Flying and Falling

I never understood why people kept birds. It felt wrong, seeing those creatures in cages. How can a bird live closed in? I used to dream of freeing all the birds. I explained this to my father at the zoo, as only righteous eight-year-olds can.

“I’ll release all of them and become a hero to the whole animal kingdom!” I exclaimed. To his credit, he didn’t laugh. He just pointed to a group of parrots.

“Where do you think those parrots are from, Leah?” he asked me.

“The forest,” I said, certain. I’d read books, after all.

“Not any forest around here. They’re used to warm climates. What would they do in the winter?” He rested a hand on my back as I turned away.

“I don’t know.” My eyes tightened in frustration. But I did know, and I hated it.

“They won’t make it. Is it okay to let them go, knowing they can’t survive outside?” He gave my shoulder a squeeze, but it didn’t help.

I nodded, hiccupping back tears. Even though I didn’t have the answer, I still hated seeing them kept from the sky.

                                                                                                 ***

Twenty years later, I made two decisions I regretted. One was agreeing to five tequila shots at my best friend’s bachelorette party. The other was wearing a tacky t-shirt claiming I was on Team Bride.

But I didn’t regret him. He was broad with buzzed hair and a strong jaw. With his sleeves rolled up, the edge of a tattoo peeked out. I was content to watch him joking with the bartender, his hazel eyes surrounded by laugh lines. Multiple shots of tequila made my staring obvious.

“Go up and talk to him,” the bride said.

“Oh no no no--” I shook my head. “Tonight’s about you!”

“Do it!!” she yelled. “It’ll be….my wedding present!!!”

I tried to be casual walking up to the bar. But I couldn’t ignore the hoots behind me. So, I sidled up to him and ordered water. Could I get away with a thirty-second conversation?

“Are you going to start a fight?” he said, turning to me.

“What?” I couldn’t believe it would be this easy.

“Well you have a bunch of women staring at you. So either you’re about to start a fight, or they dared you to come talk to me.”

I snorted water out of my nose. “Don’t know. Depends on how I feel when I finish this.”

“How long will that take?”

“How much time you have?”

I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and his number in my phone.

                                                                                                 ***

In ninth grade biology I read a factoid about Peregrine falcons. They can fly up to 240 miles per hour, killing other birds in mid-air.

I wondered: was that death by falling, or by flying?

                                                                                                 ***

On our second date, we played pool.

“So,” I said, standing up from the table. “When did you decide to become a pilot?”

He laughed.

“Leah, you’ve set a new record.”

“For doing what?”

He turned from the table to look at me. “For taking the longest to ask that question.”

“So what do I get?” I said, grinning.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” His eyes made the promise clear as they roamed my body.

“David, I hate surprises.”

“I think mine can change your mind.”

I enjoyed the surprise, but he didn’t answer my question.

                                                                                                 ***

People always talk about about birds mating for life. Some species do form long-term monogamous bonds. But this choice comes with benefits. They often enjoy expanded territory. Long-term bonds also help them take care of their young.

Peel apart our words, our clothes. Survival is all that’s left.

                                                                                                 ***

It took four more dates and an hour in bed for him to open up.

“So, when did you decide to become a pilot?” I asked, tracing nonsense on his chest. He looked away from me.

“I didn’t tell you?”

“Nope, you distracted me with your pool skills.”

“Just my pool skills?” he asked.

“Stop changing the subject.”

“When I was ten,” he began, “my family flew back to Mexico City. My grandma was sick, and this was the last time we would probably get to see her. My parents gave me the window seat. You know, to distract me. The minute we took off, I loved it. The sound, the speed, the whole world felt brand new. I wanted to stay up there forever. But the flight ended. I came back down into the smog, the noise, the mess of it all. I knew then and there I would do whatever it took to get up in the air.”

“Do you still hate coming down to earth?” I couldn’t help asking, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay still. I’d known this combo before: it was too late to run. I was already caught.

He kissed me and began working his way down my body. “Depends on where I’m landing.”

                                                                                                 ***

The bird with the shortest bond is the ruby-throated hummingbird. Once the birds have mated, the male leaves.He doesn’t help build the nest. He doesn’t help keep the eggs warm. He definitely doesn’t help raise the chicks.

There must be an evolutionary benefit to leaving.

                                                                                                 ***

Three weeks later, he had to leave; his assignment was changing. He was going to be out west, close to San Diego. As apologetic as he was, I could see the excitement in his eyes. There were new places to see, new skies to explore.

It was a relief, really. I’d started throwing up every morning as accurate as an atomic clock. I took a test, but I already knew what the result was going to be.

So I didn’t groan about tender breasts. I didn’t admit that motherhood terrified me. Saturday morning I kissed him goodbye and went to the clinic, alone.

You can’t fly weighed down with secrets.

