It had once been such a crowded sky with Brandy, Nero, Andi, and all the others who had come before. They used to all fly, high, unlimbered, free to do in the night sky what one could never do in the day. But now Egan is the last of them, grounded and strapped like a human anchor to the impossible. Landlocked, and so far, no longer willing to convince the Old Ones to let him fly as well. Where once he’d been the leader of the Tecumsa School Brokens, now he remains the exclamation point of a grand idea, the anticlimax left behind to something no one really ever believed could happen.
Everything had started when he’d dreamed of Icarus. It wasn’t a hint of something. There was no whisper of flying through the air, wind whipping his hair. The dream wasn’t his brain twisting something he’d learned into a mind-warping multi-colored live-action Manga. In fact, he’d never heard or read of Icarus or any other Greek mythology before he’d had the dream. No, this was a dream of prophecy and just as every prophet who’d ever walked the earth knew that they’d been spoken to by the divine, he also knew that the Icarus dream was incredibly special.
It had all begun with a whisper.
Excerpt from Police Report from 3 August - Tuesday - 0614 Hours:
I then met with Sister Lucretia Santos who’d been present for final lights out. She insisted that all residents of Tremblay Hall had been present, including Nero Panousis and Brandy Scoggins, who are now whereabouts unknown. When asked if they are romantically involved, Sister Santos and the other residents who are interviewed (see addendum) informed this officer of each of the missing persons’ physical issues. Nero NMN Panousis, Age 14, Ward of the State of Tennessee, Cerebral Palsy, able to walk short distances with the aid of crutches. Brandy Renee Scoggins, 15, victim of fire with third degree burns over one third of her body, but able to walk short distances with the aid of canes (crutches reportedly too painful to use). Both missing persons current location unknown. Investigation currently awaiting the results of cellular forensics to see if any local numbers are in use at time of disappearance.
“Mr. Egan, if you please. Inform us about the relationship between Phaethon and the other children with whom he associated.”
Egan glances at the other kids in the classroom, but no one dares meet his gaze. They are equally afraid that they’ll be next. Egan’s nemesis for as many years as he’s been going to Tecumsa School, Brother Amos, has a way of asking questions that seem too close to home, almost as if he knows more than he should.
“Mr. Egan. We are waiting.”
Sixteen years old last month, Egan should have had a normal life in a normal home with normal parents. He should have been driving a car, friends in the backseat, and a girlfriend in the passenger seat. But that isn’t the way his life has been laid out. His is something different. His is a life with gravitas. He adjusts himself in his wheelchair so he is sitting up straighter and decides to go along for the ride.
“Phaethon had been told that he was the son of the Greek god Helios, who was responsible for driving the sun across the sky. The other kids didn’t believe him, even though it seemed that every Tom, Dick, and Agamemnon was the bastard of one god or another.”
“Careful, Mr. Egan.”
He nods, inner smiling knowing he’d gotten away with one.
“Why do you think the other kids didn’t believe him?” Brother Amos asks.
“He had no proof.”
“Can a son of a god have proof?” Brother Amos paces to the chalkboard, then spins, his robes sweeping around him. “Does a son of a god even need proof? Or do you think the son of a god should show proof? After all, if he’s the son of a god, does he need to?”
Egan considers the question, “To set him apart. To make him feel important, maybe? In Phaethon’s case, he stole his father’s chariot and drove the sun across the sky. One doesn’t always know who their parents are—even back then—so to know yours is a god definitely gave you bragging rights.”
“Tell me this, Mr. Egan. If you are the son of a god, would you keep your powers secret, or would you feel the need to prove it? To act out?” Brother Amos presses.
“I don’t think using powers is acting out. Just because a human doesn’t understand what a god has done doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for doing it.”
Just as Brother Amos seems ready to ask another question, the bell rings. Everyone averts their gazes, grabs their books, and leaves.
“Why does Brother Amos have it out for you?” Zane asks, an hour later, shoving the second half of a bologna sandwich into his mouth. The food makes a ball in his right cheek that bobs up and down as he chews.
That’s a question Egan has been asking himself for years. “Maybe he’s jealous of my mad wheels,” he says, deflecting, gesturing towards his wheelchair.
Zane, and another of the newly arrived Brokens, sit on the grass leading up to Coolidge Hall—one of the three buildings used for classrooms and administration by the Tecumsa Home for Wayward Children, or as it was renamed by a committee of forward-thinking, grant-leaning donors, The Tecumsa School.
