The Caged Bird Sings

TW: violence.

Watching a friend in agony would have been tough enough. To actively cause that agony was another wart growing on the shrivelled soul Danielle imagined she had. She pinched the nose of Catherine Harper and looked to the witch for a nod of approval. When the nod came, she poured more of the concoction down the woman’s throat.

            “No. Please. It burns.” Catherine strained in manacles they all hoped would be strong enough to hold the woman when the change came.

            “That’s the point Catherine,” said the witch, Lupita. “The silver burns out the monster that’s infecting you.” The witch patted Danielle’s back reassuringly and checked the many silver pieces strapped to the prisoner’s pale bare flesh. Angry red sores had risen around each coin marked with the Crann Oak.

            Lupita’s brown skin had the warm glow of the firelight in it. Her kind face was contorted with stress, frowning. Her halo of curly black hair bounced as she scratched it.

            “Just shoot me,” said Catherine, a wiry woman. She shook the manacles which hung her from the ceiling with strength impossible for a mortal of her size. 

            “If you turn into a harpy at sunset we’re going to have to. Catherine, I need you to fight it for me. Remember who you are. Remember what you are. We don’t want to kill you.”

            Danielle gave the bitten woman a stool to stand on, hoping it would stop her yanking at the chains. The flickering light of torches made the shadows of the chained woman dance across the granite bricks of the cell.

            “Let me die.” The prisoner wept. Danielle winced as blood dripped from the woman’s eyes instead of tears.

            “When you transform the silver will react with the possession of the harpy that bit you. If you’re stronger, it will be over. Cured. It’s quick.” Lupita was lying. Danielle knew her girlfriend well enough to sense that she was trying to give Catherine hope.

            “You have to fight it,” said the muscular soldier as she poured more of the silver soup down the prisoner’s throat. A moment later blood poured from the chained woman’s mouth. The blood steamed as it pooled on the floor.

            “I can’t fight it.” The changing woman shook her head. Blood streaks from her eyes and mouth made her a gruesome sight by firelight.

            “It’s almost time Catherine. You want to live. I know you do.” Lupita said it with a voice of calming warmth. Her voice was melted honey on fresh bread, sweet comfort.

            To Danielle the witch, her friend and lover, was always a comfort. Catherine probably didn’t see it like that through the agony of a change that might erase her forever.

            A primal scream split their ears. The soldier and the witch slammed their hands over their ears. It was a human voice at a very inhuman volume. As she screamed, a fine spray of red shot from her throat.

            Stepping back from the prisoner, the soldier saw yellow eyes instead of brown.

            “It’s started,” Danielle said. She stepped back and picked up a loaded crossbow from the bench where unchained prisoners slept.

            The weapon in her hands was weighed down by the soldier’s conscience. Balancing the safety of the city against the life of a woman she looked in the eyes was agony. Following her training, she aimed for the heart. She kept her finger off the steel trigger.

            “Fight it Catherine,” Danielle said. She was sweating despite the cold. With the fires of the torches and all of them in the cell their breath didn’t turn to vapour as it did outside but there was no doubting that winter had come.

            A human scream became the screech of an owl. Tears ran down the soldier’s face. Her comrade had been doing her duty when the beast bit her. There was no justice for soldiers.

            With a start she realised that she had bitten her lip trying not to shoot. She put down the crossbow and picked up the bottle of Lupita’s silver concoction.

            Catherine stopped screeching and began to sniff. Trying to suck the blood from her lip the soldier checked her leather gloves. She kicked the stool from under the thing Catherine was becoming. Outside she knew that the sun was almost gone, it was make or break for the prisoner.

            “Fight it.” Danielle grabbed the throat of the prisoner and moved her gloved fingers up the jaw to pinch the mouth open. When the chained woman’s elongating mouth opened to scream again the soldier slammed the neck of the bottle into her mouth and tipped it up.

