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2
She is sitting in a mess of vines entangling her feathery white wings. Dark disheveled hair hangs in her face. Her olive skin is dark against her brilliant wings. She bends a branch and pries it from around her slender body. Her small hands pull at the last vine, but thorns bite at her palms. “Ow.” Her cry draws me to her. She wipes her soiled hands on her pale green dress and jolts to attention.
Turning her heart-shaped face toward me, she meets my eyes, and I am instantly entangled in her gaze. Seeing me approach from halfway across the grassy space, bow drawn, arrow ready, she whimpers and shrinks back from the light.
Following my first instinct, swinging the arrow toward the ground and disarming. I don’t know if it is the right thing to do, but I don’t want to scare her away. She is unarmed, after all.
“Don’t be afraid.” My voice emerges as a croak. I place the bow on the ground and shrug the quiver from my arm. “I can help.”
Pulling at the vines again, crimson drips from her grip. The sun filters through the trees like long arms pointing at her, making it difficult not to stare. She is so different from anyone I have ever seen.
I slide a knife from my belt and tiptoe closer, crossing through the evening rays.
Her brown eyes are wide and terrified. I kneel slowly and gently pull the vine from her feathery limb, avoiding the thorns. She lets out a panicked gasp as I slice the vine, freeing her.
Wings burst from her sides and she takes flight in an instant. They are easily twice the width of her outstretched arms.
“Please don’t go,” I blurt. My hands tremble, knife outstretched.
Already at the treetops, she turns midair and scrutinizes me. Her dark eyes search my body, my face, my hands. I toss the knife to the side and step forward, hands extended. The light reveals I have nothing else to hide, not even my curiosity.
Suspended in the air above me, her giant wings thrash, keeping her aloft. Wings beating once more, she slowly descends before me. Her leather-shod feet touch the ground before I can figure out what to say. Watching me closely, she folds her wings against her back, unable to hide their enormity behind her petite frame. They extend at least another head above hers.
“I... I... Welcome to Balfour.” Gently touching my fist to my chest in a proper Balfourian greeting, I nod. Four steps it would take to touch her, but I remain motionless, worried I might ruin this moment.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” she whispers and steps back.
“It’s okay.” I desperately wish for her to stay a little longer. “I’m Ledger.”
She touches her flushed cheeks in worry and looks to the sky. “Alouette.”
“Is that your name?” I breathe deeper.
She nods, and I take a small step closer. She shivers, cradling her wounded hand close to her chest, but doesn’t move away. As daylight fades, I ache to have a few more moments of light to memorize her face, her eyes, her wings.
“Yes,” she sighs. Her enormous feathery limbs twitch as if ready for flight at any moment.
I toe closer. “You are one of the Sky People?” It isn’t really a question, but she answers anyway.
“Yes.” She brushes her hands down the sides of her dress. “I wanted to see for myself.”
Raising my eyebrows, I am surprised at her response. I hoped for the same thing every year. And now she is here—one of them. I dismiss the worry clawing at the back of my mind, telling me I shouldn’t trust her or any Ellerian. I swallow back years of Father’s warnings. “Now you see. What do you think?”
“You’re smaller than I imagined. They make you sound like land-walking giants.”
I laugh. She covers her mouth, hiding a smile that makes me unsteady.
“No giants here. Although, I am a little short for my age.” I am blushing, but I don’t care.
“You are not full grown?”
I shake my head and take a step closer within arm’s reach. “I am twelve. Another harvest and I will be a man. Then I will join...” About to admit I will join in a war against her people, shame washes over me. I can’t believe I am standing with one of them, the Sky People, enemy of Balfour, and I don’t feel threatened. She is so small, gentle, and beautiful. Every belief I’ve ever held about them rewrites inside me.
“I am already thirteen and almost fully grown.” She tilts her head to the side and peeks behind me. I expect another person, but we are alone. “No wings,” she notes. “How do you stand it?”
“What?” I turn around so she can see my back.
“Walking everywhere.”
We giggle together, but then the sound of the shofar wails in the distance. She jerks, and wings unfurl behind her. I fall back a step to see their full extent.
“What is that?” Her eyes search the forest for an answer.
“They are calling in reinforcements.”
“Oh,” she says, shoulders drooping. Her downturned eyes give away her feelings of worry. She squeezes her wounded hand close to her chest.
I reach my hands in my pockets, one holds a trinket I created today, and the other has a handkerchief. It isn’t clean, but I offer to help her. “Can I bandage that for you?”
She hesitates, debating whether it is safe. Startled by a squirrel scampering from tree to tree, she looks around warily. Definitely not a spy. Just a curious girl. I approach her slowly. She is taller than me by a few inches. I pull the trinket out of my other pocket and offer it to her. Finally, her brow eases, and she takes the toy. I win her.
“I am a blacksmith, well, my father is the blacksmith. I’m technically still apprenticing.”
Taking her delicate hand, my chest flutters at the touch of her soft skin. I wipe the blood away. She winces a couple of times but allows me to wrap the handkerchief around it.
“There.” I smile, and she returns the expression. Her shoulders relax as she sighs. “I make tools and weapons. I invent things too.” I point at the trinket I made from metal pieces leftover from my father’s nails. “It’s a windmill,” I explain and twirl the sails. “You can have it if you like.”
She looks at me and we are frozen still. My head buzzes with excitement. I don’t move, though my heart pounds out of control. Her eyes slide from my gaze to my mouth. My breath catches in my throat. Her wings slowly expand behind her and all the senses in my body stand to attention.
“Thank you.” She looks at the mechanism in her hands and smiles with one side of her mouth.
“Um, you’re welcome.”