Zane, who has cerebral palsy like Nero had, sits beside his crutches on the grass. A half-eaten sandwich lay in his lap.
The girl is another thing. Her name is Andi and there’s something about her that makes Egan nervous. She has a wandering eye and a clubfoot that makes her limp and look like a hunchback, but if she sits still and her eyes manage to focus, she is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in a purely organic sort of way.
“Anyway, the bell rang, so I wasn’t able to finish talking about it,” he says.
“Do you really believe that?” Andi asks. Rumor has it that she’s been tossed around schools in New England for a time which explains the razor edge to her speech. “What you said about gods acting out?”
He scoffs. “Are you asking if I believe that there are gods and goddesses who fly about and cause things to happen?”
“You seemed so certain.” She pauses. “You have conviction about you when you talk.”
Her innocence makes him smile. “I don’t believe that there’s a pantheon of gods waiting around to do things. But I do believe that we all have the potential to be like gods.”
She glances sidelong at his wheelchair.
“Ever want to do something greater than yourself? Ever want to belong to something greater than you ever dreamed of?”
“I wanted to join the Boy Scouts,” Zane says, “But my fosters wouldn’t let me.”
Egan nods to Zane, then turns back to Andi. “Have you ever wanted to fly?”
A brief millisecond glance at her foot says it all. She’d probably give up the world just to walk straight so the idea of flying is preposterous. If she’d had parents and a decent healthcare plan she wouldn’t have her problems anyway. Both of her issues are correctable, which probably infuriates her.
“I’m serious. Have you ever wanted to fly?” he presses.
Her face turns red, but she eventually looks at him. “Fly. Like with wings and stuff?” she asks.
He leveled his gaze and lowers his voice, summoning the same authority he’d had in the classroom. “You don’t need wings to fly.”
Just then, Crespo runs up, out of breath, eyes wide with excitement. He is one of the few who’ll associate with the Brokens, but only because he knows his escape is so narrow. “D-d-did you hear? They f-f-found crutches on t-t-top of the water tower. They’re N-n-nero’s and Brandy’s and n-n-no one can figure out how in the h-h-hell they made it up there.”
The mystery of it is impossible. Two kids on crutches just gone with the only evidence as improbably as the explanations.
“Anyone ever consider that they might have left them there?” Egan asks.
Crespo scoffs. “How would they even g-g-get up there to leave them?”
Which is the wrong question, but Egan lets it sit there and fester. He merely nods and wheels away. A better question would have been where did they go?
Historians never understood the reasons man needed to be higher. They turned man-made rockpiles into places of unnecessary mystery. The great pyramids of Egypt—Khufi, Khafre, and the Red Pyramid—became mausoleums by short-sighted and tone-deaf historians rather than the stairways to the gods that they’d been meant to be. Modern Buddhists utterly failed to learn the obvious lessons of their worshipful ancestors, pretending that they actually heard something while sitting in the lotus position on mats in Iowa, Oklahoma, or California, fingers touching thumbs as they made noises together. They forgot that the original Buddhists lived in the mountains. The Maya Devi Temple in Nepal is the oldest of them all. Rongbuk Monastery rests on the back of Mount Everest at sixteen thousand feet. The Tiger’s Nest hangs on the edge of an eleven-thousand-foot cliff in Bhutan.
Theologians would have one believe that it is the remoteness that is the governing principle of their foundings. Except the remoteness is but a symptom of those who’d built the places and their need to go higher and higher to find places where they could constantly hear the voices that are ever-present in the clouds. The deep thrumming words that made bones hum and organs quiver, words like N-Ver and Hammom repeated over and over, until the monks joined them in a multioctaved chorus that echoed and endured through the ages.
Egan had first heard the words at thirty thousand feet during a thunderstorm. He’d been a mere boy of seven, moving from the Cascades in Washington to a home in Western Kentucky before he made it to the Tecumsa School. One more shake of the dice. One more roll of the bones. His young heart sent from one more foster family to another, forever in search of someone or something that would claim him as their own. Perhaps that is why he’d been so keen to hear the words—his need. Or perhaps it is because he is chosen—a reason he more firmly believed, shoving the embarrassment of not belonging aside, relegating it to an inadequacy he had no power over, like walking.