            A roaring scream simmered up from somewhere deep within the woman. Catherine’s eyebrows and hair were turning the scarlet of harpy feathers. The deep red of their plumage was why they were sometimes known as red angels.

            “FIGHT.”

            The chains shook. The stone where the chains were bolted into the ceiling crunched. A leather strap around Catherine’s arm snapped as the arm began to swell and transform. Coins spilled out from the leather and hit the muddy floor as glittering rain.

            “No. FIGHT.”

            The response was a scream with all the notes of the words I can’t do it but none of the human enunciation. More crimson tears fell from yellow eyes as the mouth became a beak, little by little.

            Catherine’s feet were turning into talons. Her fingernails were black. Her skin turned to scales where hairs were not stretching into feathers.

            “Get the crossbow. It’s not working.” Lupita pointed to the weapon on the ground.

            Danielle picked up the projectile. It felt heavier again.

            Another leather strap burst, sending coins pinging to the ground. Catherine was the bird that laid silver.

            “Shoot!” Lupita had a sword in her hand when Danielle looked back. The soldier remembered how useless swords had been against the harpies the night the woman in chains was bitten.

            “I can HEAR THEM.” It was the voice of an eagle the size of a bear. “They’re in my HEAD.” The beak shook. A sliver of granite fell from the ceiling as the chains started to tear loose.

            “Hold on. Your name is Catherine Harper. Tell me about yourself. Who were you before the siege?” Danielle asked. Her voice was that of a drunken wife screaming hoarse at a wayward husband after a long night of drinking for both.

            “I was a musician. Obviously,” said the bitterly sarcastic creature with its head tilted to one side.

            “Were you married?” asked the soldier. She just wanted to keep the prisoner talking. If she talked there was something left of her, even if her body was forgetting itself.

            “His name was Angus. He was a,” the tale was cut off by a blood curdling screech. “HE WAS A VIOLINIST. He was such a handsome man. A charmer.”

With a beak, there was no mouth to smile but the eyes creased in fond remembrance. One red tear fell. “He died the first night of the battle on the wall.”

            “How did that make you feel?” Lupita asked. She moved forwards.

            “HOW DO YOU THINK I FELT?” The screech was more animal again. Louder than ever. The soldier’s heart seemed to stop from fright at the sound.

            “I don’t know Catherine Harper. Tell me.”

            “I felt as though my heart had been ripped out. That man was my life. He was my joy.” The volume and the voice were monstrous, but the ache of the human soul was there, and the soldier knew why the witch was tormenting the widow.

            “He doesn’t sound that special to me. Just another idiot who died on that wall. He let Crann down. He let you down.” Having something to concentrate on stilled Danielle’s shaking body.

            The beast screeched and with the birdlike roar came a spray of red from the silver inside it, fighting the possession.

            Danielle wiped the red from her lily-white face.

            “You can’t even say why he was special can you?” asked the soldier.

            “He made everyone smile when he told his jokes, even when they were bad. His music stole the breath from anyone who listened. He was a kind man in a crowd of bastards. He chose ME!”

            Danielle thought the yellow eyes were browner again. She could have been imagining it. With flickering torches anything could be a trick of the light.

            “If you’d really loved him, you would have been by his side that night. You would have fought to the death for him. He would still be here now.” Lupita kept up the taunts. Rage seemed to be the last thread holding Catherine to her humanity.

            “I was, I wanted to… FUCK YOU!”

            “Tell me then,” Danielle steadied her aim with the crossbow, “what would you tell him now if he was here?”

            “I would tell him that I’ll never love a man as long as I live.”

            “Would he want you to become a bloodthirsty beast?”

            “No. He loved me.”

            “Then what kind of ingrate are you for giving in to this against his wishes? Will you betray him like that?”

            “But I-” Catherine tried to argue against the twisted logic of Danielle and Lupita’s web of guilt.

            “If you give in now, you’ll spend the rest of your existence as a monster that would have disgusted him. Is that what you want?” Lupita asked.