Her wings fan out once lifting her off the ground in a graceful leap. She is quite unlike Hollis, who often squeals and flails clumsily as if her legs are uneven.
Hoping to keep her here a little longer, I point at the giant tree in the middle of the clearing, “This is our sacred ground under the Hundred Harvest Tree. We gather here twice each year, where our first-fathers settled. We have a feast every harvest after the Clash—” I put my hand over my mouth, worried that I’ve offended her.
“It’s okay. I am not offended at you saying our people are at war.”
My confidence is boosted. “We have a feast after the Clash and if there are any ready for marriage, we hold a ceremony.”
“What’s that like?”
“The hunters bring a wild boar and the women cook—”
“No, what is the ceremony like?” Alouette’s wings fold behind her as though they are praying. Her fingers mimic the same motion and her brown eyes widen in anticipation.
“The fall leaves of the Hundred Harvest Tree are gathered into a long path from our village to that area over there.” I point to the mark in the ground where the grass is scarce from the many ceremonies held there. “The sun hits that spot during sunset and the Tree looks like it is on fire.”
“I would love to see that!”
I reach out and touch the hem of her soft green dress. It’s like a mixture of feather and linen. “What is this made of?”
“Oh, it’s just dove-down-silk. Tell me about your family.” She kneels beside me.
I look around, making sure we are still alone and join her on the ground. I marvel at the way she easily sits without damaging her wings. It’s like they have a mind of their own.
“Tolliver is my older brother. Mila is eight. She is really annoying.” I keep talking and watching her warm brown eyes soak in my every word. “Killian is nearly two and has only just started talking. My baby sister was born during the summer.”
Alouette rips out the grass in bunches and piles it in her lap as she listens. Her small hands remind me of Hollis. “My friend, Hollis is a gatherer. Her family picks from the berry bushes and herbs throughout the woods.”
Alouette smiles and rips out another fist full of tender grass, piling it on her feathery dress. “What’s it like having such a big family?” she asks with a sigh.
“It’s okay,” I say, though I’ve never thought about it before. “Tolliver is only one harvest older than I. Next harvest, when I turn thirteen, I will be a man and become a blacksmith, same as my father. He is on the council of our village and has many duties outside of our workshop. But it’s okay; I can do everything now anyway. I’m hoping I can build a few of my ideas to help our farmers do better during planting and harvest.”
“I wish I could see how you get the plants to grow all in a row in the fields like that.” She picks another blade and drops it in the breeze. It floats to me and lands on my leg.
“I would love to see what that looks like from the sky.” I lean toward her. “Can you fly carrying another person?”
She leaps up and the grass wafts into the air. I bounce to my feet and her wings stir the ground beneath us. “I carry my little neighbor around all the time,” she says.
I wonder how I will hold onto her small frame. She steps behind me, wraps her arms around my waist and squeezes my stomach. I gasp as the ground shoots from beneath me. We are above the trees in a flash. Her wings swoosh around us. It’s as if I am a part of a spectacular flying contraption. My village isn’t visible from here, but her sky island is in plain sight. She darts toward the mountains away from my people and hers. We fly along the treetops, dodging the spiky tips of the fir and pine trees.
Following the rise in landscape, we sail up the side of the mountain. Turning southward overlooking Balfour, I see the lined pattern of our fields in the distance. Our crops are in semi-straight lines and each field is like a square on my grandmother’s quilt.
From this skyward view, the evergreen trees look like wispy green feathers stuck in the soil. The rest of the forest looks like a swirl of red, yellow and orange that surrounds my village. The cottages of Balfour are laid out in three concentric circles.
Alouette’s arms tighten around me as we drop to the rocky ground on the side of the mountain. It is cold up this high and I shiver as my feet touch down. She releases me, and I shout, “That was amazing! I can’t believe you get to fly whenever you want.”
She smiles and nods. “This is what our ground is like on Ellery.” She kneels and scoops a handful of rocks and dust. I notice the absence of grass or trees around us.
“Is that why your people take our crops?” I am nervous about being so forthright.
Her eyebrows push together. “Yes. There are civilizations on our path that willingly provide us with food.” She drops the rocks to the ground. “Yours is the only one who fights against us. The Guardians train for this interception every rotation and it’s all they talk about.” Her eyes close in thought. “They have a strategy to refrain from killing as many of your people as possible so that there will be enough of your men to tend the fields. I heard a story from ages ago that our people triumphed over the Balfourians and had killed so many men, the next year they couldn’t provide enough food for Balfour and Ellery.”
Remembering the stories of the Great Loss, I don’t know what to say. In the distance, the floating land has no trees, only rock from top to bottom.
Wordlessly, she wraps her arms around me again and heaves me from the mountainside soaring head first toward my village. My whole body enjoys the mixture of exhilaration and terror. I laugh at the wonderful feeling of flying. The wind shear dries my wide eyes and gaping smile. My stomach doesn’t catch up with my body even after we level off and glide across the treetops.
As we soar, I spot several sentries sprinting into the woods toward us. Panic rises in my throat. I swallow it back as we drop into the clearing around the Hundred Harvest Tree. She lets go of me, and I stumble forward.
“They’re coming! I have to go,” she cries. Her wings swish around us and dust billows in the twilight. With her hand still in mine, she hovers just above my head.
I shield my face from the whirling dirt. “Will I ever see you again?”
“We will be out of range by tomorrow. I will not be able see you until next harvest. Be safe, my friend.” Alouette places a hand to her lips and blows a kiss. My heart wrenches at her sudden exodus as I watch her dart into the sky.
“Farewell, Alouette,” I whisper as I think about the fact that I was flying. It is the most magnificent thing I have ever felt.
