Fiction
1.
I made my first husband from feathers, wanting a soft and yielding love. I gathered some as they fell from the sky, when birds flitted from trees. I grew impatient; wild ones did not shed their gifts quickly enough, so I went to the slaughterhouse, where men slit the throats of birds to be eaten and peeled back their soft coats. I wore an apron and gloves to shield myself from the blood, and filled a large sack with slick, crimson feathers, imagining their downy touch when clean and dry, their wild colors, their iridescent sheen.
I carried the pieces of my lover home, and dumped them in the wash basin, blending them with what I’d gathered myself. Then I let the water carry away the dirt and blood, swirling in the drain. I placed the feathers to dry in the sun on that windless day, and they came to bright softness once more. I sewed a skin of fine mesh in the shape of a man, then I filled him up and closed the hole with stitches, forward and backward and forward, capturing his soul forever.
I placed him in bed beside me, where he came alive and took his first breath, sighing in the dark. I held him close, wondering if his making would be our undoing. I wondered how long before the pieces of him remembered their origin, attached to small warm bodies in flight, wind propelling them aloft. I wondered how long it would be before he remembered the sun, before he remembered migration, soaring over land embedded in memory, trajectories driven by hunger and survival. I rose and closed the windows, shutting out the breeze. After that, I hid him away in our home. When I left to gather food, I tied his wrists to a chair with satin ribbons and kept the blinds drawn. I shut out the sky and the trees. Out of respect for my husband, I never brought home birds to be eaten; I ate only nuts and seeds. He never asked to be fed. He never whistled or chirped, never pecked, strutted, or sang. I read him stories to pass the time, though never ones that might trigger a memory. Soon, I stopped reading aloud at all, preferring to hear the words in my skull.
One day, we sat in our parlor, and I read to myself soundlessly, while he remained in his usual solitude. Sunlight filtered through drawn blinds and cast narrow beams and shadows on the carpet—light, dark, and light. The shape of a large bird with outspread wings darted through the beams. My husband flinched, his soul shuddering softly.
He said, “I remember.”
I wasted no time. I slipped a shear in my pocket and slung him over my shoulder, then I carried his weeping form outside. I poked a hole through his fine mesh skin, slitting his belly, freeing his soul to scatter on the wind.
2.
I made a second husband of stone, wanting a love that lasted. At the quarry, I gathered piles of gravel, easier than hauling a heft of granite. Still, the buckets were heavy—I fought the urge to collapse as I trudged back and forth to my home. Bullets of sweat stung my eyes and my shoulders burned, arms slipping their sockets. Too weak to carry as much as I desired, I toiled until nightfall, limping over hard earth beneath thin shoes. I hadn’t anticipated the weight, the effort, the strain. I poured the gravel on my bed, forming a long torso, then arms, legs, and head. The mattress sagged under my new husband’s weight. Panting, I closed myself in the washroom to bathe the sweat and dust from my skin, then I dried myself, and slipped on a cool satin nightgown fit for a new bride.
I emerged from the washroom and presented myself as his wife, climbing in bed beside him. Gravity pulled me into the pit formed by his body. Rolling sideways, my face smacked against his, teeth clashing on his jagged mouth. Our first kiss was sharp, gritty, tasting of salt and dirt. I tore my lip, and a bead of blood seeped, bright as a jewel. My husband came alive and spoke, his voice coming out in a rumble. He began to tell stories of his origin, of the forces that made mountains, the hot lava that once roiled on the surface of the earth in thick red rivers until it cooled. He told me of the minerals that returned to the rock bed year after year from the blood and bones of ancestors at war. Because of this, he said, through the eons, stone craves death to replenish itself. To rebuild his strength, he would need sacrifice, the way his father did, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father. In ages past, virgins would be flung from cliffs, giving their lives willingly. When stone hadn’t been fed in too long, mountains shook, and behemoth plates of rock beneath the soil lurched in violence, sending entire cities tumbling, swallowed by gaping mouths that formed in the earth.
“I’m not a virgin,” I said.
It doesn’t matter, he said. Death is death.
I shrugged. I did not take a husband to hasten my own end. “What are you afraid of?” I asked.
Water, he said. I am afraid of water.
