Children of the Air

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Winter, Part 1

One

Two

Three

Four

Spring

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Summer, Part 1

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Summer, Part 2

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Autumn

Thirty-Three

Winter, Part 2

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

©2016 Mark Eddy Smith

ISBN: 978-1-939636-01-0

Feather image: iStock.

childrenoftheair.com

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters herein and you or another person, living or dead, is kinda what I was going for.

For my parents,

without whose gracious generosity and hospitality

this book might never have grown up.

and

For all who have shared their pain with me.

Winter,

Part 1

1.

In her dream, she is always falling, alone in a grayness like mist.

The wind, that strong, sustaining spirit, has forsaken her wings.

Endlessly she plummets toward the unseen ground, and the speed increases and the terror swells until she recalls this has happened before, and at last she relaxes, accepting her fate, till the mist parts precipitously upon a tumble of stones, smooth and round and white. An instant before impact, she recognizes

Corwynn jerked awake, secure in her aerie, the stones beneath her three warm eggs, their shells miraculously unshattered. Beside her slept Kyron, his head tucked beneath one wing. A cold breeze caressed her feathers as if reassuring her of its presence. The sky was just beginning to pale as, across the valley, the late winter sun hesitated behind the line of distant hills.

She breathed deeply and yawned, then stood—awkwardly straddling her eggs—and stretched every muscle, arching her back and spreading her wings. The world behind her was upside-down—untenable—with snow clinging to the undersides of pine boughs whose bottoms pointed skyward. She glared at it for as long as she could, trying to will some of the tension from her joints.

At last she recomposed herself, rerighting the world, and contemplated the possibility of the wind not simply falling silent and still but being altogether absent, refusing to respond to lung or wing. It was unthinkable: as soon imagine trees turned to rocks, or the mountain to a fish, flapping and gasping in search of the sea. Yet the dream returned every night. Each morning she reflected on its impossibility, until the memory faded with the rising of the sun. She shook her head to hasten its departure and turned her attention to the day.

Although the sky was clear, a far-off thunder rumbled ominously.

…

Kyron awoke to a rumble of thunder that, instead of dwindling, grew louder, repeating its single syllable ever more insistently until the din roused him completely and he looked up to behold a hideous, oddly-winged monster flying toward him. He had seen such things before, gliding across the sky like swollen dragonflies, but never had one approached him. He cowered, hoping a gust of wind would blow it away or that at least it would fly past the aerie without pausing. His wings urged him to follow Corwynn, whose flurry of flapping was quickly overwhelmed by the monster’s clatter, but he couldn’t help remembering that none of his children yet had wings.

At last, it was hovering directly overhead, and Kyron’s bowels emptied. The creature’s roar was deafening; its breath a hurricane. It was unmistakably a dragonfly of unimaginable proportions. He raised his wings and screamed but knew, as he did, how small and insignificant he was in comparison. As small and insignificant as a field mouse that squeaks in alarm when he himself descends. Clearly his position was hopeless, but he would not, for that reason, lose hope. Gathering all his strength, he launched himself at what he hoped was a soft underbelly.

It was not. He struck with a resounding boom that echoed even over the sound of the monster’s wings, and then he dropped, stunned, back into the nest. Some sort of webbing, like a spider’s, dropped from the monster’s side, and Kyron scrambled to cover the eggs with his wings. Glaring up at the hulking insect, he considered grabbing the webbing and flying hard to jerk the beast out of the sky, but something shadowy emerged from its side and, with a tiny flash, sent a smaller insect hurtling toward him. It struck his back with a sting sharper than any wasp’s.

Mind-bendingly, the shadow form shifted, contracting and expanding into the shape of a human that crawled from the monster’s belly and slowly descended the web.

As the sting’s venom overwhelmed him, he saw that, human or not, the creature reaching toward him had the eyes of an insect, and in those eerie circles he saw another eagle defending a similar nest. Before he lost consciousness, he noted with grim satisfaction that, although the other eagle looked sleepy, he also looked defiant, and not the least afraid.

…

Corwynn stared as the dragon shrank into the distance, her beak agape as if she would ask some question of the empty, tactless sky.

He had fought.

While she had flapped away in terror, Kyron had stood his ground.

