Winged (Aetharian Narratives)

by Sofia Vargas

  “I’ve seen this place before in a dream,” I said.

  “Have you?”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering the dream with more distinction than I normally could remember dreams. “The room didn’t have all that fabric draped everywhere. And there were people everywhere. The dream place wasn’t so … creepy.”

  “This place wasn’t always so creepy.”

  “I hope it will be back to the way it was once all this is over,” I said.

  I stepped out of the room and closed the door. We walked back to the front staircase.

  “I’m sure it will,” she said when we stopped at the railing. She looked over the empty hall. “This castle is nothing when it doesn’t have balls and tournaments going on. It’s too empty without the people and the liveliness.”

  “I want to see it like that,” I said, imagining the sound of dresses swishing to music.

  “I’m sure you will when this war is behind us,” she said, turning to me once more. “But for now, you have homework.”

  I looked over my shoulder. I sensed what was going to happen next but didn’t have time to react. She smiled and pushed me over the railing once more.

  I didn’t scream this time. I closed my eyes and let the waves of emotion pass through me and do what they needed. Once again I felt the pulse run through my body and summon whatever it could to gather at my back. I concentrated as I felt the bits of dust and dirt burrow into my skin. Having dirt lodge itself between the cracks of my skin was a strange sensation. Not painful but dreadfully alarming. I watched from the corners of my eyes as I made a pair of large green wings give a flap to cuff the air below and help me land on a knee. Once I was on the ground the dirt and dust shot out of my skin; the wings turned brown and crumbled to the floor.

  Ms. Riley descended the stairs clapping. “Excellent. You are certainly showing magnificent signs of improvement.”

  “You like doing that, don’t you?” I said with a frown.

  “It’s what is necessary at this point,” she said. “Now focus. Can you still feel and remember the sensations that came over you while falling?”

  I closed my eyes. “Yes, now that there wasn’t so much panic.”

  “Good,” Ms. Riley said. “Tonight I want you to work at being able to summon those feelings without a catalyst. I hope soon you will be able to develop your wings without having to be pushed off of something.”

  “I’ll work on it,” I said.

  She bent down and pulled a leaf out of the pile of dirt that had made up my wings. She held it up to me.

  “You are certainly moving forward.”

  There was a loud knock. Professor Elias walked out of the classroom, waving that he would get the door. He opened the door behind her and Dresden walked in with a flood of sunlight.

  “Things going well?” he said, looking around at us.

  “I like to think they are,” she said, dropping the leaf back onto the pile. She turned and walked back to the classroom. “See you tomorrow, Emmeline.”

  IX

  An epiphany

  A different kind of light seeps through my closed eyes.

  “How did this happen? What are they doing here?” an angry man’s voice says.

  “I brought Emma here to have her help us,” says the same man’s voice from before.

  I now recognize it to be Oak’s voice.

  “And the other one?” the angry man says again.

  “Bee winged,” Oak says. “He must have tracked us down somehow.”

  “Tracked you down or followed her?” says the other man. “What made you think she could be trusted?”

  Their voices move further away from me. “Because she is the one person Aetheria needs to trust most right now…”

  His voice fades away.

  * * *

  “Emma.” Viper came up to us when we reentered the campsite. “How did it go? Do they think you’ll be able to help us out soon?”

  I smiled at him. “I’m pretty sure they do.”

  I turned to say thank you to Dresden, but I ended up watching him walk ahead without me. I frowned.

  “Great,” Viper said. “You know I have a role in the military, too, so we’ll probably be able to work together.”

  I looked at him. “You have a role in all this?”

  “Well, yeah, my ability puts me in a pretty high position.”

  We started walking. “Your mindreading thing?” I stopped, remembering what we had talked about at today’s lesson. I looked over at Viper. “You’re an Elementist, aren’t you?”

  Viper smiled with an approving nod. “You really have learned a lot today.”

  “Impressive. You said all you can do right now is read a person’s mind if you can see them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you said when you perfect your ability you will be able to read anyone’s mind even if you can’t see them.”

  “You’re such a good listener,” he said.

  Ms. Riley had told me Elementists are able to control, create, and become a part of their element.

  “If you learn everything else you can possibly learn in controlling your ability, what will you be able to do?”

  “What?” he said. “Being able to read minds isn’t enough?”

  “From what I’ve been hearing it sounds as if that may be the least frightening thing you’ll be able to do.”

  Viper laughed. “You’re probably right in thinking that. If I learn how to fully control my ability I’ll be able to plant thoughts into people’s minds, make them think what I want, and enter their minds to gain complete control.”

  “I—I see.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “You’re scared of me now, aren’t you?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Really, I’m not… It’s a little unnerving knowing what you’ll be able to do one day.”

  “It’s not like I’m going to walk around and control everyone I see,” he said. “I can get into big trouble for using my ability when it’s not absolutely necessary.”

