My dad built the aviary with his own hands – a broad building that’s part greenhouse, part palace. It’s paneled in stained glass and copper, and inside there’s a chandelier that cost us a month’s wages. Zhar-ptitsa birds have to be surrounded by beauty. They tend to keel over and die if you shove them in a room without light or color. Either that or they rip out your innards. We try hard to avoid both scenarios.

            I hear the rustle of five pairs of wings as I open the door. Bright green pearls wink at me from the tree branches that sway above my head. The firebirds coo softly, and the sound is like little boys trying to smother soft chuckles. I reach for the thick leather gloves hanging on a hook, slide them over my hands.

            We own five firebirds, plus the one precious egg that took ten years to coax out of our oldest female. Dad insists we only draw blood from the male – says that since females spend over five years mothering their babies, it’s only fair.

            The male in question is roosting on the low branch of an orange tree, gold sparks slithering up and down his primary feathers. His crested head is tucked under a wing, but when I step nearer he opens one eye. It glows like green fire in the darkness, bright and baleful. I get along just fine with our females, but the male zhar-ptitsa is one nasty creature. I take a step toward him, and he hisses. Tiny silver teeth like needles line the inside of his beak.

            “You’re not going to bite me.” My whisper is half-growl as I push my sleeve over my elbow to show bare skin. To show that I’m not afraid. “You’re just going to let me take one little feather, and you’re not going to make a big fuss about it. Hear me?”

            The bird chuckles softly and whips out his eight-foot wingspan, crackling with electricity. I just stare at him, unimpressed, and rip a red-gold feather from his breast. Glittery blood boils from the wound, crackles when it hits the marble floor. The male flinches and squeezes his wings back to his body, but I’ve already caught the blood in the inkwells. I nod to the firebird, backing toward the door. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Something’s gone wrong.

            The visions swirl inside my skull, Ferris wheels and silver streams and purple mountains jutting into the sky – and then the dreams shatter. The whole panorama of color and light is sucked into black nothing, and my head erupts with fire. Pain roars down into my neck and shoulders and stomach until everything aches. Everything burns. Everything breaks, snaps, crumbles, and my world is warped and loud and wrong, wrong, wrong…

            “Lana? Lana! Sweetheart , open your eyes. Come on, baby. Come on.”

            There are some voices you can’t disobey, even when your body’s in rebellion. My dad’s voice is like that. It rips me out of the black hole, drags me back into the light. Too much light. The gallery glitters with firebird ink and the metallic aura of magyk. It hurts, almost as much as the vision. I squint my eyes, throw my hands in front of my face.

            “Too damn bright,” I mumble. Dad rocks back on his heels and chuckles wearily, and that’s when I know it’s okay. He’d be angry if there were customers in the shop when my fit began. Not at me; he’s never mad at me. But he would have been furious with himself, arguing under his breath while he violently slapped paint on a canvas. Girl her age shouldn’t be chained to a shop, shouldn’t be drenched in fey-magyk 24/7. She should be out with friends. She should be attending university. She should, she should, she should…

            But when we’re alone, he sees sense. He remembers that I love this gallery. That magyk is our way of life. That I don’t have friends, and I don’t want them, and university would be a waste of my time. He probably still grumbles, but at least the arguments stay in his head.

            I uncurl myself from the fetal position, slowly, and all my joints crack and pop and readjust themselves. For the sake of science, I wish Dad would videotape my episodes someday. I’d like to see what kind of unnatural positions I twist myself into when the seizures take me.

            I roll my shoulders, making sure they’re still in their sockets. Then my wrists. Then my ankles. Then my neck. My throat is raw, and my muscles feel like someone beat me with a crowbar, but it’s nothing that’ll keep me from work.