Spectrum

by Adam Cairney

  Chapter 21.

  The air took their breath away. It battered and beat at them as they plummeted head first down towards the earth. It was impossible to keep themselves facing any one way, and they span and whirled around as the air whipped past them. Elijah had no idea when to pull the cord, when to open his wings, but he could see Molly to one side, trying just like he was to keep herself facing one way for more than a few seconds. Everything was rushing upwards to meet them at an alarming rate, and the details of the highest buildings were now becoming visible.

  The tallest towers and steeples looked like giant fingers reaching up from a huge hand to catch them. Molly shouted something across to Elijah, or at least he thought she did, the rushing wind was the only thing he could really hear. He tried to look across to where he thought she would be. Sure enough, she was waving at him frantically. She had one hand on the pull cord of her own set of wings, and as she pulled it her wings exploded out of the little container on her back. She seemed to shoot upwards, or perhaps he was still moving incredibly fast downwards, he couldn’t tell. Elijah followed suit though, and pulled his own cord, and his own set of wings snapped out, immediately slowing his fall.

  The wings had been designed incredibly well. They were extremely large, and dark brown, with thin metal rods along the length of them to create little spines for rigidity. Molly had designed them to look like bird wings. If nature had figured it out, and it worked, why try and change things? Nature, however, had not anticipated people having wings. Once Elijah had popped the wings out and started to slow down he ran into problems. It was just like Molly had been worried about, he was too heavy. The wings started to bend backwards, the air rushing past them too fast. He was picking up speed again. He panicked, trying to reach behind him and pull the wings down, but it was no good,

  Molly had noticed what was happening straight away though. She had pulled her cord just before him, and was slightly higher up, and so straightened her whole body so that she was like a dart, speeding her up just enough to catch up to Elijah. She was barely above him, and, being careful not to touch and destroy or rip the wings, she grabbed the empty canister in the middle of his pair that they had sprung from. With Molly holding on to him as tightly as possible, the extra set of wings helped, and together they began to slow down the uncontrolled fall.

  It wasn’t enough though, the details of the lower buildings now clear, and individual houses were distinguishable, and still rushing towards them much too quickly. As Molly looked down she could even now see people pointing up at them in amazement. Or were they pointing at the Cloud high above them, drifting away into nothingness forever? She wasn’t sure, she just knew that for a second she was extremely happy. They had done it. The people were free, alive and well, and the city was still for the most part in one piece.

  They plummeted down, Molly determined not to leave Elijah behind. The wind was still rushing by too fast, and although she tried to tell Elijah to relax when they hit the ground, it took her words away before they could reach him. At least, he gave no indication he had heard anything. But she was with him, they’d been through everything else together, they could damn well crash land together too. Any moment now. She could see the individual streets, the tiles on the roofs. They were going to crash straight into one of the houses, there was no way to control or steer out of it, especially not with two of them.

  Molly closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable, and didn’t have to wait long. Still going at a considerable speed, she tried to turn them sideways at the last second to avoid Elijah taking the brunt of the hit. She heard them hit the roof, felt the tiles explode and give way beneath them. She knew she was in incredible pain straight away, and felt Elijah ripped away from her to fly in some other direction. Her head connected with a roof beam, and darkness became her world.

  Elijah, somehow, seemed to have been luckier with his landing. The roof tiles had hurt like hell as they hit them, and Molly had crashed into one of the beams higher up in the house just after that. Something had snagged his wings though. It had been a rough landing, and the thing that had a hold on him had actually caught the empty wing container on his back, jerking it upwards. He had thought his arms were going to be ripped off, but that wasn’t the case. When he finally realised he had come to a stop and was still alive he looked around. Very lucky indeed, he had been millimetres away from hitting one of the solid wooden ceiling beams and knocking himself out.

  He could see Molly, on the floor below. She was unconscious again, and he knew she had hit her head on one of those solid beams as they crashed. People were already beginning to flood into the house and up the stairs to see what had happened and help in any way they could. Elijah shouted and screamed at those who were rushing to help him, telling them to attend to her first. The crowd increased, there were people everywhere, pushing and shoving, trying to help. Elijah’s head began to go fuzzy, and the more he shouted the more distant his own voice seemed. He finally realised something was wrong, and looked down as the people surrounding him began to pull him forwards. Sticking out of his stomach was a large, jagged piece of wood, blood dripping off the end of it. His blood. He said simply “Oh.” And then “But, I made it down. I can’t die now.”

  The pain was quite intense as the people, as carefully as possible, pulled him off of the wood that had impaled him, dozens of hands gently lowering him to the floor once he was off. He could feel the wound, feel the blood flowing out of him, down his sides. He glanced over at Molly one last time. She was safely down, and being taken out of the house, eyes open, but just barely. She was alright, she was going to be ok. If he had to go, he thought to himself, at least he had that to comfort him. He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, he was so tired. He would close his eyes, just for a moment. Just for a moment…

  Everything went black.