Chapter 18
XVIII.
“I’m bored,” the tsarina lamented.
I said nothing.
“I expected my firebird to keep me better amused,” she said.
Again, I said nothing.
She swung herself out of bed by the rustling of bedsheets and blankets. Then she toed my hood. “Are you awake?”
“Call a jester if you require entertainment,” I said, pulling away from her. “That is no longer my title.”
“Not this early in the morning.”
“Is it morning? You’ve kept me blinded for weeks. I no longer have a sense of time.” I did keep time, of course, by visits and routines, but I didn’t need to let her know that.
“Is that what’s bothering you?” She heaved a sigh and sat down beside me. “If you didn’t have to go and do something as ridiculous as hurt yourself — again! — I would never have had you wear it. But I can’t trust you!”
I wished the hood were the only thing that bothered me. How far could I get into a list of irritants, complaints, frustrations, and miseries before she struck me or kicked me? How much of a morning would we have before she took me in her hands and mounted me?
“How are you healing?” she asked when she realized I wasn’t going to respond to her.
“You don’t care, so please do us both the courtesy of not pretending.”
“You don’t understand. It seems you never did.” Her fingers brushed over one of my wings in the wrong direction of the feathers, and I shivered. “I have always cared about you — even when you didn’t care about me.”
It took all my willpower not to rebuke her or call her out on her abhorrent behavior.
She lifted my head and then set it down, by the shape and firmness beneath it, in her lap. The braces on the hood loosened one by one. Then light assaulted me when the hood came off. I turned my face to shield my eyes, but the beak prevented it, and so I scrunched my eyes all the harder.
She ran her fingers through feathers in place of hair, gentle in her motions as she found several injuries.
“They are healing nicely.” Her fingers brushed over the wounds. “Some scabbing, but that’s to be expected. Head wounds always bleed so much, even when they are but little.”
“When do I get my arms back?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“The muscles are going to atrophy since I can’t use them, if they haven’t already.”
“You need to re-earn my trust. You’ve broken it so many times. Maybe I’ll only let you have them back once they’re completely useless.”
I didn’t have the energy to persuade her otherwise. She would do what she wanted when she wanted to do it. My resistance gave her thrill, and so if I stopped resisting, she would grow bored. She already had if I could go by her morning declaration.
“I’ll release them just for the time you’re with me,” she said after a moment, “to give you something to look forward to when you come visit.” She stroked my head again. “Don’t make me regret it, my dear.”
It wasn’t like I could run away with my ankles kept in bands and jesses, but with my arms unbound, I might have a chance to undo them.
Still, what would that accomplish? I was tired and weak and kept weaker by the restraints and the limited meals.
Even with free legs, I did not think I would have any greater chance at escape now than before.
And if there were no chance, I would not dare risk losing something else that I did not realize I could lose until she took it from me.
“Sit up,” she instructed as she pushed me out of her lap.
When I righted myself and put my back to her, she untied the bindings between wrist bands.
My arms and wrists barely registered their new freedom, but my shoulders screamed in pain as my arms fell to my sides and released the muscles in my back.
I could barely wiggle my fingers, and it took a monumental effort to set my wrists on my thighs.
Long leather straps dangled from each wide leather band.
I did not miss the width of the leather bands either, wide enough to prevent me from making another assault on my own wrists.
The tsarina placed her hands on my shoulders and began rubbing.
I almost jerked away from her. Almost. I managed to bear her touch only because any perceived rejection now would cause her to retaliate.
But I didn’t want her touching me, not when she had been the cause of my suffering.
She wanted to be my solace now, my comfort.
Her kindness was almost worse than her cruelty.
And for all the disgust and revulsion I had for her, I had to endure it if I wanted any small measure of freedom in my current degraded state.
“You’re so tense, my dear,” she said as she focused on muscles that had spent the last few weeks building up knots.
Her thumbs worked between and under the feathers, traveling up my neck into what should have been my hair. She tilted my head from side to side to stretch muscle and tendon. Then she slid her hands back down and rubbed at the muscles between my wings.
“Why a bird?” I asked, proud of how unemotional I sounded about it.
“Why not?”
“Don’t play coy. You dressed me like a chicken first and then gave me real feathers. Why?”
She dropped her hands and moved away from me. Then she stood and began unbraiding her hair. “You had the audacity to fly away from Ilyichia — from me — and nest with a Varnasian whore that took your fancy.”
“She was not a whore,” I whispered. “She was a gentleman’s daughter, and I married her.”
“Yes, ever the noble one, aren’t you?” She knelt in front of me.
“I heard about your other mistresses too. Did your uncle introduce you to the one you took in Alfinia? I heard she bore a child that could have been yours — a head full of dark ringlets and skin like milk. Did you know that? I did. I heard about everything.”
I didn’t know anything about a possible child. Could the tsarina be lying to me, just to hurt me? That seemed a likely possibility, but maybe it wasn’t a lie. I had been involved with a woman in Alfinia — which I thought I had kept sufficiently quiet — and a child was a possibility too.
“You flew from one woman to another, never caring who you hurt in the process.”
“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” I said.
“But you did anyway. And then you returned. So I made you a bird. The most ridiculous one I could think of, so that no one else would be swayed by your charms. So that I wouldn’t be swayed again.” She reached out and put her hand on my cheek. “And it didn’t work.”
The touch from anyone else might have been sweet and soft and warm, but I well knew the cruelty that lay hidden in her palm, the tenderness of muscles that could turn sour in moments, the possession that permeated her bones.
She conflated obedience and ownership with love.
I did not think she could truly love anyone, not now, not after so long of hating those who would not give her what she wanted, I among them.
“And this form?”
“In this form, no one but me would want you.” She stroked her thumb over my cheek.
