Free Plumage by Nancy Springer

swordblades. Purple-green swags trailing fringes of—liana, grape, ivy? Celadon filigree balls far overhead—mistletoe? Sassy glimpsed flits of shimmer and movement everywhere, yellow, orange, azure—but when she looked to see what they were—efts, birds, butterflies?—she saw only misty greengolden glow, heard only the echoing flutelike calls of what might have been birds or—or fetches or some eerie spirit that lived in mirrors. And the trees, so soaring—surely any or every one of them must have been the world tree, the arbor vitae, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
    â€œEden,” Sassy whispered. “Paradise lost.”
    But where—where was the bird-being she had glimpsed in the mirror? And what was it? An angel with a flaming sword? And how in the name of heaven … where was she to find her parakeet in all this?
    Or her lost soul?
    The magnitude of what she faced made Sassy sag back and just lie there on the moss—it was no wonder she had landed on moss, for moss grew shaggy everywhere in the twilight under the trees, on the ground, on boulders and boles and roots that swelled and knotted like muscles. Sassy lay amid moss and ghostly, nodding white plants like Irish clay pipes, and glossy lavender mushrooms, and shoots putting up translucent leaves. Saplings grew whip-thin, yearning toward the distant light, probably doomed to die. It was a shadowland down here, far beneath the paradise up above. Sassy grew aware of a babbling sound—running water somewhere, and also her mind. Lost , her mind dithered, lost scared wet hungry
    â€œHush.” Sassy got up, comforted herself with the thought of graham crackers, and turned around to pick up her bags. They were of course not there. There was nothing there but moss and more mushrooms, Spam-pink this time. She had left her totes on the floor in PLUMAGE, probably five feet away but it might as well be—
    Forever , bleated her brain.
    â€œHush!” At least there was water. And the water prompted Sassy to put a mundane name to the place so she wouldn’t be so scared. “It’s just a rain forest,” she told herself sternly.
    Except it wasn’t. Sassy had read enough books on rain forests to know that it wasn’t. The towering, vine-draped trees made her think of such a primal jungle, but this eden was sweetly cool, not hot or humid or rife with bugs. Some of the immense tree trunks vanished upward into a green so deep it seemed almost black—galaxies of needles. They were conifers of some sort—redwoods? Sequoias? And what about the mistletoe? And what would English ivy be doing in a rain forest?
    A black-and-lavender butterfly the size of a robin bobbed by like a Muppet. A misty-gray moth the size of what Sassy considered a normal butterfly fluttered up. Then, from somewhere above, a foot-long pinion the color of dawn floated down, spiraling on the air like maple wings. Within arm’s reach in front of Sassy it halted, hovering four feet above the ground, then wheeled so that its shaft pointed away from her.
    Sassy gawked at the feather behaving in defiance of gravity. Then, simply because it was beautiful, she reached for it.
    The feather scooted just beyond her grasp, then stopped again.
    It was silvergold tea rose whisper tawny pink and lustered like nacre. Sassy stepped forward and lifted her hand, but her fingers hovered like the feather; caution had kicked in. What sort of uncanny thing was this? And what might it do to her if she touched it?
    The shimmering pinion wheeled toward her, then turned away again, pointing about twenty degrees to the right.
    â€œAm I, uh, am I supposed to follow?” Sassy asked—rhetorically, of course. She was one of those middle-aged women who talked to herself, even in the supermarket.
    The feather, however, seemed to hear her. It jiggled encouragement, nodded like a horse, and led off.
    â€œNow wait a minute!” It seemed to