Soon she was a black spot diminishing against darkening clouds.
‘What is it?’ said Peri, following Jay as he circled above the old farm.
‘It’ll be here somewhere. Should be, on a summer afternoon like this.’ Jay turned sharply, the fringe of his primary feathers brushing her wing.
He rose higher, scanning, then dropped.
Jay centred his gyre above an overgrown garden that must have been near the now-vanished farmhouse. Directly below them sprawled a tangled mass of deep green shiny leaves and pink flowers. Peri circled above Jay.
Distant bees or nameless grass-dwellers hummed, tuning themselves up in the afternoon sun. Her fears crowded in on her. She had to leave Audax and Heavener Ridge. The sun melted the tightness in her limbs, warming her sore muscles, burnishing her feathers. She sighed, wishing her thoughts, her fears, would dissolve in the heat.
The heat. Sun had awakened something. Peri spiralled over the dense leaves, the pink flowers. Just here, luscious scent streaming upwards in the golden furnace of afternoon, concentrated essence of a thousand roses. Sky steaming in roses. Clouds simmering vapour of roses. She breathing roses, sweltering in roses, sweating roses, rose tear warm on her cheek.
‘I see you’ve got it,’ said Jay, sweeping closer, the whoosh of his wings a steady beat in the still air.
‘It’s bliss.’
‘It’s a thermal. Sometimes you can find a thermal by scent. You can fly along and suddenly be startled by a smell, putrid or gorgeous, rising along with the thermal. I found this one above the rosebushes a while ago. Knew it’d appear again on a warm afternoon like this. That’s not all. Other things rise too. Look.’
Peri looked down, focused. Scraps of colour freighted the rising air: butterflies lavender, blue, yellow, white; watergreen dragonflies; pink petals. Peri turned as tightly as she could so that she was almost hovering, allowing the warm air infused with perfume, blossom and insects to engulf her.
‘Thank you,’ said Peri.
‘We need to go,’ said Jay.
A stiff breeze sprang up, blowing an ominous cloudscape towards Peri and Jay; they had to work hard to make headway against it.
There was no mistaking the rapid growth of these clouds. Peri was flying into the most complex sky she’d ever seen, other than the supercell storm. She was flying into a series of shifting vertical planes, like the layers of flat scenery, one behind the other, creating a sense of great depth.
The nearest layer, the one they were now flying through, was darkening sky with wisps of black cloud. Behind that towered a cumulus congestus cloud that bulged deep eggplant purple and must be thousands of metres high. Directly behind and swelling out from the side of that cloud, the afternoon sun lit up another mass of cumulus congestus so that each billow glowed white, crisp as frost, intoxicatingly bright next to the dark cloud massed against it. Behind the white cloud shone sky as blue as heaven, as if all the darkness in front belonged to another day altogether.
‘Wow,’ said Peri.
‘CC over there,’ said Jay. ‘Need to get moving.’
He accelerated and Peri pushed herself to match his pace.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing to the purple cloud. Horizontal flickers of lightning. ‘Cloud-to-cloud lightning.’
They swooped as low as they dared. It was scary, thrilling, racing these clouds, speeding over the trees and rolling plain, and now she was putting it all together, glancing at the land formations below, comparing them to the clouds, glancing down again. When her concentration was this single-minded, when she was flying for her life, then she could do this, put it all together the way Jay was teaching her. Simple. All she had to do was think of absolutely nothing else. Wings are heavy unless you give something up. All she had to give up was everything. Everything but flying.
She hardly wanted to admit it to herself but there was a release in concentrating on her flying. A relief. Her Flight training in the City had been taken out of her own sleeping time. Even then she’d always been anxious. What if Hugo wakes, what if he needs me, what if the milk I’ve left for him isn’t enough?