Written by: Katie Simpson
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Sabotage

“Fred. Fred, wake up.”

He stirs from his wounded slumber as Amelia squeezes his shoulders, shaking him gently. Fred is leaning against the trunk of a palm tree, his eyes squinting at the dry blood on his pants. Every part of his body is sore and he protests from the inside, but Amelia is insistent. He looks up at her, feeling what remains of his existence spill out like water on a hot skillet.

“What is it? Are you hurt?” he asks in a gruff whisper.

“Can you walk, Fred? You have to see them. Their wingspan must be fourteen feet! They’re absolutely breathtaking!”

Amelia is giddy, with cuts on her face and hands as if she had walked through brambles. Without thinking, she kneels and pulls his arm around her shoulders, trying to pull him up to a stand. He wails, stomach churning at the pain. Unphased, she starts to hobble forward, but it’s no use. Fred falls to the sand, too weak to weep.

“Oh, do get up! We may never have another chance to see such magnificent creatures! To think, they live and we thought them to be the stuff of legend!”

Fred feels his consciousness as he rolls over onto his back, his right leg throbbing as pain rides up through his back and down to his toes. He cannot comprehend Amelia’s mania, her inconsiderate obsession with whatever winged creature she happened to come across while he very well might be dying.

“Don’t worry, Fred. You’ll see them. I’ll even bring one to you if I can!”

He doesn’t hear her run off when he blacks out.

                                                                                                       ***

The sun is high in the sky when his eyes flutter open. Amelia must have moved him because he is lying on a blanket next to a small campfire. He hears something boiling when he turns his head to look around. Amelia is squatting about ten feet away, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as she giggles. After some time, Fred realizes she’s speaking French. But there’s no one else around. However, the way she’s carrying on he nearly doubts himself.

“Amelia, dear, who’s here?” Fred asks.

A quick turn of her head in his direction, then she remembers the pot of boiling water over the fire. Amelia removes it, then crawls to Fred’s side.

“Captain, I’ve brought one to you. They speak French!”

Fred’s heart begins to race, jumping to the conclusion that they are rescued. The adrenaline gives him enough energy to sit up so he can behold their rescuers with his own eyes.

“Thank God, we’re saved,” he breathes.

“Fred, this is Malory,” Amelia coos as she gestures past the fire.

There is no one. Fred’s breath picks up and panic begins to set in as it did those first few moments after he crawled from the wreckage of their crash.

“Amelia, I see no one,” he says evenly.

She huffs and walks back to the spot where she had been squatting, pointing with both of her hands like knives to the space in front of her.

“Honestly, Fred. I know you’re not feeling all that well, but she’s hard to miss.”

Amelia speaks again in French, and Fred can feel his heart leaping toward his throat as a deep fear sets in. He searches his memory for clues. There was the crash. There were the attempts at radio communication from what was left of the plane. There was his weakening body as blood oozed from his wound, and Amelia stitching it up. And then there was a fish roasting over a campfire. He could not eat it, but she could. Fred remembers the cautionary tales of eating the heads, that you can lose your mind for hours, sometimes for days.

Fred’s terror gives him the strength to stand.

“Forgive me, Miss Earhart. My vision has failed me since the crash. I can barely see you at all,” he lies.

“Ah, Fred, you poor dear,” Amelia says as she leads him around the fire. “Perhaps Malory will let you see her with your hands.”

And she takes his left hand and runs it through empty space, touching nothing, but Amelia speaks with awe.

“Feel the wings, Fred? A single feather is nearly a foot long. Wings for arms, but they keep everything else. She is the truest representation of an independent woman - a harpy, a woman who can fly.”

It’s too much. The world fades, and Fred’s last thought is the hope to wake up saved.

                                                                                                       ***

Fred wakes up screaming. Amelia’s fingers dig into the stitches on his right thigh and her other hand is wrapped around his throat.

“So, was this your plan all along, Fred? To rip me from the sky as I closed the circle of the globe? Was this part of your plan?”

She rips the wound open and the blood oozes heavily. Fred wretches and weeps, too weak to pull from her, nearly delirious with pain, dehydration, and hunger.

“Malory told me everything,” Amelia continues. “She heard you radio FDR, tell him our coordinates, tell him that you were successful. That you thwarted me. That you failed me as a captain and friend.”

Fred can smell his own blood and the ocean. He can feel the wind and hear the crash of waves below.

“You won’t take my wings, Fred.”

Amelia kicks his body over the edge of the cliff and he tumbles down toward the ocean. She sneers down at the ring of foam on the surface of the water before looking up at the sky. The sun melts behind the horizon and the stars begin to peek. Amelia spreads her arms and breathes deeply, closing her eyes as she recites:

“For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan; and Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can - must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man.”

Amelia leaps.

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Matt Crump