Her father landed in the yard, alone, a heap of wings and wax. 

With a cry, her mother ran from the loom. The sister couldn't tell whether the cry was of fear or joy—it was an inhuman shriek, like of a bird of prey, the pleading screech of an aging, hungry sparrowhawk before flight.

When the sister caught up, her mother stood by her father's fallen form, her face raised to the sky, eyes mad, screaming, "My son? My son?" 

Her father shook his head. 

No. The sister ran from the scrubby yard, ankling chickens aside, dodging goats. No. A stitch pierced her side. No. She ran faster, eastward down the hill, stumble-sliding in the scree on the cliff where the homestead broke into rocks and crooked trees, and she climbed the tangled branches of the olive. No. She perched, squinting to the east, a streak of orange unfolding from the sea. 

She saw nothing else—no errant figure straggling behind, no bit of feather on the foam.

"Daughter."

She looked down. Her father stood under the tree, open hand beckoning, wings dragging, trailing feathers in the dirt. 

She shuddered.

He led her back through the goats and chickens. Her mother turned away into the house, hands dangling limp and empty. 

Her father stood bare before her as she unstrapped the wings from his body. Then they squatted with rag and bucket, her fingers covered with down as she scrubbed and peeled her father's back, picking off lumps of wax and scraggly quills, stripping his skin into blotches of pink. 

He grabbed her wrist. 

"Gently."

The name became taboo. 

*****

The first days, every shadow overhead was her brother—the miracle of his return, the blow of his absence. 

The next days, the shadow was her father pulling her head back down to earth, to her work, to his dinner, and to his socks. 

Her mother looked at nothing, only picked her hair and cheeks and chewed her lips. 

Her father shoved the wings under his bed. 

He pointed out dead gulls, husks of bone and feathers bloodying the cliffs. "That's him." One night, their dinner was broken by a flurry of wings and a dull smack as a bird skull cracked against the kitchen window. "That's him. Still flying into the light. Fool."

*****

She tried to pretend she didn't see how her father watched her, his eyes following as she milked goats and baked bread. She knew he noticed the way her body turned east, how she lifted her head if the wind changed, how she whispered to songbirds and started feeding the chickens feasts of nuts and berries and served him only vegetables and grain.

One night he rose from the table in disgust. "No more roots and herbs," he said, overturning the bowl and scattering their meal on the floor. "I am no rabbit. I will have meat."

He made her watch as he strangled the brown hen, watch him pluck and flay and gut the bird. He tossed the flesh to her, flung the bones to the dog, his eyes dark with the memory of flight and fall. 

"Cook it. Fool."

*****

Still, each morning, she listened to the break of waves on rock and dreamed she saw her brother's form in flight outlined against the sun, all wing and claw. 

She refused to forget his blue-sky eyes. Or the days they fought like pirates, swung like monkeys, screamed like seagulls, sang their dreams, picked unripe olives, one for each wish, every future, and cast them from the cliff, watching them sail out and down like hard green stones disappearing in the surf. She would not forget the nights she hid in the shadows of the olive's twisted limbs as her brother stood below, facing their father, offering his hand instead, the flesh of his open palm a pale flag trembling in moonlight. 

Or the mornings after. Their measured silence. 

She carved his forbidden name into the olive.

*****

Late, late one night, when the moon was new and shadows deep, she crept into her parents' room and slipped beneath her father’s bed. She felt the dear wings’ silk and pressed her face into the smell of salt, the ocean heat. She lay for hours, listening to her mother's grunting sleep, her father's even breath. No rustling twitch betrayed a nightmare worry for their son. 

Near dawn, she stole the wings and climbed the tree. With sure fingers, she pulled the wings across her back and strapped the feathered wax to her arms. As the first edge of light broke the horizon in two, the wind ruffled her hair and brushed her own red heat, the stars inside her bones. Her arms lifted, her brother's name a hope on her lips.

Then her father was upon her. 

He growled and spat as he dragged her from the tree. The olive leaves snagged and broke in her hair. 

"Forget him," he said. "He forgot you. He left you. He flew too close. Too far." 

He handed her the ax and made her chop the tree down and down into kindling. 

She wept as she cut, stacking the limbs gently. 

He kicked them over, poured oil on the branches, and handed her a torch. 

She wouldn't leave the pyre. Not even when the wax began to bubble and burn. She stayed all afternoon tending the flames that cracked the olive wood and scorched the feathers still strapped to her back. At dusk, the fire still blazed and popped. Shadows crept across the yard, twilight scavengers. 

She did not falter when the feathers caught fire.

Her father turned away. Her mother had already gone.

*****

Long after the fire had simmered and burned out, her father sent her mother out with a lantern. She found her in the gulch behind the coop, a feathered, crumpled thing. Her skin was crisp, her eyes white stones. She lay there steaming, earthed, remembering. 

She did not move or cry, not even when her mother yanked a feather out, its quill hooked in a pore of skin and blood, then grabbed a handful, two, then more and more. The tufts of down and flesh hung in the air and hovered in the lantern's light like moths. 

Her father hid inside the front door's dark, his eyes two darker holes, and watched her pluck.

*****

All night she lay, her gaze fixed east. 

As the first light flickered into dawn, her mother cried out. The sister's skin burned blue then white, heat radiating from her body and rippling the dry dirt into circles around her. Quills burst from her back, her chest, shoulders, arms, covering her skin with great, sleek feathers of mottled brown.

When daylight touched her newly molted form, she rose and found her legs were steady. She paused and brushed her mother's cheek, a print of ash good-bye. Then she turned away—away from father's curse, his closed, curled fists—away from mother's reach, palms tarred with bloody down. 

She did not look back.

Body strong and mind sure, she winged out to sea, far beyond her old edge of sight, savoring her new shape, her own strength. 

Then she laughed. "Fool," she whispered, smiling.

She crowed with joy, pitching and diving around another form whose wings and claw she knew and recognized—his darling form a darkling silhouette of claw and feather rising in the light.