“Psst! Your birds are showing!”

Ren looked around, searching for the source of the whisper and eventually meeting the gaze of an old woman bright eyes and blue-tinted gray hair. She was a jay, then. They were always pointing out the obvious.

“I know,” he said, trying not to be sullen and failing utterly.

“Don’t you think you should do something about it? The pure humans will drive you out of town if they see.”

“I know,” Ren said again, putting a bit of a growl in his throat. Well, he tried for a growl; it came out more like a croak, and he rolled his eyes in displeasure.

“Yes, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll drive you out, the humans will. Drive you out then go looking for more, and then we’ll all be at risk.”

“I know,” Ren repeated a third time, letting his anger out. “Look, I’m trying. I know they’re visible, but I can’t… the spell doesn’t work.”

But the old woman was still chattering. Jays tended to do that. “All of us at risk, and then we’ll have to find a new planet, and this one’s so nice, with the plump worms and the tall trees and the skies with room to really fly, and then – what do you mean the spell doesn’t work?”

“I’ve grounded and centered and counted to ten – to fifty, even. I’ve done the incantation. I’ve drunk the calming tea, and no matter what I do, I cannot banish the thoughts of Unkindness for longer than a couple of minutes.”

“Unkindness? Unkindness?” The women tilted her head one way then another, peering at him from one bright eye at a time. “But, you’re not a Raven. You’re a Crow.”

All of Ren’s senses suddenly focused on the old woman. “I’m a what?”

“You’re a Crow. Banishing Unkindness doesn’t work for Crows. You have to banish – ”

“Murderous Thoughts,” he said with her. “I have to banish Murderous Thoughts. I… my mother was a Raven,” he spoke the last five words very quietly.

“I’m sure she was, dear. Happens all the time. She probably pushed you out of the nest much sooner than the rest of your clutchmates, didn’t she? She’d have to, if she knew.”

Ren nodded, his head bobbing in a birdlike way that he usually managed to hold in check. Humans were too perceptive. They might not be able to see his Birds most of the time, but they’d notice the body language that was just a bit… off.

The old woman – the Jay – had gone quiet and still. That was odd, Ren thought. Jays only in did that when they sensed danger.

He looked at her more closely. She was old, yes, but not so old that there wasn’t some plumpness left. And she wasn’t too big… and he could – oh, God – he could hear her rapid heartbeat threatening to burst through her body.

He was a Crow, she’d told him.

He couldn’t reintegrate his Birds with the Unkindness spell – that only worked on Ravens. Crows required… blood. Blood and death. They had to give in to their Murderous Thoughts in order to banish them.

Silently, Ren thanked the Jay, the old woman, before he lashed out.

Hours later, all that was left in the street were a few blue feathers, and a handbag full of birdseed.

“Well, hallelujah!” Aunt Beulah declared. “It’s just like that song. It really is raining men.”

I glanced out the window to see yet another pair of black-trouser-clad legs slowly descending. “That’s not normal,” I told her. “Less messy than the time it was cats and dogs, though.”

But my aunt, who – in truth – was barely older than me, close enough in age to be my sister, really, was already pinching color into her cheeks and smoothing her cotton calico dress as she bolted for the door.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yes, come on. This kind of Rain comes only once, maybe twice, a lifetime. You go and catch one before his feet touch the soil, and he becomes the partner you always wanted.”

“What if you miss?” I asked. Some of the forms coming down weren’t exactly compact. I’d noticed more than a couple beer guts beneath the nondescript suits.

“Most of ’em just disintegrate. Makes the garden soil really rich, though. How do you think my mamma grew such luscious tomatoes in this godforsaken place?”

“Water and sunlight, I suppose,” was my drawled response. “Like everyone else.”

But Aunt Beulah just gave me her ‘you know nothin’ honey-child’ look. Then she pulled a barely-there shade of lipstick from her handbag and used the hall mirror to make sure she got it on right. “You coming?” Her hand was already hovering over the lit-up door-plate. A touch of her palm would activate it.

I thought about how Billy Ray had kissed me under the bleachers the other day when we were supposed to be catching critters for the biology lab. It’d been like kissing cold liver. Gross!

Then I thought about my friend Rhonda Sue and how she had the softest, flow-iest, golden hair and got this sweet blush on her face whenever our eyes met during literature class, especially if we were reading poetry. Kissing her wouldn’t be like liver, cold, hot, or drowned in ketchup, I thought.

“I think I’ll have to find my ideal partner the old-fashioned way, like back on Earth. By meeting them.”

“Suit yourself, Lisanne.” And she disappeared out the door.

Me? I went to the computer to call up the Almanac. Rhonda Sue and I might end up better as just friends who practice kissing sometimes. And there had to be a day when the sky rained women, right?

The hardest part, as the water fills your mouth, nose, lungs, is not to struggle. We’re drilled on this when we start the program. “If you struggle,” they tell you, “you could choke and die.”

Instead, we were told, we must stay calm, relaxed.

I start my mantra, chanting in my head before my feet leave the deck. “The ocean is the cradle of life. The ocean is the cradle of life.”  I imagine the sea as a great mother, her blue-green arms keeping me safe from harm.

I plunge backwards into the water. They always push you overboard in the split second when you forget to anticipate the shove. The theory is that if you can’t see the waves coming to greet you, you’re less likely to panic.

But I never panic.

I let myself fall into the ocean’s embrace, and I’m struck by the beauty of the bubbles rising up around me toward the expanding rings of my entry-point. It’s my air forming those bubbles. The former content of my lungs.

The first time I did this, I was terrified. Humans only breathe liquid when they’re in the womb, after all, but once I got past the initial disconnect, the fight against my own instincts, breathing water was as natural as… well, you know.

I feel the gill-slits behind my ears opening and closing – it tickles a little. They pass their undulating movement down my neck, to the two other pairs there. With the bottom one responding to the pressure of the water, I can feel a sort of current in the back of my throat.

The next set of gills – four pair – are on my sides, between my ribs. Those are larger, and just the first one kicking in helps me shake the rapture that is caused by weightlessness, low oxygen, and the salty indigo that surrounds me.

It’s experimental, the body-mod I’m using now, but I’ve been fascinated by mermaids for as long as I can remember, and when I saw the ad in the back of a science magazine, I had to volunteer. Initially, I thought the gills were going to be some kind of external apparatus, but no. They triggered a t-cell here, massaged a little-known gene there, and within a few months I was essentially amphibious.

I move in the water, my nude form completely at home. My gills are functioning exactly as they should. I consider the blue world surrounding me, and feel a pull, a longing to go deeper, to swim further, to stay here in the ocean that has always been in my blood.

The watch strapped to my wrist vibrates. My fifteen minutes are up. I’m supposed to return t the surface, to the boat. Reluctantly, I begin my upward swim, hoping beyond hope that the next trip will be a longer one.