'Pieces of Sky' by Ali McGrane

She doesn’t bring a towel. It’s November, and she has no plans to swim. But she walks barefoot, shoes strung by their laces around her neck like tethering weights, the wet sand squeezing between her toes and sucking at her heels. She lets her feet settle, half-hidden creatures waiting for the tide. Everything sinks here at the edge of things. When she takes her next step, the sand seems reluctant to let go.

The small cloth bag over her arm is blown about by an off-shore breeze so the straps twirl, and she has to untwist them to add the next feather. It’s black and bent, probably from one of the ravens that stalk the beach each evening. She doesn’t mind that it’s bent. She collects feathers no-one would want. Feathers streaked with tar, feathers whose spines have been crushed, half-stripped feathers like old combs. Wing feathers, tail feathers and cloud-coloured down. Small flags poking from the litter of weed and human debris at the high tide mark. She wants them all.

Back home she shakes the day’s pickings into the sack in the corner of her room. The contents rustle in welcome. She plunges her hands deep inside, waits for the quills to scratch secret spells for flight onto her parchment skin.