The first crack and sizzle of lightning snapped across the portside wing. Passengers screamed as a fist of thunder enveloped them. Lights flickered. The plane shuddered. Overheads opened, spilling luggage and jackets into the aisle. Almost everyone had their eyes closed, hands white knuckling their armrests.
But Egan’s eyes are wide and searching, wondering who’d said the word and made his body tremble.
Then it came again.
A sizzle and crack.
A fist of thunder.
And the words—N-Ver, N-Ver, N-Ver—repeated over and over by a voice that felt far older than anything he’d ever known.
It isn’t until they landed in Lexington that he’d stopped listening and by then, he’d understood, nodding to himself, nodding to the unseen, that yes, he would do as he’d been asked. He’d be their messenger. He’d explain their needs to the world, even if it took one person at a time.
The next morning is Saturday. They didn’t have any classes until after lunch, so Egan spent the day as near the water tower as he dared to go. Yellow police tape still fluttered in the breeze. Even the bright sun couldn’t destroy the memory of the others flying, their arms wide, eager laughter falling from their lips, as they did only what they’d dreamed. This is what Egan’s life has become and he is proud of it. He is a messenger. He is a giver of the air. If only they’d listen, he’d send them high, pirouetting, swooping, diving above the water tower, into and out of the clouds, the words powering them, the wind propelling them, the—
“Hubris,” comes a voice from behind him.
Egan’s memory melts as reality burns through. He’s been caught daydreaming, returning to the scene of the crime. He grabs his wheels and turns around.
Brother Amos stands with a hand up to shade his eyes, staring towards the top of the water tower.
“What did you say?” Egan asks.
“I said hubris.” Amos lowers his hand and levels his gaze at the boy in the wheel chair. “I was trying to get you to understand hubris. You do know what it means, right?”
Egan regards the brother. About thirty and a dozen or so pounds above two hundred, he wears his usual black cloak. Black sandals adorn his feet. The hair on his head is closely shaved. Even if he hadn’t shaved, it is clear he is already going bald. But it is his eyes and mouth that consistently grab Egan’s attention. The man seems to always be in the middle of a smile, as if there is a joke for which only he knows the punchline.
“It means bragging about something, right? We were talking about the young gods. None of them could keep their power secret. Is that what you meant?”
“Hubris is more than that. It’s more than foolish pride. It’s more than arrogance. It’s doing something knowing that it will bring down the ire of those around you. Even the gods sometimes can’t appreciate hubris.”
“The gods were once young themselves,” Egan says. “They probably bragged when they were young.”
“Some gods were never young, Mr. Egan. Remember that. The gods are older than anything we know.” He resumes looking at the top of the water tower. “Where do you think they went?”
Egan stares at the brother, wondering at his response. Then he realizes he’s been asked a question. “Do you mean the gods?”
“The gods haven’t gone anywhere. I was talking about dear Brandy and dear Nero. Where do you think they went?”
Which is the right question. Egan smiles. “Don’t you mean how did they get up there? That’s what everyone wants to know.”
“We know that’s not the most important question.”
“But they are broken. Not even regular people,” Egan says.
“Come now, Mr. Egan. I know you’ve created this whole mythology that you and the other kids with disabilities are broken, but we know that’s far from the truth. I have a feeling you can do very much whatever you want to do.”
Egan doesn’t know what to say. No adult has ever addressed him with such aplomb. He ignores it. “The police think that the crutches and canes were left on the tower as a decoy.”
Brother Amos grunts and shrugs. “Interesting speculation. Did they say a decoy for what?” he asks. He turns on his heel without answering. “Decoy,” he says to himself. Then he chuckles and walks away.
The next day is the fourth Sunday of the month which means a field trip. They leave in three busses for Lookout Mountain to learn about its rich history during the Civil War. Egan and the Brokens ride on the handicapped bus. He’d hoped Andi would have ridden with them, but she is still trying to assimilate with the normal students. When they arrive, he makes sure to find a place beside her for Sister Santos’ presentation, who begins by telling of the Nickajack Expedition against the Cherokee Indian, then moves on to talk about the major Civil War battle in 1863. Behind her, the Tennessee River meanders lazily in an arc past Chattanooga and around a spit of land called Moccasin Bend—where the Tecumsa School once threatened to send him to a mental health facility.
He has little time for the presentation, instead, watches the way Andi tilts her head as she listens as if she is an animal trying to understand a different language.
He is just getting up the nerve to speak to her when she leans towards him and asks, “Why do you want to be called Broken?”
