by Roxie Noir
It was one of the best feelings he’d ever felt.
Far below, he could see his brother and Jules standing, staring, open-mouthed and horrified, and he felt bad that they’d almost watched him die.
Just a minute, he thought. I gotta go find something first.
He wheeled around the mesa and the sun exploded onto his shoulders.
He flew over the mesa a couple of times, then landed, looking around in wonder. He’d never even seen the top of it before, and from there, it looked like he was at the end of the earth, a steep cliff in every direction, the ground rocky and spotted with small, spiny bushes, the whole thing sloping gently to one side.
All I had to do was almost die, he thought to himself.
Then he heard his mother’s voice, talking to him, clear as day.
It’s the girl, she said.
Seth stood up straight and looked around, searching out the mesa-top for her ghost, for another eagle, for anything, but she was nowhere.
What? he thought, but she’d gone silent.
I guess that’s it. ‘It’s the girl.’ Jules? Not the weird rock in the attic?
Nothing else happened, so he swooped down over the edge of a cliff, circling the cliff sides.
Other eagles — real eagles, he presumed — watched him suspiciously from their holes in the mesa side, and he didn’t go near them, just flew by slowly, wondering how eagles interacted with each other. Was there a bird of prey equivalent of the nod-and-wave?
He circled lower and lower, looking at every side of the mesa, and he was starting to get desperate. He was completely certain that he’d find whatever they were looking for there, but he didn’t know exactly where.
Is it in one of these eagle nests? He thought. I don’t really want to get into a fight with another eagle on my first day, but...
Then something flashed in a hole, just for a moment. Seth circled back and it flashed again, then again, and he flew toward the cliff, grasping the edge of the hole with his talons as he folded in his wings.
The flash had been a Coke bottle, and he stood on one foot and nudged it. It looked old, the thick green glass type that they didn’t make anymore, the label completely faded, the bottle itself half-filled with dirt.
Beyond the bottle was a small wooden box, bound by metal straps and locked. Seth hopped forward and pulled at the lock with his beak, but only succeeded in pulling the box along the floor of the hole.
The moment he touched it, that same thrill went through him, ruffling his feathers and making his brain feel like it was sparking.
This is it, he thought. Now, how do I open it?
His talons were useless. He was pretty sure he could turn back into a human, but a part of him was afraid that becoming an eagle was a one-time thing, something that could only happen in great distress, and the last thing he wanted was to be trapped near the top of the mesa, completely naked and human.
So he grabbed the small box with one talon and pulled it to the edge. Then he stood on top of it, grabbed it firmly, and took off.
Flying and carrying something was different, and for a terrifying second, Seth thought that he’d miscalculated, the box was too heavy, and he would have to let it go or plummet to his death, but then he flapped his massive wings a few times and found the lift he needed, gliding silently back around the mesa.
12. Jules
Jules and Zach ran to Seth’s clothes. Jules grabbed his shirt in her hands, staring at it and shaking it out, like something might fall out of it that explained everything. Zach did the same with his pants and then his shoes, turning everything inside out and upside-down as he went through it.
Two small feathers fell from Seth’s shirt.
Jules and Zach just turned to each other and stared.
Jules was the first one to speak up.
“You saw that, right?” she asked, her voice wavering.
Zach just nodded.
“You saw something fly out of my brother’s clothes?” he said, like he was trying to confirm.
“Yes,” Jules said, looking back down at his shirt.
She squeezed her eyes shut, then reopened them, like maybe if she did it enough it would be Seth’s body in front of her, not his empty clothes.
She didn’t want Seth to be dead. Of course not. That very morning, she’d wondered what their kids would look like, a thought that was completely insane and wildly inappropriate, but she also knew that men who fell hundreds of feet usually hit the ground and died.
This has to be a dream, she thought. It doesn’t feel like a dream. Everything is so real and tangible, and I can feel the dust on his shirt, and Zach is right here, talking to me, but it has to be, right?
But people don’t fly away in real life?
“I’m taking this psychology class,” Zach said, still staring at the clothes. “And I learned that men usually start manifesting schizophrenia in their mid to late twenties, though usually they hear voices long before they have a complete break with reality.”
“We must be having the same break from reality,” Jules said.
“Maybe we’re patients in a mental ward together,” offered Zach. “Otherwise, I have no idea what to make of this.”
Jules looked around again, searching for the bird that Seth had turned into.
This doesn’t feel like a psychotic break either, she thought. Not that I know what that feels like.
I hope Seth is okay, whatever happened.
“My mom had stories about stuff like this,” Zach said, slowly. “Maybe this is some kind of shared delusion that our family members all had, and so it slowly became legend after a while. Sort of like how vampire legends came about.”
“I’m not a family member,” pointed out Jules.
“Maybe you’re not real,” said Zach.
I’m pretty sure I’m real, thought Jules, but she didn’t press the issue. It wasn’t like she knew what was going on either.
“Do you think he’s coming back?” she asked, still holding the shirt, squeezing it in her hands.
