Landed Wings

chapter 1: ASHLYNN

At a glance, the world seems to be much as it was;

Not too bad, but not as good as it could be either.

People fly everyday without incident;

Children play on swings, happy and carefree.

But underneath it all;

In the sewers of humankind;

Like a fat black rat with eyes of gleaming ebony;

Lies a slowly killing poison;

Waiting for its prey to take one false step;

To eat the rotten apple;

To stumble on its hard surface;

To listen to its lying, seductive promises.

It waits,

It waits for one.

There is always one.

Six months earlier…

ASHLYNN

The face reflected in my mirror stands at 152.4 centimeters with a wingspan of 121.9 centimeters. Everyone knows I was born to sing. I’ve started my career the way most people do I guess, with a youthful dream of greatness. In the beginning, no one would pay me, I would sing, unmasked, at bars and clubs, birthdays, sky festivals, community events, and nature ceremonies – for nothing more than the whispered promise of a future booking. Everywhere I could sing, I did. I always knew I was special, born…no, destined to sing. Didn’t people everywhere tell me so – even if they had to tell me secretly? Everywhere I go, they whisper, "You have a gift" or "You have a special purpose" or "I wish I was as brave as you".

People say that my wings are as spectacular as my voice. They are covered with dark, rich black feathers that look almost blue in the moonlight, outlined with a fire red at sunset. My voice and my wings are my only salvation. When I need to be alone, I can go to my hideout just on the edge of the quarter and fly as high as my wings will take me, singing all the way. I never look back, only up… spiraling up up up into the beautiful cacophony that I release from my mouth, dream of with my mind, and follow with my soul. I am young, that is a fact, young and naive in the way that I think all young are. Immortality… okay maybe not immortality but definitely longevity, is guaranteed. Now that I am seventeen, I’m close to breaking the bonds of my childhood and taking the path I choose. For years I’ve dreamed of my future, and now it’s finally clear. In my mind, life is handed to me on a beautiful silver platter, engraved with symbols of purity, love, innocence, and devotion. And through it all, this wonderful life I imagine, I will sing. Through singing, I will break the barriers between the SkyBound and LandBound. I figure that we all want to get along but sometimes it takes one person to show everyone how. My world makes sense to me and really it’s pretty simple. Singing is a doorway to the soul. When we open our souls, when we express ourselves so clearly, with such emotion, is there not a sort of epiphany reached, a pinnacle of gorgeous release? I know if I can share this feeling with the others, my fellow SkyBound, I am sure I will succeed in uniting our people. Nothing can stop me, and even if it seems impossible, I will always find victory. At seventeen I have no time for doubts and worries. My concern is flying, singing, and being free, untethered. My mother Cocoa is not a supporter. She says I’m reckless, immature and unrealistic, that I can’t see below the surface. She’s constantly sniping.

“You only see what people put in front of you”.

She’s a hard woman with the heart of granite but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. For some reason, she is a soft looking woman. Her wings are chocolate brown… literally. I mean that if you hold running, melted chocolate against them, you won't be able to tell the difference. Her eyes are a dark black, like my wings. Her hair is slightly lighter than her wings with artificially blond tips. When she was young, she tells me all the girls dyed the tips of their hair. It was a fad that quickly grew outdated but my mom never got the memo. Even so, she is beautiful, in a regal way. Of the three in our family, she looks the most avian, because of her eyes. If my mother was a bird, she would have been a heron - violent, primal, and dangerous. Don't get me wrong, I love my mother. But she can be poisonous. When she doesn’t like something, she let’s you know about it. And she doesn’t like my singing. She thinks it’s foolish and beneath me as a SkyBound. The speech is always the same, she starts off speaking reasonably…

“There are so many other careers, honorable careers, you could pursue. You’re interested in cooking, right? Why not

pursue the culinary arts?”

In the beginning, I used to think she actually wanted an

answer but I quickly realized this is what my English teacher would call a rhetorical question – no response desired or required. After the last question, she winds up and starts to screech…

“You are at the top of your class academically – why can’t you pursue serious subjects? Don’t you care about the world you live in? You’re a smart SkyBound designed (who knows what that means?) to be great. Instead of embracing your gifts, your destiny, you’ve latched onto a by product of your genetic makeup. “

Then she gets downright nasty…

“I can’t believe my daughter wants to live like a LandBound. Can’t you see them for what they are? They don’t do anything! What have they contributed? Nothing, that’s what. All they do is take, take, take. Who is responsible for the years of peace? Why do you breathe crisp, clean air? Who makes the world you live in possible?! YOUR people, the SkyBound. Instead of wanting to make a meaningful contribution, honor your heritage, you want to just sing. You are not here to entertain or champion the LandBound, the LandBound are here to entertain us.”