He hesitates, then answers, “It’s not what we want to be called, it’s who we are.”
She flashes her eyes at him, then resumes watching Sister Santos. She says, “Bullshit,” and nothing more.
Egan stares at her. No one has ever called him on this before so he doesn’t have a frame of reference to argue. Luckily, she saves him.
“No one calls you that except you. Why do you want to be a Broken? It’s such a derogatory term.”
“Maybe I just want to call us something before others get the chance,” he says. “They could call us gimps or something worse.”
“Do they?”
“No.” But then he adds, “but there is this one boy who did. He used to make jokes about me like, What do you call Egan when he’s sitting on the front porch?”
She glances at him and when it became apparent that he is waiting for her to ask the question, she raises an eyebrow instead.
“Matt. As in door mat. You call him Matt.” When this gets no response, he says, “Or what do you call Egan when he’s floating in the pool? Bob. Get it? Bob? Or what do you call Egan when he’s nailed to a wall? Art. Get it?”
She grins a little, but it isn’t what he is looking for. “Those are dead baby jokes,” she says. “Like, what is red and sits in a corner playing with razor blades? A dead baby. What’s red and green and sits in a corner? The same baby two weeks later.”
“That shit isn’t funny,” he says, smiling.
“Some people think it is,” she says. “Ever hear the one about how to tell the difference between a baby and a bowling ball?”
He can’t help but grin wider. He knows the joke. They all know the joke. For some reason he’s surprised she knows the joke. He gives her a grudging laugh as he shares his unusually candid thoughts. “It’s really crazy the sort of things we find funny. I wonder if our parents ever had jokes like these.”
“Of course, they did,” she says.
“And I suppose they found them funny, too.”
“Given the right context. So what happened to this boy who made fun of you?”
“Ronnie? He aged out at the home I was in. On the day of his eighteenth birthday, he just got up and walked away.”
“So your whole life has been changed by that one boy,” she says. “He must have some powerful magic.”
Sister Santos ends her presentation. She tells everyone they have thirty minutes to look around and then back to the busses.
Without a word, Andi stands, goes behind Egan’s wheelchair, and begins to push it.
He can feel her limp behind him, but it is ever so slight. Holding onto the handles helps her keep weight off her bad foot. She is probably using him as a cover.
He has nothing to counter what she’s said. It takes him awhile. But as they approach the edge of the bluff, he asks, “Don’t you think one boy can change a life?”
“If he has powerful magic he can, I suppose.”
The curve of the river is becoming obscured by low clouds. At three thousand feet above the valley floor, they are high enough up and soon, find themselves in a white bubble of muffled cloud cotton.
“What do you know about hubris?” he asks, his voice deadened by the air.
She shrugs as she pushes the chair to a stop near a stone bench.
He engages the wheel locks.
She sits beside him. “I know it has something to do with pride.”
“Brother Amos thinks that it’s foolish pride. But what if you are so certain about something and we showed pride in that? Is it foolish? Or is it knowing more than anyone else?”
“Knowing more than anyone else? Sounds like something a teenager would say, is what a grown up’s response would be.”
“But it can happen.” He knows he shouldn’t say anything more, but he can’t help it and feels the words leave his mouth of their own volition. “A teenager can know something…something special…something magical.”
“You’ll have to stop vague-booking and tell me what you’re really talking about.”
He cocks his head and listens. They are there. The words of power. N-Ver. N-Ver. His spine vibrates with their bass. And something else behind them like the sound of children playing. At first it sounds like glass falling on glass, but if he listens closely, he can make out individual laughter.
“I can’t really explain it,” he says. When he sees her about to protest, he holds up a hand and says, “But I do promise that there is great magic. You just need to listen.”
“Listen to what?”
“If you’re talking, you aren’t listening,” he says. “Now, just listen.”
She shakes her head as she stares into the clouds. “But I don’t hear anything.”
“You will if you just keep quiet.”
“But what is it I’m supposed to hear?”
He uses his hands to encompass the clouds. “This. Now. Everything.”
He watches her stare blankly into the clouds until a breeze comes and they part. The bend in the river appears, and with it, the place where the crazy people live. All the while, he stares at her as she sits with her eyes closed. He doesn’t dare move as his gaze redraws the curve of her jaw and the way her closed lips seem as if they are telling her cheeks a secret. He imagines her sitting closer to him, feeling her breath on his cheek. He imagines it smelling sweet. Not like candy, but something more organic, like the palm of a hand after a vanilla bean is crushed within.
