Believing in Blue

by Maggie Morton

The meatballs were almost ready after about forty minutes, and during the brief break while they were baking, she read the beginning chunk of a novel Shawn had given her, about a young lesbian woman with magical powers. It was both surprising and a bit thrilling to suddenly have something in common with a character who could do magic, and a lesbian one at that. She fell in love with the book only a few chapters in. Her comfortable kinship with Lynne, the spunky protagonist, kept a smile on her face the whole time she was reading.

  Soon enough, the meatballs and sauce were done, and so was the spaghetti she’d started cooking in the middle of a painful break from her reading. She knew she’d have to hide the book before Tim got home from his office: he’d made rude comments about the occasional lesbian character on TV, insults that soon branched out to include Wren and her assumed “dyke-y-ness.” He might have been correct in his assumption, and she’d learned that people of her orientation occasionally used the term “dyke” for themselves, but Tim didn’t have the right to use it in the cruel taunts he directed at her. She’d tried to tell him this, while leaving out the fact that, however much he meant it as an insult, she was a dyke. And thanks to Shawn and Nicole, she knew there was nothing wrong with being gay. Even Tim hadn’t managed to convince her otherwise.

  Dinner was ready, now, and just in time, because she heard the front door open and slam shut. The loud sound made Wren jump slightly. It wasn’t the sound as much as it was the person who was causing it, and the fact that whenever Tim slammed the front door that loudly, he’d likely had a bad day at work. Next, she heard him talking to her mom. Wren was unable to make out his words through the kitchen door, but perfectly able to hear his pissed-off tone of voice. This was not good. Hopefully he’d eat his dinner quickly, and then Wren could go back upstairs and hide until it was time to catch a few hours of sleep. The best part of her entire day would come then—the part where she went to her spot in the woods, and let out her wings, and was free from everything but the magic her body now possessed.

  It wasn’t midnight yet, though, not even close. So she plated up the pasta and sauce, making sure her stepdad’s plate had the most meatballs, and threw together a salad as quickly as she could manage. Then she took everything into the dining room, placing each plate of food and then the salad bowl on its polished, dark surface. She felt like a maid, sometimes, instead of a stepdaughter, one who was expected to cook, clean, and be quiet. Tim had trained her to be as quiet as she could around him, because the more she spoke, the more she drew his harsh attention.

  Only a few minutes after the table was set, Tim came in and sat down, placing his usual mug of whiskey and Coke next to his spot. From what little Wren knew of alcohol, his particular drink of choice seemed kind of inexpensive for someone as rich as he was. But if it was a low-class drink, it fit him perfectly, she joked to herself. As she was thinking this, she smirked a little, which soon proved to be a mistake.

  “What are you smiling about, smart-ass?”

  Wren’s small smile turned into a slight frown. “Nothing, Tim, nothing. Should I go and get Mom?”

  “Aw, who gives a rat’s ass. I’m hungry, so I’m going to start eating whether she gets her lazy ass out of that armchair or not.” Tim speared a meatball and stuffed it into his mouth, barely bothering to chew before he swallowed. “These are mediocre, but much better than what you made last night,” he told her around a following mouthful of spaghetti. That was the closest to any praise she was going to get, so her tense shoulders relaxed a little as she went to get her mom.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Wren said when she reached the living room.

  “Thanks, sweetheart. I can smell it from here, actually. Did you put anything into the spaghetti sauce?”

  Wren told her mom about the unique ingredient in the meatballs as Denise slowly got up, wobbling a little once she was standing. During dinner, her mom complimented her cooking at least five times, but Wren still couldn’t wait to get upstairs. And more than that, she couldn’t wait to go out into the balmy night air; she couldn’t wait to let out her wings and finally become more herself than she’d been all day long.

  Chapter Four

  Everyone had eaten quickly, especially Tim. Thankfully, he had only fumed silently for the better part of the meal, his usual scowl showing that while he wasn’t ready to blow up just yet, Wren would probably be hearing some yelling while she tried to take a catnap.

