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For every Emerie who has ever held the door open for another. Your wings are perfect.
Illyria, The Night Court
She woke at dawn and stretched her arms, rubbing at the aches of her shoulders and lower back that came from holding up the deadweight of her wings. If they had not been clipped, these wings would have the muscle and strength to hold their own.
If they had not been clipped, she would spend hours in flight. They would stay aloft or tuck neatly between her shoulders in a symmetrical resting position, as the Mother intended.
But instead, at the age of fourteen, after her first bleed, she was held down as the village healer sliced through the central tendons of each one. Five incisions in a starburst pattern. These made certain no rapid healing occurred.
No second chances for female flight.
She dressed in the simple shift and rubbed ointment along the jagged silver scars, like rivulets running down the maroon membrane. The morning was crisp, the sky blue as a Siphon and Ramiel gleamed granite in the distance.
Nodding to the camp mothers, she found her work site, cauldron already bubbling, laundry in the basket waiting to be boiled, scrubbed and rinsed. This was her lot. The brown skin of her hands and wrists was calloused and streaked with several more scars from the boiling water and caustic herbs used to remove blood stains and treat Illyrian fighting leathers. She healed quickly, but not perfectly. Nothing about her was perfect anymore.
She lifted the heavy basket with a grunt, shifting it to her hip for better support and dumped the soiled clothes into the pot. Stirring, she hummed low and watched as the young males trained on the western steppes.
In a few weeks, the young females would be offered a chance to train, but only those who were not bleeding, and only those who had finished all their chores, and only those whose fathers and brothers allowed. And only those who were brave enough to weather the names, and the looks, and the cold shoulders…
Sometimes, on slow days, when there wasn’t too much laundry, she let herself imagine that her wings were whole. That she could climb the cliff sides and leap from the heights. In free fall, the air and wind would propel her body, and at the last minute, right before she crashed upon the steppes, her wings would snap out to their fullest and she would coast along the wild grasses, their blades grazing her face. Or maybe she would take off from the peaks and pass straight up through the clouds, tasting rain and smelling ether. She laughed at herself then, but the sound held no music.
“It will be your skin when the çamaşır shrinks, Asli.” A camp mother called out from the next fire. Damn. She’d let the laundry boil for too long. The Illyrian used the long wooden paddle and pulled the steaming clothes from the cauldron, praying it was not too late. Her skin already blistering as the water splashed her legs and forearms, burning her hands.
A shadow dappled the sky above. A peal of laughter followed. She looked up. And there, leaping from a cliff’s edge, to the east, was a young female with golden brown hair and moon white skin. She was not Illyrian, yet she possessed Illyrian wings. They were enormous, unclipped, and perfect.
And for a heartbeat, the laundress wished on every star that ever graced the Night Court sky that she could have those wings. No, she did not even need those wings. She would be content with the ones on her back. Before she was held down. Before they were taken from her.
The female leapt from the cliffside and with a wild whoop, her wings caught the wind and she banked, one with the current and the sky. How free, how magical it must be. There was a male flying beside her. Not any male. This was the High Lord and his High Lady. They continued to fly off into the horizon until they were mere specks in the vast sky.
And the injustice of it coiled like a snake and struck. Its venom coursed through her veins. This twenty year old High Fae who shape shifted wings on a whim, taking pleasure in a birthright not her own. The Illyrian's rage was a living thing. For this was her sky. The wind was a song thrumming in her blood.
The High Lord had made it illegal to cut a female’s wings, but he did not enforce it. He tried to help females learn to fight, but did not enforce it. Most powerful in history, but not powerful enough to stop an Illyrian farmer or soldier from tying a fourteen year old to a chair and breaking her body. From stopping a mob of warriors from throwing rocks at mothers who wished to learn how to block a blow.
How could the High Lady take such joy in flight and not defend the very females whose wings were still being clipped, when she knew firsthand the pleasure and power, the joy and freedom, that was being denied them? Instead, she blithely coasted above those whose wings would never extend to their full span or feel the wind catching so perfectly. Did she not see how hurtful it was, how harmful, to overlook the suffering of the very fae race she was impersonating?
The laundress lay the clothes on the rocks and furiously beat out the blood stains. Her back ached and her hands were on fire as she watched her daughter, Banou, collect firewood at the edge of camp. Her little velveteen wings were still uncut, youthful talons still rounded. Her body was unbowed and unbroken, for now. The laundress had a thought. What if she got her daughter out before she could be bowed, broken, and clipped? And what if other younglings, they too, could get out? For if their High Lord truly could not protect them from the blades and rocks and fists that would inevitably come their way, then they would have to save themselves.
What if Banou could one day leap from a cliffside, her perfect laughter pealing from the skies? Why should joy only be free for the rich and the powerful? The sky and stars should be the birthright of every Illyrian. And now, the laundress wanted this more than anything. Tonight, she would walk the mountain pass and seek out the one whose name was Emerie. The Valkyrie.
She continued to scrub the blood stains from white linen, and this time, when she laughed, there was music.