The Ferret Bride, by Madalena Daleziou

Sarah Jackson -

When her mother dozed with the last doily of Kassia’s dowry half-done on her lap, Kassia ran barefoot to where wild thyme grew, and pine trunks cried resin.

As a little girl, she’d often found solace in the hollow of an ancient plane tree, its branches low, welcoming arms. Under the scrutiny of her tiny palms, the wrinkled surface had felt like the hands of a grandfather. In the hollow’s nooks she’d hidden all the little treasures a kindly grandparent might have given her; colourful beads; buttons; walnuts; the occasional rose candy; and the needles and threads and tulle on which she used to cross-stitch all the things she dreamed of. She’d longed to be a bird, a running wolf, a leaf that the wind could carry away—until her betrothal last summer.

With her dowry almost done and a carriage ready to carry her away, Kassia now wished she could be a tree—though its eternal roots didn’t terrify her less than a lifetime away. At least, she could rest amidst its comfortable roots one last time, even if she had grown too tall to fit comfortably in her old sanctuary.

This time, though, her grandfather-tree had a visitor that wasn’t her. A girl stood at the centre of the hollow, a tiny thing with branch fragments between her toes and red hair, like apples in midwinter.

“You’re leaving,” the girl accused Kassia. “You’re turning your back on your people—”

Kassia would yell if only someone had taught her how. Was it her fault that her brother promised her to his work partner, hoping to have a home to wait for him when he did business abroad? With nothing to say, she turned her back as if to confirm the verdict. The sunrays were a novel sensation against the back of her neck where the shirt had come loose—Mother always told her to shield from the sun.

They say it’s bad luck to look behind you when you’re leaving. Or that you’ll be bound, and never manage to go. Kassia looked anyway. But no girl stood there anymore.

A red canary tilted its head. If she didn’t know it was impossible, she’d say it looked like the very bird that had escaped from the cage in which her brother brought it some moons past, as a gift for her betrothal.

***

“No one should see your veil,” Kassia’s cousin Rhyna said with the solemn wisdom of five wrinkled women. Biting her lip in concentration, she applied a touch of rose petal powder on Kassia’s lips. “Not until the wedding.”

“Easy enough,” Kassia mouthed. She felt the powder painting her chin instead of her lips.

Rhyna shook her head. “Sit still for once.”

Kassia sighed and submitted to her powdered, perfumed fate. Her caged canary, Riri, the motley one who hadn’t managed to escape, whistled a note that chilled her bones. Like a tune that the Daughter of Death would murmur as she rowed her charges to the next world. The canary wouldn’t make it to the homeland of Kassia’s betrothed alive.

Done with the lip powder, Rhyna started mixing silver and gold paints. Kassia folded her veil and prepared to tuck it away to wait for the wedding at dawn.

“Not yet.” Kassia’s friend Amersa ran in with her little sister Chloi at her heels. She looked at Rhyna accusingly. “You didn’t tell her.”

“I’m making a blushing bride out of this pale, sad face. You enlighten her since you got time.”

Amersa pulled the veil from Kassia’s hands. “You must cut off a little square, four fingers long. Pin your best needle on it, threaded with white, and leave it all at your window at night.”

“Why?” These powders and perfumes, these little rituals, held none of the charm they used to have when someone else had sat on the bride’s seat. They felt futile. Kassia was leaving. She wouldn’t get to teach her daughter any of it.

“You don’t know?”

Perhaps she would have, if she hadn’t been daydreaming of flying away when friends and cousins got ready for their own weddings.

“It’s the ferret bride!” little Chloi said, trembling with macabre delight. “She’s jealous when a girl gets married.” She lowered her voice. “She was a bride once, the most beautiful in the village. She had waited at home like they told her, only glimpsing her betrothed through the curtains’ fringes. But the night before the wedding she sneaked out, she undid her braids, and danced with the foxes, and gathered thyme and chamomile in the moon road. So… So…”

First, Kassia fell on her back, braids tugging painfully at the roots of her hair. Then she saw the little girl who’d sneaked up on her. “So, a wolf ate her heart!”

“Well,” Kassia said, gently moving the child away from her tight, empty belly, “there are no wolves here.”

