When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  ‘Promise me something.’

  ‘What?’ Peri stared at Jay.

  ‘If you decide to hit me or attack me again, make sure I see you coming, like I did tonight. Don’t ever sneak up on me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I don’t lash out without thinking. I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Of all the patronising—’

  ‘I’m not patronising you, you silly little—’ He paused, took a breath. ‘Alright, now I’m patronising you. Peri, I’m twice your size and I’m trained to—’ He broke off and sat next to her on the grass, pushed wet strands of hair back from her cheeks. ‘Peri, I saved you in that storm. You’ll always have a claim on me, something more than one adult usually owes another. That’s just the way it is. Funny how when you do something for someone, you owe them, not the other way round.’

  ‘Like me and Hugo.’

  ‘Yes. Someone told me once the surest way to get someone to care for you is, somehow, make them do something for you. People fall into the trap of doing the opposite all the time; they serve another, hoping they’ll be loved for it, but all they do is fall deeper themselves with everything they do.’

  ‘That sounds cynical.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s the way love actually works. It’s not about freedom or equality or self-interest, two independent individuals coming together, balancing, give and take the same amount; that’s a transaction, a balance sheet, not love. Love is service or it is not love. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about service. That is what my life has been. The more that is demanded of you, the more you give. The more you love. As a mother, you know this. The one you love most is the one who has taken you over, put your very life at risk.’

  Peri listened to the grass shift in the warm breeze. In the dark east, summer lightning split, white water falling down distant purple cliffs of sky.

  So that’s why Peter and Avis never cared for Hugo and I did. Do. I never understood. They never gave up anything, they never risked anything, and the less they did for him, the less they loved him. I thought it was the other way round, that they did nothing for him because they didn’t love him. Maybe that’s what they thought too. Probably wondered what was wrong with them. If they’d just acted like they loved him, day in, day out, wiped his bottom, bathed him, fed him, got up every night, love would have come. No escaping the work if you want love.

  Peri squeezed Jay’s hand and got to her feet. ‘I’m going to sleep.’

  The next morning, Peri set Hugo down on the sandy river flat and stared at him, looking at each feature more closely, with more attention than she had ever dared. She had played with his fingers and toes and rubbed his tummy and kissed his nose, mostly when Avis and Peter had not been around, but she had never dared take that inventory of the newborn that parents do, looking at each feature to see that it’s perfect, to see who it resembles in the family. She had been afraid to do that, afraid perhaps of loving him too much, or in the wrong way, and what would have been the point of trying to see who he looked like anyway? It had been none of her business.

  Now Peri looked with new eyes. She was his mother. Hugo linked her to the family, the parents and grandparents, she’d never known: a living message from the past she could not read. The slight tilt at the corner of his eyes; the mouth with its full upper lip crumpled, a newly opened poppy; fragile eyelids lit at the edges with violet shade, like paper-thin shells: whose features were these? His brow, so wide across the temples, that was Peter, her link to him and generations of his family forged, unbreakable.

  The deep anger kindled last night still burned in her. Peter had known and never told her. He’d made love to her while she was pregnant and never told her. And Avis, was she in on it too? That would explain her coldness. But why would she have gone along with it? Peter had made her, Peri, pregnant and he’d let her bear the baby, thinking Hugo was not hers. He’d known and kept this from her. He’d stolen Hugo. He was the kidnapper.

  Peri ran her hands down Hugo’s long legs. That could be her or Peter. His toes, rounded out at the end, like frog toes, and his shiny dark hair, the slightly square face, the rounded chin, that was her. How had she missed it? She hadn’t looked for resemblance, would not have believed it if she’d seen it. Some babies look like the men and women they will become but Hugo had the blank perfection of childhood. His adult face was still hidden.

  Peri picked him up again, breathing in his hair and the skin at the back of his neck. He smelled of his own shortbread smell, river water, earth. So hard to grasp, to truly believe, that not only was it permitted for her to love Hugo, now it was her duty, it was required. That would take getting used to.

