When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  Now I had to sit and hope that nothing went wrong in surgery, that nothing went wrong as he recovered, that nothing went wrong ever again that might be my fault.

  Lily chewed at the side of one of her fingers, an old habit I thought she’d disciplined herself out of long ago. Gently I pulled her hand away from her mouth. She let it rest in mine for a moment before twisting both hands together in her lap.

  ‘We’re going to be here for a while,’ Lily said.

  I stood up and started to walk around the room. Along the blue line running down the corridor towards the swing doors at one end of the room, then back towards the windows at the other end. The surgery, while not especially risky, I’d been told, was taxing and time- consuming—all those muscles and nerves to knit up perfectly.

  The sun didn’t move that morning. Every time I paced up to the window, it stood in the same place in the sky as before. Hospital time. Dead white time that lurches forward only for meals, and not even then if you’re not a patient. I insisted on searching for food and returned with soft drinks and plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Lily didn’t touch these either.

  The afternoon was searing, sky molten white. A woman in blue scrubs splashed with blood—Tom’s?—approached us, undoing her mask. ‘Thomas is in recovery now,’ she told us. ‘He’s fine. You can see him when they bring him up to the ward.’

  Lily sprang to her feet. Now she was excited. After all this waiting, Thomas was a present she’d finally get to unwrap. What would he be like?

  Tom’s bed was next to a window facing west. Sun poured over him. Lily and I stood looking down at him. Eyes closed, sleeping. Sheet pulled up to his neck.

  Lily reached out and picked up the hem of the sheet.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I have to see.’ Slowly, she drew the sheet down to his ankles.

  And there they were. I had to admit, Ruokonen had outdone herself.

  Tom’s white body, thin as a peeled stick, was hidden. He was covered in gorgeous heavy warm wings that lay on him as if carved from pure gold.

  Lily wept.

  The sun lit up each feather, so perfectly sculpted and detailed, as if etched.

  We stood and watched him breathe, wings lifting ever so slightly, as the sun sank behind us, and as the angle of its rays shifted, Tom’s feathers flashed hard green.

  I bent down and kissed my son.

  Wind beat the trees till they raked the sky. Keening entered Peri’s dreams, that rising note signalling the impending wall of storm. She lay on her back, breathing fast, abandoning herself to voluptuous fear, pleasure as pure and dreadful as her moment of falling with Jay. When she dropped into her breathing, listening to the wind, she could feel her weightlessness at the top of the storm, the second she’d hung there, bright curve of earth below. She often closed her eyes and lived that eternity, that breathlessness before dropping into the dark, its sublime terror the talisman of her soul.

  Frisk stretched himself along the end of the bed, his fur tiled dark and light in the pattern of perforated light falling through the window. She leaned over, buried her hands in his mane. Good to feel the rough warmth of his fur. Frisk yawned and turned over, still asleep.

  Peri rolled over and shoved her head under a pillow. Hugo wailed for her if he heard thunder. On those nights they slept curled together. Though not frightened of storms herself anymore––so many things no longer frightened her—when she lay asleep, defences down, and howling wind wove through her dreams, she woke distressed when Hugo was not there, hoping someone was comforting him at Peter’s house.

  She got up and padded to Hugo’s room; his absence, his warm sweet smell, filled it. She shut the door and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. The leaves of the oak outside the kitchen window shed a warm glow over her as they moved.

  Peri wished she knew what had become of Avis. Peter had heard nothing. There was an investigation, Peter even coming under suspicion, but there was no evidence she’d met with foul play of any kind. Fowl play, fliers remarked sagely to each other. She’s turned Wild. Any fool could work that out. And all they can say is—not proven. Her disappearance was sensational: she’d been famous, and now that she’d vanished she became more so. Now Peri’s fears took the same form, over and over. Avis Wild; ravening, hollow-eyed, shrieking as she snatched Hugo back into the sky.

