Chapter Seventy-Nine. Daye
Daye
Feathers rained down on Daye from all sides, arriving faster than she could catch them.
The blue jay brought feathers, and the chickadees, and the flock of starlings that passed by, and suddenly every other bird did too.
The woodpeckers with their red caps. The brown sparrows and the sleek black ravens.
The mockingbirds and the doves and the cardinals and the finches.
Blue and brown and yellow feathers; long gray ones, larger than her finger, and tufts of crimson no bigger than her fingernail.
A maelstrom of feathers, with Daye at its center, breathless with panic and marvel.
Daye wove.
She wove as the day wound down. She wove as beyond the border, the bells and singing stilled, the last wisps of sounds muffled under the snow flurries that began to blow. She wove until her throat ached from speaking the words and her fingers ached from moving. Still, she wove.
Each feather landed inside her like a stone in a pool, sending ripples.
With the first few feathers came a new sort of lightness.
Like her bones were growing hollow. Like her roots were growing wings.
With half of her body rewoven, the feeling of lightness deepened, as if one jump would be enough to lift her up, up, up, never to come down again.
When all but her arms had been rewoven, the stillness of roots inside her slipped away, replaced by the whistle of wind in her ears, even though the air around her was spring-soft and calm.
She was changing, becoming a creature of treetops and sky. And, still, she wove on.
In Daye’s mind, the rustle of feathers became interchangeable with the sound of tethers snapping: Her tethers to spring, to this land, to the ground. Her tethers to Rory, one by one.
Daye wove, and as she wove, tears started sliding down her face, for the first time. This is grief, she thought as she cried. This is what grief feels like.
Above her, the sun started slanting down, the day tilting toward its end. Somewhere beyond the trees, the piling snow hissed and shushed, beckoning Daye to come.