  What was the difference between choosing to love Hugo and having to love him? What did that feel like? She wasn’t sure she’d ever had a choice. But she was bound to him now, there truly was no choice. What a relief—not just that she would not give him up but that she could not.

  Her own parents must have thought they were doing the right thing, giving her up, and she knew that they’d been wrong. She could not do the same to Hugo.

  Early afternoon Finch came to find Peri, who had stayed by the river with Hugo all morning, playing with him, feeding him, dozing next to him while he napped. She’d washed his hair, rinsing the suds into a bowl Finch gave her and, carrying Hugo on her hip, lugged the water away to dump it near their waste pit, well away from the river, as Finch had instructed.

  All the while Peri wondered: how do I feel? How should I feel? Should I try to be with Hugo even more intensely than I thought I had the right to before? Or should I be calmer, more relaxed, the way a real parent should be, trusting in a bond that wasn’t, or shouldn’t be, under such pressure? That would be more sane, wouldn’t it? Thinking about it, it’s obvious I have no bloody idea what normal love between parent and child looks like. Did I see any in my childhood? The way Peter and Avis were with Hugo, that couldn’t have been normal, could it? Maybe for them it was. But not what you’d want. No. I don’t think so.

  So when Finch urged Peri to come on a flight with her and Jay, she was reluctant to leave Hugo but also relieved for a brief respite from the uncertainty of renegotiating her relationship with her baby. Her baby! If in fact that was what she was doing. Really, that was not right. She was realigning her thoughts but the way she looked after Hugo would not change. What changed was her approach to their future and she’d not had time to think about that yet.

  ‘We’re going on a short flight for Shaheen’s sake,’ Finch said. ‘Come with us. You need to use your muscles today so they don’t seize up altogether.’

  Peri left Hugo with Raf and Griffon, who’d come down to the river flat and were now playing with him roughly in the way that young men will. Hugo splashed and giggled with them as if he would burst with joy.

  ‘See?’ said Finch, as Peri paused before turning onto the path leading to the launch run at the cliff edge. ‘He’s happy!’

  Shows how much you know, thought Peri as she followed Finch. Hugo was not really old enough yet to spend long periods without her. Especially since he was not used to anyone else looking after him.

  Jay met Finch and Peri on the cliff edge. He had his falconer’s glove tucked into his waistband and a whistle on a thong around his neck.

  ‘Wind dummy?’ said Finch.

  Jay nodded, looking up and away from them.

  He took off into the afternoon light. The sun was high, the sky lit with white puffs of cloud above them evenly spread, handfuls of crumpled paper scattered across a floor.

  ‘Mid-level cloud,’ Jay was saying to Finch as Peri rose to meet them. ‘Between two and six thousand metres. Ac flo.’

  Peri closed the gap with Finch and Jay, who didn’t look like they were working at all. They floated up like puffs of smoke and were almost as hard to see. There was nothing shiny on them, no telltale glints from
watches or jewellery, no flash of glitter from the wings like she was used to seeing in the City. These two were virtually invisible, not something any City flier wanted to be.

  ‘Altocumulus floccus,’ said Finch to Peri. ‘Higher up. But we’ve got some cumulus over there to head towards, long as it doesn’t start to o’d.’

  ‘Air rising ahead of a cold front,’ continued Jay. ‘Could’ve transformed from altostratus or cumulus or arisen from turbulence or convection at middle cloud level. Means there could be a thunderstorm later. Finch, you two acted as lemmings just then. What’s the point of me playing wind dummy if you don’t pay attention?’

  ‘I did,’ protested Finch. ‘I just did it very fast.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Jay.

  Finch said, ‘Okay. I didn’t. Sorry.’ She added, ‘So, did you check all the indicators before you came out? Not just wind but height of cloudbase? Lapse rate?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Jay. ‘Can’t you calculate lapse rate yourself by now?’

  ‘You know I can’t.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jay, ‘you can try remembering that in the afternoon of a warm day like this, environmental lapse rate is likely to be greater than the dry adiabatic lapse rate, which gives you a superadiabatic lapse rate. Yes?’

