If I Promise You Wings

by A.K. Small

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Romance

Synopsis

Hold Still meets You've Reached Sam in this lyrical YA novel about one young woman's journey through the Paris fashion scene as she chases promises, overcomes grief, and falls in love.

Seventeen-year-old Alix Leclaire dreams of becoming a renowned feather artist, creating statement pieces that define glamour and high fashion. As an intern at Paris’s premier feather boutique, trained by the alluring Raven, she works with the staff to construct wings for the dancers at the Moulin Rouge.
 
But with every feather she sews, the grief Alix has been evading looms. Her best friend, Jeanne, died months ago and ever since, Alix has felt compelled to live as Jeanne did, taking risks she never would have before. Alix begins stealing feathers for her own use—a serious offense at the boutique—and loses herself in a passionate affair with Raven, who makes her his muse. Even when Blaise, an old schoolmate, offers solace and healing, she pushes him away.
 
Echoing the chaos and division in her heart, the wings that Alix creates take on a frightening and wild beauty. Living like Jeanne has given her everything she ever wanted—but at the risk of losing it all.

Release date: January 16, 2024

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

Print pages: 336

Sample

Mille et Une Plume sits on rue D’Orchampt, a back street of Montmartre. The boutique has a bay window, and behind the glass hang two pairs of wings. With the sun shining bright, it’s a sight to behold, almost as if angels were speaking to each other. One set shimmers metallic while the other is black with streaks of electric blues.

Today, I not only stare at the wings, but summon whatever courage I have and knock on the door. Three short raps. As I fret on the sidewalk, I hear Jeanne say, Louder, Alix. Her absence crushes me. I knock again and kick the cobblestones with the tips of my Converse. Jeanne hovers and to stop the sharp grief from rising in my chest, I repeat a line from our favorite poem, Hope is the thing with feathers. The door swings open. A tall, brown-skinned woman with an explosion of curls and the darkest eyes I have ever seen appears wearing cigarette pants and studded pumps, her shoulders wrapped in a ruby-red cape. The crimson material, silk or satin, catches the summer light, and like the wings in her bay window, she sparkles, too.

“Que voulez-vous?” she says.

My face warms, and my voice turns to powder because this woman is Mademoiselle Salomé, the most famous plumassière in Paris. Who else but a premier feather artist would shine this way? I stare at the ground, and in my jeans and tattered T-shirt, sweaty from walking here at the height of day, I feel as small as a gravel pea standing before her.

“I’m closed,” Mademoiselle Salomé informs me.

I nod, something I’m exceptionally good at, and discern annoyance, perhaps even unease, in the way she keeps her cape shut tight, but then I hear Jeanne say, If you don’t rise to the occasion, Alix, I’ll order the prince of darkness to haunt you forever, and missing my best friend more than watching our bloodred sunsets over the Seine, I blurt, “I’ve come to be your apprentice.”

Mademoiselle Salomé laughs.

I point to the black wings with streaks of blues and try to tell her I once counted 980 feathers on each wing, and that I have stood several times outside her boutique too shy to knock, that I am not joking about being her apprentice, but my courage slips away. After Mademoiselle Salomé catches her breath, she looks at me again, this time slowly. She appraises my slender build, my short haircut with choppy bangs, the freckles on my nose, and down to the smear of dirt on my Converse.

She says, “What do you know about Mille et Une Plume?”

Certain she will shut the door in my face, I say, “Rumor has it a raven works here. And you opened the boutique twenty-one years ago on a hot day like this one.”

The feather artist studies me again. “How would you know? You weren’t born then.”

I nearly tell her my mother attended her grand opening, then gave me the newspaper clipping with pictures of it when I turned ten—the last memory I have of my mother giving me anything—but that would mean a conversation about something I’m not up for having.

So instead, pointing to the wings again, I say, “They must be hard to make.”

“Teens.” Mademoiselle Salomé sighs, but then, peering at the inside of my forearm, she catches sight of my starling feather tattoo and says, “What’s this?”

“Oh,” I say, certain I’m blushing. “Just a reminder of—” I pause. “Things.”

“Entres,” the feather artist says, urging me through a parlor, past a bright room full of extravagant costumes and brilliant plumes, to an area with sewing machines and mannequin busts. “You do realize it’s Sunday?”

“Yes,” I reply, though I haven’t cared much about the dates since the accident.

