Chapter 41
TINK
Lars declares the cliff side under which the Gathers are docked to be too high for my first flight test.
Actually, how he put it was, “Don’t want our faerie dashed against the rocks like a fly on the face of a train engine.”
Even the Nomad has given up on correcting him, and now he and I just exchange a look that feels like an inside joke.
The way it makes my stomach flutter, the way it reminds me of the storage closet in the Company outpost, makes me uncomfortable. I make a mental note not to glance at him while Lars is talking.
The cliffs Lars picked out are a half hour’s walk from the Gathers.
My unused muscles ache from the uphill climb, but I don’t mind.
It feels good to put them to use after being cooped up in bed for so many days.
Even after I’d petitioned the Nomad, Lars had still made me rest an additional week.
I welcome the familiar ache of doing something.
And besides. The view is pretty.
When Lars had first told me we’d be practicing my flight skills on a cliff side, I’d secretly dreaded the thought. It’s not heights I fear, but memories.
But the cliffs in Neverland had been dark and looming and broody. These?
These cliffs are cut from red clay and peek out over clear blue waters.
The trees here aren’t pine, but maple. Everything is three shades brighter, more vibrant, than in Neverland, and instead of a strong wind coming off the waters that cuts bone deep, the breeze that drifts off the waters is inviting, spraying me gently to keep me from getting overheated in the warm sun.
“What is it?” asks the Nomad as he watches me stare up at the cliffs from down below.
My fingers still ache, but I’ve at least regained my range of motion.
My father and I used to go cliff-jumping, I write. Except we did it at night.
Which begs the question.
Shouldn’t we be doing this at night? I write.
Lars answers for the Nomad. “See? The faerie agrees with me. But no—no one listens to Lars.”
I shoot the Nomad a questioning look, and he says, “I have my people stationed around the perimeter. They won’t let anyone near.
And there’s no reason for a boat to drift close enough to see you.
If they did, we’d see them first, and there’s no way they could make out your wings from this distance.
To them, we’d just look like a gaggle of irresponsible cliff-jumping adolescents. ”
Why day? I sign, but the Nomad doesn’t answer me.
Lars leads us up a trail on the cliff side. We’re a quarter of the way up when I realize he’s not taking us to the top, but to an outlet halfway up.
When we arrive at the outlet, I stare down. Waves lap up against the side of the cliffs, reminding me of the bowl of water my mother used to leave out for stray dogs.
Lars is right. The water here is clear, empty except for the sand underneath. No rocks upon which to be smashed.
Still.
This won’t work, I sign.
Lars is too busy surveying the landscape to see my hands move, but the Nomad lifts a brow.
We’re too close, I sign.
“This is about the height we’ll need you to be able to jump from for the heist,” says the Nomad, “if you can’t do this…”
No. I sign the word with emphasis, frustrated. I can do it—I grab my quill—just not the first time. When I was a girl, my father…
I let my hands trail off. I don’t have the signs to explain the entire story, and writing them—the lessons my father taught me as a youth—would take up the entire notepad.
“Your wings are like any other part of your body,” my father had said. “You can’t expect to only use them once in a while and have them work for you.”
“But I never get to use my wings,” I’d said, frantic.
“I know. I hate that it has to be this way. But don’t fret, little one. You can still use them. You’ll just have to be patient with them. Give them time. After a long time of disuse, their reaction time won’t be what it was the last time you used them.”
Behind me, I flex my wings, the muscles in my back sore from the time I’ve spent in bed the past two weeks.
My back muscles aren’t completely useless.
They’ve been supporting my wings all these years.
Still, I’ve hardly moved them, much less flown with them.
My wings aren’t like Peter’s. I can’t simply open them and let them act as a sail or a parachute.
No, I have to flutter. Like a dragonfly or a butterfly or a hummingbird. And movement that quick…well, I haven’t attempted it in quite some time.
Lars was right to think giving me the wind and a fall would help, though it’s less about the aerodynamics and more about the adrenaline. But at this height, with my reaction time hampered by disuse, I’ll never make it.
