Genre: Mythos, Fantasy Short Story
Author's Note: A creative reimagining of “Spirit Monster Tracks a Rider,” from Kenneth J. DeWoskin and J.I. Crump, Jr., trans., In Search of the Supernatural: The Written Record (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
It ends like this:
A boy falls from the sky. He nearly touched the clouds, but not quite. Now he plummets to the river below, spiraling, writhing against gravity, buffeted by the wind. He is golden, like a star, and he is burning like one too.
He hits the water.
* * *
Where does it start? I don’t know. With an idea? A question? Maybe here:
The estate is plunged into shadow. I tip my head back and watch the airship pass above, the huge ballooned shape eclipsing the sun, its propellers cutting the clouds into ribbons. More and more airships have been arriving in the city, ever since the construction of the Crystal Palace finished in Hyde Park. The Great Exhibition is still four months away, but people are clamoring to see the city hosting it. I wish I was one of them, sailing to London on the clouds to see the wonders of the world. Instead I am here already, barred from exploration.
When I suggested I contribute to the technology my father was putting forth at the Exhibition, he sneered at the thought. He said I had been spending too much time in the city libraries, remaining thankfully unaware of my workshop secreted away in the old carriage house of the estate. Constructing my own small inventions of gears and steam to mimic those blooming around the world has kept me sane ever since my father ordered me stay on the property indefinitely. He is flying in another inventor to create designs for him to brandish at the Exhibition. I am to meet the man and his son when they arrive today. Until then, I pace around the gardens, winding my way past statues and flowers I’ve seen hundreds of times before.
I stare at another passing airship, and I wonder what it would be like to fly on my own.
* * *
Is that where it starts? Just a thought? Or a decision, a plan, like this one:
“We’ll build it without them.”
Rus, the inventor’s son, the boy who leaves his father’s workshop only to willfully enter mine, day after day, week after week, meets my wide eyes and laughs, squeezing my shoulders with the sound. “Ari, we’ll build it without them.”
My head spins, grip on my hastily rolled-up design tightening. To build… No. It’s cruel to entertain the possibility. My father would never allow it. The other Exhibition sponsors would laugh me out of the Crystal Palace.
“Think about it,” Rus continues, undeterred. “My father brought me along as his assistant. I ask for and bring him the materials he needs. If I slip in a few extra parts…” He shrugs with an impish smile. “Who’s going to notice?”
“But how will we present it? No one will let us in if we’re not registered to display.”
Rus waves away my protests. “You already have tickets to the Exhibition—” As my father’s trophy daughter, I think bitterly, but don’t interrupt Rus as he continues: “I’ll be aiding my father. We’ll sneak the prototype in. I’ll demonstrate, and you can simply bask in the glory of everyone clamoring for the rights to your genius.”
I can’t keep up with him, but at the same time I can. I’ve drawn enough designs to recognize a rough draft, a sketched plan of a dream. While half of me is balking, the other half whispers: it could be possible.
Rus pries the paper from my clenched fingers and marches to the desk. He spreads out my design, using gears to hold down each corner. His eyes rove over my engineering drawing, meticulously measured and labeled, of a wingspan made of metal.
They’re not finished. It’s only a design. Yes, I’ve plotted out each feather, how the bronze scapulars will cover the ratchet wheels, how the rotor-weight between the coracoid and the human shoulder blade will wind the springs throughout the skeletal structure. But they’re not finished. They will move, but they won’t respond to their pilot, and I can do nothing to fix the problem without a prototype. Small models and automatic birdfeeders I can make by scraping together pieces stolen from watches and old cleaning bots. I’d never get the parts to build wings large enough for a person to soar on. I wouldn’t dare attempt it by myself, but…
Rus looks back up at me, face outlined in candlelight, eyes brighter than the flames dancing on the wicks. Written over his face is a reckless desire that plucks at a string running from my head to my feet. The vibration settles in the bottom of my chest, like there was a place already open for it. I’m not sure if it’s hope or desperation, but I’d like to taste the former for once, so I nod. Rus smiles, a gentle one that softens his face, not lights it up.
“Together,” he says, turning to the window and the sky outside, “we are going to fly.”
* * *
Where does it start? Maybe not with the plan, but with the test, pushing the boundaries of dream and reality. Maybe here:
The miniature flyer takes off and Rus cheers. I clap a hand over his mouth. His brown eyes are almost black in the dark, wide and amused as he looks at me.
“Keep quiet,” I say, removing my hand.