“I have no idea,” said Zach.
“You know the stories.”
Zach just looked at her, and was about to say something, when something else caught his eye.
Jules whirled around.
Coming right toward them was one of the biggest birds she’d ever seen, all gold-brown, and it was carrying something in its talons. She backed away, trying to avoid getting hit, but at the last moment the bird dropped the box in front of them and then landed.
Jules and Zach didn’t move, and after a few moments, Jules spoke.
“Seth?” she whispered.
She knew it was a crazy thing to say, but then again, nothing was really making sense.
The bird — she was almost certain it was one of the golden eagles who lived on the mesa — cocked its head at her, its golden brown eyes flashing.
That’s him, she thought, suddenly certain. Those are Seth’s eyes.
The eagle was enormous, its head almost even with her waist, and its wings had easily been wider than her own arm span. Then it gave a little hop, moving away, fluttering its wings.
“What?” she said, as it hopped from foot to foot, seeming frustrated.
Then all at once, it was like the eagle melted into itself and in a blink, Seth stood in front of them again.
The three of them stood there, silently. Seth was totally naked, but that was far from the most pressing issue.
“I think I found it,” he said, pointing at the box.
“What just happened?” asked Zach.
Seth just shrugged.
“Can you do it again?” Zach asked, totally ignoring the box.
“I think so,” said Seth. He frowned as Jules got on her knees, fiddling with the lock.
Then he shrank suddenly, an enormous eagle where Seth had been.
Zach took a step backward, but was more intrigued than afraid.
“Guys,” said Jules. “Someone get a big rock and hit this thing.”
>
Zach grabbed a big rock, the size of his fist, and slammed it into the box.
“Be careful!” said Jules, afraid he’d break something.
Instead, the lock fell away, and the two brothers knelt in the dirt over the box, opening the lid.
Inside was a sheaf of paper, bound together by twine that fell away when they touched it. His hands trembling, Zach unrolled the papers, careful not to let them be taken away by the wind.
The first was just a letter, and then the next and the next. Jules’s heart fell.
All that for nothing, she thought.
Then Zach flipped through one more and stopped.
UTAH TERRITORY, the next one read across the top. Underneath was a faded seal, and then handwriting. Jules couldn’t make some of it out, because it had faded with time and was written in a flowery, old script, but she could read enough.
WHEREAS, the undersigned, HIRAM ADMAS, has fulfilled his obligations to tend the soil and establish Himself and Family, the Utah Territory recognizes his ownership of the lands under his dominion.
There was more, but she couldn’t read it.
“There needs to be a map,” she said. “Something that says what it was he owned, where the boundaries were...”
Zach flipped through another page, his hands shaking, and the next one was filled with the small, flowery, neat handwriting. It was all directions.
“This is it,” Jules said. “That’s it. That’s what he owned. ‘From the river inward, three hundred acres encompassing the Table and Lands below it’ — that’s the mesa, ‘mesa’ is just Spanish for table, it must have come into common use at some later point—”
Her hands were shaking, too, and she felt like she couldn’t stop talking.
The three of them stood, looking at each other.
“So it’s over?” Seth asked.
“We have to get the deed to the right place, I’m sure,” Jules said. “I’m sure there’s a process, we have to put in the right paperwork, all that.”
I’m saying ‘we’, she thought. Why am I saying ‘we’?
Zach and Seth just nodded.
“Should we talk about this bird thing?” Zach asked.
“It just happened,” Seth said. “I was falling, and then I sort of... flexed a muscle I didn’t know I had, and then I was flying.”
He swallowed and looked at his little brother.
“Do you have the dream where you’re flying?” he asked.
Zach just nodded.
“It was just like that,” Seth said.
Jules pointed again at the box with the deed in it.
“We can talk about this later,” she said. “We need to find out now how to file this.”
13. Seth
Seth let Jules take over. She seemed to know more about land use bureaucracy than either of them, so he followed her as she marched quickly toward the house.
Thank God she’s here, he thought. Not just because I really like having her around, but Zach and I might have never thought to send the deed somewhere.
After all, our family has been happy to live here for a hundred years without being certain that we own it.
“Where’s the letter from Quarcom?” Jules said the moment they were inside.
Zach grabbed it off the table and handed it to her. Jules read the whole thing over, then read the attachment.
“We have to fax this in,” she said incredulously. Then she looked up, from Seth to Zach and back. “Is there a fax machine in Obsidian?”
Neither of them had any idea. Within minutes, they had the very slim Obsidian phone book out and were calling everywhere that they thought might own a fax machine.
“It’s two thousand fifteen,” Jules muttered. “I can’t believe they need a fax. There’s not a copy shop, somewhere you can go to pay for copies, that sort of thing?”
The brothers looked at each other.
“That gas station outside Blanding has a copy machine,” said Zach. “It might have a fax?”
Jules was already grabbing her purse from the floor, getting out her keys, and striding purposefully toward the door.
“Let’s go,” she said.
