Chapter 1
To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandma, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth—deep down, I always did.
I was just a girl.
I was born Avianna Wilhelmina Leroux on a remarkably clear Minnesota night on first of April in 1944. My birth was later remembered for the effect it had on the birds on the street where I lived, the auspiciously named Pinnacle Lane. During the day, as my young mother began to experience labour pains, the crows collected mounds of tiny cherry pits in their beaks and tossed them at the house windows. Sparrows perched on women’s heads and stole loose strands of hair to weave into their nests. At night nocturnal birds gathered on the lawns to eat noisily, the screams of their prey sounding something like my own mother in hard labour. Just before slipping into a deep twilight sleep —relief granted by a nurse—my mother opened her eyes and saw giant feathers fall from the ceiling. Their silky edges brushed her face.