I wouldn’t even know it was July if it wasn’t for the heat and all the litter on the streets: the red, white, and blue tinsel; piles of empty bottles; and party hats left over from last night’s Bastille Day celebrations.

“What’s your name? And how old are you?”

“Alix Leclaire.”

I tell her I’m seventeen, that my birthday just passed, and that I received my baccalauréat with honors. Mademoiselle Salomé leads us through a door to a study that opens onto a courtyard where the most majestic oak bends, its thick and gnarled trunk hundreds of years old, its leaves dark green and full of oxygen.

Looking at the oak, I almost feel like I can breathe better and say, “I also collect and draw feathers. I—”

But my chest constricts. I see a flurry of sketches surrounding my bed, Jeanne admiring them while croaking a song by Charlotte Gainsbourg, then Jeanne sitting shotgun in her boyfriend du jour’s beat-up Renault hours before she died, platform boots propped up on the dashboard, wisteria-colored hair falling on her shoulders, and I can’t explain the most important part, that I swore to Jeanne I’d become Mademoiselle Salomé’s apprentice the way Jeanne swore to me she would become a rock star.

“Sit,” the feather artist says, pointing me to a leather chaise. “You look pale.”

I focus on the room, the high ceilings, giant windows, and posters of the Moulin Rouge. Everywhere, ivory bins overflow with feathers in every color. I’ve never seen so many. On one wall, there is a sleek floor-to-ceiling cabinet with an abundance of drawers. Everything is orderly, clean, yet cozy. I recite more of the poem in my head, And sweetest in the gale is heard; and sore must be the storm.

“Look, a lot of people collect feathers,” Mademoiselle Salomé says. “But why work with them all day?”

It’s not only feathers but birds I’m drawn to, I don’t say. How they take flight and how I wish I were one so I could lift off into the sky. Sometimes at night, I dream of little nubs piercing through my skin, of the beginning of wings sprouting from my body. I even feel the pain. But, Jesus, all that sounds wild I know, so I say, “I don’t see myself working anywhere else. I’ve always been around artists, creatives.”

“You mean your family?”

“I guess.”

I study the gnarled oak. I think of forests where tree roots entangle with other neighboring roots for strength and wonder how this majestic tree has weathered these years alone.

Mademoiselle Salomé walks to one of the ivory bins and lovingly rustles the plumes. “Tell me more about that feather on your arm.”

Again, I feel Jeanne’s presence, how everything we dreamed of was entwined. I say, “I chose the starling for intuitiveness. A quality I hope to carry forever.”

Mademoiselle Salomé scrutinizes me with her dark eyes. “Go ahead. Mingle. Let’s see if my feathers introduce themselves to you. They can be haughty sometimes.”

I get up, pausing at a bin filled with burnt orange plumes. I take the fattest one, run my fingers along the tendrils, smell it. The scent is musky, alive, and gives me such a jolt, I twirl, then throw Mademoiselle Salomé’s feather into the air and catch it as it falls gently back toward me. I hear Jeanne singing, Papa and his saxophone, his trills and offbeat melodies, the way even yesterday he clutched his instrument as if the brass and buttons were akin to a lover, a life raft, or both, and under Mademoiselle Salomé’s roof, clutching the rust-colored plume, I confirm the art of feathers is like music. Something one is called to do.

“C’est une plume de coq flammé, a burning pheasant feather,” Mademoiselle Salomé says as if I hadn’t just spun around like a child in front of her. “We find them in Hawaii in dense shrubs. At Mille et Une Plume, we believe in molted feathers. I’ve traveled the world to meet sources who acquire these natural treasures. Where I come from, birds are as precious as their plumage.”

Mademoiselle Salomé shows me the quill, says the down-like pieces known as fluff are also called the after feather, and that in this very room there are hundreds of different plumes from countless types of birds in color ranging from brun d’os (bone brown) to bleu coquille (eggshell blue) to fanfare (pearl gray). She also tells me that the apprenticeship, a role that might lead to following in her footsteps, is in fact newly open, and everyone striving for it will be incredibly busy this fall—but that, come to think of it, she does have a petite main position available. Nothing glamorous. The internship pays minimum wage and the person’s job will be to mainly run errands, clean the boutique, make coffee, take out the trash, answer phones when needed while everyone else will be in the midst of sketching, designing, selling, sewing, and embroidering costumes, décor, and garments made of plumes. But, if I could show my worth somehow, growth is always possible when there is passion.

