Marguerite’s skin shone with tears, shone with blazing golden light. She threw back her head and cried out, not in pain, but in sheer joy, the way a bird cries midflight. Wings so black and so bright they shorted out my vision sprouted from her back, wide as the room, wide as the city. The house fell away and there was only Marguerite, burning in her own lovely fire, her lips moving, silently telling herself the story of herself, the magic words, unwinding, then raveling into a whole new form.