They bickered a bit in the parking lot over who would drive, and Zach won, since his fifteen-year-old sedan at least had a real backseat. Seth gave the front seat up to Jules, and they rode in almost complete silence for an hour and a half.
“You guys really live in the middle of nowhere,” she said at last.
“We like it,” said Seth.
“It’s beautiful,” said Zach. “Kind of inconvenient, though.”
True, thought Seth. Right now, for example, when we’re going on an expedition to find the nearest fax machine.
A gas station came into view, and Zach slowed down. The three of them watched it anxiously, craning their necks to see the window. It looked deserted, and for a moment, Seth thought it was closed.
It’s okay, he thought. Blanding will have something else.
Then they pulled into the parking lot, and he could see the car parked in the back, and the signs in the window came to life. They were mostly junk food and soda advertisements, but in one corner, in LED lights, there was a small sign that said:
COPIES, 15¢
FAX
Seth whooped. Zach parked diagonally across two spots in his hurry, and the three of them got out of the car, the wind tousling their hair. Jules’s fiery curls practically exploded around her head and she made a face tugging at it. She glanced at the road and spotted a large black car slowing down.
Jules frowned, and cast Seth and Zach a look.
“Go fax that,” she said. “I’ll be right in.”
Seth and Zach just did as she said, opening the door to a faded chime. The clerk barely looked up from whatever he was doing, and Seth spied the copier in one corner, heading toward it.
“Make a copy first,” Zach said. “I think you have to feed the paper through the fax machine, and I don’t want to risk tearing it.”
The copier had to be from the 1990s, if not before, a positively ancient piece of office machinery. Seth put the deed face-down on the glass plate, then stared at the buttons. The text had worn off of them long ago, so he hit the green one.
PLEASE INSERT CHANGE, the machine flashed at him.
Seth looked around for a coin slot on the machine, feeling the edges and sides with his fingers.
“Excuse me,” Zach said behind him, to the clerk. “How do you pay for copies?”
“The coin slot,” the clerk said, sounding bored. “It’s on the left.”
Practically hidden behind the machine was the same kind of coin slot that washers and dryers in laundromats had, and Seth dug through his pockets for change.
Outside the gas station’s plate glass windows, the black car had pulled into the gas station and was idling a couple of spots away, like it was waiting. No one got out, though Jules was still watching it, one hand over her eyes. Something in the way she was standing, waiting, gave him pause.
“Here,” said Zach. “I got a quarter.” He slotted it into the machine and it fell down the metal tube. The copier sprang to life, just once, the paper sliding out of the tray.
It was so light it was unreadable. Seth rolled his eyes.
I hate these things, he thought, and hit buttons until he had found out how to turn up the darkness.
“Oh yeah,” said the guy at the desk, who was beginning to get interested. “It probably needs toner.”
Thanks, Seth thought sarcastically. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another quarter, slotting it into the machine.
Why does this thing only take quarters if a copy is fifteen cents? He thought.
He hit the green button again, then raised his eyes to the parking lot.
Two men got out of the car, both looking at Jules. They walked toward her, slowly, a menace in their steps that Seth couldn’t exactly identify, but the intimidation was evident.
Before the machine had even finished scanning t
he deed, he was out the door again, the hot desert air in his face.
“Juliana?” one of the men asked. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but his khakis had a neat seam down the front and his polo shirt was perfectly tucked into them.
It wasn’t how people from the area dressed, not at all. Seth’s spine straightened.
“Yes?” Jules answered, her arms crossed in front of herself.
Seth moved to her side. He felt like every muscle in his body was twitching, jumping, like he was just daring these guys to try something on Jules.
For now, the man seemed confused.
“I thought you were on-site today,” he said. “What are you doing all the way out here?”
At his side, Seth could almost feel Jules tremble.
“The mine would have ruined peoples’ lives,” she said, not answering his question. “You were willing to wreck a whole town. A whole river, and who knows what else, just so you could make a little more money,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes.
“What do you mean would have?” he asked. “Everything’s cleared the Utah Environmental Board. It doesn’t matter who you tell about porous sandstone and toxic runoff. It’s not illegal.”
Jules didn’t say anything, and for the first time, the man seemed to notice Seth standing there.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
Seth shrugged, sneaking a glance back through the plate glass at Zach. His little brother was standing in front of the fax machine, looking down at it, pressing buttons.
He needs more time, Seth realized. That’s what Jules was doing: preventing the two Quarcom men from coming inside. It was bad luck that they’d shown up more or less in the middle of nowhere, but Seth was glad that she’d noticed.
“I’m just some guy,” he said, shrugging.
In the store, Zach hit the buttons, balanced the copies in the feed, and waited.
“No,” said the man in the polo shirt. The second man still hadn’t moved. “No, I’ve seen your face before.”
“I don’t think so,” said Seth.
Just try something, he thought. His hands itched to punch the guy who’d tried to take away his home, his town, his entire life, and he could feel the rage surging through him. Underneath his skin he could nearly feel the ripple of feathers, the urge to shift and tear the guy’s arms off or rip his throat out.