Ophelia Skyfeather flew east because east was where the wind pushed her, and she had no better plan than that. She was eighteen, unmated again, and the other harpies on the last cliff had driven her off with sharp beaks and sharper words about females who could not keep a male. Her wings ached. She did not know where her kind gathered to court. Her mother had died before teaching her, and the two males who had claimed her before had never taken her anywhere she could find twice. What she wanted was simple and had not changed since she was small: a male who would keep her, a nest of her own, and chicks in it. She scanned the hills below for feathers, for other harpies, for any sign at all. She saw only pine and rock and, near dusk, the smoke of cook fires she did not recognize. She landed at the edge of the tree line to drink from a stream, and the net came down before she lifted her head. Green hands pinned her wings. Goblins. They bound her arms against her sides with leather cord and marched her uphill to a hall of stacked timber, where mushrooms grew in the corners and a dirt mound sat fresh beside the throne. The goblin on the throne wore a crown of iron points. He looked at her a long moment without speaking. "Harpy," he said. "Alone." She tried to answer and could not shape the words. He stood. He was taller than any male who had touched her before. He took her chin in one hand and turned her face to the light. "Mine now," he said. "You nest here. You bear here. You do not fly." He said it the way another man might name a price on grain. She waited for the part where she could refuse. It did not come. A collar of braided leather closed around her throat, and Gruk Ironjaw knotted the end to a ring set in the floor beside his chair. The drifting was over. She had a place. It was not the one she had wanted, and she did not yet know how to want anything else out loud.

Ophelia sat by the throne all day and tried to think of a way to put off the night. She had watched Gruk Ironjaw hold court from the seat above her. He listened more than he spoke. When the eastern hill chief came in and knelt, Gruk clapped him on the shoulder like a brother and sent him back with grain. She saw then that he kept what he claimed. She was one of those things now. When the hall emptied and the torches burned low, she tried the only refusal she knew. She said she was tired. She said her wing hurt. She said the moon was wrong for a female. Gruk looked down at her from the throne and waited until she ran out of words. "Up," he said. He untied the tether from the ring and wound the slack around his fist. She followed because the collar gave her no other choice. His room was behind the hall, warm from a low fire. He was not rough. He did not strike her or shout. He took his time and spoke to her the way a man speaks to a good horse, pleased and certain. When it was done he knotted the tether to the bedpost so she could reach the water bowl and nothing else. He slept with one hand on her wing. In the morning he called two goblins in from the hall. They held her against the floor while a third worked along the long feathers of each wing and pulled them out one by one. She screamed into the wood. Gruk drank his broth and watched. "You stay," he said, quiet, when it was over. "You nest. You do not fly." He set the pile of feathers on the table beside his crown. Ophelia lay on the boards and understood that the sky was closed to her now, and that the nest she had wanted her whole life would be this one, and this male, and no other.

The feathers were still on the table by his crown when Gruk untied her from the bedpost and pointed at the corner. "Nest," he said. "Before the eggs come. You please me, you stay. You do not, you go to the pot at the next feast." He walked out and left the door open, the tether trailing loose behind her. Ophelia stood in the middle of the room and understood that the corner he pointed at was empty, and that a harpy with no wing feathers could not gather branches from a tree. She would have to make a nest from what a goblin king kept in his own chamber, and she would have to do it before her body forced the matter. She worked all day on her hands and knees. She dragged the bedfurs off the frame and shook the straw from the pallet into the corner. She tore strips from the hem of the long cloak on his peg and wove them through the straw the way her mother had woven reeds. She pulled the down from a cushion on his chair and lined the hollow. When she saw the pile of her own plucked feathers on the table she stopped, then took them down one handful at a time and pressed them into the ring. The nest was low and round and smelled like him. When Gruk came back at dusk he stood over it a long time. He crouched and touched the rim with one thick finger. "Good," he said. He unhooked a plain iron cup from his belt and set it beside the water bowl. "Yours." Then he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her the way he had watched the eastern chief kneel in the hall, pleased and certain. Ophelia climbed into the nest she had made from his room and her own feathers and lay down on her side. She had bought the winter. The corner was hers now, and so was the cup, and so was whatever grew inside her before the thaw.