Rus tilts his head. “You worry too much. Wasn’t it you who picked this place—in the most wretched hour of night, might I add—because no one would notice us?”
“That doesn’t mean I want to push my luck,” I reply. Once more, I check around to make sure we’re alone. The expanse of grass where Father plays croquet when he brings business partners over is silent in the night, not consumed with cigar smoke and scotch and braying laughter. It sits behind the hedge maze, because Father likes to parade all guests past the maze. Rus’s father designed it on commission years ago, when my father and his were only correspondents across a sea, when Rus and I were still children and knew nothing of each other, of flying or falling.
It’s an ugly, imposing thing, but the maze protects me tonight, keeping Rus and I from view of the mansion. It leaves me able to test my flyer. I’m not used to working with new, shining parts like the ones Rus brings me from his father’s supply. The device is only six ounces, yet had felt much heavier when I launched it. I’ve never dared test my prototypes outside the safety of my workshop, but for this I need open space. So I slipped out to the gardens tonight, Rus with me. I made sure I could manage on my own, but his help is nice. Or maybe just the company—he isn’t much help, in all honesty. Too busy with his head in the clouds. He stares up at them now, eyes following the flyer as it wheels above us.
“You’re a genius, Ari,” he says. “That is absolutely marvelous.”
I pretend the compliment doesn’t lift my chin, but the smile Rus sends me shows he knows it does. Still, the praise is rather unfounded.
“It’s nothing novel,” I say. “You came here on an airship—this is a fraction of that size.”
Rus shakes his head. “That was a whale in the sky, bloated and filled with people.” He points to the flyer. “This is a freedom.”
I’m not sure I agree. The design is rudimentary, only moving from the joint of the wings and fuselage, flapping up and down like a child trying to fly with just their arms. I wanted to make sure it would work when already wound, but the wings aren’t moving enough to cause the rotor-weight to engage and automatically wind them. That is something that will be tested only when I have the real prototype, and I’m running out of time for that. The Exhibition is in three weeks and my wings are only stiff imitations of the birds they’re supposed to emulate.
“It’s progress, Ari,” Rus says, reading my thoughts. “This counts as a success.”
As if on cue, a gust of wind pushes the flyer’s nose upward, too high, and it stalls out. I stifle a yelp but can’t stop the squeak of dismay as the stilted wings fail to recover and the flyer crashes to the ground. It’s not enough, the gears and springs aren’t enough. I’m afraid to go and look at the damage, but know I must.
“You’ll fix it,” Rus says as I hold the mangled invention in my hands. He crouches down next to me and rests his hand on my shoulder. I lean my head into the touch, cheek pressing to his knuckles, listening as he repeats, “You’ll fix it. It’s okay. I know you can do this.”
“I can do this,” I echo, voice quiet. In my final design, the real wings, they attach to the pilot using a harness, half thin metal plating, half leather. On the flyer, the bronze tube fuselage was just a placeholder for the person. I look at the bent metal, twisted back like a spine arching too far, and whisper again, “I can do this.”
Rus hugs me close. “We’ll fly. You’ll see.”
* * *
Where does it start? With realization? With discovery? Maybe this:
I watch the falcon alight from the branch outside my workshop window, almost close enough to touch but not quite, and I understand. It comes to me in the swiftest thought. I struggle to snatch it out of the air fast enough, cradling the revelation to my chest like a hatchling. Just like the falcon’s, my wings need a pulse. I assumed they didn’t have a heartbeat yet, but they do. It is the pilot. What I need is a conduit.
Old gears and springs clatter to the ground as I sweep my desk clear, throwing aside scrapped diagrams of wings that wouldn’t fly. I lay a new paper out, fresh, blank, like an open sky. I admire the freedom of it for a moment, wishing I could step into its infinity.
Then I pick up my drafting pencil and begin to draw.
The answer is copper. Strong, corrosion resistant, malleable—but, most importantly, conductive.
Rus helps me anneal copper and pull it through drawing dies, making spools upon spools of red-tinged wire, enough to thread through the entire chest harness. They weave through the wings as well, strung like muscle strands through the humorous, radius, ulna, through the inner vein of each bronze feather. The copper will conduct thermal energy, the heat of a body in motion, and the smallest sparks, the electricity in each firing nerve. Goosebumps, hair standing on end, shivers—it will hum through the wings.
This is it. This is how we fly.
* * *
Where does it start, or should I be asking where does it become irreversible? When does a beginning turn into one end instead of dozens? What action sets it in motion? Maybe this one:
“I need more time,” I say. “The wings aren’t ready yet; they haven’t been tested!”