Now there was a freedom in wearing herself out with such single-minded purpose. She felt guilty, indulging in an illicit pleasure. She had to push thoughts of Hugo—her son, her son—aside to concentrate on each detail of finetuning her skills. She was racing those overhanging clouds, knowing this time was precious and running out so fast, even though her new understanding, surprising her every few minutes like a cold wave submerging her, was both delicious and anxiety-provoking. Creeping up on her, Peri felt, was a lust for Flight.
Now, gloriously, they burst out from under the purple cloud. Its rumbling faded behind them and they sped bathed in full sunshine over the valley leading up to Heavener Ridge and now they were sweeping up on the ridgelift and she and Jay were laughing, silly from relief and joy and the rush of it, she wasn’t losing that at all, it could only grow higher and faster and stronger, just like that erupting purple cumulus.
By the time they splashed into the river, Peri was exhausted and elated in mind and body.
Late afternoon stretched ahead of her. Again she played with Hugo in the tea-coloured river pool. It was warm and clear and Peri felt calmer than she had for months, for years. She had not felt this carefree since playing in the river at Janeane’s when she was four years old.
Shaheen sat on her favourite perch, a branch overhanging the water. Ek-ek-ek-ek, she said a few times, the sound resonant and harsh, seeming to reprimand them when Hugo’s squeals of delight became too shrill. Where are your fledglings? said Peri to the falcon. Did you scold them like that? Shaheen fluffed out her feathers and dozed in the sun. With the perfect discipline and energy conservation of the hunter, she could spend hours motionless, as if carved in stone.
Peri concentrated on each minute as it passed, feel of sun on her back, water streaming off her oiled feathers, the pleasant ache in her strengthening flight muscles. In her mind every second was the startling knowledge: she was Hugo’s mother. His real mother. She was right to care for him, to love him as much as she did. Every few seconds she glanced at him again, measuring what this new distance, or closeness, might be.
And she could feel how she was growing in power and skill with every hour she spent in the air with the Audax fliers. Every moment with them she was becoming more the flier she had hoped to be. The airy lightness she’d always dreamed of was at last unfolding.
How ironic that she should grasp these competing ecstasies of her life here at the same time, with Audax.
There was always that uneasiness; whatever Peri did the other clamoured for her. Mother and flier—both selves had grown stronger, more intense, in her time with Audax, as if she had been a fire, banked and smouldering, and now she blazed, burning high and hot. Wouldn’t she burn out all the sooner, be scattered, ashes to the wind? For a second she could understand Avis and Peter’s ambivalence towards Hugo. She would not be this torn if Hugo were a fledgling. But he was not and so the things she most loved tore her in opposite directions.
Peri nursed Hugo, then fed him dinner from the cool larder in the river. The sun was still strong and warm on her back but it was starting to lower and Hugo was nodding. He was tired after all the playing with Raf and then with Peri.
Peri wrapped Hugo and took him back to the overhang. Leto was there and said she was about to sleep herself. Peri left Hugo asleep, snuggled into Leto’s side, and walked back down the track. Her whole body was coming back to sensual life, surging with energy as her fears dropped away, as the rush of Flight was hers, more and more every day.
When she stepped down to the river pool, Jay was there, changing a dressing on one of his wounds. He straightened up and caught Peri’s eye. ‘Give me a hand,’ he said, indicating a dressing on his back, under his wing. ‘I can’t reach it.’
‘I can’t
either,’ said Peri. ‘You’re too tall.’
Jay sat down on the sand and Peri sat on the log behind him, straddling his narrow waist with her legs. He leaned back into her and arched out his wing. Peri gently detached the bandage and pad and cleaned the cut and surrounding bruise.
Jay winced.
‘What happened?’
He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He handed her a first-aid package.
Peri opened it and smoothed on the new skin and dressing it contained. She ran her hand carefully down his outstretched wing as far as she could reach.
‘Let me check your feathers,’ she said. ‘Make sure there aren’t any more broken ones that need fixing.’
Jay turned and looked at her.
‘Okay,’ he said.
