by Jef Aerts
Rung by rung, I found my foothold. The wind blew under Mom’s wings, wafting the feathers into my face.
Don’t look down, I thought. It’ll soon be over.
My legs were wobbling. From down there, it hadn’t looked that high, but when I reached the platform, I felt dizzy. I put Sprig down and held onto the railing.
“Giant?” I yelled down. “I made it!”
But there was no answer and no sign of anyone on the grass. Down on the street, a motorbike roared past.
That was when I felt the ladder shaking. Beneath me, I heard a rasping, panting sound.
“Pff!” Jadran stuck his head up over the edge of the platform. His face was red, and sweat was running down it. “It’s high up here, huh?”
I took a step to one side and wanted to yell that he hadn’t kept our agreement and that he had to go back down right now. But I didn’t dare. Every word could be the wrong one, the spark that lit his fuse.
I thought of what I’d seen Mom do so many times before: close her eyes for a count of three, take a deep breath, and then try to persuade him as calmly as possible.
“Hold on with both hands, Giant.”
Sprig wasn’t scared of heights. His sharp claws tapped on the metal.
“You have to move the wings,” said Jadran, “so that Sprig can see how.”
“That’s too dangerous up here,” I said.
“Then I’ll do it.” Jadran grabbed my arm and started to unbuckle the wings.
“Stop it!” I pulled away and stepped to the edge. I stretched my arms beside me.
Jadran pushed Sprig toward me, giving him a pep talk. “Look, my little birdie. This is how to fly. Open your wings and then jump. Got it?” And to me he said, “Up and down, Josh. Keep moving them up and down.”
It was such a horribly long way down, and keeping those huge wings open was hard.
“That’s enough,” I whispered. “Sprig gets it now.”
“He doesn’t get anything!”
“Maybe he’s not ready yet.”
Jadran stamped angrily on the platform. “You have to try harder, Josh!”
At that moment, I heard shouting from below. I looked down and saw Yasmin running across the grass, apparently searching for us. She looked behind the bike shed, and turned around and peered up when she heard the thumping of Jadran’s feet. Her mouth fell open.
“What are you two doing up there?” she shouted.
I closed the wings and took a step back.
“Sprig’s going to fly!” shrieked Jadran. “Look!”
Sprig was standing beside me. And finally he was copying me.
He opened up the injured wing.
“You see!” Jadran’s deep voice echoed off the buildings. “I told you so! I always tell you so, don’t I?”
Sprig spread his wings wider than ever before. His body swayed in the wind, and it looked like he was about to be lifted up into the air.
Yasmin waved at us. “Your mom’s home. What if she sees you guys up there?”
“Come on, Jadran,” I mumbled. “Let’s go have something to eat.” Mom could even get him out of the bathtub with that.
Pwee ee ee! Sprig hopped over the platform, beating his wings. Pwee ee!
“He’s almost flying,” hissed Jadran. “We can’t stop now.”
I closed my eyes again, counted to three, and went and stood next to Sprig. Jadran mustn’t explode. Not here, not three stories above the ground.
I swallowed. “One more time. Then we’ll go back down. Promise?”
Two pairs of wings opened up.
“More!” screamed Jadran. “Faster, little one!”
He came and stood right behind me and Sprig. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I waved the blue wings one last time.
“No!” screamed Yasmin.
“See? You can do it!” Jadran cried triumphantly. “If you really want to do it, you can do anything!”
And then he gave me such a shove that I plummeted down from the platform to the ground below.
THE BED, THE TWO CHAIRS, and the closet—everything was white. The curtains were green, but the sky behind them was a bright white sheet too.
“Would you like some water?” asked Mom.
I wasn’t thirsty. I was still too drowsy from the anesthetic.
Mom gave me the outline of what had happened: I’d fallen three stories down. I lay on the grass, looking like I was dead, and Yasmin ran off crying and looking for help. Meanwhile Jadran went crazy. They’d had to drag him in through a window on the fourth floor.
“I murdered him!” he was bellowing when the ambulance came racing onto our street with its lights flashing. “I murdered my brother!”
It took four paramedics to get me onto the stretcher while trying to calm Jadran down. Luckily they had medication, said Mom, because words weren’t enough to stop him. The pills gave Jadran a thick tongue and zombie eyes.
I was taken to the hospital in the ambulance. They’d operated on my leg for hours, and then I’d slept almost around the clock.
“Did Sprig fly?” My voice sounded hoarse and far away, as if someone else was speaking.
Mom sighed a dark cloud into the room. “Three times around the grass, Yasmin says.”
Dr. Mbasa was standing in the doorway.
“You were very lucky, Josh.” She was smiling the way doctors sometimes do, with a kind mouth in a stern face. “Your spine isn’t damaged. And you still have your legs.”
My legs.
I slid my hand under the sheet and felt a thin hospital gown and a whole load of dressings and bandages. There was a plaster cast on my right leg from my groin to my calf. My left ankle was wrapped up tightly.
“Three breaks and a miracle,” whispered Mom.
“I’ll bring you the wheelchair tomorrow,” said Dr. Mbasa. “And then we’ll do a lot of practice. Believe me, I’m going to make a wheelchair champion out of you.”