“I’m not done!” Chloi said, jumping to her feet. “She died, and they sent her away in the Daughter’s boat into the next world, still veiled and dressed in white. Only she didn’t die completely. The Daughter pitied her and turned her into an all-white ferret. Now she roams the country looking for a house with a bride. You must leave a piece of your veil by the window at night, with tools for her to weave her own wedding-things. Else she’ll come into your room and cut your braids.”

Kassia thought there were worse prospects. Her head felt so heavy.

Amersa shoved a piece of honey cake into Kasia’s hand. “Hold this when you sleep. In case she comes hungry.”

***

Kassia woke up to tapping at her windowpane. She’d hardly slept at all. She was allowed no lying down and no pillow lest she ruin her hair. It was an armchair and hopeless dozing for her until her betrothed came at dawn to take her away.

She kicked the bedcovers. Her sticky hands surprised her—it took her a moment to remember the cake, now crumbles on the sheepskin blanket.

A white shadow loomed at the window. A ferret, nibbling at the tulle piece Kassia had left for her. The beady, black eyes were fixed, it seemed, on Kassia’s very soul.

Chloi had told her to tie a ribbon around the veil piece, to make it look like a gift. Amersa had given her a boon to offer. Rhyna had said not to rise at all when the tapping came. If she hadn’t violently dreamed of being elsewhere, she might have known long ago. Too late to heed her best friend’s advice. Kassia opened the window and offered the remains of the cake: winter walnuts, honey, cinnamon, and a cognac like fire.

The ferret sniffed at it and took a bite, then another. Soon, most of the cake was gone and she was licking the honey off Kassia’s hand. When there was no crumb left, she jumped down to the stone yard.

Kassia rinsed her hands using the jug of water on her bedside table. Still in her nightgown, she climbed out where the ferret stood. Her tail tickled Kassia’s heel as she turned her back to the house. Kassia followed her, warming up quickly against the spring night. She crawled under the fence and into the woods, back where the little girl and the red canary had stood.

“I thought you’d never come down.”

Kassia’s heart missed a beat. There was no ferret amidst the dark bushes now. Only a woman. She looked no older than thirty-five, but her hair was snowy white, shining grotesquely against the night. She giggled at Kassia’s puzzlement. “Mama would commission dyes, dark as her sins, to make me seem normal. You can unbraid this, if you want,” she added, pointing at Kassia’s hairdo. It looks painful.”

“I—”

“Yes, yes, you’re supposed to be getting married tomorrow and your friends told you to be wary of me. But I see you aren’t scared, so we can talk. Come. I’ll take you to a real party. Unlike your wedding, this is one you’re actually allowed to attend.”

Kasia hesitated only for a moment. “Let me take my shoes.”

The ferret bride laughed. “What for?” Her own toes were caked with dirt, her soles like hardened leather. She was dressed in rags, layers of transparent white that made her look like she’d been caught in a spiderweb. “Is—is that your wedding dress?” Kasia asked.

A smile, all teeth. “I have to make do with what gifts you girls leave out for me.”

“Well…” There was no polite way to ask this, but Kassia had started, so she might as well spit it. “Have you worn it, since—”

“I only wear it when I work, helping little sisters like you.”

“Helping…?”

The woman took Kassia’s hand in hers. “Run with me,” she said, with a smile like a golden summer morning. They stormed deeper into the woods, further than Kassia had ever been allowed to venture, to a clearing where the pines were bent, as if gossiping amongst themselves. A carpet of chamomile blooms lay under Kassia’s feet. Little lights floated, star-like all around her. Kassia stretched a hand to touch one.

“I wouldn’t do that. The fairies won’t like you messing with their lights.”

The ferret bride led her to an aging oak. “Up you go,” she said. Walking around it, Kassia saw a little loft concealed in the branches. “It doesn’t look like much, but it’s good enough for the little birds that visit me.”