  “I know,” I said, shaking my head. I felt silly for being a little scared of him for those few seconds. “I know you wouldn’t do anything like that unless it had to be done.”

  “I’m glad you know that,” he said. He put his arm around my shoulder.

  I smiled. I looked to the side when movement caught my eye. Arie was standing in the entrance of her tent with her arms crossed.

  “Hungry?” Viper said.

  I turned my attention forward again in an attempt to ignore her. A nagging feeling in the back of my mind told me that probably wasn’t the right thing to do, but I ignored that as well.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Very.”

  * * *

  I lay in bed all night playing back everything I’d felt when I fell over the railing. I focused on sensations, emotions, and anything else I could fish out of my memory. When I was sure I had everything my body went through down, I made a mental list and went over them one after another. Since I was finally able to separate what I’d been feeling, I was able to focus on and intensify them individually. I focused on the pulsing sensation and tried to summon it at will.

  A small pulse emanated from my chest, ran through my body, then out to everything around me. Small flurries of dirt, dust, and lint were pulled in by my body. As soon as I realized what was happening I stopped so that it wouldn’t attach to me and form my wings. I didn’t feel like having to brush everything off my bed and sleeping in whatever I couldn’t get off. The hours ticked by while I went over and over things in my head, teaching myself how to create that pulse. Once I felt that I had it down I let myself drift to sleep.

  * * *

  I woke up to the same situation and procedures I had the previous morning. Once I was ready I walked out of my tent not intending to have breakfast where I now knew I was supposed to.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, having a seat on the stool I’d sat on the morning before.

  Oak looked up
from the toast on his grill. “And what do you have to be sorry for, Emma?”

  “I’m sorry for everything you guys must go through,” I said.

  “And by you guys you mean us Southerners, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Now why do you feel you have to be sorry about something like that?” A cup of tea poured itself in front of me. “You just got here and have had nothing to do with any of it.”

  “I know,” I said, “but it’s horrible. I saw it where I came from, too, you know.”

  “I’m sure you did,” Oak said, starting to make a couple of slices of French toast. “Most people can’t look past themselves and what they know. They need to feel superior so they look for the things that they think make them better than others. If Castle Larnex was in the South and all the people with important powers had dark skin, the situation would be the same, just reversed.”

  “But now an important person does have dark skin. What do you think these changes mean?”

  He placed a plate with two slices of French toast in front of me with a small jar of syrup.

  “Things had to change eventually. The question is, why now? And what are they changing into?”

  “Do you think it could be something bad?”

  “I don’t know,” Oak shrugged, wiping off the grill. “All I know is that things are weird. My girlfriend claims she doesn’t even have an ability.”

  “What?” I said, choking on my tea. “How is that even possible here? Do you believe her?”

  Oak laughed. “She’s my girlfriend. I love her and would do anything for her, but no, I don’t.”

  I thought about what he said while walking to the main tent. I sat with my parents while they ate their breakfast. It looked much fancier than mine, but I knew that it wouldn’t have been as satisfying to me. Viper waved at me from the other end of the table where he was talking to Arie, who I could have sworn gave me a dirty look. Again.

  I sighed when I saw Dresden get up from another table and walk toward us. He was way too good looking to have a scowl always on his face.

  “Are you ready?” Dresden said once he had reached our table.

  I nodded, said goodbye to the group, and we left once more.

  The sun was gone that morning and it was dreary, not at all as bright as the previous one. I looked at Dresden while we walked back to the castle. In the shade, he looked familiar.

  Why he looked familiar didn’t hit me until we were on the steps of the castle and I looked at him as a cloud moved over the sun and we were plunged into shadow again. His darkened clothes could have passed for being wet.

  “You’re the one who pulled me out of the water, aren’t you?” I said when he knocked on the door of the castle.

  He looked at me in surprise. “Yes.”

  I wasn’t sure if the surprise was due to me recognizing that it was his arm that first pulled me into Aetheria, or if it was because I hadn’t realized it sooner.

  The door opened and he stepped aside to let me walk through it.

  I smiled at him as I passed. “Thank you.”

  “Just doing my job,” he said, not meeting my eye. “I’ll be back for you later.”

  He let the door swing shut between us.

  * * *

  “Why do you think a special ability was finally given to a Southerner?” I said to Ms. Riley while I showed off my perfected pulsing abilities.

  “I don’t know,” she said, watching various small objects gravitate toward me. She gave a satisfied nod.

  “I think it has to do with your green wings,” Professor Elias said while he too watched the various objects turn green with each pulse then turn back to their original color when the pulse ended. “Something is happening. Or at least about to.”

  “What?” I said.

  He shook his head. “That I cannot say.”

  By the end of the lessons I was able to pull small rocks toward me and got my wings up to almost eight feet long. I looked around at the various objects on the floor.

  “What do I do when there’s nothing around?” I said. “When I have nothing to build my wings from?”

  Ms. Riley smiled and walked away from me. “There will always be something.”

