epilogue
Volos sprawled on his bed, replete. He had been a month in the McCardle house, and to celebrate, Wyoma had invited the whole family, Starr, Merrilee, their husbands and their new babies, and had made Volos a devil’s-food cake, which was so far his favorite, especially with double-chocolate icing. Usually he and Texas did most of the cooking (often with bizarre results) because Wyoma worked. But Wyoma had wanted to make the cake. She mothered him, in her way. That first day, within the first hour, they had understood each other. He had staggered in the door, and she had looked up at him with eyes that assessed the task before her.
“How long since you shampooed your hair?” she had demanded.
“Shampoo?” He had not imagined his hair to need such care. But since the incident which had caused the loss of his wings, his body was acting differently. Texas had needed to teach him to use deodorant. And his hair was growing in finer, less like feathers, more like Texas’ hair. And oilier, more in need of washing.
“Didn’t nobody never teach you how to take care of yourself?” Wyoma had grumbled, not unkindly. Then she had led him upstairs, and scrubbed his head for him at the bathroom sink, and towel-dried it, and helped him totter to bed in the room she had prepared for him.
The bed, an old wooden thing with a wire spring, was the same little bed that had belonged to Texas as a boy. Volos had spent a lot of time in it those first few days, looking at the block letters Texas had scratched in the headboard with a penknife once when he was being very bad. RBM—Robert Balfour McCardle. At an awkward angle. Being mortal was an odd thing. In a way the boy who had carved those letters was as dead as Volos’s wings, and in another way he would live on through generations.
Volos felt almost human now. He walked strongly, and the haunting pain was gone from his back. On the floor by his bed lay a big all-paws mutt puppy—Texas had taken him to the pound to adopt it, he had named it Raphael, and most days he and Raph wrestled in the grass and ran through the yellow leaves, out across the fields, past the family cemetery where his charred wing bones lay, then through the woods, down to the river and back.
In his room besides the dog were many good things: his guitar, and a radio shaped like a jukebox (a gift from Ennis and Angie), and baseball hats marked Agway and Persimmon Volunteer Fire Department and Mingo County Courier. And piles of magazines, Metal Mag and Motorcycle Women and Bimboy. And the balsa-wood airplanes and model cars Texas kept getting him, the silly oversized Teddy bear Wyoma had bought him, and a Corvette-shaped decorator bottle of Avon aftershave (not yet used, though the day seemed to be coming when he would need to shave) from the girl down the road. The room, like the house, was not large, and his things crowded it, but when he was in it Volos did not feel boxed in. Instead, he felt snug, as if the house itself, like the family under its roof, embraced him.
Soon, Volos knew, he would have to decide what to do with the life he had claimed for himself. He still did not seem able to think about money, about making a living, in the same way that other people did, and he knew this—but he also knew that a man could not be a boy forever and let his father and mother take care of him. Sometime he must leave home.
Texas and Wyoma kept telling him not to feel that way, that there was no hurry about anything, and he knew they meant it. Those two, they astonished him daily with their love, for each other and for him. Waking up every morning, he felt himself being born, blinking into the sunrise.
He knew only one thing about his life, really: He wanted to make music.
So sometime he would go back to L.A., maybe. Get together with Red again and maybe the others, see if they could become a band. Just to live and sing and dance in the night and sometimes do a little fucking, that was all he wanted. Maybe find a sexy guy to take his mind off Angie. Stay away from the junk, since he knew it could hurt him now. Stay away from record producers. The worst thing that could happen would be if he became a star again, but that did not need to happen. People probably would not recognize him. There was hair on his chest now, and his voice had deepened, there was grit in it these days, and his face had subtly changed. Like the rest of him, it spoke less of starfire and ether now and more of earth. It was a good face with soul in it, still his own but also somewhat like Texas’. Weathered, a little, by life and West Virginia. When he went back to L.A. he would call himself Flaim, and he would know where he was from, and who loved him, and who he loved. As if there were a compass in his heart, he would always know which way lay home.
From the kitchen down below he could hear Wyoma and her girls chattering. Texas was downstairs taking a nap with the TV on. As if he could see him, Volos imagined Texas stretched out in the armchair with his Stetson over his face and his booted feet propped on the coffee table. Atop the TV, standing in its frame, was a recent studio photo of Texas, Wyoma, Starr, Merrilee—and Volos.
He yawned and stretched, fingering initials freshly carved in his bed’s headboard—VFCM. Volos Flaim Carson McCardle. Texas had loaned him the penknife to do it.
He stretched some more, then rolled over and patted Raphael’s head. Reached over the dog for tablet paper and pencil. Chewed at the fingers of his left hand. It was still hard for him to write. He remembered three dozen languages—though not the languages of birds—but he still held a pencil like a firstgrader. Use a tape recorder, Texas had suggested. But Volos wished to make songs as Angie would have done, and write them down.
So far none of his had felt like hers—but this time was different. Something within him had settled into place like a cowboy into a saddle, like a mountaineer back in the mountains, and now he could be whole, he could make music, really make it, like making a baby, from the fundament of his body and the penetralia of his soul. He sensed the song coming. Felt it snapping and clicking in him, electric. Could feel its heartbeat rhythm. Could almost hear the guitars.
Volos wrote:
Now I am made of fire
I blaze
through my numbered days
and all around me I see
the mothers the fathers the lovers
like candles aglow
with each other
one haloed in the other
melting in one another
above their shoulders rising
their invisible wings
of flame.
About the Author
Nancy Springer is the award-winning author of more than fifty books, including the Enola Holmes and Rowan Hood series and a plethora of novels for all ages, spanning fantasy, mystery, magic realism, and more. She received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for Larque on the Wing and the Edgar Award for her juvenile mysteries Toughing It and Looking for Jamie Bridger, and she has been nominated for numerous other honors. Springer currently lives in the Florida Panhandle, where she rescues feral cats and enjoys the vibrant wildlife of the wetlands.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Nancy Springer
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4835-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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