“You are the only thing I would have asked for from the firebird, and so now, I get both in one.” She smiled, truly smiled, devoid of bitterness and hate, a rare expression that I had once appreciated my first round of being her lover but now found unspeakably sad. “You are my perfect companion.”
Her perfect companion. That sounded like a forever kind of thing. I had already guessed that her offer of a way out was false, so I didn’t despair any more than I already had. But even like this, I would have preferred a forever anywhere else but at her side.
But, smiling, contented, she was in a place where I could ask things of her.
Not all things. I couldn't ask to have my ankles unbound. After the removal of the hood and the release of my arms, she would shrink if I asked for more of my restraints to be removed. But other things, yes. I just couldn’t phrase them like asks.
“I have such a poor diet,” I said. “I may not be with you long.”
“That can be fixed, my dear. Just behave, and then everything gets better.”
“Will I always be chained?” I looked meaningfully at the leash tied to the bed.
“Show me I can trust you, and that will go away too.”
I didn’t know how to do that because she couldn't trust me. I would always be looking for the way out. But I nodded as if I understood.
She slid her hand from my face, down my neck, and over my chest appreciatively, finally resting it over my heart.
“You are not alone,” she told me. “I know this is difficult, but it doesn’t need to be. You have me, have always had me. Rely on me. Need me. And I will prove to you how much I care about you.”
The lies issued forth so convincingly that she likely did not think them lies at all. Somehow, she had rationalized all of it, and I, lowly creature as I was, should forgive her entirely because she claimed to do it from a place of caring.
“What do I look like now?” The question, though originating from my throat, surprised even me. “I know I am ugly,” I said, heading off any vague description she might use to placate me. “You and all others have made no secret of it. But I haven’t seen. Not everything. Not all at once.”
Her hand slid off of me entirely and fell back onto her lap. “You don’t want to.”
Maybe I shouldn’t want to, but now I had to know.
I had guessed at much since I could see a beak and feathers and could extrapolate from there.
But I hadn’t touched my face, at first too afraid of what the truth would be beneath my fingers and then unable to raise my hands to my face at all.
I could look down and see a full torso of feathers, legs of feathers, feet of feathers and scales.
I could feel the weight of wings pulling muscles in my back.
Like the mosaic floors of Varnasia, I could see the tiles, but I had not yet stood back far enough to see the whole.
I reached out, trembling as much from weakness as with hesitance. The leather strips that dangled from the band brushed her wrist. I laid my horrible, clawed hand on top of the one she had withdrawn.
Her eyes traveled down to our hands. A fleeting expression of guilt passed her face. She glanced back up to me, her brows knitted.
“Please,” I asked.
She took the hand that lay on top of hers and stood. With her other, she unclasped the chain lead from the bed. She dropped the leash and tugged on my hand. I shifted my legs to position them beneath me, and then I stood. I stared down at her, through feathers and over a beak.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure. By the moment I turned more cowardly. But I had to know. I had managed rather well when stuffed into a costume not to look at myself beyond absolute necessity, but that had been a costume. I knew what I looked like outside of it. I didn’t know who or what I had become now.
I nodded, words nowhere to be found.
She led me patiently through the bed surround, through the room, and into her dressing room, the ankle bells noting each step.
She dropped my hand just inside the doorway and went to the window to draw back the curtains.
Morning light flooded the room. I stood stark against the sea of glimmering satins and pastel accessories.
She returned to my side and took my hand again, leading me forward to her golden-framed pier mirror.
She didn’t drop my hand when I stumbled.
She clung to it as if offering her strength while I did this impossible thing.
But I just stared at the creature that stared back at me from the glass.
My logic alone recognized it as my reflection, although every other aspect of my personhood said, no, absolutely not, this is not you.
I couldn’t correlate any of the creature’s attributes with mine.
Little wonder no one would recognize me if I could not see myself in this Otherland monstrosity.
I dropped her hand when I took another step forward, more fascinated than horrified, my shock still leading the motions rather than my horror repelling me.
I reached out and touched the glass, my talons following the movement of the creature’s talons as they tapped along the surface.
I stretched a shoulder, twisting it in the socket to loosen the arm, and the creature did too.
Skin not covered by feathers had gained a scaled texture, black and gray in gradient, going darker as feathers took over.
I tilted my face from side to side to better see myself.
Even my eyes, the creature’s eyes, reflected only a dim light of what had once been.
I raised my clawed hand to my chest and stroked down to keep the feathers smooth, every rib a prominent bump along the way. Somehow, this was me. This.
I had never blamed anyone for exercising caution around a man-sized bird known to have caused harm.
A creature of the Otherlands, in all its strange, monstrous glory, would give anyone pause.
And somehow, even retaining all my faculties and higher reasoning, knowing that this monster of legend was me, I wanted to flee from it too.
She came up beside me and put her hand on my arm.
“You truly have murdered me,” I said, proud of my detachment, grateful for my calm. “There is none of me in this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she whispered. “You are all here. All of you. There’s just one difference — I’m the only one who can see it.”
To anyone else, her sentiment might have seemed sweet, loving even, but she didn’t know who I was.
Or she didn’t want to know. She had an idea of me, an old and outdated image of a former lover that she clung to beyond any new knowledge or circumstance.
I wasn’t her idea, couldn’t be her idea.
Not without giving up most of the pieces that made me who I truly was.
There was no space in her daydream for a grieving widower, an unwilling lover, or a world-weary man.
She rejected all parts of me that she couldn’t own or control — most notably, the part of me that did not want her.
“Come back to bed,” she said after an eternity of me staring at my reflection. When she managed to tear me away, she wrapped herself around my arm and led me back into the bedroom. “I have ideas on how to distract you and solve my boredom in the process.”