Compartments click closed above his head. They feel his restlessness as bodies brush past him. He blinks at rounded windows, battles with the belt. Arranges his phone, headphones, magazine, jacket. Muscles shift on one side of the face, then the other. Something in the mouth. The air dry and whining. He leans a forearm on the armrest, and an elbow jabs against it. There’s no room.
Doors are being locked, bodies settled.
They move along the row, searching the passengers. They know they won’t find him. It wasn’t Adam crossing behind blue glass, but a stranger. They were caught up in that woman’s urgency. And now they are caught in this machine.
The travellers don’t like it either. Everyone’s uncomfortable in their skin, some degree of unease at their confinement. Makes it easy to move and hard to settle. They stop as one woman, annoyed, turns to glare at something jiggling at her back. They feel the muscle at the side of the eye contract as she squints at a child behind her. They watch the child’s frown form, its expression fragment into terror. The parent beside her places a restraining hand. The body, a set of springs, turns again: they feel the release of muscle as the woman’s face goes soft. Something in the blood that slows the heart rate, calms the breath. Medication, or practice. They let the eyes blink and close.
The kid starts crying.
She loosens the seatbelt around her stomach. Clears her throat.
Carefully, they help her to look out the window. Trying not to push too hard, create too much resistance. Interferences like this are dangerous. They still can’t predict the consequences. She complies, moving the eyes, then the head and shoulders, shifting forward to catch the angle. The plane is rolling along the runway now. Around her, people close screens, swipe phones, settle. The child behind her sniffs and whines. The plane gathers speed, they feel its weight lift below her. They have no idea what this will do to them.
The earth releases its hold.
In a moment, they are flying. The roofs below pattern out into a dark green undulation: watercourses, forests, fields. The ocean to one side, vast and welcoming, and edgeless where its roots enter the land. A little furrow forms on her face, and her eyes fall closed.
The hum of the machine encloses them. Excitement rises, subsides. Up high, they are freshly aware of the body’s vulnerabilities. The thin air pushes out the cells and membranes, slowly inflates her in her skin, and they are afraid. Not of losing Adam, or finding him. Afraid they might dissolve completely, slip and fall to pieces, shatter at last into infinite fragments. Anything could happen in the air.
When the plane reaches the clouds it bounces once, twice. Her stomach drops; she grips the armrest, palms cold. They feel the weight of cloud-resistance, the shudders as the plane passes through. Then she looks out again. This blue.
A memory of an empty world, of anything solid left behind. Momentum, as if the body’s load, its terrible ballast, had let go. They were still a child, flying alone, leaving a land behind that shrank to islands. The stewards stumbled over their sweethearts and peanuts. They passed through the boundary, and saw from the other side how little substance it had. How porous these surfaces that had once seemed like walls. Leaving was a reprieve, a fairytale escape, a banishment. Just for a few months, then a year, then the rest of high school. They hadn’t understood it as migration. It was meant to be impermanent. There was always supposed to be a return, a home to return to.
The body was the only homeland. And that’s long gone.
Behind them, the child wriggles. They feel the woman’s body growing heavy, nearing sleep, and with that rest looms the threat of grief; they slip away. The child’s wide awake. The way her body vibrates, breath small and high as a violin against the chest, she might never sleep again. They want her vigilance. The parents make a barricade on either side, safe, but there are sore places she can’t help scratching. Staring into the dark below seats, across the mother’s calves, where something lies concealed that fascinates. She knocks her feet against the rim of the chair, one then the other. They settle in the thoughtless act repeated. Think themselves into it without planning to. Just let the feet coincide until the two limbs beat together. ‘Yī, èr, sān, sì.’ They look with her, see her reflection against the growing dark. Her little round face grows patient, obedient. Then at once she stops and holds both legs stiff against the vinyl, every muscle tense. A hand shoots out to hit the woman beside her, the mother whose body she sometimes commands.
‘Mama,’ the oldest word, warm in her mouth. But it’s not strong enough. Terror tenses in her. Legs out, she grips the armrests, too wide for her small hands. She doesn’t take her eyes off her reflection.
The mother doesn’t wake. They try to move the eyes, and she fights them. The legs collapse, pain at the knee. The insect itch overcomes her. She’s strong; they can’t hold on much longer.
The steward coming down the aisle stops one row ahead. Tries to wake the woman in front, but she won’t stir.
Is she hurt? Have they hurt her? Fear’s in the body, they remember. Then let it be the child’s fear.
The little girl closes her eyes, shuts them in. Her tongue pushes behind her teeth. A wobbling one, and a little gap. Her attention where it aches. She uses pain to connect with herself. They want her to sleep, want to leave her in peace. But they don’t have enough control. They rush into the man behind her, who wakes with a snort. Heart rate rising, lungs like syrup. A little echo of her, at first, but it subsides.
Grateful, they taste the staleness in his mouth. He blinks and reaches for headphones, tracing the cord from the tablet to his chest. The lights overhead go dark. His breath is short and painful. The other passengers begin to cough. This heart’s not getting enough blood. In his weakness they become afraid again. What is to stop them from falling, from floating, lifeless, back to earth? Nothing but air.
Air, and the remains of a dissipating fury.
He drifts into the tune, the heart rate softens. They imagine they might soften too, descend like a feather, something lighter. Weightless, loose up here above the cloud’s false floor. Become rain. Enter oceans. Let go of the energy required to cohere. The scale of the planet frightens them, the spread of the unknown. They are afraid of letting go, of falling to pieces. Out there, grief will adhere to them, weigh them down, scatter them like ashes. Maybe they’re supposed to let it.
Yet memory comes, and holds them together.
The music encloses him, and they want to let him rest. But they need these eyes. There’s a blinking light out there, emerging from the depth of white. He squints at it, and his throat catches fire. There’s no fire out there. It’s only the wing’s edge cutting through the dark.
His hand reaches up to grasp his neck below the ear. Cold fingers rise to the back of the skull. Strange. He seems to be feeling for a wound, though there’s nothing there.