Rus doesn’t relent. “This is the test. Trial by fire.” He sends me a grin I don’t return. Distantly, the buzz of motorcars and people filter into the workshop. A day before the Exhibition and crowds are filling the streets. The ground is so busy, so full. To rise above it seems so impossible, so beautiful—but no.
“I can’t let you go up there,” I say, fists clenching. “Not now. If I have just a little while longer—”
“To do what?”
Rus’s voice is sharp, and I look up, startled. His eyes are alight, gaze bright like the flash of a pocket mirror in the sun.
“A little more time to do what?” he asks. “To hide around your own home? To tinker away in secret every night?”
I bite my lip until it hurts, swallowing hard. Rus steps into my space, reaching to hold the back of my elbows even as I hug my arms to my chest.
“The world needs to see this,” he says, softly now, “and the world is at our doorstep. We’ll show everyone what we can do.”
He runs his thumbs in slow circles on my arms, and I try to focus on the motion. I try to steady myself, though it feels like I’m being unmoored, thrown from my nest too early. Dread twists my insides, rooted deep, and I’ve almost summoned the willpower to refuse when I make the mistake of looking at his face.
He wants to fly. He wants to fly so badly the desire is almost like a second skin. I wonder if all the times I tapped his hand, walked arm-in-arm around the grounds, held him still as I measured his torso to fit the harness—all those times, was I ever really touching him? Or was I just clinging to the outside of a boy who wishes to soar so fiercely that he’ll risk his life on a prototype? I look at Rus, his expression wild and desperate, and I think how can I take this from him? How can I strip him bare and act surprised when all that remains is a shell?
He meets my eyes, squeezing my arms.
“This is our only chance, Ari,” he says. “It has to be now.”
My whispered, “Okay,” is a gavel strike.
* * *
Where does it start? Does it start? Or is the end woven into our veins like copper through false wings? Does it start, can it start, or has it been written this way all along?
We sit in the grass by the carriage house after a morning of labor. In the workshop behind us, a pair of wings hang on the wall, with feathers of bronze and connected with red thread of copper.
I should be exultant, but the lack of time to test drive makes me nervous.
“I fear you will fall,” I say, turning to Rus, “like a star knocked from the sky.”
He tilts his head, eyes to the sun, and smiles. “What better way to burn?”
* * *
I am tired of asking. I want an answer.
“Don’t climb too fast,” I say, tightening the harness straps over Rus’s middle. “If you try to ascend straight up, you will stall. Are you listening to me?”
Rus brings his attention from the wings on the wall to me. A lazy smile curls his mouth.
“Of course I’m listening,” he says. “I’ll leap straight off the ground like a firework.”
“That’s the opposite of what I said.”
Rus takes my hand in his. “I was joking, Ari.”
“And I am not.” I pull my hand free and return to checking that the harness is fitted correctly. “Stay gliding and catch updrafts as much as you can. Do not fly straight upwards,” I repeat. “The stress will—”
“Tell this to the business men that will be flocking to you,” Rus says. He grins and stretches his arms out. “I’ve been dreaming of this my whole life. You think I can’t handle it?”
He dreams, but he’s never woken. Never taken what’s in his head and put it into the world.
“Dreams and reality are very different things,” I say instead, tightening the last strap. “Do not fly straight up.”
“I won’t,” Rus replies, still with that disarming smile. “Promise.”
* * *
It ends like this:
A boy falls from the sky and into the Thames. He flew straight up toward the sun, and his hope may not have faltered but our wings did. Against the glass of the Crystal Palace, his reflection plummets beside him. The crowds that had gathered in awe to watch a boy fly beyond the airships begin to panic, shouting in surprise and horror. What an Exhibition this will be.
He hits the water and the crack of his spine echoes across the park.
* * *
That is how it ends. How does it start?
The inventor and my father stride off, discussing copyrights and finances, and I am left alone with the inventor’s son. The clouds reflect in his eyes as he looks at me, his hair seeming to try and tangle with the wind. I extend my hand to introduce myself.
“I’m Ariadne,” I say. “Welcome to Crete Estate.”
He takes my hand with surprising energy, like gears clicking in place, initiating the tick of a watch. His smile is as bright as the sun.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ariadne,” he says. “My name is Icarus.”
About the Author: Elsa Richardson-Bach is an English and creative writing major, and yeah, she uses “too many packets,” but it’s the best mug of Swiss Miss you’ll ever have in your life, so checkmate.