  Peri set her empty glass in the sink. Wind buffeted her flat. Hugo had his own house, the one Peter had decided he should live in. She knew Peter was talented but had thought it was talent for mass, shine, awe. She hadn’t known he had it in him to create a house like a cloud, each room grown into its own exquisite tint. Sunset colours: pink, purple-blue, clear red. Walls rolled in waves or unfurled like flowers. They looked none the worse when Hugo splashed paint on them or hit them with his trucks.

  Peri sighed, looked out the window. This was going to be one of the bad nights, when the walls closed in. Her ability to bear confinement was diminishing alarmingly. Often she slept in the silvered oak outside, dozing on the wooden platform built by other fliers, listening to the shifting air. It took her back to her time on Heavener with Audax. That felt right but unsettling. As if the part of her that was Wild arose in those times, grew stronger. She had to make peace with that self, the being she became when she flew.

  Back to the bedroom then. She knew when she was beaten. She pulled on her night-flying skims that rasped shreds of light from moon and star to make her faintly visible in the dark.

  Peri flew out over the ocean, always where she most liked to fly. Below rocked a scatter of brilliant needles stuck into the sea. A few fishing boats, not enough to justify the word ‘fleet’. There were no fishing fleets anymore.

  Not long after Peri started working at Flight Gym, Niko had returned, alone, to the City. And was promptly sued by Diomedea for publishing their research papers. Niko was jubilant. Diomedea had made the fatal error of fighting Niko on his own ground. They never dreamed it would go this far, he said. They thought they could scare me. Never, he said to Peri, never sue anyone who has nothing to lose. Nothing they can do to me except tell me to stop publishing and everyone’s already copied everything.

  As the case ground on, Diomedea realised it had made a disastrous mistake from which it could not now extricate itself. The worst part for Diomedea was that every detail of its research, its company operations, its relations with competitors and customers, was dragged through open court and put on the public record. Niko and his asso- ciates aired allegations on everything from collusion with MicroRNA/Corvid on drug pricing to falsifying research on treatment side effects.

  ‘There is an odd thing,’ said Niko a month or so into the case. ‘Even though they’re suing me, they sent someone to talk to me about you.’

  Peri looked at him.

  ‘They know you’ll listen to me.’

  ‘What am I supposed to listen to?’

  ‘Well, they’re still interested in you and Hugo, of course.’

  Of course. Niko said Diomedea had admitted that in a sense it was responsible for what had happened to Peri’s father. ‘They’re offering you compensation. Without prejudice. They’re not calling it compensation but that’s what it is. They’ll support you in anything you want to do—any studies, any projects of your own—to a very considerable degree.’

  ‘If I let them study me and Hugo,’ Peri said.

  The thing is, I want to know myself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Niko. ‘It might be important for your future and Hugo’s, to know what effect your father’s treatments had on you.’

  ‘Tell them I’ll think about it, Niko. I do often wonder if that’s why I had such a strong yearning to fly from the start. I’d rather think it was just me, though, not an urge implanted in me by the company that experimented on my father.’

  Peri headed east, further away from la
nd. How far could she fly? She had been pushing herself, extending her range. She was in training.

  Jay was planning something. They wanted her help. You’re becoming well known, Niko had said. In the right circles, among people who know about these things. I hear you’re just about the most sought-after Flight instructor in the City.

  Niko had also told her, when he first came to see her on his return to the City, that Finch was dead. She’d been cornered that night, forced up and into aerial combat against a Wild. Jay had seen her fall. They couldn’t look for her body; they had to save themselves. What a lonely, terrifying death. Peri often saw, out of the corner of her eye, a dark shape falling from the sky into a death spiral. Once the wings were set in the wrong angle there was no way to get them back up, no way to generate forward thrust.

  Jay went back to find you, Niko had told Peri. But you were gone. He searched for you, at risk to himself.

  Had Jay’s search drawn the Wild away from pursuing her?