  And just as expected, his usual outburst had begun shortly after she went upstairs, and she heard his loud, angry voice on and off until ten thirty. It was then that she was finally able to sleep, shutting off the light and setting her alarm for midnight.

  She woke to the Beatles, singing about strawberry fields, which wouldn’t have sounded like a half-bad place to go if she didn’t have an even better location in mind for that night. Her spot might have not been all that special to anyone else, but she’d gone there often during her years of living on the edge of the woods in this giant and lonely house. She didn’t feel lonely in the woods, even after her wings had appeared. She was used to secrets, after all, and unlike the ones she’d already kept from Nicole and Shawn about her home life, this one felt almost good to keep. No, it felt wonderful.

  After shutting off her alarm and resetting it for seven a.m., she changed into what she’d started calling her “wing shirts.” She’d torn right through the shirt she was wearing when they first came out, and so she’d taken a few of her least-favorite tops and cut out most of their backs, to make room for her new, highly distinctive body parts.

  The night air coming through her open window let her know that the night would be cooler than the early evening heat on her walk home had promised, so she added a light sweater to her outfit. She put on some sneakers and grabbed her house key, stuffing it into her pocket. Then she left her bedroom and headed for the back door.

  The one nice thing about living in such a large house was that her mom and stepdad’s bedroom was conveniently located far down the hall from hers. The stairs were well made and new enough that there also weren’t any squeaky steps, but she kept her footsteps light and soft all the same. She didn’t know if Tim would care about her sneaking out, but he sure would be mad about her waking him in the middle of the night!

  So she shut the back door quietly, too. She never bothered to lock it, even though she always brought her key—their neighborhood was incredibly ritzy, and besides, she didn’t want to risk forgetting her key one night and getting locked out. She had no interest in spending the night in the woods, however much she liked to go out into them for a few hours every night.

  Wren went to the back gate and opened it, its slight screech as it swung shut a welcome sound by now. It was far enough away from Tim and her mom’s room that she knew neither of them would ever hear it. Once she was free of the yard, she also felt free of everything else. It was time to free her wings, too, and she felt lighter than she’d felt all day as she started down the narrow dirt path, the one that led to her wondrous midnight freedom.

  Tonight the moon was almost full, so she hadn’t bothered to bring the flashlight she had hidden under her bed right next to her clean “wing shirts.” She walked down her special, secret path quickly, her excitement growing with each step toward her equally special, equally secret spot. And about ten minutes later, after reaching the very end of the dirt path, she was there.

  As summer nights went, it wasn’t an especially warm one, so Wren shivered a little when she removed her sweater. There was no way she was okay with wrecking it—it was one of her favorite pieces of clothing, and as she’d learned the first time she’d let her wings out, they weren’t stopping for anything, not even a jean jacket. So far, they had seemed to be the most powerful part of her body, but they still weren’t powerful enough to lift her off the ground. At least, not yet.

  She placed the sweater on the rock she sometimes had sat on to read in the past, shut her eyes, and told her body it was safe now…her wings could be released.

 
; It always began with a slight itching, like a slowly growing discomfort that didn’t lessen as time went by. But then the itch would turn into a tightness, and the tightness would lead to a lovely release, one like falling into sleep when you were completely exhausted, or like how she imagined it would feel when she kissed someone for the first time.

  In the moment her wings began to come out of her back, and as they spread to their entire, vast size, Wren smiled. The smile didn’t come from the calming relief she experienced when her wings felt the summer air for the first time all day, or at least, it didn’t come entirely from her allowing her wings to exit her back. She was also smiling from the thoughts of that kiss, so lost in her imaginings of it that when a voice, seemingly from out of nowhere, said, “Hi, Wren,” she practically jumped out of her skin.

