Feathers, Bones, and Dreaming

She showed up in my head one day. She'll be staring in her own comic soon too, I think.

 Bonefeet had gold dust in her skin. Her hands were rough like sandstone, and glittered.

She had sharp, sharp teeth, thin and flat, for picking out ribs from meat. Bonefeet's eyes were red and glassy, green and purple and diamond. The crooks of her arms were the crooks of hawk wings. She had a small, pointed little tongue the color of pitch. Her hair was sometimes feathers. And she would walk, oh so quietly, and smile, waiting.

 

The court was umber and marble, silk draping from the ceiling- red silk and cream. There she sat, talons curled over a wicker bench, scales gleaming a pretty ruby red (she had them in a few places, arms and sides and thighs). The sun shone through her veined ears, pricked by little gems. She was beautiful, in her way.

 

Bonefeet stood (she was shorter than me) and disappeared behind a pillar, clicking as she walked, tiptoed and gentle. In the shadows her eyes burned amber. The breeze blew warmly through the marble forest, silks shifting, little bells chiming.

 

And Bonefeet would sing. Sing of shadows, wood, and agelessness, of hunting and waiting. Her heart was a lucent red apple, hanging in the hollow of her chest. You could see it some days, with the right light, her skin stretched over ribs like taut leather, hung with soft twine inside, sometimes ribbons (she liked to decorate). Birds would nest there, if she slept, next to the dull-warm beating pulse.

 

Bonefeet dressed in rust and silver. Sometimes she danced, bare, fleshless feet so nimble, translucent in the sun. So many colors in the living bone! Dead bones are white and bleached. Living bones were hers- light gold, effervescent pinks and milky glass.  Dry bones- too brittle to eat, she'd carve and dye and wear like jewels. Hollow bones she left on roofs, their song in the wind kept away evil. Bird's bones, thin and curved she wove together and wore in her hair. She could play music on panpipes made from a wild deer, and a harp from the breastbone of a drowned maiden.

 

I loved her as a prince can love from afar. Sometimes I thought I had imagined her, it was so easy to lose her in the court when it was full (all wore masks in those days, some horrible and some lovely) and she vanished into the shadows away from the crowds. My father and mother, king and queen, would call on her for advice- a strange sort of slave she was in their home, a midwife of the dead and stillborn, a reader of stars and windsong and of entrails. Bonefeet never spoke, but whispered in your ear- words that held three meanings at once and revealed their secrets only in dreams.

 

I asked where she had been caught- they said she was a spirit, those clawed, gold-dust hands at the ends of pinioned wings had collected the souls of birds and ferried them past the Starboat and its hunters to the Eversky beyond. A hundred years ago, a prince like myself had thrown a net of copper wire across the sky, and caught her in ascent towards heaven. He had stolen her mask, and hid it from her so that she could not escape the world of men, and the souls of a thousands starlings, a thousands hawks, rooks, quails and doves were scattered, lost in the between.

 

Bonefeet plays her pipes- haunting, wild, mourning, and I know she is calling for them, calling them back to her.

 I dreamt one night that she came to me, wearing a mask of feather, bone and beak. She taught me the patterns of wings and how to hunt, how to wait, how to speak to shadows and to death. I dreamed that she carefully, carefully removed my skin with her claws, peeled me away and devoured me, snapped my bones. I loved her. She sang, and I sang with her as she swallowed the last of my heart and flew, carrying me away from time and earth.

 

I know that this dream is a future dream, clear as a vision, bright as truth that has yet to be. And if I find where my ancestor hid Bonefeet's mask, I will return it to her.

Prey should know that no one could ever appreciate, desire, understand, or love it so completely as a hunter.

As my hunter loves me.

As she loves us all.

 

Reviews

[Rambling Prose]

You, young man OR lady are an amazing talent! You leave me stunned with each read...

Excellent piece of writing...(shhhh) there's a typo in the 8th line from the bottom.