  Jay had brought down quite a few of the Wild, Niko had con- tinued, but there were too many so he organised our retreat. He blamed himself for Finch’s death; he believed if he’d prepared us better it wouldn’t have happened. I don’t agree; those were the risks we were taking. Anyway, he went back for you. I thought you should know that.

  ‘What happened to Shaheen?’ Peri asked.

  ‘We don’t know. I like to think she’s found herself a territory, another mate. Good thing Jay kept her free. Otherwise she’d have been killed that night.’

  Ahead of Peri, a cloud-dragon was swallowing stars, its crooked shape blotting out the sky. She set herself to climb above it. It was like seeing a broad path leading ahead of her, higher into the sky. She’d been seeing more and more in that way. Seeing the path and then flying along it; it didn’t matter whether the trajectory was straight or curved. In daylight, at least, it might be linked to a dim ability to perceive ultraviolet. She could sense colour gradients in the sky; they altered her patterns of flying, particularly for long flights. Niko and Jay said they’d been exploring that too and wondered why no-one had spoken of it. Too hard to describe. Peri herself couldn’t but she also thought City fliers didn’t notice it because they didn’t need it. They didn’t use it. They rarely flew long distance.

  Jay did, though. We’re thinking about real long-distance flying, he said. We’ll head out across the ocean. Like a migration. No-one’s ever done it before. Will you come?

  Peri flew higher, heading slightly north-east. Will I join them? More than anything, I want to fly with Jay again.

  She came about, checking her heading against the rush of stars and the rainstorm of city lights, which she knew well from this direction, from the sea back to the land.

  Peri accelerated. Thrilling to skim fast above the City at night; as darkened towers wheeled below her they made her feel so much higher, their spires giving scale to her height. She circled above her favourite buildings, soaring above vents, streams of hot air surfing her up, and then, as always, saving the best for last, she wheeled over the tallest tower, Cloud City, one of the few still lit each night. This was almost as good as glass-off: tumbling down into the ravines formed by its sides, lit walls flying past her, waterfalls of light plunging up into the sky, giving the rush of speed like nothing else.

  It would be a year before the migration. Jay was gathering support, working out the logistics. Fliers would join them from each territory and country they flew over. It would be an exploration, a protest, a challenge. It would be the talk of the world.

  Peri arrowed up and over the top of Cloud City, testing her speed. She braked and turned, floating, a seed on the wind. That had done it. Now she was tired. No more fancy moves. Go home.

  If you come with us, if we make it, Jay had said, you will be an explorer. A legend. No-one else is doing this, they don’t even think it’s possible. Maybe it’s not. But it hung there, a shimmering possibility. She could see them taking off at sunset, using the polarised light patterned across the sky then to orient themselves, aligning with the earth’s magnetic field, then flying through the night, under the moon, straggled into the long, wide V that geese use. The rhythm of Flight for days, breathe in, wings up, breathe out, wings down, till there was nothing but that rhythm and the changing light and clouds flaked like salt, translucent as rice paper, torn into pieces, breaking up, bubbling over and streaming away like boiling milk. No thoughts but the movement of light, the glassy feel of air over her wings.

  By the end of it she would be Wild.

  Perhaps not. Perhaps they could find a balance.

  They’d have to start without her. Only now was she getting to spend more time with Hugo. If she took off for a long migration, with no guarantee she’d be coming back, wouldn’t she be like Avis, disappearing into the blue? It would be such a long time for Hugo. And for her. She’d had enough of leaving things behind in her life for now.

  Still so much to do, exploring the realm of Flight. They’d hardly begun. She was young. There was time.

  When Peri got back to the flat, she took out the letters Zeke had given back to her.

  Dear Hugo,

  I wrote these for you because I wanted you to know how it was when you were very little. Because you can’t remember it yourself. And I was the one who was there with you. Who saw you and listened to you and knew how you were.