He who was a giant among eagles, who had carried sheep to his nest to feed his love, who had broken the backs of rams and lifted goats into the sky with the strength of his wings, had defended their aerie to the last, and, though his strength was as a butterfly’s before the whirlwind, he had spread his wings over their eggs, and he had triumphed, in a way, for all three of them remained.

Corwynn stood over her three warm stones and wept, after the manner of eagles, with her head bowed and her eyes closed.

2.

The sensation in the pit of Lissy Peabody’s stomach was more guilt than fear. As she watched the toboggan slide downhill without her, she could hear her mother’s voice: "I told you," while she, still in a sitting position, floated toward the bracken on the left-hand side of the trail, the last big snowflakes of March pirouetting around her, the dark trees awaiting her arrival.

She shouldn’t have gone sledding alone at dusk. It would be hours before anyone found her, broken and bleeding, barely conscious. If they didn’t find her before morning, she’d die from exposure.

At least it had been fun while it lasted—the wind sharp against her cheeks, her butt massaged by every bump, the shushing of millions of snowflakes beneath the sled, the melancholy twilight hush, this feeling of weightless timelessness.

She landed with a crunch.

Amid a tangle of dead branches, she waited for the pain to erupt from whatever she’d broken or sprained or punctured. When it failed to arrive, she knew she was paralyzed, her spine shattered—she’d spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair—and yet, she could feel her toes snug in her boots, her fingers in her mittens, her heart in her throat. She was sitting in the snow as if she’d meant to.

Euphoria bubbled up from her belly like sulphur dioxide from a mud pool, and she started giggling. Oh. my. God! she screamed with relief, letting herself fall backwards, arms spread wide, chest heaving with laughter. When at last she struggled to her feet, she had to wrestle the snow for ownership of her boots. She ran to retrieve the toboggan and continued downhill, on her stomach this time, the remaining slope almost sufficient to satisfy her desire for more.

She couldn’t wait to tell Mom.

…

When Kyron awoke, it was to lurching rattles and absolute darkness. None of the myriad sounds or choking smells were familiar. He raised his wings to escape but lacked the space to stretch them full. No matter how he twisted or spun, his wings met something unyielding that thrummed and jangled. Panic overwhelmed him and he screamed, but his voice was swallowed by the growling darkness. He thrashed in every direction, bruising himself and bending feathers, increasing his violence with the single thought that if he gave it his all he would surely break free. When his beak caught against something thin and hard, he bit down on it, yanking his entire body back and forth until at last it gave way, and he pushed against it with the top of his head—only to find it no less solid. Baffled, he pushed harder, certain that he had felt the tendril snap. Not until he tried to bite down on it a second time did he understand it was his beak that had given way. He investigated the split with his tongue, and a sorrow such as he had never known engulfed him.

How long the darkness lasted he couldn’t know, but in time it was pulled away, replaced by an orb as bright as lightning. Even after his eyes adjusted, the three figures looming before him remained indistinct. One of them whistled like a songbird.

Kyron couldn’t decide whether to spring at them, attempt to escape, or cringe in the corner of this gleaming, geometrical tangle, so he did none of these, but simply stood, squinting in the glare, trying to discern what sort of creatures they might be. One of the figures seemed to have the same reflective eyes as his captor. They called to each other with the quiet cacophony of a murder of sleepy crows, then returned him to darkness with a thunderclap. He backed away as far as he could, hunched down, and focused all his will on refraining from further panic.

…

Mary Peabody was stirring soup when the back door opened, admitting Lissy, dripping snowmelt and wearing a triumphant grin.

Shut the door, honey. It’s cold out, okay? Where have you been?

Okay. So, Lissy said, carelessly slamming the door, you know how you told me not to go sledding alone down Firetower Hill? Well. I hit this really big jump and just went flying into the woods. I thought. I was going. to die.

Hang on a second, said Mary, holding out her hand like a crossing guard. Are you telling me you went sledding, alone, down Firetower Hill, after I’ve told you how many times?

About a hundred. Anyway. I went flying into the woods, like–

Melissa Chrysanthemum Peabody, you are grounded.

What? Mom, no!

No TV, no calling your friends, for a week.

"That’s not fair! That’s so not fair!"

Why? How is that not fair? I’ve told you a thousand times–

"Because I told you. Because. I could have just. not said anything, and you wouldn’t. never have known, but you. I was trusting you, to just–"

To what? To not get mad, when I’ve told you a million times not to go running off into the woods by yourself, and at night, no less? God knows what could have happened—you could get eaten by a bear—and who would save you? Not nobody, that’s who. We’ve got a whole neighborhood here, kids your own age and everything. You could play with them for as long—until I called you in for dinner if you wanted, but no.