They sit there, him watching her as she sits with her eyes closed, listening to everything he hears, the words of the Old Ones even now should be coursing through her. They sit as one perfect pair until Sister Santos rings her old fashioned, silver bell to call them back to their busses.
Her eyes snap open and she turns to him, a hint of a smile playing across her features.
A surge of something delicate fills his chest. “Did you hear it? Did you hear them?” he asks.
Sister Santos rings the bell again.
“Come on,” she says, standing. She unlocks his wheels and turns him around. “Time for us to go.”
He can no longer see her, but he still whispers, “Did you hear them?”
Five. Ten. Twenty feet. And she says, “No, Egan. Sorry. I didn’t hear anything.”
The delicate thing inside of him shatters.
Then they are on separate busses, each on their own journey back to the Tecumsa School.
The rest of the day and night pass in miserable silence. By the time he is back in Brother Amos’ classroom for third period on Monday, he’s barely able to contribute. For the first time in his life, he thought he’d found someone to share his connection with the voices of those who lived in the clouds. He felt so sure about her, but replaying everything they’d said, he realizes how mistaken he’s been. Who is she anyway? Pretender. If the best she could muster are dead baby jokes, then what good is she?
The problem is that she and Zane have been assigned to his classes and they now sit a few rows in front. He can’t help himself as he watches her back, longing for her to turn and regard him. But the best she can do is turn to Zane and laugh at something stupid, or raise her hand and answer one of Brother Amos’ stupid questions.
“Mr. Egan, are you with us?”
He realizes that all eyes are now on him. He’s been so lost in his love-hate that he’s missed the question.
And there she is, turning around, eyes appraising him, inspecting him, analyzing him, and for the first time in years his face turns red. He opens his mouth to speak but feels like Crespo and knows he can’t get the words out.
Brother Amos’s voice surrounds him. “I was asking about James Matthew Barrie, Mr. Egan, and his most well-known work, Peter Pan.”
Egan feels the buzzing of everyone staring at him and grinds his teeth together. He hates the feeling. He fights against it. He exhales and forces his mouth to enunciate the words, “Peter Pan?” And of course as soon as he says it, he feels ridiculous. He has his own love-hate relationship with Peter Pan. He remembers in the Cascades with Mother Dixie and how she liked to sit them in front of the television with her library of Disney movies while she drank wine all day. Two of the older kids fought over what they’d watch. It was either Lion King or Peter Pan and he’d been forced to watch them until he was sick of them.
Brother Amos sighs in exasperation. “Mr. Egan. Peter Pan. We’re waiting.”
The memory of the older boy named Ronnie and the girl named Jess and their pinching and punching and stealing of his food avalanches back on him with the music of Peter Pan and Lion King as the sound track.
He says the words again, “Peter Pan.”
The eyebrows arched. “Indeed. Sure. Tell us about the hubris of Mr. Barrie.”
“Back to the Greeks then.” Egan clears his throat and sits up straighter. “Pan is the God of the Wild. Barrie named his famous character after Pan to display Peter’s nature. In both mythology and Barrie’s story The Little White Bird, Peter is wild and is able to communicate with otherworldly beings and travels to Neverland.”
“And his hubris? You were asked about his hubris,” Brother Amos mentions.
Just as Egan is about to speak, Sister Santos comes to the door, her face pale.
Brother Amos meets her in the hall.
Crespo being Crespo listens at the door, then crabs to the middle of the room.
“They found them.”
“Who?” several students ask.
“B-B-Brandy and Nero.”
“But that’s impossible,” Egan says.
“No. That’s what the Sister is explaining They found their bodies in a field near Pikeville.”
“Are they dead?” Zane asks.
Crespo nods. “She said it is as if they’d fallen from a great height.”
Egan can’t keep his mouth from slamming open.
As bad as the previous night was, this night is even worse. Storms rage outside, and he hears himself being called. But he is too confused to go to them. He’d thought that he’d freed the others of their earthbound dramas. He’d never meant to send them to their deaths. The voices never promised—never told him what they were going to do with the others. They just made them fly and let them join them in the clouds.
And to think that Brandy and Nero fell from the sky like a pair of modern Icarus.
There has to have been some mistake.
There’s been repeated knocking on the door, but it isn’t until well after midnight that he finally relents and opens it.
