Cold came over me, but I was warm inside with guilt. The feeling nuzzled against me. It pressed against my heart like a soft animal and slept in my lap.

10

A LIGHT PRICKLE ON MY wrist woke me. I startled out of sleep, shaking my wrist hard, sure that I had been seen, I had been caught, a soldier was slipping a manacle onto my wrist. But the prickle disappeared, air beat against my face, and what I saw was not uniformed men but the Elysium bird launching itself from my wrist. It hovered for a moment in front of me before sweeping away.

It landed a few feet from me. It scratched the plastered roof, oddly chickenlike for such a glamorous bird, wings tucked close to its body. Now that I was so close, I could see streaks of green on its belly, speckles of pink on its breast, the black thorn of its beak, the tips of white on its red wings. It sang.

“Shh,” I said, which was foolish—what bird obeyed a person?—but it stopped midsong. I reached into my pocket for the seeds—Aden’s seeds. Mine, I remembered the bird singing. It felt not like it belonged to me, but that it was telling me that I belonged to it.

I scattered the seeds across the roof.

It pecked its way toward me, head tipping left and right, tail dipping, luxuriant feathers drifting behind it like the train of an iridescent dress. It ate the seeds, husks splitting beneath its beak and dropping to the roof. The moon was high and bright. I wanted desperately for this bird to be mine no matter what it could do for me, no matter if the stories were real, if only so that I could see it in full light and know its patterns and colors, to know it so intimately that I would see its details even when I closed my eyes.

It flitted closer, then landed on my knee.

You can’t catch an Elysium bird, I had told Aden. Had anyone ever heard of an Elysium behaving like this?

Maybe it was because it was trained and had been raised from its shell.

Maybe hunger had overwhelmed it.

Whatever reason it had decided not to fear me, I couldn’t question the peace that spread from where it perched upon my knee, drifting down my leg and up into my stomach, stealing over my chest. I dipped my fist into the coat pocket again and offered an open handful of seed. It jumped to the heel of my hand, feathers curling over my wrist, caressing my upper arm. It ate. The beak gently jabbed the palm of my hand, a tender little needle.

What are you? I wondered as I studied it. What are you, really?

What am I, that you chose to come to me?