  Dear Hugo,

  You loved the moon. We’d sit up at night when I fed you and if we could see the moon through the eastern windows you’d stare and stare at it. You’d look for it even if you couldn’t see it. Do all babies have such a passion for the moon? I’d never heard of such a thing.

  Dear Hugo,

  You used to wake so early and I sat with you in the deep blue before sunrise. You’d finish nursing and fall back into sleep, as if you were sliding fast away from me into deep clear water. I could see you but you were gone.

  Dear Hugo,

  I wanted to tell you—

  Peri put the letters away and went out to the oak tree. Tonight she would sleep outside.

  Thomas bounced up and down on his seat inside the light-rail carriage. ‘We’re going to Sugar Island,’ he sang. ‘We’re going to Sugar Island. We’re going to Sugar Island.’

  ‘Settle down, sweetie,’ I said, as I buckled him in, tucking his gold wings around the seat. They were still the most beautiful wings I’d ever seen. I guess Lily and I had to count ourselves lucky as Thomas had been one of Ruokonen’s last clients. She’d turned her entire attention to research, mostly on cracking the dynamics of insect flight. Insects ‘fly by wire’, she’d said. They constantly alter the shape and tension of their airfoil and so they can do things birds could only dream about. They can fly upside down and backwards. I hoped those abilities were a long way from being transferable to humans. Bird men were one thing but insect men I didn’t want to live to see. Then the human project would be well and truly over.

  ‘I’m not a sweetie,’ Thomas said happily. ‘I’m a Swift.’ He was using his fledgling name more and more. Swift was an inaccurate name in one way—swifts are black—but accurate in another way because the slender recurved arc of his wings made him, potentially, incredibly fast and agile. I’d looked up swifts only to read they were capable of the fastest flight of all, excepting the screaming dives of falcons, and lived almost all their lives in the air, drinking on the wing, mating, even sleeping in flight. I didn’t find this information reassuring.

  I handed Thomas a banana—he was always hungry these days—and settled in for the long ride to Sugar Island. I’d only been there once, as a child, and the image of it had stayed fixed in my mind as the setting of ideal beauty, with its turquoise water and its sand that was indeed as white and fine as sugar; so fine, my awe-struck child self had been told, that the sand had been used to polish the lenses in the great mirrors used in space telescopes.

/>   Thomas bounced up and down as much as the seatbelt allowed and sang around mouthfuls of banana—Thomas fly round the sun, Thomas fly round the moon, Thomas fly round the chimney pot on a Sunday afternoon.

  Sugar Island was deserted when we arrived. The cost of the ride out there was beyond most people these days. As always, it took forever to unbuckle Thomas and shepherd him away from the light rail. Now with his wings the performance took twice as long, manoeuvring the wings out carefully, making sure no feathers got damaged, smoothing them down. Finally, we walked down the path away from the station and followed its winding white sand into tall green forest. After ten minutes or so we could see blue water and blue sky ahead of us. We were not down at the beach yet but nearing the edge of a cliff about twenty metres above the water. I knelt down and brushed Tom’s hair out of his eyes.

  ‘Hello,’ I heard a low gentle voice say. Peri. Then, ‘Tom! Tom!’ a little voice squeaked.

  ‘Hugo, my big man,’ I said and turned with my arms out. Hugo ran to me as Peri came up close behind him. ‘Can I kiss you?’ I said. Hugo nodded solemnly and I kissed his cheek. Hugo and Thomas squatted down and began playing some game they’d invented with stones. I kissed Peri’s cheek too.

  ‘You look well,’ I said.

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Thanks. How’s Halley?’

  ‘Good. She’s good. Have you heard anything about Jay and his crew? Where are they?’

  ‘Indian Ocean.’

  ‘Oh. That’s something, isn’t it? And Hugo? He seems well.’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes. I have to get him back to Peter’s by seven.’

  ‘Thanks for taking Thomas on this flight with you. I don’t think he realises how lucky he is, to be taught by such a celebrated flier as yourself. They say no-one can bring out the exhilaration of Flight the way you can.’