Peri worked over every dark and golden feather on Jay’s wings, grooming them until they shone. She leaned in against his back to reach the feathers at the leading edge, along the top. She let her hand run up his neck and felt him shiver.
‘Jay,’ she whispered, pressed against him.
‘Yes?’
‘Take the bracelet off me.’
‘No.’
She kissed his neck.
Jay stood up and turned to face her. He bent down and helped her up, circling her wrist with his hand. He walked along the river, still holding her wrist. She almost had to run to keep up.
Jay took her along the river to a small private beach. He was all easy confidence taking her in his arms. Jay’s mouth was soft on hers, he was taller and far more massive than Peter, his skin smooth and brown and warm, his muscles dense and unyielding.
Jay kissed her. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I want to know more about you,’ said Peri. ‘You’re the most mysterious one here. How come you know everything? You know what I went through in the storm. You knew how to fix me and Hugo.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Jay, looking down at her. Peri’s gaze flicked to the dressings on his chest and arms, the tattoos on his upper arms.
Niko said, ‘ Your six years of rigorous training with the best of the best.’
‘Oh my god. You were a Raptor!’
‘No,’ said Jay. ‘I am a Raptor.’
So this was a Raptor. He pulled her on top of him and entered her and she sighed, letting herself soften in a way she never could with Peter. That had been all tension and rush, hard exquisite lust, but this was slow bliss and she kissed Jay deeply. Jay held her tight, easing her, slowing her until they barely moved and she was melting like honey in the sinking sun. Minutes, maybe hours, hung suspended in the hush and warmth of the early evening and she wondered if she could pass out with pleasure.
Afterwards, Peri lay pillowed on one of Jay’s wings, her head on his arm. Jay shivered when her hand grazed one of the dressings as she stroked him.
‘Injuries do it for some girls,’ said Jay.
‘Oh, come on,’ laughed Peri.
‘True,’ he said. ‘I saw the way you looked at me after the raid.’
‘You looked even tougher. But in need of loving care. I’ll bet you had lots of girls when you were a Raptor.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Jay. ‘When I say I’m still a Raptor, I mean it. Once a Raptor, always a Raptor.’
‘Really?’ said Peri, propping herself up on one elbow. A curved leaf from the tree above them drifted down and she caught it in her hand. She stroked the leaf down his chest. ‘What do you mean?’
Jay sighed. ‘The treatments and the training are different. More extreme. I can do things you can’t.’
‘So you have superpowers,’ said Peri.
‘In a way. But I’ll pay the price.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I won’t live as long as you.’
‘Oh.’
‘That was the price of leaving my village. You paid a price to leave your village.’
‘How did you become a Raptor?’ said Peri.
‘The men of my islands have been an export for generations. We’re big and strong and have a warrior history. We like to fight, I’ve been told. So we’ve always been in demand from the armies of the world.’
‘So they came for you?’
‘I always knew they would. I wanted to get away, see something of the wider world, but I also knew my own worth. I held out against the recruiters until I was promised Raptor training. You know the saying Be careful what you wish for, you might get it? Well, I got my wish alright.’
‘What happened?’
Jay closed his eyes as if to remember better. His voice was slow and warm; Peri had never seen him so relaxed. This was not Jay as the rest of Audax usually saw him.
‘I can’t describe six years of Raptor treatments and training but there were times I thought I was going to lose my mind. It was as if every part of myself, every mental and physical characteristic I thought of as me, was put into a molecular blender and atomised and reconstituted into something else. Military training can be like that at the best of times but this was a thousand times more challenging. I knew only the other Raptors had the slightest idea what I was going through and even then only the ones in my intake. They change the techniques and treatments, refine them, all the time. The comradeship of the Raptors in my unit was the only thing that got me through.’