Winter closed the hall and shrank her world to one room. The eggs grew inside her a little each week, a hard weight low in her belly. Ophelia learned Gruk's chamber the way she had once learned the sky. She learned which stones near the brazier stayed warm at night. She learned to fill the iron cup at the water bowl before he asked. She learned to sit on the rim of her nest with her wings folded small so he could see the curve of her and the swell she carried. When goblins came in with maps or tribute, Gruk did not send her out. He pointed at the corner and she went to it. She knelt in the down and kept her eyes low. The goblins looked, and Gruk let them look, and none of them touched. She understood after a few visits that this was part of his rule. A king who kept a harpy in his room was a king who took what he wanted and held it. The eastern chief came at midwinter with salted meat and a bent head. Ophelia had seen him kneel in the hall once before. Now he sat at Gruk's low table and ate from Gruk's bowl, and his eyes went to her twice and away. Gruk waited until the meat was gone. "My mate," he said. "Carrying." The chief bowed to her from his seat. Ophelia felt heat climb her neck and did the only thing she knew to do. She rose, walked to the table on bare feet, and filled Gruk's cup from the jug the way a wife would. She set it by his hand and went back to the nest. Gruk did not look at her. He drank. When the chief left, Gruk shut the door and stood over the nest. "You did well," he said. He crouched and put his palm flat on her belly and held it there until he felt one of the eggs shift. "You stay in this room now. Until they come." He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. Ophelia lay back in the down and understood that she had passed some test she had not known she was taking. The corner was hers. The cup was hers. Her body was his. She had wanted a mate who would keep her, and she had one, and the shape of being kept was smaller and harder than she had pictured. She folded her hands over the weight inside her and waited for the thaw.

The thaw came, and with it the pain. Ophelia woke before dawn with a cramp low in her belly, harder than any she had felt through the long months in the corner. She rolled to her knees in the down and gripped the rim of the nest. The next wave took her breath. She made a sound she did not mean to make. Gruk sat up from his pallet, watched her once, and went to the door. He spoke to someone outside in the goblin tongue. Then he came back and knelt beside the nest and put a hand on her back. "Push when it comes," he said. "Don't fight it." She did what he told her. There was no one else to tell her anything. It took most of the day. She lost track of the hours between the waves. She bit down on a strip of leather he pressed between her teeth. She soaked the down with sweat and worse. The first egg came near midday, pale and warm and larger than she had pictured. The second came an hour after. The third split her open in a way the others had not, and she screamed into the leather until it passed. Gruk lifted each egg as it came and set it in the hollow she had made months ago. When the last was down, he wiped her face with a wet cloth and let her drink from the iron cup. She slept without meaning to. When she woke, three eggs lay against her thigh, mottled and heavy, and Gruk was gone from the room. She counted them with her fingers and felt something loosen in her chest. She had done the thing she was kept for. The nest was full. She was still alive in it. Down the corridor, in the smoke of the kitchen, Gruk stood at the cook's shoulder and spoke low. He drew a shape in the flour on the board with one thick finger, an egg cracked into a pan, and named the bird beside it. The cook did not look up. He nodded once and wiped the flour away with his palm.

The days after the birth ran together. Ophelia sat on the eggs and did not leave the nest except to eat and relieve herself. Her body ached in places she had not known could ache. The eggs pressed warm against her belly, and she kept them turned the way her mother had shown her long ago. Gruk came and went from the chamber on his own hours. He brought her food himself now, bread and broth and strips of cooked meat, and set the iron cup by her hand without a word. Once he crouched by the nest and put his palm flat against the largest egg. He left it there a long time. "Good," he said. That was all. But he brushed her hair back from her face before he stood, and the touch was not rough. She leaned into it before she thought. She had not been touched that way since she left her clan. She began to speak to the eggs when she was alone. She told them their father was strong. She told them the nest was warm and no one would take them from it. She told them their names, which she made up and changed and made up again. Gruk came in during one of these times and stopped in the doorway. She flinched and went quiet. He crossed the room and knelt by the nest and put his hand on her shoulder. "Talk to them," he said. "They hear." She started again, halting, and he stayed until she was done. That night he slept on the floor beside the nest instead of on his pallet. She watched the shape of his back in the dark and let herself believe it. She had a mate. She had a nest. She had done the thing she was kept for, and he was staying. Down the corridor, past two doors and a turn she could not walk to, the cook fitted a new iron ring to the largest pot in the kitchen and tested the lid. He had built the frame that morning to the measurements Gruk had given him: wide enough for three eggs at once, and long enough, if laid on its side, for a full grown harpy. He banked the coals low and covered the pot with a cloth. Gruk had told him it would not be tonight. It would be soon. In the chamber, Ophelia hummed to the eggs and did not hear a thing.

