said the star-woman. Her voice was full of disappointment, and the sound of it was more than Danny could bear. “Is that your guilt? Have you even now not learned the wrong you did me?”
“I sorry,” the creature said. “I not want you to leave me with papa.”
For a loathsome instant, Danny was back at home. His mother was pushing a bundle of food and a few coppers into his hands and telling him to go, go before his father woke. And he had gone and left her because it was all he could do. “I can’t,” he’d said. “You must,” his mother had answered. “Make something of yourself. Find yourself a good wife and treat her well, that’s all I ask. Trust me, Danny, it’s all a mother wants for her child.”
Trust, he thought, and knew what wrong the star-woman could not forgive.
He took a step towards the creature. The star-woman turned her awful, glorious gaze upon him. He looked away. Looked at the ground. But took another step.
“Listen,” he said to the creature. “You did a bad thing to your mother. But what was the worse thing?”
“I not know. I only know I sorry and I right. She not love me, she hate me.”
“She’s your mother. She loves you. I promise you.”
“Yes,” said the creature, but it didn’t sound as if it believed him.
“Didn’t she protect you from your father?” It was a guess, but there had been so many times at home . . . he knew he was right.
The creature made a sound that was half sob and half word. It took a long, shuddery breath. “Yes,” it said at last.
“Of course she did,” Danny said. “Because she loved you. So why would you think she would leave you?”
“Don’t know,” said the creature. It shrugged and turned away.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit insulting to think she would leave you? Perhaps that’s why she’s angry.”
“Yes but I scared,” said the creature. “I not . . . brother is . . . brother is like her. Beautiful one. Her beautiful boy. Me, I like father. So I think she protect me because sorry for me, but why she want ugly one with her?”
“You should have trusted me,” said the star-woman. Her voice was like breaking ice.
Danny felt his bowels loosen just at the sound of her. But he had to continue, had to free Maria.
He looked up at her, although he thought his eyes would burn away.
“He thought he wasn’t good enough for you. He was a little boy scared of losing his mama.”
“Who are you to speak thus to me?” said the star-woman, and Danny was sure he would die.
But there was Maria.
“I am . . .” he paused. He was sure the star-woman would know a lie if she heard one. And so he said something that he knew was true, even though it had only been true for a few moments. “I am your son’s friend.”
The star-woman regarded him. “It is good that he has a friend,” she said at last. “And perhaps there is truth in your words.” She turned to the creature. “Why didn’t you trust me, my son?”
“I was just so scared, mama. I’m sorry.”
“Then so am I,” she said. “You should come now. It is not earth that weighed you down, but your guilt and my anger. And the things of earth no longer become you. Be free of them.”
She motioned with her hand, a movement Danny could never later quite recall.
Light blazed around the creature. He stood tall. His features, his bones, everything changed. Bright wings burst forth from his shoulders.
Another light fell from the sky. A young man, so like the being who had been the creature that there was no telling them apart.
“My brother,” each one said at the same moment.
“And now we are almost finished,” said the star-woman. She turned to Danny. “But a true friend deserves a true gift, and you have a good heart. What would you have?”
Danny thought of the gift she had given her son, and the damage it had caused, and knew he must choose carefully. He could ask for Maria—the real Maria, not the witless creature she had become—to love him truly. He thought the star-woman would grant it, that she had that power. But it was not something a man of good heart would do. His mother would be appalled.
“I want Maria to be free of whatever your son did to her,” he said. “If she’s to love me, I’ll have to earn that love and make a place where we can be together in this world.”
“That is not in my gift,” the star-woman said. Danny stared at her, appalled. But she turned to the being that had been the creature. “My son,” she said.
“It is done,” he said. “I’m so sorry for the hurt I caused you and her, Danny.”
“It’s nothing,” Danny answered out of habit.
“No, it’s not. If we’ve learned anything this night it must be the value of acknowledging our failures, wouldn’t you say?”
Danny nodded. Then he surprised himself by laughing. “Your English has improved.”
“The body I was wearing had mostly forgotten how to think. But that part of my life is finished with now, and I thank you.”
“As do I,” said the star-woman. “But you have not chosen a gift of me, Danny Fletcher.”
“I would not know what to choose,” he admitted.
“Then let me choose for you.” Perhaps she saw him flinch. “I’ll give you no double-edged swords, Danny Fletcher. Just the promise that if you choose wisely—and I know you can—you will find what you seek and earn what you deserve. But are you sure you do not want her love?”
“I want her love,” Danny said. The star-woman raised her hand, so he went on quickly, “but I want to earn it.”
“Then I was right. You have chosen wisely. But do not forget that other woman you owe so much. You should seek her too.”
“I will,” Danny said.
“Then farewell, Danny Fletcher,” said the star-woman.
“Farewell,” said her sons. “Farewell.”
There was a blaze of light so fierce that Danny threw his arm up in front of his face and still it blinded him.
When he could see again, he looked around. Maria was standing by the palm trees.
She was smiling.
Danny went to her.