her through, white dress, white flesh, red heart. The pain was immense, monstrous, impossible. But she did not scream. She clenched her teeth and closed her arms about the beast’s head, embracing it, holding herself up by it as her life and strength flowed away. The world dimmed to grey and she dropped to her knees. The air was full of the smell of blood. Then flames leapt and churned in the air as the beast began to pour itself into her. It burned to take the beast in, for she was only flesh. Then she felt the hot red gush of blood within and without, for she could not contain him. Her back split and blood fountained out, but that scarlet gush was not wet and it was not blood. She was on the ground on her hands and knees, gasping and rocking with the pain.
The old beggar woman knelt before her in the sand, seamed and withered face shining. There was wonder and terror in her eyes. She reached out to touch the girl’s cheek with papery reverent hands.
The saxophone man and the hunchback stood either side of her. They lifted her to her feet, grunting with the effort. Miraculously the blood had ceased to pour from her chest and the skin was smooth and unbroken, though the torn bodice of the dress was drenched and crimson. But there was a dragging heaviness at her back as they released her and bowed. She staggered under an unfamiliar weight as a great softness moved and unfolded behind her. She craned her neck to look over her shoulder and saw what knowledge of the beast had done to her. Wings emerged from the shreds of cloth. Not white but red as the dawn sun, red as fire, red as a beating heart.
‘I am changed,’ she said.
‘How could you not be?’ asked the beggar woman. ‘There have been others, it is said, who claimed one of the horned beasts, but never did I see it. Never did I speak to anyone who saw such a one. Rare and rare they are. You are.’
‘Where did the others go?’ asked the girl who was no longer a girl.
‘Up,’ said the gypsy. ‘Out into the world to fly fearless in the sunlight. Alone and complete.’
The girl who was no longer a girl smiled at the beggar woman and at the other poor, dim, ragged people gazing at her, and they lifted their hands before their eyes and reeled back. Knowing she would blind them if she stayed, she spread her wings and the metro wind rose to carry her up and up and out into the dark world where she would haunt the dreams of the fearful, stir secret wings in the hearts of poets, sing lullabies to the dying and reveal herself to those who dared to see her.
THE DOVE GAME
It was hot in Paris.
The minute Daniel stepped from the air-conditioned cool of Charles de Gaulle airport, the sun dropped a hammer on his forehead. The unexpectedness of it stopped him dead, and a woman in a white dress that looked like a silk petticoat wove around him, her thin arms and long neck a glowing pink. He had never imagined people getting sunburned in Paris. The heat seemed wrong here, misplaced, as if he had somehow brought the aridity of the outback with him.
He was to catch a Roissybus to Avenue de l’Opéra in the city, and then take a taxi to his hotel. A queue extended from the closed doors of the bus, through which the driver was visible reading his paper. He took his place behind the elderly couple at the end. It was evident that they were arguing. Daniel thought of the comfortable bickering of his own parents, which had always seemed to him like two old warped boards rubbing together whenever the wind blew from a certain direction.
The woman stabbed a finger towards a mound of baggage and Daniel wondered what could possibly fill so many cases and bags. The rest of the people in the queue also seemed heavily laden. He carried only a half-empty canvas bag. Perhaps it was because he did not need his luggage to anchor him when he was only staying for a few days.
He found himself remembering the look on the face of the travel agent when he said he needed to be in Paris for one day. Her eyes had flickered with faint confusion over his dusty jeans and faded flannel