She makes certain her shawl is knotted tightly and shoves the handle of Rhun’s ax into it for safekeeping. The head presses up against her back ribs. Humming her song under her breath, Mairwen walks over soft, long grass into the center of this dogwood copse. A warm breeze blows, shaking loose some white petals that float around her. Mair sits down.
Her skirt balloons around her, settling as gently as the blossoms. Here she belongs.
Plopping her hands into her lap, she allows herself a moment to mourn the beautiful indigo wool and skims a finger against the slits of silk in the sleeves. Arthur snapped at her, when they first ran inside, that her skirts would hold them back.
The warm breeze skimming through her tumbling braids reminds her of the sun, and she hopes Arthur is alive. Her jaw clenches. She makes fists in her lap.
“Why have you stopped singing?” a tiny voice asks.
Mairwen leaps up, trips on her skirt, and lands in an awkward crouch.
It’s a woman the size of a sparrow, naked but for dowdy brown bird wings folded loose against her back. Her eyes are black as a sparrow’s too, her chin pointy, and her body slim, frail, with only a hint of breasts and hips. She stands an arm’s length from Mairwen.
“I didn’t realize anyone but the trees were listening,” Mairwen replies, thinking to herself that honesty is the only path to take.
The bird woman smiles, her teeth like needles.
Mairwen gasps, suddenly imagining her own teeth growing long and sharp and special.
“We liked your singing,” a different tiny voice calls, drawing Mair’s attention up into the dogwood branches, where another bird woman perches, spreading her speckled wings.
“Yes, we did,” several of them chorus at once.
From behind the petals, more emerge. They push aside the flowers, rubbing their cheeks to the soft petals, embracing them like friends. One bird woman jumps down, spreads her russet wings, and soars in a modest spiral around Mairwen’s head.
The first bird woman ruffles her own wings and walks a few steps nearer Mairwen. “Yes, sing again. Sing about your birds.”
“I should go,” Mairwen says instead, standing slowly. “I have business to attend.”
All the bird women frown. There must be nearly fifty of them, and though they’re tiny, Mairwen doesn’t relish the thought of a swarm of their needle teeth chewing at her.
“I need to find a friend of mine,” she says.
“Don’t go,” says the first woman.
“Sing,” says another.
“Sing!” repeat a dozen others, in a discordant harmony.
Mair opens her mouth to say no, but thinks there’s no good reason not to give them another round. “The jaybird crowed his lonesome song,” she sings, under her breath, backing away from the first bird woman. The flutter of wings behind her reminds Mairwen she’s entirely surrounded. She can’t remember the next line, though she sang it again and again just now.
A bird woman lands on her shoulder, wings brushing Mair’s cheek. The woman grasps at her hair and the collar of her bodice. “Sing!” she shrieks into Mairwen’s ear. The tiny teeth snap. “Daughter of the forest!”
“I—I cannot,” Mair says firmly, “I need to find my friend. I must go.”
The woman pulls hard at her hair, and three more dive at Mairwen’s skirts and face.
She bats at them, tries to knock the woman off her shoulder, but the creatures cling to her hair.
“Then we shall have your fingers!”
“We shall have your toes!”
“We shall have your pretty eyes!”
“Or we shall have your song!”
Mairwen covers her face with her hands, jaw clenched at the ripping pain in her scalp. She hums the tune frantically, and the bird women cheer tiny cheers. At least four tangle in her hair, flying around, pulling at the curls, and one grips her ankle, no more than the weight of an apple against her foot. She feels one at her ear, tiny fingers tugging the lobe. Another—or two—take her left hand and grasp around her thumb and small finger. One settles against her breast, wings fluttering as fast as Mairwen’s heart.
