Feather Dark

Chapter 7

Keira

Four gigantic suits hold me down, their faces nothing but dark shadows silhouetted by the overhead florescent lights. I'm twisting and kicking, but their hands are too strong and I lie pinned to the table. I scream, tearing my throat to pieces, crying out to anyone who might hear me and take pity, but no one comes and no one inside the room cares.

Sevic appears above my head, upside down in my view. "You know, I used to break in horses when I was a girl," she says conversationally. "They all start off acting as though they are the wildest hooves to ever grace the stables, but eventually..."

She gestures to one of the suits, and he stretches my right wing out against the table. Sevic raises the scalpel and it flashes in the light.

"...Eventually, they all learn that the human with the whip holds the power."

She brings the scalpel down to my wing and my screams begin again. They don't stop until my vocal cords rupture.

Coated in sweat, I started awake in my abduction suite. By the raw heat in my throat, I knew I'd been screaming again in my sleep. The nightmare echoed through my head, and I wished that a dream was all it was.

Pulling my right wing around, I ran my fingers down its length. I'd lost track of how many times I'd wept over the last three days when my fingers reached the point where Sevic's scalpel made contact. From there onwards, the feathers were gone, sliced clean away. All that remained were the sharp ends.

It hadn't hurt: the feathered shafts had no nerves. The brutality was what had affected me; ruining my wings was equivalent to shaving my head – in fact, I probably would have dealt with being bald better. Sevic and her suits were so callous and calm as they mutilated my most treasured body part, then they tossed me back in my gilded cell.

I'd lain on the plush carpet, rocking and crying for hours. With my wing clipped, I was grounded again. It felt like I'd just gotten airborne again after my wing had healed: now, it could be weeks, months, until my feathers regrew. I had no idea how long it might be. I'd never given myself a trim like that before.

While I sobbed, broken, I prayed for my twins to come and find me. It wasn't like at least one of them didn't know where I lived. Noah would be using his super-brain to scan for clues and track me across the skies. And Leigh was my best friend – he must have sensed something was amiss and he'd never stop searching for me. Ever.

Hours passed, and I hadn't been rescued. Instead, I found myself peeing with a towel wrapped around my waist for privacy. Then I used a bar of soap to write a choice insult with a variety of four letter words on the bathroom mirror and collapsed into bed.

I wasted another two days soaping over the mirrors and flushing towels down the toilet. I created food sculptures on the floor by the door, so that anyone who entered would have to hurdle mashed potato and cornflakes creations. My favourite time-consumer was pulling up the carpet. With a few hours of decent effort, I could move all the furniture, roll up the carpet, then replace everything onto the bare concrete and drape the carpet over the top.

Once a day, a housekeeper and a handyman would enter my suite and repair my latest efforts, while at least two suits stood guard. The suits were a bit like the beefeater guards at Buckingham palace: they didn't speak, move or emote in any way.

I took it as a challenge. I'd sprawl on my bed and ask them incessant, irritating questions.

"Hey, you! Has anyone ever told you, you have really tiny lady hands?"

"You should probably get that mole checked. The edges look raised, which generally means cancer. Have you been feeling okay lately?"

"Did you know that you have three really long hairs coming out of your nose?"