Zane stands in a puddle, soaked with rain. His face is red with tears and something else. He slumps on his crutches. “She won’t come down. She wants you.”
“Who won’t come down? Who wants me?” Egan asks.
“Andi. She says to come and get you. She said that she lied. She can hear them.” Zane’s eyes grow wide. “What can she hear, Egan? What did she lie about?”
Egan ignores the questions. He rolls past and into the storm.
Zane shoves his crutches aside and begins pushing Egan. Soon they are in a loping run. Zane seems to be holding on as much as he is propelling them.
The storm lashes at his face and torso with wicked slaps of rain. The sound assaults him on multiple levels. Thunder booms and wind roars. Beneath it all comes the voices, stentorian, anguished, starving. They want more to fly. They want more to come to them. The entire way to the water tower Egan wonders what he is going to do.
Then he sees Andi, standing on the edge of the tower, arms raised to the sky, shouting into the wind.
“I hear you. I hear you talking. Take me. Take me now.”
Zane pulls Egan to a stop, then lets go and limps to the tower. He pulls himself up to the top. When he joins Andi, he points, and she follows his gesture.
She sees Egan, then steps to the edge and shouts. “I lied to you. I heard them.” She spins, slipping on the wet metal surface and almost plummeting below. She catches herself at the last moment. “They won’t stop talking to me, Egan. They want me. They want to make me fly.”
He shouts. “Don’t do it, Andi! I was wrong. Don’t listen to them.”
Egan’s chair jerks around violently.
Brother Amos holds the arms of the chair, his face inches from Egan’s. “What are you doing?”
“Andi. She’s going to get hurt.”
Brother Amos’ gaze pierces him. “She needs your voice. She needs your connection.”
Visions of her falling thousands of feet in some lonesome field flood him. “No. I can’t. I don’t want her to die.”
“This is not yours to decide, Egan. The Old Ones have claimed her. They’ve made their voices heard through you, their conduit. They want her.”
Egan shakes his head and struggles to be free of the brother’s grip. “I thought all they did was fly.”
“You didn’t want to know. You were so happy being a ringmaster you didn’t take time to learn what it is they did. Nevertheless, we are here, and you have been long ago chosen. The Old Ones need to be fed. What lives in the cloud is but a memory of them. A whisper of what they once were. To keep them alive they need ones such as yourself.”
“But why me?”
“You came from nothing. You have nothing. Nobody wants you.”
“But that’s not true. I had a mother.”
“That picture? I gave you that picture. I found it in a frame I bought at the store. It means nothing.”
Egan screams at Brother Amos. Unintelligible. Primal.
But the brother ignores it. “I tried to give you hints. I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen. Remember when I asked you to tell me about the hubris of Mr. Barrie? Why would he have any hubris if he is merely telling a story…a fiction…something he’d invented whole cloth from nothing. What amazes me is that regardless of how smart you are, you still don’t get it. You still haven’t made the connection.”
“This can’t be true. All they ever wanted to do is fly. All any of us ever wanted to do is fly.”
“Barrie couldn’t help but brag. His hubris is incredible. He put everything in plain sight, albeit hidden behind a pleasingly youthful narrative.”
“Shut up!”
“Peter Pan is real. Neverland is real. It’s not some place for lost boys and girls to go to live a life of freedom from responsibility. Neverland is above us. We see it every day. The sky is Neverland. The clouds are Neverland. They’re where the Old Ones live. You’ve heard them. I know you’ve heard them. You wouldn’t be a Pan without hearing them.”
Egan reels from it all.
“The irony of the real story is that the real Peter Pan couldn’t fly. He couldn’t even walk. Pans by their very nature are only half human. Just as you are.”
“I’m human. What are you talking about?”
“Your upper half is. What about your lower half?”
Egan stared at his useless legs. They are worthless for what they are. The wheels of the chair are his real legs. Like a modern Pan. The body of a human, the legs of a goat.
“Tell us about Pans, Mr. Egan. What is their lineage?”
“I d-d-don’t know.” But he did know. He’d studied and studied well. He knows the answer.
“Come now, Mr. Egan. Enough of this. Tell us about the Pans.”
“They preceded Apollo. The Pans came before any of the Olympians. They were here before any of the Greek gods. Pans were here before anything else.”
“Why were they here, Mr. Egan? What was their reason?”
Egan glances at Andi who seems to be levitating above the water tower, her arms raised into the air.
