Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

“Feathers,” he repeated. “But not Annabella’s.” “Not Annabella’s.”

When I woke up, she was gone. In her place: plain white feathers.

Something else. Because Prue wasn’t looking like she was that happy to see me. In fact—it was kind of the exact opposite.

He’d become convinced that he, too, was a bird, and Annabella’s eggs weren’t hatching because he was the one who was supposed to sit on them.

“I think I’ve been avoiding you. Just a little bit. But not because of Annabella, it’s nothing like that. It’s just . . . you’re the first girl I’ve ever kissed. And I didn’t know how to tell you that.”

I was twelve when I told my mother I was gay, and it had been like asking her to pass the coffeepot.

Mary had been equally easy; she’d rolled her eyes, said “Duh,” and remarked that it was a relief she didn’t have to compete with me for guys, even though, she was quick to point out, I wouldn’t have been much competition.

Vira was the easiest of all. I told her I liked girls. She told me she didn’t like anyone, at least not in a sexual way. We breathed h...

bed. I wanted to hold her hand, to quiet the impulses that made it impossible for her to sit still, but I didn’t want to disrespect whatever music she heard.

‘Hi, Harrison! Just wanted to warn you that I’m going to be jumping soon. Didn’t want to startle you.’”

Such a Mary thing to say.

“Hi, Georgie,”

IT vibes

“I woke up this morning and I thought to myself, I suppose I’ll go climb a tree,” Mary said,

shrugging, like it was perhaps the most normal thing in the world for young women to spend their free time in the branches of big trees.

“‘I suppose I’ll go climb a tree’? Nobody talks like that, Mary.” “My legs hurt. From walking.” “So you thought y...

My sister was turning into a bird. And just like my namesake—the Georgina who came before me—there would be no magic I could use to save her.

“I found that loose floorboard when you were both eight. She hid a slice of cake inside it. I followed a trail of ants.”

“Is there any way to stop it?” I asked. “I sort of like her human.”

“Mary killed Annabella.”

“Did you just save my life?” I asked shakily. “Thank me later,”

“You must be really attracted to me right now.” “Surprisingly enough, I am.”

“I should have. I wish I had dick-chopping magic powers.”

My sister hadn’t killed Annabella. Of course my sister hadn’t killed Annabella. But I knew who did. Evil man.

All of the pieces of that night were shifting and clicking into place inside my brain. My sister’s torn shirt. The bruise in the bathtub. My sister’s broken necklace. My sister’s nightmares. My sister’s terror.

A shadow passed over his features, and I saw him how my sister must have seen him that night in the barn, that night when she said no and he said yes.

“It always rains when you cry.” “That’s the same thing.” “It’s not the same thing at all. Don’t you see?” she said. “It’s your thing, Georgina. This is your thing. It’s always been your thing; it was just too big for any of us to see!”

“Happy birthday,” she said. And then Prue screamed.

Behind me I heard Vira whisper, “Evil man.”

“No way. I don’t know what you two are capable of,”

“Surely no more than what you were capable of,” I said.

“What I did?” Mary repeated. “I didn’t do anything, Peter. All I did was say no.”

I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference. They hid behind weapons of mass destruction: big guns and bigger bombs. They were small, small, small—

And everything went white.

“Has the sun exploded?” I asked. “I imagine if the sun had exploded, we wouldn’t be around to comment on it.”

“Just like fucking Zeus,” I whispered. “Ah, so you’re remembering,”

Peter had forced himself on my sister in a gross, dusty barn, and Peter had thrown a three-hundred-year-old bird against a wooden beam and snapped her wings and neck, and Peter had aimed a gun at my face, but—despite all that—I didn’t think I was prepared to add murderer to the list of attributes I used to describe myself.

“I said a little worn for the wear; I think I should amend that to a lot worn for the wear,” my mother said thoughtfully. “He was blown into next Tuesday. Really. I had to go and drag him back to the present. He smokes when he opens his mouth and he’s covered in burns, but he’ll live.”

“You knew,” I said. “You must have. You knew I was making it rain.” “I had a feeling it was you, yes.”

My mother’s eyes darkened. We hadn’t said the word yet. Words had power. Just like the words— Slut. Magic. Fernweh. They had power. So did the word— Rape.

My sister had disappeared. I remembered now. The smell of burning flesh. The light so bright it had washed the entire world away. The tiny flutter on my shoulder. Like the smallest, most delicate little body had landed there for just a moment— Before flying away. As if to say—

Thank you.

His defense—she deserved it because she had already had sex with so many people—made the judge, the Honorable Eleanora Avery, laugh the fuck out loud.

As if out of a fairy tale, nobody asked: What was my sister wearing the night she was raped? How much had my sister had to drink the night she was raped? How many guys had my sister previously had sex with? Because—again, out of a fairy tale—they realized that none of those things mattered.

Because there was nothing in a girl’s history that might negate her right to choose ...

I said to good-bye to them, one by one, these people who had dedicated their lives to a thing that had been so violently taken from them.

I watched them pull the grave marker out of the earth—the one Peter had made—and fling it into the sea.

“I’ll be back next year. Annabella or no Annabella, this is my home too.”

We took turns watching over them: Harrison, Prue, Vira, me. We stacked books and magazines on Mary’s bed and read stories and watched Annabella’s babies.

The magical nest in my sister’s room that somehow, between watches of its diligent guardians, had gone empty. Not a piece of egg nor fluff of feather left to be found.

I woke up that night to my sister hovering over me.

“I was afraid nobody would believe me,” she whispered, her voice soft and muffled by wool. “I would have believed you. I will always believe you.”