            An agonised screech made all the soldier’s internal organs shiver. It wasn’t the first time the screech of a harpy had caused her to wet herself. In fact it had been Catherine who had made a joke of it the first time they faced the monsters.

            “I can’t FIGHT IT. I can hear them. They’re calling me.” It wasn’t a woman before them anymore. Wings crushed into shackles suspended the beast where Catherine had been. Nothing of the woman remained on the outside. Within there was a spark, fighting for its life against cold winds.

            “Fight for Angus,” Danielle told the woman inside the monster. “Picture his face. Think of the way he made you feel. Hear his music. Tell me one of his jokes. What did it feel like when he kissed you? How did he smell? Tell me.”

            Were the red feathers turning brown? Was that an illusion of fading torches?

            “Angus had blue eyes. His nose was broken in the middle. He had a scar down his chest from a knife fight with his brother. He was the youngest of four. He made me feel like I was made of pure gold. He smiled when he saw me. He smelled of beer and his violin. When he kissed me I felt invincible. I was safe if his lips were touching mine. He played We march in Bandits Forest like a love ballad. When he smiled, he had a dimple under his left eye. He had his fiddle tattooed on his arm.

            There was a young man from Crann,

            He proposed a drinking ban,

            He’s dead of course,

            Along with his horse,

            Dig his grave now,

            Quick as you can.”

            The feathers were brown again. Some had become hairs. The bumpy scales on her skin were shrinking away. The talons on her feet were shrinking back into fingernails.

            “That man,” said a voice more human than before. “My beautiful Angus. Red feathers fell like leaves from her wings. The wings became arms again. The distortion of her form freed her from the shackles as she slowly turned back into the woman she had been before the sun had set outside.

            Catherine fell from her chains, her head about to bounce off the granite. Danielle rushed to catch her. Her face was still longer before. The teeth in that mouth were razor sharp.

            In Danielle’s arms the beast tensed up and bit at her neck. Lupita smacked the woman over the head with the crossbow but.

Together the witch and the soldier chained up the prisoner again.

            “Do you think she’s really unconscious?” asked the soldier as she locked the manacles around the bitten woman again.

            “I hope so.”

            It didn’t take much to keep Danielle and Lupita up through the night. When a castle guard came to tell them, it was morning the prisoner was still a woman. Mostly.

Catherine opened her eyes to look at them and wailed a perfectly human sob.

            “My eyes!”

            “Catherine?” The soldier stirred from a daydream.

            “Everything’s wrong. The colours, they’re all over the place. What’s wrong with my eyes?” When the soldier looked into the prisoner’s eyes, she saw that they were still yellow as they had been at the height of the transformation.

            “They didn’t change back.”

            Catherine was a strong woman. Sinew beneath her white skin. Yellow eyes were too much for her. She wept and coughed. Danielle realised that the woman must be terribly dehydrated. Unlocking the shackles which bound the woman, the soldier carried her down to the wooden bench and lay her there.

            Marks from the shackles circled her wrists. The burns from the silver coins on her skin were raw. Those coins clinked every time their feet hit the stone floor. The soldier fed the survivor broth and bread.

            Feeling the guilt of new growths on her shrivelled soul, Danielle tended the woman she had shackled for her own good. It was another burden she would carry to the grave.

            Catherine was free of the chains but not the cursed touch of the harpies. Lupita said the call of the flock would come to her from time to time. She was granted a room within the castle, safe from the prying eyes of the people, safe under the prying eyes of the guards.

            From the window of her new room high above the city Catherine ‘Farsight’ Harper could watch things on the horizon beyond the reach of any looking glass. She lost the muscle of a soldier in the coming weeks, wasting away at the balcony of her room.

            Many who cared about the woman worried she would jump from that balcony. They didn’t know the many stories she had ahead of her. She would return from the depths of depression. Not the Catherine of old. Cat ‘Farsight’ Harpie would have tales told of her long after her real name was lost.