Perhaps because I swear the plumes are glowing in their bins and maybe because I am lightheaded from my twirl, I whisper, “‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’”

Mademoiselle Salomé fixes her gaze on me, then recites the poem until I join in and we say the last lines together, “‘I’ve heard it in the chillest land, and on the strangest sea; yet, never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me.’”

Jeanne hovers. My chest feels heavy. I’d give anything to share this with her, to say, “Oh my god, Mademoiselle Salomé reeled off Emily.” But a knot forms in my throat, and I know I’ll never share this moment or any other with her again.

“You sew and embroider?” the feather artist asks.

“Oui,” I lie.

“The internship is yours, if you want it.”

I nod, then thank her politely when what I want to do is throw my arms around her and promise I will not disappoint.

Mademoiselle Salomé leads me out the front door.

“Be here tomorrow at seven a.m.”

As the lock twists, I wonder when I will meet the raven and what errands a bird might ask me to run.

I hurry down the street, past le Bateau-Lavoir on Place Émile Goudeau, up hilly streets where tourists bustle and where merchants wash the stoops of their shops and gossip before closing. I keep walking until I’m on the other side of the Sacré Cœur, way past la Maison Rose and the vineyards, where women walk with purpose and graffiti lines the buildings. I walk until I am in front of our apartment building on rue Jean Cocteau, where the sidewalks are made of concrete, not of cobblestones, and where I have lived ever since I was born. I climb to the third floor and take a deep breath. It’s like the place has been hit by tragedy twice. Once when my mother left, and now Jeanne.

I slip the key inside the door, walk in, and say, “Papa?”

I yearn for his footsteps, the way he shuffles when he’s been holding music sheets for hours and is struggling with new stanzas. I want to tell him about Mademoiselle Salomé, about the feathers. Yet as I walk down the hall, I’m afraid of how I will find him, either in a low where he doesn’t speak or, worse, on a high where his band has signed a new deal, which means that, if not now, soon he will be gone again. I peek in the living room behind his hand-painted partition, and there he is asleep among crushed beer cans, a mouthpiece, and swaths of cleaning cloths scattered on the floor, Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, chest hair poking out, shiny tenor sax lying beside him. For a second, I’m so grateful to see him I almost kneel to pat his unshaven cheek, but then remember how upset I am. I put my foot on the edge of his mattress and bounce my heel up and down as hard as I can until he opens his eyes and says, “Stop, Alix. Please.”

“You promised to do better.”

I pick up the beer cans, stomp to the kitchen, dump them in the garbage where more empty ones reside. I rummage through the cupboards until I find half a pack of peanuts, Petit Beurre biscuits, and an unopened Coca-Cola bottle—Jeanne’s favorite snacks left behind.

“You’re the parent, remember?” I yell.

I eat the cookies and take a sip of the soda.

“I’m sorry, canard.”

Papa leans against the doorframe, running his hand through his hair. The dark circles under his eyes shock me.

“For what it’s worth, I miss Jeanne, too. I think of her every goddamn day.”

“Well,” I say, “at least you still have Zanx. Aren’t you lucky?” I make myself smile, but the rough edge to my voice betrays my sarcasm.

“Don’t be like that,” Papa says.

Adeline Zanx is Papa’s manager, the lead singer in their jazz band, and his girlfriend. She is not a terrible person, but her job is to take him away from me. Zanx gets the band gigs, and she is very good at it. In the past three years, they’ve been to Barcelona (five weeks), Madrid (eight), Berlin (three months), Stockholm (started as three weeks and turned to two and a half months), and Vienna (all of spring two years ago). Her dream is to take them to New York where she is from, but Papa thinks that’s a bridge, or perhaps an ocean, too far. He says he likes knowing he can train or bus back to me. What a saint.

Papa taps the counter. “God, I see Jeanne right here. Don’t you? Ass never in a chair. Used to drive me crazy and now—” He can’t finish the sentence.

Of course, I see her, sitting on top of the Formica, legs crossed, laughing and drinking Papa’s beer, freshly dyed wisteria hair on top of her head, kohl lining her eyes, Bruised Plum staining her lips, charisma pouring from her like glitter. Jeanne was famous before being famous. She was always waiting for someone from Canal + or TF1 to barge in with a camera crew and discover her. “You have to play the part before you get the part,” she used to say. I should kiss Papa on the cheek, or pat him on the shoulder, empathize, tell him Jeanne loved him, which is true, but exhausted and feeling beyond sorry for myself because Jeanne was my best friend, I push past him and lock myself in my room.

