The Horrid Glory of Its Wings by Elizabeth Bear

Author:Elizabeth Bear
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2009-11-22T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

The next day, I go down to talk to the harpy.

I get up early and wash quick, pull on my tights and skirt and blouse and sweater. I don’t have to work after school today, so I leave my uniform on the hanger behind the door.

But when I get outside, the first thing I hear is barking. Loud barking, lots of it, from the alley. And that hiss, the harpy’s hiss. Like the biggest maddest cat you ever heard.

There’s junk all over the street, but nothing that looks like I could fight with it. I grab up some hunks of ice. My school shoes skip on the frozen sidewalk and I tear my tights when I fall down.

It’s dark in the alley, but it’s city dark, not real dark, and I can see the dogs okay. There’s three of them, dancing around the dumpster on their hind legs. One’s light colored enough that even in the dark I can see she’s all scarred up from fighting, and the other two are dark.

The harpy leans forward on the edge of the dumpster, wings fanned out like a cartoon eagle, head stuck out and jabbing at the dogs.

Silly thing doesn’t know it doesn’t have a beak, I think, and whip one of the ice rocks at the big light-colored dog. She yelps. Just then, the harpy sicks up over all three of the dogs.

Oh, God, the smell.

I guess it doesn’t need a beak after all, because the dogs go from growling and snapping to yelping and running just like that. I slide my backpack off one shoulder and grab it by the strap in the hand that’s not full of ice.

It’s heavy and I could hit something, but I don’t swing it in time to stop one of the dogs knocking into me as it bolts away. The puke splashes on my leg. It burns like scalding water through my tights.

I stop myself just before I slap at the burn. Because getting the puke on my glove and burning my hand too would just be smart like that. Instead, I scrub at it with the dirty ice in my other hand and run limping towards the harpy.

The harpy hears my steps and turns to hiss, eyes glaring like green torches, but when it sees who’s there it pulls its head back. It settles its wings like a nun settling her skirts on a park bench, and gives me the same fishy glare.

Wash that leg with snow, the harpy says. Or with lots of water. It will help the burning.

“It’s acid.”

With what harpies eat, the harpy says, don’t you think it would have to be?

I mean to say something clever back, but what gets out instead is, “Can you fly?”

As if in answer, the harpy spreads its vast bronze wings again. They stretch from one end of the dumpster to the other, and overlap its length a little.

The harpy says, Do these look like flightless wings to you?

Why does it always

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