  ‘Hey,’ said Finch. ‘I know I just set a bad example to Peri but you indulging your frustration with spoonfeeding all of us wuffos, and to you everyone’s a wuffo, is a poor example too. You could explain to Peri what the hell you’re talking about.’

  Peri concentrated on the way each beat of her wings forced huge draughts of air into her, and glided into the gyre Finch and Jay had set up, mounting higher with them in wide, easy curves. Higher and higher until the land flattened out into a mantle of colours. This high there was less fear, her breath came back. Here she could really fly. They had slipped the surly bonds of earth. They rose higher, until the air began to chill and the clouds were nearer, grey along their undersides.

  ‘Lapse rate,’ said Jay. ‘The simple version is that lapse rate describes the decrease in air temperature with increasing elevation—’ He broke off as a piercing witchiw-witchiw fell through the air towards them.

  ‘Shaheen,’ said Finch. ‘She’s waiting-on. That means she’ll stay above us until we get to where we’re going.’

  ‘There is something useful you can practise. Cloud snapshots,’ Jay said as they rode the lift towards cloudbase. ‘A habit you should get into. Clearly, you need to keep a better eye on the weather.’

  It was true. She did not understand the sky or its clouds nearly well enough.

  ‘So,’ Jay said, ‘you need to watch out that clouds are not overdeveloping. Cumulus have the potential, always, to o’d, and if they do, you’re going to get strong wind, rain, possibly hail or thunderstorms. Get into the habit of taking mental snapshots of clouds on your flight path. Take them regularly, say once a minute. Find a point of comparison to work out their speed or development—their position relative to a mountain or a tree, or height relative to another cloud. Clouds can change surprisingly fast and with nothing in the sky to give them scale except other clouds it’s easy to lose track of how fast they’re growing—or decaying. If a cloud is growing taller rapidly, well then, you know what to do.’

  ‘Get the fuck out of there,’ said Peri.

  Jay laughed.

  They flew westward, heading towards a bank of cumulus clouds piling up on the horizon. Peri tried to practise taking mental snapshots of the cumulus far ahead but it was a struggle. There was nothing near them that was stable as a point of comparison and it was difficult even to try to fix all the shapes and heights and positions of the clouds in relation to each other in her mind and then compare those things again a minute or two later.

  Jay’s the best flier I’ve ever seen. But some of this stuff I’m learning is taking all the joy out of flying. How I can feel the rush of it when I’m worrying about blue holes and my energy bank and taking cloud snapshots every sixty seconds? Is this really what I wanted when I got my wings?

  Finch seemed to pick up Peri’s mood. ‘How’re you going?’

  ‘Not so good.’

  ‘It might help if you understand you’re looking at a few different types of cumulus there. For example, those scattered puffy bits of cumulus nearest us are classified as cumulus mediocris or cu med. Not an appealing name but it’s a pretty type of cloud, the kind you want to see on a nice day for a picnic. Mediocris just means they don’t get that high. Shifting to the plane behind those, you’ve got a striking example of cumulus pileus—’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Peri. ‘Cu pil?’

  ‘Exactly. And those gorgeous deadly big fellas behind the cu pil, the ones that look like giant cauliflowers exploding upwards in slow motion?’

  Peri laughed.

  ‘Cumulus congestus.’

  ‘Cu con?’

  ‘Yeah. Cumulus always indicate instability which is one concrete result of Jay’s precious superadiabatic lapse rate.’

  ‘My head hurts,’ Peri said.

  ‘Practise, my dear. That is all. I’m sure learning to fly isn’t as hard as learning to play the piano, you know. It’s just that the consequences are different. No-one ever died from hitting a wrong note.’

  Jay stooped into a dive, Finch and Peri following. They pulled out of the dive and began a wide spiral downwards.