The next afternoon three goblins came into the chamber while Ophelia was turning the eggs. She stood up in the nest and spread her stubbed wings over them. Gruk followed the three in and put a hand on her shoulder. "Nursery," he said. "They check the shells. Warmth. Weight." He nodded at the goblins and they knelt and lifted the eggs one by one into a padded basket. Ophelia reached after them and Gruk caught her wrist, not hard. "They come back," he said. She believed him because she needed to. She sat down in the empty nest and pressed her hands flat against the warm hollow where the eggs had been. She waited. The straw cooled under her palms. By late afternoon the hollow was cold. When Gruk came back alone and unclipped her tether from the ring by the throne room door, she almost cried from relief. "Dinner," he said. "Come." He did not lead her to the dining hall. He turned at the second door and took her into the kitchen. The cook stood by the largest pot on the hearth. Steam rose from the lid. Through the steam she saw the shapes of her three eggs bobbing against the iron frame inside. She made a sound she had never made before. She turned to run and two goblins caught her arms at once. Beside the pot, on a low trestle, lay a roasting spit. It had been sized to her. She saw the leather cuffs at each end. She saw the drip tray. She twisted against the hands and screamed for Gruk. He stood in the doorway and watched her without moving. "Please," she said. "Please, I built the nest. I laid them. I did everything. Please." "You did," Gruk said. His voice was quiet. "Eggs were the deal. Not you kept after." "I'm your mate," she said. "You slept by the nest. You touched my hair." "I did," he said. He did not look away. "Warm bird lays warm eggs. Cook said so." The goblins pulled her toward the trestle. The cook opened a jar of fat and set it by her head. Someone unbuckled her collar to fit the cuffs. She kicked and a goblin took her ankle and held it. She begged him by his name until her voice broke. Gruk crossed the kitchen and crouched by the trestle so his face was level with hers. He brushed her hair back the way he had done by the nest. "Quiet now," he said. "Faster if you're quiet." He stood and told the cook to wait for his word, and walked out. The door shut behind him. The cook picked up the jar of fat. Ophelia lay strapped to the spit and understood, finally, why the first male had left.

The cook worked without hurry. He poured fat from the jar into his palm and spread it along Ophelia's ribs and thighs, down her arms where the wing feathers used to be. She pulled at the cuffs until the leather cut her wrists. The spit did not move. She twisted her head toward the pot and saw the three shapes still bobbing behind the steam. She said their names, the ones she had whispered to the shells at night. She said them again louder. The cook did not look up. He pinched out the last down under her arms and dropped the tufts into a bowl. Then he took a small knife and scraped stubble from her calves. He tipped a jar of coarse salt over her belly and rubbed it in with the flat of his hand. He worked garlic and something bitter into the fat along her sides. She cried without sound, then with sound, and neither changed his pace. When he was done he wiped his hands on his apron and stood back and looked at her the way a man looks at a loaf before the oven. She begged him to cut the straps. He said nothing. He walked to the door and spoke to a goblin in the hall, and the goblin ran. She waited a long time. The fat cooled on her skin. The eggs kept bobbing. She tried to think of the nest and could not hold the picture. She tried to think of the male before Gruk Ironjaw and understood again why he had gone. A woman who could not say no was only meat waiting to be claimed by someone hungrier. The goblin came back and gave the cook a single word. The cook nodded. He crossed to the hearth and raked the coals into a long red bed under the spit rest. He came back and checked the cuffs at her wrists and ankles and the strap across her hips. He lifted one end of the spit. Another goblin lifted the other. They carried her to the forks above the coals and dropped the spit into place. The heat rose against her back. The cook took the crank handle and fit it to the end. He began to turn. Ophelia rolled once toward the coals and once toward the ceiling and once toward the coals again. The fat on her skin began to hiss. She stopped begging. There was no one left to beg. Somewhere above her the pot lid rattled where her children were already done.