Water, over years, over centuries, had the power to wear stone. Lashing waves smoothed sharp edges, reduced columns to mere pebbles. Swollen rivers and streams fresh from thunderstorms could carry stone for miles, grinding it to a fine silt—fleeting, insubstantial, washing away with the ocean.
I stood, and made my way to the washroom, where I twisted the cold metal knob on the bath spigot, running the water at full force. The tub filled in a matter of minutes, then the water cascaded over white porcelain walls, forming a river. I rushed away from that home, my feet sloshing under the sopping length of my nightgown. My husband’s voice grumbled behind me, growing distant, like weak thunder.
3.
Craving lightness, I made my next husband of air. I made a man-shaped balloon of discarded parachutes, cutting them into strips and stitching them back together, but leaving an air hole at the top of his head with a drawstring closure. I held the balloon open, running down a grassy hill on a summer day, catching the breeze inside him. I stumbled at the bottom, flattening my balloon-husband with my flailing body. I repeated the attempt, starting at the top again, running until his form puffed out. I clenched my fist around the opening to seal the air, then tugged the strings shut, capturing my husband’s essence. I carried him home, dodging children and dogs who thought he was a toy, someone to punch or wrestle between teeth. At home safely, I rested him against the wall, and nestled against his form, wanting only to be held, to be cushioned, to have a buffer against the world. He deflated immediately, wind whining from his seams.
4.
I made my next husband of silk, first collecting hundreds of worms. Before they would spin, they needed feeding, so I stripped a tree of its leaves. I placed the leaves in the worms’ box and they gorged for weeks, until only shreds remained. The creatures grew and grew, molting skin after skin. Plump and satisfied, they yawned and strung silk from their bodies, writhing and flailing their heads. They worked for two sunsets, enclosing themselves in soft white tombs. Once they slept, I scooped the pods into boiling water to kill them, preventing transformation. I covered my ears, counting the minutes, then I lifted out the pods, and brushed the silk off the dead in smooth single strands. I popped the worms’ cooked flesh into my mouth like meat, gagging at the taste but thanking them for their sacrifice.
I sang to the silk: soon, the strands would make a fine husband, a smooth shining one. I imagined the places we’d go together, and all the other jealous wives. I imagined my pride, how I’d beam, and how I’d make love to his soft body. I spun, wove, sewed, and soon had the shape of a man, though he was flat and needed to be stuffed, so I filled him with more silk—raw, unwoven, cast-off cocoons. Once complete, my new husband shimmered in the light.
I carried him everywhere, and women cooed, demanding to know where I’d found him. I didn’t reveal my secret. I only nodded, pretending I’d found him this way, perfectly made. They smiled and caressed and I became jealous of their touching. So I whisked him away, preferring to be alone. They followed, trailing us through the woods to get close. I ran him home where it was safe, and we would stay indefinitely.
Over time, he began to change. Day by day, something swelled inside and he grew dense, seams about to burst. I could no longer carry him. I laid him in bed, afraid of what was to come. I joined him there, weeping softly. He began writhing again. I begged him to be still, yet he wouldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking of where I’d gone wrong. I’d eaten all the worms, preventing transformation, or so I thought. Had I made a mistake?
Worn by emotion, I fell into a dreamless sleep, and was startled hours later by a sound. My husband’s skin tore open. Enormous, tattered wings pushed through the break, weakened from struggling. His shimmering skin slipped backward, revealing a moth the size of a man.
“This can’t be,” I said. “I had eaten all of you, leaving only silk behind.”
Not all, the moth said without speaking. He had no mouth and couldn’t feed, and would be dead in days.
He was beautiful and terrifying all at once, cream-colored with a soft thorax and legs, pleasurable to touch, like fur. His bulbous black eyes shone. I saw myself reflected inside them, falling in love with my own face the way Narcissus did. I lifted up my nightgown and pulled him on top of me, and his fragile wings tore.
He was destined for death, regardless.
I stared at myself in his eyes, seeing only love. He stung my belly. In the searing knives of pain, I felt only ecstasy. I felt truly alive.
G.G. Silverman lives just north of Seattle. She is disabled and the daughter of immigrants. Her recently completed short fiction collection was a finalist for the 2023 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards and the 2023 St. Lawrence Book Award, short-listed for the 2023 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize, and long-listed for the 2023 Steel Toe Books Prose Award. When not writing, she teaches others how to do it. Find her online at www.ggsilverman.com.