  “Holy shit! Who’s there? Are you going to hurt me?” She quickly opened her eyes and found herself face-to-face with the girl from the café. Sia. But she was clearly no ordinary girl, because she had wings just like Wren’s. Their intense-blue feathers glowed in the moonlight just the same way Wren’s much-paler wings had glowed each time she’d come out to her special spot. It might have still been special, but it clearly wasn’t a secret anymore. Nor were her wings.

  “I was hoping I’d see you here tonight,” Sia told her. “No, actually, I was expecting it. You sure chose a perfect spot, you know. Plenty of room to take off once I get you flying.” She was wearing an outfit that looked like a combination of a form-fitting dress and a robe. It was dark gray and fell almost to her ankles, with a square neckline and loose, wide sleeves, along with what looked like tight-fitting pants underneath, the hems of them stopping right above some elegant sandals the same color of her robe-dress and pants.

  Wren tried to coax her breathing back to normal while her uninvited (but not unwelcome) company sat on the rock and crossed her arms. “Your dad did tell you he was sending someone, right? I didn’t want to try to sneak a peek at his letter before I delivered it. Some things are sacred, of course.”

  “Of…of course. I’m glad you didn’t read it.” Wren was glad she hadn’t, very glad. No way did she want a complete stranger reading everything her dad had written, even if the stranger seemed to know Torien, and even if the stranger was so incredibly attractive. It wasn’t only Sia’s wings and her sudden appearance that had given Wren a little trouble with breathing regularly, but Wren wasn’t quite ready to admit that to anyone, least of all herself.

  “Anything for a new friend. We are supposed to work together, after all, and so it’s important that you trust me. It’s always important for the Winged Blue to trust the one who teaches them how to fly. After all, where we’re going in just a few short days and nights is pretty damn high up in the air. Wouldn’t want you to get so nervous then that you forget how to fly!” Sia chuckled, but Wren didn’t really find her words all that funny. Nor were they especially reassuring.

  “High up?” she asked. Then a more important question came to Wren, making her forget about her first. “So, um, you mean you’re going to teach me how to fly? I’ve been trying for almost two weeks but haven’t had any luck.” Wren walked over to the rock and sat down, tucking her wings into each other a little so they didn’t bump into Sia’s.

  “We Winged Blue never teach ourselves, so it’s no wonder you weren’t able to learn on your own. And you seem pretty good at letting them out of your back by now, at least, so that only leaves us getting you up in the air. Should be no problem at all, as our not-yet-flying young ones almost always learn in just two days!”

  “I don’t have two days, though,” Wren told her. “Not all at once, at least. I have school, and graduation, and my mom, despite her…distractions…would notice if I was gone for that long.”

  “You’ll be gone a lot longer than two days, I’m afraid. But your mom will be fine, I’m sure, and besides, you have a world to save. Two, actually!” Sia grinned, almost looking a little proud, Wren thought. But she couldn’t possibly be proud of her, as she hadn’t even flown yet, much less saved the Winged Blue’s world, or whatever other world Sia happened to be talking about. Wren was in no way ready to save even just one entire world. Right in this moment, she felt as if she couldn’t even save herself from her small, meaningless life.

  “So, are you ready to get started?”

  Wren nodded, making eye contact with Sia for a few seconds, whose bright-green eyes made her look much happier to be there than Wren was right at that moment.

  “Great!” Sia clapped a few times, then jumped onto her feet. “To start, I want you to watch me, to see how I look when I go about it. Does that sound good to you?”

  “Yes!” Wren couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice, as the idea of watching her new acquaintance fly sent a flicker of fluttery thrill through her chest.

  “Great, great. Okay, please get up and stand behind me, so you can see firsthand what my wings look like when I first take off.”

  Wren stood and got behind Sia, wondering if her own wings looked as gorgeous as Sia’s from the back, hers a blue almost as dark as the night sky. Wren’s were merely the pale, watery blue of the sky as the sun was first rising, or at least the parts of them she could see when she looked over her own shoulders.