Oh my God, Mom, I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m thirteen years old. I don’t ‘play with the neighborhood kids’ anymore, God.

She was sitting on the floor, pulling off her boots and wriggling out of her snow pants. She stood up, grabbed the tassel of her hat and flung it on her boots, her mouth pinched and white. She stalked out of the kitchen with the toes of her socks flapping.

Shaking her head, Mary returned to stirring the soup, much of which was now stuck to the bottom of the pan.

…

Kyron was surrounded by angry ducks. He couldn’t see them because the darkness was still absolute, but their quacking would wake a carcass. Was he dead, or had they eaten his eyes? He was lying on his side, on something as unyielding as rock only smoother. Every feather ached, and a keening moan escaped him. The ducks fell silent, but only for a moment.

As his mind grew clearer, he noticed his head was wrapped in something that was the source of his blindness. He noticed, too, that the calls he heard were too complex and varied for any waterfowl he knew. He had to assume he was still in the company of humans.

Strangely, the realization brought a certain measure of calm. If the humans were responsible for his blindness, then terror was what they desired from him. He would not oblige. His body still felt waterlogged and disconnected, but he was not yet dead, and so long as he lived there was the possibility of escape.

He touched his tongue to the part of his beak that had broken. The tear had closed, but it tasted sharp and bitter, like rotted fish only worse. He clenched his jaw and felt a twinge that pulled at something deep within his breast. The damage was not yet healed, but the something deep inside was strong. Drawing upon that strength, he tried to heave himself upright. It took several attempts, during which he battered his head several times against the hard surface beneath him—producing a hollow boom that echoed oddly in his mind—but in the end he managed it.

Once upright, it took all of his resolve to stay that way. His condition was not drastically improved, but it was proof that he was not yet defeated. He took several deep breaths in preparation for flight, blind though he was, but before he could raise his wings, rough talons grasped him around the middle and lifted him. Once again, a sense of helplessness overwhelmed him and fear battled his resolve, but he was quickly released and his head uncovered, revealing a row of orbs, each as bright as any sun. He blinked and shook his head, trying to clear the spots that floated before him no matter which direction he looked. He was dimly aware of a human form backing away from him, and of a host of human faces staring from behind the suns.

Abruptly, they all fell silent, as if waiting for him to act. He opened his beak, but suddenly a strangely rounded human approached from one side and squawked at the flock of faces with all the dignity of a goose, waving its malformed wings ineffectually. When the human was done honking, it waddled back the way it had come. Immediately it returned and repeated the performance. It did this several times, until Kyron began to wonder if he were dreaming.

The sense of unreality overpowered the threat he perceived from the humans, and he risked a look behind. To his horror he found himself surrounded by gigantic insects similar to the one that had attacked his aerie. Lined up in eerily ordered rows, they stood sinister and motionless. Even worse, he was standing on the face of one. His talons were scratching the same hard surface he had met when he slammed into the monster’s underbelly, and suddenly he recalled where he had heard that hollow boom before.

He tried to scream and leap away, but his aching body would not obey. Instead he only squawked and fell over. Immediately he started sliding horribly down to where the creature’s mouth must be. When a human scooped him off the monster’s face, he was almost grateful, even as another human slipped something over his head that returned his blindness. For the moment, those rough talons felt as safe as his mother’s, and he only prayed with all his might that they would bear him far away and never let him go.

3.

Kyron awoke, sometime during the night, to stars overhead and a fragrant breeze. He couldn’t remember coming to this place, but while the lack of monstrous insects, bright lights and humans was an improvement, something wasn’t right. His head was throbbing painfully, and there was a lump of unidentifiable flesh beside him. He ate it with only the slightest hesitation and was surprised to find it both soft and reasonably fresh. With his hunger assuaged, the pain receded, and he gradually grew aware that he was not alone. The cries of a host of other animals arose from every direction. Mournful cries, mostly—the huff of a bear, the hoot of an owl, the yip of a coyote, the squabble of a fox—these he recognized, but other sounds were as foreign to him as was the meat. The whole place felt forsaken and unreal, and the darkness, punctured by sickly yellow moons, felt eternal.