If I fall, my wings get wet, I sign to the Nomad. I can’t fly again. Need to dry.
It’s not exactly what I want to say, but I hope the Nomad catches my meaning.
“We have all day,” says the Nomad, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We can stay and wait for them to dry if needed.”
I shake my head. He doesn’t understand.
I’ve had my wings shredded, my spine tapped, my fingers and wrists broken, my voice stolen from my throat.
I need this.
“We can go back. Try it tomorrow,” offers the Nomad.
Something about that thought sparks anger within me. I can do this, I just need a higher vantage point. But by the way the Nomad is looking at me like he can’t let anything happen to me—of course he can’t, since I’m apparently key to his plan—there’s no way he’d let me jump from the top cliff.
A thought clicks into place in my head.
What if I try to fly from the ground instead of jumping? I write.
“There’s not enough room. You’d hit your head,” says Lars, pointing to the red stone above us.
“We could try up top,” offers the Nomad. “The wind will be faster up there anyway.”
It’s only when he turns away that I let myself smile.
When we reach the top of the cliff, I do my sweet father a favor and at least warm up my wings. Of course, to the Nomad and Lars, it looks like I’m actually trying to fly, which is convenient for what I have planned.
It means that neither of them reacts in time to stop me when I make a break for the cliff side.
“Wanderer, no!” is all the Nomad has time for. That, and I feel the graze of his fingers on the back of my spine, but I’m quicker.
My foot launches off the edge of the cliff, and for the first time in so very long, there’s nothing at all below it.
Wendy once told me that when Peter would drop her from the sky, she felt weightless. I always thought that was her wishing she could disappear. Wishing she could fade away and find a way not to leave a single fingerprint on the world around her.
That had made me sad, because for me, that’s not what flying is at all.
For me, flying is taking what should not be, and making it so.
A thrill courses through me. That blissful moment of up suspended before the down.
“It’s too high!” I hear the Nomad scream at Lars, but I don’t hear his response, because the next moment, my body falls, cutting through the air, the wind whipping at my ears and drowning out any sound.
The water below me shimmers like glass, and if I hit it from this height, it will hurt just as much.
So I shake my wings awake, like my father did to me when I was a child, shining a lantern in my face and pulling the covers off of me and letting the cold air hit me, all with a smile and a laugh.
Agitated by the cold, by the urgency of the fall, my wings startle.
I falter in the air, then fall again. Again, my wings turn on and off, buzzing then halting, and it no longer matters if I hit the waters below. My wings have slowed me enough that I won’t—
Something splashes in the water below me.
And in the clear water, I watch the Nomad sink, his body limp, knocked out clean by the impact.
No.
Realization hits me just as hard.
He jumped in after me.
I redirect, willing my body toward where he hit the water, but my wings are slow to respond to my wishes, and by the time my bare feet graze the cold waves, the Nomad has sunk too far for me to reach him.
I watch him, screaming at him in my mind to wake up, but he’s face down. And still sinking.
I’m not sure if it’s the tears or the salt stinging my eyes, but I turn my body and dive.
The water is cold, stinging and blurring my vision. My arms fight not just with the water, but with my wings, spread out behind me and slowing me down as if I had a parachute attached to me.
By the time I reach him, my lungs are already popping with pain. I fish my arms underneath his armpits and cling to the hope that what I’m about to try will work.
I beat my wings, and slowly, they act as paddles and we begin to rise. My wings are thin, frail, and not meant to move like this in water, and they fail me often.
Eventually, my back aches to the point I have to take one arm out from underneath the Nomad and swim with one arm.
We make no progress. My body is panicking, begging me to leave him behind. We’re not going to make it, not both of us.
Despair rattles through me, and I stare down at his face, perfectly serene and only minutes away from death.
I take two of my knuckles, grasp the skin of his neck. Squeeze and twist.
The Nomad’s eyes shoot open. He gasps in pain, inhaling a gulp of saltwater, but it’s enough. Alert, he grabs me and hauls us both to the surface.