Anna-Marie McLemore: The Weight of Feathers

“That wasn’t a fight,” Lace said. “That was the three of you beating on a local. You know what happens when you beat on the locals? They don’t come. If they don’t come, we don’t get paid. Word spreads that we’re the kind of people who beat up anyone we feel like. Then guess what? We’re not welcome in this town anymore. Then we’re not welcome in the next town, or the next county. My father goes back to a job the school district cut. Your grandfather goes back to selling champurrado where, Echo Park? You want that?”

He sat up. “I had it handled.” His yelling turned her face hot.

“Oh, like you had it handled with the horse?” Lace asked.

Justin’s cheek grew sunken, back teeth biting the inside. “Low, Lace,” he said. “Low.”

The guilt hit her, small, but sharp. He was right. Her bringing it up was low. Justin was only eleven when he, Alexia, and Alexia’s older brother “borrowed” a Camargue colt from a family that ran a traveling horse show. They’d planned to bring it back before dawn, but it had spooked and gotten away from them, and in the moonless night they couldn’t spot its pale coat.

The three of them thought they could get away with it if they kept their mouths shut. But then Alexia, a new mermaid, could not get near water. She shied away from it like a foal that had never seen a river. Her brother and Justin startled as easily as fillies, jumping at the sound of every closed door or chittering squirrel. They realized the horse family knew about the Camargue, and had cursed them.

Justin, Alexia, and Alexia’s brother stayed up three days and nights, searching for that horse. The Palomas, including Lace, all stayed up too, praying, fearing that the lost colt would make the horse family hate the Palomas as much as the Palomas hated the Corbeaus. But they could not help them look, because to lift the curse the three would have to get the horse back themselves.

They finally found it grazing in a salt marsh. They returned it, their eyes never leaving the grass as they apologized. The next day, Alexia loved water again, and her brother and Justin were bold as hawks. The family who owned the Camargue figured they had learned their lesson, and lifted the curse that made them like skittish horses.

Lace sat on the edge of the bed, back to Justin. All the arguing seeped out of her. It wasn’t fair of her to bring it up. Justin had been the youngest of the three of them, and he and his cousins had made it right.

If only the feud with the Corbeaus came down to a single lost colt.

“Somebody’s gotta look out for us,” Justin said.

“We look out for each other,” she said.

“ Abuela puts us in the same town with them.”

Them . The word twisted his lips. He couldn’t even speak the name Corbeau.

He was saying what nobody else would. Abuela chose wrong. Every year, she chose wrong. And every year, the Corbeaus got one of them. Last year Matías spent half the show season with a cast on his right arm, though he swore it was worth it and he’d do it again. The year before that a sirena came home with her dress strap ripped by a Corbeau. Her mother had thanked God she could run faster than any of her cousins.

Every year, they wondered what the Corbeaus might do next. Send crows to bring sickness on the Palomas. Use gitano magic to curse a Paloma child, stopping her from growing the birthmarks that showed up on all other Paloma girls. Leti was sure they’d murdered Tío Armando years ago, slaughtered him in the woods. The story about the coyote was just that, she said, a story.

Lace put nothing past the Corbeaus. Twenty years ago, they’d caused the flood at the lake, killing Tía Lora’s husband. Eight years ago, they’d almost drowned Magdalena with that net. There was nothing they would not do.

Justin punched his pillows, fluffing them up.

“I’m not gonna go looking for a fight,” he said. “All I’m saying is, they come here, they’re gonna get one. And I’m gonna make sure my brothers are ready.”

“And whose show do you think that guy’s gonna go see now?” Lace asked. “Ours or theirs?”

Justin grabbed the remote and clicked the TV on.

“If you want to look out for us, good,” she said. “Look out for us. Keep Oscar and Rey out of fights.”

He flipped the channel. “If you don’t want me beating on the locals, don’t go out so late.”

He knew why she went out late. She starved all day so when she slid into her tail, her stomach wouldn’t look soft with baby fat, Abuela poking it with the corner of her Bible and saying, “You’re still not a woman, mija .” But after the cleanup and the costume mending, hunger drove Lace to the snack aisle at the liquor store. So she stayed as she was, not soft enough for her grandmother to pull her from the show, not thin enough to be one of the finned beauties who draped their tails on wide rocks, posing for pictures.

Justin threw the remote in the air and caught it. It smacked against his palm. “Guys around here gotta know they can’t look at my cousins.”

“He wasn’t looking at me.”

“He could’ve been.”

Thank God Justin didn’t have sisters. “But he wasn’t.”

She almost felt bad for the guy. He’d either been too scared to fight her cousins or thought it was no use. He wasn’t built like Justin, but he was just as tall, and he had enough muscle on him that he could’ve tried if he’d wanted to.

Maybe Justin didn’t like his hair, how it was almost long enough to touch his shoulders. According to Lace’s uncles, no man worth anything wore his hair past his ears. She didn’t know if it was that wavy and messy on its own or if that was from her cousins kicking him around. And she couldn’t quite tell what he was, his features strong but not sharp.

Lace’s cousins didn’t like not knowing what someone was, not knowing what to do with them. Poor guy didn’t stand a chance.

“Sorry, Lace,” Justin said, as quickly as if he’d stepped on the fin of her tail.

“Don’t tell me. Tell the local guy. Tell your mother.”

“I thought you didn’t want my mother to know.”

“Then don’t do it again.” She pulled the door shut behind her.

Her feet brushed the hallway carpet, picking up static. Her fingers sparked on the knob of her room. Today had been the first day dry enough for it. The rain was coming again, her father said. They were waiting on a wet summer, one that would dull tourists’ taste for outdoor shows. The Palomas would fight the Corbeaus for an even smaller audience.

Martha had fallen asleep before Lace went out. So bony her upper arms were as thin as her forearms, Martha couldn’t keep weight on, even with her mother always pushing stone pine nuts at her, swearing they would help her grow hips.

Poor, good-hearted Martha. She’d once made the mistake of saying they shouldn’t call the Corbeaus gypsies. She’d read somewhere that the right word was Romani. The glare Abuela and Lace’s mother gave her could have singed the green off an ancho chile.

Their tails hung over the shower bar, the pink and orange fins dripping into the bathtub. Martha’s arm stuck out of the comforter, long fingers grasping the TV remote. Lace clicked off the set.

Makeup covered the pressboard dresser. Base and mascara. Cream eye shadows in a dozen shades. Red lipsticks. All waterproof. Sea-colored rhinestones to stick at the outer corner of each eye and on their false eyelashes. It was Lace’s job to put color on each of her cousins, the same as it had been before she joined the show.

If her cousins showed for call late from flirting with local men, Lace barely had time to do her own makeup. Not that it mattered. Abuela kept her in the background, a mermaid who flicked her tail and then disappeared into the shadows of sunken trees.