Kassia propped herself up. The tree’s dents were natural footholds. She could climb. But what next? Was she going to hide in a treehouse forever? Or go back and face her mother with her tousled hair, smudged makeup, and scraped feet? Her palms began to sweat. She gripped the next branch less tightly than she should, for fear of scratching her hands or breaking her nails, adding to her list of offenses. The branch escaped her hold. In her panic, she lost her footing. She’d been so high up already. She could break her neck, or—

The dreadful collision she expected never came. Instead of falling, she floated. When she brought herself to open her eyes, the sharpness of her vision took her by surprise. The forest had come into focus, almost painfully clear and bright. Where she’d always had arms, wrists, fingers, she now had wings, laced with white and brown feathers. Her shock was so much that she did fall right then, turning human again before she hit the ground. This time, at least, she was falling from a lower spot, and landed safely into a soft puddle of mud that took most of the impact. No chance of salvaging her hairdo now.

The moment she sat up, Kassia heard footsteps breaking the dry chamomile. She looked left and right for her companion only to find her at her feet, ferret formed.

Kassia climbed back up to the loft. This time, she didn’t hold back and didn’t trip. She lay flat on her stomach. The ferret’s tail tickled her face. She couldn’t see a thing, but children in her village were versed in waiting and observing; two pairs of booted feet; the desperate flapping of wings.

The gunshots woke up half the sleeping animals in the wood. A bird fell from a nearby tree. Kassia covered her ears with her hands. She stayed like this long after the footsteps faded.

In what seemed like a lifetime later, the ferret became a woman again, touching Kassia’s shoulder lightly—an almost-consolation. Silently, she climbed down, where an owl carcass lay. She nodded for Kassia to follow. Kassia did not turn into a bird again, but she found she almost knew how—a muscle memory only half-forgotten.

The ferret bride clenched her fists. “He was an owl, like you. But like you, he was not only a bird. He was one of us. He’d already lost his human life to some ailment; measles, ghost-plague, war, hard to tell. He’d only had the owl life left.” She clenched her fists. “This happens more and more often. I can’t blame you if you’d rather run abroad and live in safety and forget you ever had wings. This is what we are. We have two lives inside us, human and animal, and we don’t settle. They hunt us for it.”

Two lives. Kassia thought of all the times she’d dreamed of marriage as a little girl, before she knew what it meant, just because she thought it would be nice to come and go with a handsome boy on a horse. Then she considered all the times she’d cross-stitched pictures of birds, how often she’d longed to go away on wings of her own. “I want to—I want to fly. But I can’t. Mother will kill me if I run off.”

“Your mother must have known what you are. She’s the same but chose not to be an owl. Everyone’s doomed to leave their parents. And they were marrying you off anyway. Do you want to get married? Do you want to leave this land now that it has a chance to breathe? They’re killing us, true, but we are fighting back. And you have the skies. You can travel in your own terms and choose when to come back.”

Kassia’s eyes wandered from the ferret bride before her, to the visible leaves of grandfather-tree, to the silhouette of her village’s hills.

There was so much she longed to ask her mother. Could she, too, turn into an owl at will? Had she ever felt the breathless, merciless joy of taking flight? And if she had, how could she have sighed and bent her head as Kassia’s brother arranged her marriage? Given the ways Mother had shielded her, from the sun, from the wind, from everything, Kassia already had a bit of an idea. It wasn’t hard to imagine that Mother would probably choose to tuck her away safely, like old silver behind a showcase, rather than let her fly, and fall. Perhaps they would have that conversation one day, when Kassia would no longer feel her blood boiling at the mere thought of Mother’s sigh.

She spat a feather that had stuck in her tongue. She flapped her hands once, twice. At the third flapping, they were wings. The forest was silver, moon-bathed. She could see it so clearly. If she had a human face, its beauty, a hundred times brighter through her owl’s eyes, would make her weep.

She’d be back one day. Hopefully, Mother would forgive her by then. When it was time for Rhyna, Amersa, and little Chloi to leave their white tulles at the window to appease the ferret bride, Kassia would come for them, see if they needed to escape. If they did, she’d help them to do it even if they didn’t have wings or claws such as her own.

But she was going to fly first.

Author's note

This story is partly inspired by Greek folktales, including a lesser-known version of the folk song "The Song of the Dead Brother." I am in the process of writing a YA novel with this concept and main character as a starting point.

Madalena Daleziou

Madalena Daleziou is a Puschart and Rhysling-nominated writer from Greece, currently living in the UK. She holds an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow. Her work has previously appeared in The Deadlands, Inner Worlds, and other venues.