Peri said, ‘I wish I’d had someone who was going through the transition with me. I was so alone and it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done, that and giving birth—but the terror of getting my wings lasted longer.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I needed help just to learn how to get my brain to move my wings. They were just heavy, dead things. They felt stuck on, not-me. For the first days after the surgery I didn’t dare even look in the mirror. I couldn’t bear to see what I’d become. It wasn’t until I started being able to use them that I could stand to look. Even then I wasn’t sure whether I was a monster or not. The wings themselves were beautiful but I wasn’t sure about the whole package, whether all the parts of me fitted together anymore.’
Jay opened his eyes and looked at Peri. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. ‘I didn’t go through that,’ he said after a moment. ‘We were up and into rehabilitation and training so quickly. I became a new person but never had time to give it much thought. I’m glad it’s over now but I wouldn’t have missed it. We did things that make me shake my head now.’
‘Like what? What are your superpowers?’
‘We used to fly up into the low stratosphere. Our officers said if a bunch of fucking geese could fucking surf the fucking jet stream then so could we. Were we going to let ourselves be shat on by a shit-for-brains goose? Sir, no, sir, we would not. When we started we had thermal suits and oxygen but all that was cut back as the treatments progressed, until we could do it ourselves. Most of us, anyway. The attrition rate was high.’ Jay paused. Was he remembering what flying in the jet stream was like? Peri thought of her own instant at the top of the storm, seeing the shining curve of the earth for one moment, then blackness and falling, an eternity of falling. Jay had experienced that. Alone among anyone she was ever likely to meet, he knew what she had seen.
‘I remember,’ said Jay almost dreamily. ‘I remember looking down from that high. If it was clear I could see roads and rivers, just squiggles, like they are on a map. I could see the sea and the white band of surf but no movement. I could see grey and brown, darker green along the coast and over the hills, patches of lighter green around the towns and along roads. And the towns themselves looked like odd-shaped areas of coloured dots scattered among more uniform browns and greys and greens.’
‘You must have taken Zefiryn to see like that,’ said Peri.
‘Of course,’ said Jay. ‘Zefiryn enabled us to deploy characteristics of eagle visi
on, among other effects. The higher you fly, the more sharply you see.
‘The most amazing thing was flying over mountains, especially around four or five klicks up. You fly along a big valley or the side of a massif. Then head for the highest mountain or plateau and you soar up along the rock face and just clear the top. Then swoop over the top and drop down into the valley. Gives you vertigo like nothing else. It’s dangerous because the weather in high mountains is so unpredictable.’
‘What was hardest about your training?’
‘One of their favourite things was to take us up blindfolded—like being fucking kidnapped, over and over. They wanted us to focus on bird navigation abilities. Could they release us over unfamiliar territory and could we find our way back to base without instruments? Did we have compass sense? Map sense? We’d circle our release spot and off we’d go. Some we never saw again. I often wondered what happened to them. They kept on, though, our superior officers, they were fucking ruthless, trialling us under different conditions. Night-time. Cloud cover. Rain. Storms. Over water. Over land. You name the terrain and weather and we had to do it.’
Jay sighed and crossed his arms behind his head. ‘When we were at the very limit of how high we could fly, we’d develop hypoxia, even with oxygen, and when you do you become euphoric but it’s weird because the colours grey out. So coming down was a real rush as the colours flooded back.’
‘Wow. That sounds incredible.’ Peri ran her hand through Jay’s hair. ‘These lightning flashes on your wings and hair,’ she said. ‘Are they to do with your unit?’
Jay shook his head. ‘No. It’s the kind of thing Raptors do. Adolescent, really.’
‘I love them,’ said Peri.
‘Yes,’ said Jay, laughing, ‘but then you’re so young, even younger than I was when I started training, so that fits.’
Peri dozed in Jay’s arms and woke into darkness, to find him kissing her. Her body was still sore from all her bruising in the storm but she eagerly enfolded him. He spread his wings over her and she breathed in the scent of neroli from the oil he used to groom his feathers. It occurred to Peri, as she felt the warm silkiness of her own and Jay’s feathers all around her and the heady drifts of scent released whenever they moved, that this was her first time with a flier since acquiring her own wings.
When We Have Wings Page 37