  But now she stared at Sia’s shoulders instead, her clothes seemingly cut perfectly around where her wings left her back, although Wren couldn’t understand how they came out without tearing the fabric around their base. Maybe…maybe they were magical clothes. Maybe the impossibilities this world came with didn’t just include…what was it Sia had called them? Blue…Winged Blue.

  “Okay, Wren, you watching closely? And you might want to back up a few feet. I don’t want to whack you in the face when I start to lift off the ground.”

  Wren hadn’t realized she’d been standing so close to Sia, so she shuffled backward as fast as she could. “Is here good?” she asked. She now stood near the very edge of the clearing, Sia a good eight or so feet in front of her.

  “Much better, Wren. Here I go!”

  Wren’s jaw dropped the second Sia’s feet left the ground. All it had taken were a few strong-looking flaps of her wings, and she’d been able to achieve flight. That had looked downright easy! It had looked so easy that Wren was almost certain she’d be able to learn that very night.

  Oh, was she ever wrong. First, Sia had taken a few leisurely, smooth laps around Wren, although instead of running slow circles around her, Sia was flying slow circles around her. She’d landed slightly in front of Wren and told her, “Now, you try. Remember, it only takes a slight push-off from the ground. At least for beginners like you.”

  Wren really was a beginner, because even with the hardest push-offs she could make with her tensed knees and sneakered feet, she only managed to make a fool of herself in front of her pretty teacher. And as a grand finale, she fell flat on her face after almost an hour of trying.

  “Oof!” She began to get up on her own, but then Sia helped lift her off the ground, adding insult to (slight) injury by flying a little as she helped Wren stand back up.

  “I think…I think that’s enough for one night,” Sia told her, and Wren had to admit, she really was ready to stop. Sia squeezed her hand lightly before she let go of it. “You’ll have better luck tomorrow, I’m sure of it. Now, why don’t you join me on the rock again? I have something I need to tell you, and you might want to be sitting down for it.”

  “What? Is it bad news?” Wren began to worry, then, that it might have to do with her dad.

  Sia patted the rock to her left. “Just sit, please, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  “Sure, okay, I will.” She went over to the rock—her rock, as she’d thought of it until then—and got ready for the worst.

  “First, I’m guessing this will come as a shock to you, but your mom…I mean, you must think she’s your mom, right? Well, Denise isn’t actually related to you.”

  “What? She isn’t?” Wren was very gla
d that she’d listened to Sia about sitting down, because this wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting to hear. She hadn’t known what to expect, to be honest, but now she knew that just about anything could be told to her next, so she steeled herself for the existence of giant flying badgers that the Winged Blue could turn into at will.

  Instead, Sia said, “Your dad told me he got lonely after a few years alone here on Earth, raising you by himself, and then he met Denise and felt much less alone. She might not have been his true love, the way your actual mom was, but she filled some of the space in his life that your mother had left empty when she disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? So he doesn’t know where my birth mom is?”

  “No one knows. She was with him when he left through the portal to come here, but it seems she didn’t make it. The sky above only knows where she might be…or if she’s even…well, I don’t want to worry you about her. Just know that she loved you very much and wanted to protect you just as much as Torien did. And does.”

  “I’d always thought my dad had a rather unique name, you know. Now that, along with how he seemed slightly different from other…other human dads, I guess I should say…well, it makes a lot more sense.”

  “I’ll bet it does!”

  “Do…do you know why I’m so important to the Winged Blue? My dad said I was, and you seem to think so, too.”

  “From what little I know of our prophecy, you’re very important to everyone’s safety, but I don’t know why. At least our part of the prophecy doesn’t state why.”

  “You have only one part of it?” Now Wren was even more lost. What new and confusing fact about this other world would crop up next?

  Sia nodded. “Yeah, only one. We don’t know where the other section is, just that it’s missing. Although it’s very likely that the Winged Red have it.”

  “The…Winged Red? Are they kind of like the villains of the Winged Blue’s world?”