My skin twitched under the plaster. Mom said they’d given me twelve stitches.
“When will I be able to walk again?” I asked.
“A bit of patience,” said Dr. Mbasa. “After the winter you’ll be running to school again.”
“But that’s months away!”
I could tell from Mom’s face that she thought it was too long as well, but she didn’t say anything. She stood up and put a pillow behind my back.
At six o’clock, Murad and Yasmin came to take over from Mom. Jadran was still in the car and didn’t want to get out.
“Hi,” said Murad.
And “Hi,” said Yasmin.
I didn’t say hi back.
Yasmin hung her wool scarf over the radiator. The whole room smelled of wet sheep.
“I brought some goodies,” said Murad, conjuring up one caramel candy after another.
Mom went to get coffee. She gave Murad the plastic cup and moved a chair next to the head of my bed. She patted the seat with her hand to make it clear that he had to sit there.
“I’m just going to go see Jadran in the car. I’ll call you later, Little Giant.” Mom gave me such a big kiss that it felt like she’d be away for years.
Yasmin fiddled with her jacket. She stared at the bump of the plaster cast under the sheet. Her bangs had been trimmed. There was almost an inch between her black hair and her eyebrows now.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“I dreamed about you last night,” said Yasmin. “You were wearing those wings and you took off like a rocket.”
We drank lukewarm hospital water and chewed Murad’s candies. I noticed that Yasmin kind of rolled her lips up at the corners when she ate, and I caught myself thinking that I actually quite liked it.
“I put those wings in your room,” she said. “Your mom wanted to throw them out, but I thought …”
I had candy stuck in my teeth. So I smiled with my mouth closed.
Murad came and sat a little closer to me. Out in the corridor, the nursing cart
rattled past.
“Are you very mad at Jadran?” he asked.
“He’s my brother,” I said.
“I think I’d be furious. But you seem to be keeping pretty calm.”
I didn’t feel calm at all. Crushed would be a better word. I put one hand on my tummy. It was hard and cold, as if the plaster had spread from my leg and up over my belly button.
“Jadran thought I could fly,” I said.
Murad frowned. There were grey hairs in his eyebrows.
“I don’t think things can be easy for you, Josh,” he said. “Jadran is sometimes so …”
“Happy!” I said quickly. I hated it when people talked about Jadran like he was some kind of problem we had to work together to find a solution for.
“Yep, he’s often happy,” said Murad with a smile. “But when he’s not, you can always come to me and …”
I felt like a mummy made out of plaster. Murad took a swig of my water and put his hand on the bed, right next to mine.
“Did you know that cranes do really disgusting burps?” I said.
MURAD SLEPT OVER AT THE hospital. Not that it was necessary, but he really wanted to. He sat on one chair and put his legs up on another one with a blanket over him.
I thought about Jadran, lying at home all alone in my room. They’d probably given him more pills to calm him down. Later, when Murad was asleep, I’d try to breathe toward Jadran. Maybe our breathing bridge would work at a distance too.
An ambulance’s siren wailed outside. Blue streaks flashed on the curtains. Murad wriggled his feet under the blanket. I squashed my thoughts into earplugs and closed my eyes.
In the morning my sheets were all tangled up. Murad was pretty impressed that I managed to do that with my leg in plaster. A nurse opened the curtains and gave me my painkillers. Then I got breakfast in bed, with a heated-up croissant.
There seemed to be no end to the rest of the day. At eight o’clock, Murad left for work and Mom took over. She didn’t leave me alone for five minutes. She went with me to all the tests, with me in my underpants and hospital gown, and her in her coat, which was way too hot.
Mom nodded as if she already knew it all when she looked at the new X-rays with Dr. Mbasa. There were three steel pins and a few bolts in my leg. I’d never make it through a metal detector again without setting it off.
In the afternoon, Jadran finally came to visit. Mom had gone to fetch him from the Space. It was actually supposed to be a vacation week for the day students, but Jadran was allowed to go because of the accident. He worked in the garden and on the farm, together with the young residents who lived there permanently. I heard his footsteps thudding along the corridor. He banged the door open and thumped into the room.
In a single jump, he thudded onto my bed. The whole thing creaked. I only just got my leg out of the way in time.
“You’re still alive,” he panted.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m still alive.” If he’d hugged me any harder, they’d have had to operate on my ribcage.
We ate some of the candies. Well, I had one, and Jadran gobbled down all the rest.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he mumbled before every one.
The door swung open.
“Ta-daaa!” said Dr. Mbasa, as if she was bringing me a present. She pushed a little wheelchair decorated with two stickers of flames into the room. It was shining like new, and it smelled of disinfectant.
It looked so childish.
Maybe Mom should have warned Dr. Mbasa. The doctor obviously had no idea how Jadran might react when he saw me in a wheelchair. She didn’t know that Jadran’s giant body was so fragile on the inside.
Jadran quickly scrambled down from the bed and went and stood in the corner of the room, like a little kid who’s just been told off. Dr. Mbasa showed Mom how to help me into the wheelchair. It seemed simple, but Mom made a big deal of it. She did everything way too carefully, as if I might fall apart.