  They dropped towards forest rolling down into a shallow valley. Peri could see forest all around to the horizon. They dropped further and the country began to resolve into individual trees, rock faces. Now they were down in the shallow valley, flying not far above the treetops. Peri’s skill at this kind of flying had increased dramatically in the last day or two. As they sped over the treetops Peri saw a patch of soft green too lush for this wilderness. The old, empty farm stood out like a green beacon. Jay slowed, diving steeply, then beat his wings hard to soften his impact.

  ‘Ugh, boink,’ shuddered Finch as Jay hit the ground. ‘Too hard and too fast for me. Guess he’s used to it.’

  Finch spiralled up, waving Peri to follow her.

  ‘Watch,’ said Finch.

  Jay raised his whistle and blew three short blasts. Shaheen circled below them.

  ‘She’s hunting now,’ said Finch.

  ‘What did Jay call her? A haggard hawk?’

  ‘Most falconers fly hawks they’ve raised themselves, who’re almost afraid to go out of sight of the man or woman who’s fed them since they hatched. But a haggard hawk is a queen; she’s wild-caught, full-grown into her breeding plumage. She may even have raised young. She’s a survivor who’s been able to feed herself for years. Naturally they’re much riskier to fly, easier to lose back to the wild. But Jay flies her at hack—that is, free—and she returns, especially since her tiercel was killed. I wonder if she doesn’t see Jay as her mate, maybe a kind of super-male, though of course with birds of prey the females are larger, so greater size is not a masculine quality.’

  ‘What is a masculine quality, then, for birds of prey?’ said Peri.

  ‘Lightness,’ said Finch. ‘Size and power is for the females. To hunt with a female peregrine is the ultimate for falconers and only the female is given the title of falcon.’

  Jay raised his arm to the falcon.

  Peri heard the whistle of wind and saw the bird plummeting, a dark thunderbolt. The falcon caught something in mid-air and brought it to Jay. He fed her a morsel and with a chinking of bells she was away again.

  Peri circled higher. Her vision grew stronger the higher she balanced, just here, under the clouds. Down there were the old round yards, railings sagging and broken. The spot was peaceful, melancholy, reminding Peri of the abandoned farms in the hills behind Janeane’s property. She dropped, imitating the falcon’s dive, and pulled herself up, beating her wings strongly to gain height a
gain.

  All the way out here, we’re safe. But for how long? In the City, we’re both in danger, unless I return Hugo to Peter, all on his terms. Give him back what he bought. Can’t do that now. Finch was right. Now I have to find a way to claim Hugo.

  The falcon stooped again and brought something to Jay, her every movement heralded by the small music of the bells.

  Peri balanced herself on a warm updraft; how long could she soar without a beat of her wings? Her control was growing so fine that she could concentrate on the minute angle of each primary feather.

  She needed time to think. What would it be like if she stayed here? She could see herself, long green years ahead, years of flying and foraging, of growing tough like the Audax fliers. Could she make that choice? To hide in the woods? She’d never be able to come out into the world again. These people would be her whole world.

  Audax fliers won’t stay here forever though. And what about Hugo? This life’s impossible for him. No other kids here and what would he learn, except to be an outlaw? All they care about is flying; to them he’s incomplete, just like he is to Peter and Avis. How long can I keep carrying him when I fly? No way for an unwinged person to live with Audax.

  Jay fed Shaheen the small birds she’d caught and bagged the rabbits for carrying back. The two of them took to the air. In a heartbeat Shaheen was flying above all of them, her long, slender wings beating in shallow, powerful strokes. Soon she was out of sight.

  ‘She’ll be resting on one of her perches on the cliff face by the time we reach Heavener,’ said Jay. ‘She does about fifty klicks per hour in level flight. Of course, when she dives you’re talking well over three hundred klicks per hour—that’s ninety metres per second—fastest creature on the planet.’ He sounded as proud as if Shaheen were his own daughter. He tossed the bag of rabbits to Finch. ‘Take that back for us?’

  ‘Sure. What are you doing?’

  ‘See you back at Heavener. Peri, come with me.’

  ‘Don’t be long,’ said Finch. ‘Sky’s becoming more unstable.’