The cook turned the crank until the fat ran clear and the skin darkened along her thighs. Ophelia stopped rolling her head. She watched the coals when they passed her eyes and the ceiling when it passed after. The pot lid had gone quiet. The cook lifted her off the forks when he judged her done and laid the spit across a wooden trestle. He cut the straps at her wrists and ankles because the meat pulled cleaner without them. He carved a long strip from her flank into a bowl and carried it out to the hall, and two other goblins came in with platters and knives and did the same until the spit held only bone and the shape of what she had been. They fished the three eggs from the pot with a slotted ladle and cracked them into a dish. They peeled the shells with their thumbs. Gruk Ironjaw sat at the long table with his chiefs on either side. The eastern chief sat at his right hand where an ally sits. Gruk ate the first strip from the bowl the cook set before him. He chewed once and swallowed. He said it was good. He passed the bowl down the table and the chiefs took their portions and ate. The eggs went around on a wooden board, split open, the yolks still soft. Gruk took one and ate it in two bites. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. A chief across the table asked if there would be another harpy. Gruk looked at the platter between them, at the wing bone the cook had set out for show. He said no. He said one had been enough to feed the table and settle the deal, and a second would only teach the clans to expect it. The chief nodded and did not ask again. When the platters were empty the cook came in with the collar in his hand, the leather stained where her neck had worn it. He set it on the table beside the king. Gruk picked it up, looked at it once, and dropped it into the fire behind him. The leather curled and caught. He turned back to his chiefs and called for the drink. Outside the hall the wind moved through the eaves and no one in the room heard it. The nest in his chambers still held her feathers and the iron cup she had drunk from. In the morning a goblin would sweep it into a sack and burn the sack in the yard, and the chamber would be ready for whatever the king brought home next.

In the morning a goblin came into the chamber with a sack and did the work he had been told to do. He gathered the straw first, then the strips of cloak, then the down from the cushions. He picked the feathers out of the corners where they had drifted. He took the iron cup off the shelf and dropped it in the sack with the rest. He carried the sack out to the yard and set it on the burn pile and put a torch to it. The straw caught fast. The feathers curled black and were gone. The cup would be pulled from the ash later and given to another slave or melted for iron. Nothing in the chamber remained that had been hers. The floor was swept. The bedding was replaced. A goblin beat the dust from the wall hangings and set the room in order for the next thing the king wanted kept there. Gruk Ironjaw came in near midday and looked at the clean floor and the fresh bedding. He nodded once. He told the goblin at the door to send word west. He said to find a trader who dealt in harpies and to bring one before the next moon. He said the room was ready and the deal with the eastern chief would need feeding again by spring. The goblin bowed and went. Gruk stood a moment in the chamber and looked at the corner where the nest had been. He turned and went back to the hall. In the yard the fire burned down to coals and a boy raked the ash flat. By evening no one in the hall spoke her name, because no one there had ever learned it, and the work of the king went on without pause.

The trader came before the next moon. He led a young harpy on a short rope and asked for his price in the yard. Gruk Ironjaw looked her over once and paid without speaking. The goblins took her inside and fitted the collar. They walked her past the burn pile where the ash had long since been raked into the dirt. She did not know what had happened in the chamber she was being brought to. No one told her. The room had been swept and set in order, and the bedding was clean, and the corner where a nest had once stood was empty and waiting. Gruk stood in the hall and watched the new harpy pass. He said nothing to her. He told the goblin at his side that the eastern chief would come again by spring and the deal would hold. He turned back to the business of the day. Somewhere west, a clan of harpies argued over their own matters and did not think of the one they had driven out. In the yard the work went on. The story of Ophelia Skyfeather ended there, in a room that no longer knew her name, closed and finished, with the kingdom moving on without her.