Jadran’s rasping breath was getting shallower and faster.
“Calm down, Giant,” whispered Mom when I was finally sitting in the wheelchair.
I stayed there while Mom and Dr. Mbasa went out to talk in the corridor. I joked to Jadran that if they wanted to hide, they’d better not go to the ICU, but Jadran didn’t get it. He was trying to fix a jacket button that had come loose and was dangling from a thread.
“Do you want me to do it for you?” I asked.
The thread snapped. The button rolled under the bed.
“I murdered you.” Jadran was shaking. “I murdered your legs!”
I wanted to give him a hug, but the wheels were in the way.
He started banging the back of his head on the wall. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Bang, bang, bang!
Every sorry was a mark on the white of the room.
I didn’t know what to say, because of course this time it really was Jadran’s fault, even if he did believe that I’d fly.
“It’s okay, Giant,” I said. “I’m not mad at you. Really.”
Jadran rammed the bed. His elbow knocked my gym bag full of clothes onto the floor. And then he was gone.
“Sorry, sorry.” He hurtled down the corridor.
“Where are you off to?” I heard Mom calling after him.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
The door to the stairs slammed behind him.
JADRAN WAS MISSING. THEY SEARCHED for him all evening and all night. Mom scoured the city, while Yasmin kept watch at home. They searched all the places my brother liked to go, the store with the cuckoo clock in the window, the bicycle bridge by the station, and the Japanese garden next to the library.
But Jadran was nowhere to be found. And so first they called in the counselors from the Space, and then the police.
They’d promised the night nurse would come let me know if there was any news. But no one came. And the night was empty and eerily quiet.
I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. I made a breathing bridge without knowing where the other side was.
Even before breakfast, Mom was standing beside my bed. Her eyes were puffy. She did her best to reassure me.
“Have another good think,” she said. “He must have gone somewhere he knows. There must be something we’re missing.”
“The geese in the park,” I said. “That house with those weird gargoyles, the fountain where he always tries to fish out the coins.”
But they’d been everywhere.
Mom helped me into the wheelchair. She wanted to go for a coffee in the cafeteria. It wasn’t as bitter as the coffee from the machine. She sat on one of the orange chairs and pulled me as close as possible.
“He’ll manage just fine,” I said as she ran her fingers through my hair.
“The three of us always manage just fine,” she said, more to herself than to me.
Murad called every fifteen minutes. Yasmin sent a photo of Jadran that the police could use in the missing person report, if that proved necessary.
I rested my head on Mom’s shoulder. She smelled a bit sweaty, but still good, like the flowery perfume that she sometimes dabbed on her neck. Mom nervously stroked my plaster cast. Like she thought it was her own leg.
I suddenly thought of a funny story that Jadran had once told me. Maybe it would cheer her up a bit.
“Do you remember that time Dad had been walking around looking for Jadran for hours?” I asked. “Dad was in a real panic. But Jadran had been hiding in a sleeping bag under your bed the whole time.”
Mom had forgotten. She hardly ever remembered anything that involved Dad.
The phone call we’d been hoping for didn’t come until eleven o’clock: Jadran had been found and he was all in one piece! I was so happy that I rang the nurses’ bell three times. When Mom started crying, I buried my face in her soft tummy.
Jadran had walked all the way to the cranes’ lake, almost ten miles away. He must have followed exactly the same route we’d driven a few days before: around the ring ro
ad, through the industrial park, and then along the winding road into the woods.
I thought about how bad Jadran must have felt last night—in the dark, with that cold wind in his face, and all those strange sounds he was so scared of, too scared to stop walking.
Near the lake was a bird-watching hut and a small visitors’ center. Jadran had headed inside because he was hungry. He was wet and chilled to the bone. The woman who worked there as a nature guide had given him some crackers and instant soup out of a packet. When Jadran confessed that he’d nearly murdered his brother, she called the police.
Mom put on her coat and wanted to set off as quickly as possible.
“Tell him they’re letting me go home tomorrow,” I said. “And that I’m truly not mad at him.”
She did her best to look cheerful.
Mom told me later that she spent almost two hours trying to persuade Jadran to go with her. But he wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t get into her car and he wouldn’t leave the visitors’ center either. He just kept staring at the TV screen. There was a documentary on about cranes and their seasonal migration.
Mika, Jadran’s personal counselor at the Space, was brought in to persuade him. He was crazy about her. He wrote her letters, sometimes as long as half a page, and said that he was going to marry her one day.
But not even Mika could get him to move.
“I want my brother,” whispered Jadran. “My brother and no one else.”
Dr. Mbasa wasn’t at all happy that I was leaving the hospital a day early. They were planning more tests and X-rays. But luckily Mom was able to talk her into it. When Jadran got an idea in his head, everything else had to give way—that was how it had always been.
The doctor insisted on personally packing my bag and walking me to the exit. I was wearing an old pair of Jadran’s sweatpants, which were baggy enough to fit my plaster cast.
“Don’t forget to think about yourself too,” she said as Murad drove toward us. “Your brother’s very special, of course. But so are you, Josh.”