Another day draws to an end. I open the window and look up at the stars blinking in the still blue sky, then tell myself to go ahead already, not to be scared, that if Jeanne could climb onto the windowsill and dangle her feet in the air while proclaiming our dreams, so can I. Carefully, I place my right foot, followed by my left onto the ledge—which turns out to be a lot skinnier than I’d thought—and through gritted teeth, I say, “Can you believe I knocked on Salomé’s door? That she not only invited me in but that the apprenticeship is open?” I almost laugh because Jeanne would think the whole thing was epic, but I look down and grow woozy. The world below blurs. I grip the windowpane so hard my knuckles turn white, then I lower myself ever so slowly until I’m sitting on the ledge, heart banging like a drum, feet dangling in the air, my whole body shaking.

Hear ye, hear ye, I hear Jeanne say.

“Cheers,” I manage because when Jeanne perched herself up here, she always said, “Life is about taking big fucking risks.” Back then, I was unwilling, or afraid, to sit beside her. If Jeanne was in a good mood, she would bellow a song in that throaty voice of hers, unfazed at the void beneath her, or say something dumb like, “Chin up. Put your crown on, Queen.” Papa would either bang on the door and tell her to be quiet or blow in his sax if he liked the way Jeanne riffed on the melody.

Now, I stay seated to prove a point but to whom I’m not sure. In the apartment building across the street, a mother has pinned her baby’s onesies on a clothesline. Her neighbor planted geraniums in a box but never watered them. The flowers are brown and wilted, which makes me wonder if other households are as broken as ours. A car honks, and still gripping the window frame, I swing one leg, then the other, into my room, plop onto my worn duvet, and whisper, “I know it wasn’t your fault, but why did you have to leave me, too?”

On Monday morning, Mademoiselle Salomé invites me into the sewing lab. Pointing to an older seamstress, head bent at her sewing machine, thumbs stretching fabric, the feather artist says, “Alix, meet Faiza. She has been with me forever and knows tous les recoins, every nook and cranny of this boutique.” Then Salomé motions toward a girl, slight in stature, but pretty with a strawberry-blond bob, who is hand sewing azure-blue feathers at the bottom of a Victorian skirt, and says, “This is Manon, my hand stitcher. Une merveille.”

“Bonjour.” I pretend to look over everything with ease as if I’d seen it all before, but in my ripped jeans and T-shirt with only a sketchbook full of feather drawings I haven’t shown anyone except Jeanne, I feel so out of place I nearly turn around and leave.

The fluttering of the feathers and my desire to become Salomé’s apprentice are the only reasons I stay.

The feather artist must feel my resolve because she signals me toward her study and says, “Viens. There is one more person I’d like you to meet.”

Like yesterday, sunshine spills inside the high-ceilinged room and through the window the gnarled oak’s leaves flutter in the breeze, but this morning a young man stands behind Salomé’s desk, removing feathers from a pouch. A shock of tight blond curls frames his face and his skin is golden brown. He wears a crisp white shirt, tailored khakis, fancy loafers, and seems about the same age as me and the hand stitcher, but more important than everyone else. He holds himself with confidence, chest out and shoulders back.

“Raven,” Mademoiselle Salomé says. “Alix will be helping us Monday through Friday. Would you spend a moment with her?”

The young man runs a palm across the antique pink feather he’s just placed on the table. He lifts a pair of scissors as if deciding where to begin his first incision. “What école does she come from?” His voice is as sharp as the scissors he holds.

Mademoiselle Salomé sighs. “No need to put her through the paces. Alix is only interning. Give her the list of incidentals for the Marché Saint-Pierre or have her familiarize herself with fabrics.”

Raven sets the scissors down. “Why don’t you ask Manon instead? I’m—”

“Please. Manon is swamped,” Mademoiselle Salomé says. “Besides Alix likes poetry, sews, embroiders, and draws, too, I believe.” The feather artist smiles in my direction, then, waving goodbye, adds, “Plus, there’s something about her. She spun amidst the burning pheasant feathers yesterday.”

Once the door shuts and Salomé is gone, something tells me to brace myself.

“Alors, Pixie?” Raven says, a. . .