  “You’re coming along very well, Miss Larnex,” Professor Elias said.

  “Thank you, Professor,” I said, having a seat on the floor to rest. “But please call me Emma.”

  “I’ll try to do so.”

  “I hear Arie isn’t too happy with you,” Ms. Riley said, pulling a chair out of the classroom.

  “I’ve noticed,” I said, sighing and looking up at the high ceiling. “Do you have any idea why? Because I certainly don’t.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “I’m sure she doesn’t like what close friends you and Viper are becoming.”

  “Why is that a concern of hers?” I said annoyed.

  I looked back at her when I didn’t get an answer right away. I didn’t like the look on her face at all.

  “What?”

  She looked at Professor Elias, who shrugged.

  “Emma,” she said, looking back at me, “she and Viper are engaged.”

  “They’re what?” I said, jumping to my feet.

  “They’re engaged,” she said again.

  I understood what the sequence of words meant, but I still couldn’t wrap my mind around them.

  “I’m guessing that you didn’t know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” I said. “How would I know that?”

  There was a knock on the door and Professor Elias walked over to answer it.

  “I thought Viper would have mentioned it at some point,” she said.

  I rubbed my forehead with my hand. “Yeah, you’d think he’d mention something like that.”

  Professor Elias opened the door and Dresden stepped into the room.

  “Are lessons done for the day?”

  “Yes, please,” I said before anyone else had a chance.

  He seemed a little alarmed by the way I stomped toward him and stalked out of the castle.

  * * *

  “What’s going on here?” I said in a rougher tone than I probably should have.

  The question made Dresden jump. I couldn’t blame him; I hadn’t said a word our entire walk. However, I couldn’t help but ask when we came to the clearing behind the campsite. There were groups of people congregated outside the fence.

  “Training,” Dresden said.

  He didn’t hesitate to navigate our way around the groups. I gasped when a couple of heads turned toward me. Every face that looked at me looked almost exactly the same. I could feel every eye follow our footsteps.

  “Training for what?” I said, looking at the rest of the people in the groups.

  All of their features had very little dissimilarity.

  Looking exceedingly different from one another was a task not easily accomplished in Aetheria, but was still accomplished to varying degrees. People had different shades of blond hair, shades of blue eyes, facial features, heights, and so on. But all of the people in front of me had the same shade of medium-light blond hair, the same shade of aqua blue, squinty eyes, the same wide-set nose, the same fair skin, and were almost exactly the same height. It was like looking out over an army of clones.

  “For battle, of course,” said Dresden. “Everyone here is a part of a specific branch of the military. They work with one another to mold together and take different forms.”

  “What kind of different forms?”

  “Whatever form is needed,” he said abruptly.

  He was obviously annoyed with my sudden compulsive questioning.

  “Why do they all look so similar?” I said, watching them converse with each other. “It’s like they’re all the same person.”

  “We figure it’s part of what they do,” he said. “It’s always been that way. People with their ability have no other purpose than to be one with their group. The stronger their sense of community the stronger their molded fo
rms will be. They’re trained to think and be one. I guess looking the same helps with the sense of being one.”

  I had never been happier about how different I looked from the other people in Aetheria than I was at that moment. One of the soldiers caught my eye as he and everyone else around him looked at us passing by. When my eyes landed on that soldier I saw that he didn’t look as similar to the others. His hair and eyes seemed a shade darker and he was slightly shorter than his companions. It wasn’t an extremely noticeable difference at first, but the more I looked at him the more he seemed to stand out.

  He seemed to be aware and ashamed of his uniqueness. When I looked straight at him he let his eyes fall to the ground, unlike the others who looked me straight in the face. I felt that it wasn’t just subtle differences he had, but also the way he held himself, almost like he didn’t have the confidence all the others did. It made me sad to think that maybe the lack of confidence was because of his distinction from the others.

  I sighed. “It must be a sad life to live when you can’t be yourself.”

  He moved his gaze from the ground and looked at me. I gave him what I hoped was a comforting smile and walked on with Dresden. He ranted about how this particular group of people didn’t feel the need to be themselves and that they were happy when they felt that they had an impenetrable bond with the others in their group. I rolled my eyes. He went on about it until we reached the gate to the campsite.

  “If anything,” he said, “they need to feel that their bonds cannot be broken by outside forces.”

  He pulled the gate open for me.

  “Well, then,” I said before he could continue, “that just means none of them would have a chance on their own.”

  I walked through the gate into the campsite.

  “Hey, Emma,” Viper said, bounding toward us. “How were today’s lessons?”

  “Great,” I said with fake enthusiasm.

  “Must be tiring, huh?” Viper said. I’m sure he thought exhaustion must have been the reason for my lack of excitement. “I was thinking that I’d show you around a little. I know Dresden only escorts you to and from the castle so I was thinking you’d like to see some other areas.”

  Dresden picked up his pace. I felt betrayed when Viper and I started trailing behind.