“Don’t you want to know the reason, Mr. Egan? Don’t you want to understand why Pan is written into The Wind in the Willows as a Piper at the Gates of Dawn? Don’t you want to know why Peter is a Pan and why he needed children to follow him? It’s all the same. Peter makes them fly and the Piper makes everyone forget. It’s all the same. It’s all connected.”
The sky suddenly booms.
Then Egan’s legs begin to move, not as legs should move, but as strange spongy appendages, as if they belong to a different creature, like an octopus or a squid. They pull him from his chair and beneath the police line.
Brother Amos shouts into the heart of the storm. “I’ve been waiting for someone like you. When you came, I knew what you were. It just took time to make you into what you could be.”
Egan glances wide-eyed at Brother Amos as he is pulled towards the tower. He opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes.
“Who is it that pushed you? Who is it that fed you all the information? I knew when I saw the way you looked at the clouds. Normal people don’t look at them that way.”
“Help me!” Egan manages to scream. His legs begin pulling him up the ladder, wrapping themselves around the bars and dragging him up and up.
“You looked at the clouds as if they spoke to you and they did. Peter Pan is never about the myth of eternal youth. It is about eternal life. Living as one with the Old Ones. Feeding them. Become one part of them. The Aztecs had it right. So did the Egyptians.”
Then Egan is atop the water tower. He’s never been up there but has always dreamed of it. His legs move beneath him, pushing him to an improbable standing position.
“Egan. This is wonderful,” Andi screams. “Can you hear them?
N-Ver! N-Ver!
“They want me. They will fix me, Egan.”
N-Ver! N-Ver!
She reaches out to touch him.
He grasps at her.
Just as they are about to touch, she shoots into the sky with such speed that she is gone in an instant.
Egan sways and Zane steadies him.
Brother Amos arrives on the top of the water tower, huffing. Still, as out of breath as he is, he finds a way to continue lecturing. “Carved on a rock at the apex of the Red Pyramid is a series of hieroglyphics that have been translated. To fly is to cry, reliving the tears of joy and sorrow of everyone who has come before, the clouds a repository of all human emotion, controlled by something older, wiser, and wanting. It is to you we feed. It is to you we pray. It is to you we heed.”
“I want to fly,” Zane says.
Egan now knows. He realizes what is job has been. He’d thought he was there to free his Brokens. And he was. But the freedom he thought he was giving them wasn’t the same.
The sky booms again.
Lightning strikes the tower.
Egan feels himself pulled into the air by an unknown force.
“No! Not him! Never him!”
Brother Amos lunges at Egan’s legs and grabs them, holding him down like an ecumenical anchor.
Egan stares into the clouds, white and gray and ablaze with the storm. They are alive. He feels the Old Ones. He can almost see an echo of their presence…images in the clouds of the great monsters they once were.
Lightning smacks the tower.
Zane and Brother Amos go flying.
Egan feels as if his legs are on fire.
Thunder booms once more.
N-Ver! N-Ver! shouts the sky.
Days, weeks, months later, Egan remembers that for one brief moment he flew. He thought he’d love it. It was all that he’d ever wanted to do. But what he discovered was that the feeling was less one of freedom and more being at the end of someone else’s line. Brother Amos saved him in those final moments, whether he knew it or not.
Egan is supposed to return to Tecumsa School. He’s not looking forward to it. He has a long road to recovery, both mentally and physically. The lightning did something to him. When it struck, it changed the shape of his right foot. It’s more like Andi’s now—but not a club foot—more akin to a hoof. Still, he accepts it gladly, for as strange as it seems, he can walk now. Physical therapy has been the most painful thing he’s experienced, but to leave his wheelchair behind is something he’d never once imagined.
He’s seeing counsellors as well. They want to know what happened up there on the water tower. They want to know how he got there. They want to know what happened to Andi. The more questions they ask, the fewer answers he has. Ultimately, they blame it on Brother Amos who will never be able to answer their questions. His body was found at the base of the tower, smoking, charred, and broken.
Egan has been searching the internet. He’s looking for Andi’s body. So far he’s yet to discover it. He could have missed it. Or she still could be flying. He doesn’t know, but he wants to.
Soon he will walk out of there.
He’s not sure what’s in store for him.
But when it storms and when the thunder booms, he can hear them calling for him.
N-Ver! N-Ver!
And he says it right back at them.
But one day.
One day he just might find her.