And as if that’s not enough, my mom wraps up with her warped philosophy…

“I get that you don’t understand what I’m talking about or why things are the way they are. You think I don’t understand you, but you’re wrong, I made you. You feel like something’s wrong, you don’t know what to do about it and you don’t even know how to define it. You think by changing the order of things, by singing, you can make a difference. I’m going to tell you something no one else will be willing to tell you - everyone craves order. They want to know how they fit, where they belong, who they belong to, where they come from and where they are going. They want to live in a world of expectations, not uncertainty. They would rather live the life they know is limited rather than live a life not knowing what the next day brings. This is the construct of every successful society. Uncertainty breeds fear and fear breeds chaos. The real problem here is your unchecked, unguided emotion. Your constant barrage of feelings blinds you to the truth. The LandBound are there because that is where they belong. If the SkyBound begin to sing, taking away the entertainment of the LandBound then we begin to upset the balance of our society. LandBound may become unsatisfied believing they should live like SkyBound. By your actions you risk sparking chaos and rupturing the peace we all enjoy. Do you see? Are you hearing me?”

At this point, I am always faced with a choice, I can either A, assure her that yes I see her point and will give serious

consideration to a more meaningful life path or B, tell her that she’s just using complicated language to justify her prejudice and start an all out verbal brawl. One day maybe things will be different, but right now, at seventeen, I’ve got to go with option B. I’m always ready to rumble.

My dad Gneiss is my mom’s opposite. Complete opposite. He is laid back about everything. He and mom are two extremes. She’s too severe, he’s too relaxed. My dad is a musician (instrumental of course, instruments are approved for SkyBound), so he approves of my life choice – secretly of course, he knows better than to cross my mother. But I can't talk to him. Not seriously. He’s more a friend than parent. He’s one of those friends whose good one day and terrible the next – you never know where you stand with him. Sometimes I wonder if everything is alright upstairs. Things that he should take seriously, he doesn’t and stuff that doesn’t mean anything means everything to him. I can’t describe what I feel from my parents as love, on one side I get anger and disappointment, on the other, a benign apathy. Both of them share one thing in common – they REALLY don’t understand me. I don’t like asking my dad to fly with me. I never really forgave him for forgetting about me all those years ago. When I was nine, we were at the Sky Mall getting a present for mom. It was her birthday the next day. My relationship with her was easier then. When I said I wanted to sing, she would just say, “Okay honey”. I realize now that she thought I wasn't serious, that it was just a little kid's fantasy. I remember how excited I was that day. I was so excited that I didn’t even mind having to go through the scanners and scales. Scanners and scales are a part of daily life for SkyBound. If you are a certain weight, you aren't allowed to pass through Sky Mall. Because we SkyBound have so much body mass, we cannot be overweight. Being overweight is a crime resulting in your wings being stripped from you. Your BMI has to be 18.5, and no greater than 20. As a result, all of the flying population is thin. That day, we were scanned, went through the scales, and got the present. Everything was fine until it was time to leave. We jumped off the exit ramp and started flying back home. My dad is a dreamer, and when he flies, he goes somewhere else. He started flying faster and wilder, and my nine year old body and wings couldn't keep up. That’s when it became dangerous. The law says you are supposed to hook your kid to you when flying until age thirteen, because updrafts are so strong. All SkyBound have to take solo flying lessons at age thirteen and pass a test just to get a permit for solo flying – accompanied by an adult. My dad didn't believe in the harness – free range child rearing he called it. I call it just another

example of his immaturity. My dad was whooping ahead of me and I got caught in an updraft. It swept me up, farther up than I'd ever been. I tried to flap back, but I was caught. Up, up, up, higher than we were allowed to go, where the air is not as rich, where oxygen disappears, and where death is certain for a tiny nine year old girl. Even when I thought I couldn’t survive that high, I just kept going up. I was gasping for breath, frantic, my heart beating hard against my thin chest, my muscles quivering in my wings to keep them from snapping back. In the end, the draft was too strong for me. My right wing went SNAP and my tendons popped as my wings went places it's not supposed to go. I grew dizzy and felt myself screaming. I've never felt a pain like that and I almost blacked out. No one was around. My vision blurred as my brain starved for oxygen. At the last possible moment the updraft released me and I started falling to the ground, my right wing useless. Before I blacked out, with my plunging dead weight picking up speed, I could see my dad, unaware, far in the distance still swooping and flying with dizzying joy.

When I woke up, I was in the Sky Hospital, my wing back in place and slung up. Groggy, I could do little more than

whimper. A Sky patrol had seen me falling and caught me 100 feet from the ground. I could have died. The Sky Patrol had seen my dad too. While in the hospital they came to question my dad, threatening to take me away from him in low voices across the room. They didn’t take me away but my dad was charged with child abandonment and reckless behavior - his license for flying was revoked for a year. He was able to get a restricted license that only let him pick me up from school and go to the grocery store. When I asked my father if he was going to be okay not being able to fly everywhere, he just looked at me, smiling sadly.

“I was born with two legs, I’ll be fine”.

As for me, it took eight months to recover. That’s the first time I witnessed my mother’s fury. During those eight months my mom didn't look or speak to my dad. And he didn't try to speak to her – he might be a little nuts but he’s not stupid. To this day, my right wing sometimes throbs, and I feel it happening all over again. I don’t mind though, it reminds me of the promise I made to myself not to marry a man anything like my father.