Chapter 2 #2
A different crow landed to my left, startling me.
I hopped a few feet back. This crow was slightly smaller and rounder.
It spread its shiny wings and hopped, catching air before landing again.
Then it did it again. It was teaching me, I realized.
Wow. I pranced some more, excited as I considered what was happening around me.
These creatures had saved my life. And now they were teaching me to fly.
Their level of intelligence seemed incredible.
Unless they had once been human too. Then again, crows had babies every year. Babies who needed to learn how to fly.
CAW! Right, no time to get lost in my thoughts, my life depended on it.
I imitated my teacher, holding my wings out and hopping.
My body felt so light, tempting me to leap several feet high.
I lifted off the ground and then landed again.
My feet absorbed the landing easily. Holy shit.
The crow in front of me made a loud squawk, unimpressed.
He jumped around, trying to get my attention.
Hold your feathers, I’m working on it. I glanced around me, still adapting to the way my field of vision seemed to wrap around my head.
I craned my neck, looking up and around. No sign of the owl. Yet.
I tried again. This time, I flapped my wings, gaining a little more altitude before landing on the ground.
He hopped away from me, leading me farther from the previous spot.
This time, when he spread his wings, he pushed off harder and flew to a shrub at the base of the trees.
But the shrubs were no longer bush-sized to me.
They were the size of trees. Once regular-sized trees now towered above me, like ancient redwoods, higher than they had any right to be.
Caw, caw. The cries came from above. There were eyes on me. Good. They had saved me from death a few minutes ago, the least I could do was provide them a little entertainment as I tried out my new wings.
With my highest jump yet, I gained some altitude, flapping frantically until a gust of air plucked me off the ground and flung me at the nearest bush.
For a moment, one perfect, blissful blip in time, my body took over.
Wings, tail, and feathers all coordinated to lift me up into the sky until I reached about fifteen feet.
I looked down. That was my mistake. The earth dropped away below me, and I hovered in the air with no net.
Then the ground rushed toward me, but I didn’t know what to do.
I flapped desperately. It slowed me a little, but not enough to prevent the crash.
The last of my instincts kicked in, and I rolled into a ball, feathers forming a cage around me, blocking the worst of the impact.
I lay on the ground for too long, but the memory of the owl, which was out there still, got me back on my feet.
Scratched up and bruised, in pride as well as body, I inched toward the brambles, wanting to hide.
But I couldn’t stay there all day. The sooner I learned to fly, the better my chances were of surviving. And I had every intention of getting my life back. I refused to let that monster steal my carefully constructed life.
The next few hours were excruciating as I flung my new body around in a frantic attempt to fly.
For the amount of time I could distract my brain from overthinking, it worked; my bird body built to succeed.
Flattening out completely was terrifying when I was in the air, but the flatter I could get, the more the air buoyed me upward, like a cork in water.
But I couldn’t keep from looking down or prevent the disaster that came afterward.
Eventually, the moments of grace came to outnumber the falls, scratches, and tumbles, and I quickly learned an appreciation for my feathers.
Landing took the most faith, since I could not see my feet unless they were braced in front of me, which did not make for a graceful landing.
A few seconds of soaring stretched into more and more, and the less I thought about the mechanics of what I was attempting, the more I simply trusted my body to execute the impossible maneuvers without any interference from my human brain.
I began to get the hang of it. At least until I started thinking too hard again and fell to the ground.
All this time, my fellow crows stayed nearby, their presence more encouragement than actual help.
Lucky me, I had feathered cheerleaders. Though I scoffed, and I certainly did, their watchful eyes eased my desperation the smallest bit.
As I started to trust my new body and got the hang of the feeling of flying, the moments of enjoyment began to outweigh the terror.
The rush of adrenaline coursed through me as the air carried me up high.
Weightless like I had never felt before, different even from swimming, as I hung suspended above everything, and marveled at the perspective, the rush of falling, the correction of my feathers and wings, the slightest movements capable of changing my position in the sky.
The faraway sound of a police siren finally got me higher in the sky, for it came from the road, down the cursed driveway I had stupidly hiked the night before.
Without stopping to analyze, I flapped my wings and found a new challenge when a strong gust caught me and lifted me straight up in the air.
Too high too fast, I panicked, flapping madly.
But as I started to fall, I decided I was done struggling.
So, I stopped my floundering, they were wings, not hands, dammit, and for the first time, I didn’t fall from the sky.
Wow.
The world as I knew it dropped away, shrinking in size as I rose like a kite, giving me a perspective I had only caught glimpses of from drone videos. A sea of treetops spread out in all directions, the house and courtyard allowing me to orient my new place in the world.
Once I got the hang of flying, it was going to be amazing.
The experience of a lifetime. But now, it was time to see what I could do about getting myself turned human again.
I followed the siren’s call down toward the road, wishing I had some way to cover my ears as I got closer, enhanced hearing an unexpected package deal with the feathers.
Several vehicles surrounded the abandoned rental on the edge of the road, and I flew closer, focused on landing on a high branch before turning my attention to what was happening below.
Feet out, claws extended, I pulled my wings up and stuck the landing, and then had to hop a few branches higher to be able to see the road.
The sirens belonged to a sheriff’s SUV. Two other cars were parked behind mine.
People stood in the road, blocking it entirely, aware that no one would be driving through anytime soon.
The only person I recognized was Matthew.
“Her purse and laptop are missing. She must have tried to walk back.” He held my open suitcase in his hand, the contents emptied out onto the ground. My bras and panties spread out for everyone to see.
“This road is hardly used,” said the cop. “Except for some eccentric folks who live up here. They live here for a reason. Bald Mountain Road is a dead end.”
“We have to find her.” Matthew sounded distressed.
And where was Cassandra? Was she more worried about saving face for our presentation than finding my body, slowly dying somewhere in the woods as wild animals took bites of my warm flesh?
Because, hello, my situation wasn’t far off from that horrific scenario.
“Matthew!” I cried, or tried to say, flapping down to the car before taking the time to think through what it would look like from his end.
I got his attention alright, long before I got anywhere near him.
“What the fuck? Get out of here!”
I landed on the roof of the rental car that had abandoned me in this desolate place, claws shrieking on the metal. Matthew loomed above me, his arms waving as if he were attempting to fly as well. No, wait, he was trying to shoo me away. “Matthew!”
“What’s wrong with this bird? Fucking crows.”
Matthew backed away as I tried to get his attention.
“Do something!” he yelled as if I were a threat to him.
The officer’s gun fired just as I slipped on the metal, the force of the air pushing me over, the bullet missing me by inches.
My trusty crow friend once again flapped in to save me, risking his own feathered hide by dive-bombing the police officer’s head, giving me just enough time to propel myself off the car and into the air.
After a wary glance at the trigger-happy officer, Matthew glared at me like I had tried to kill his dog, and I settled back into the tree.
Matthew put his phone to his ear, and I flew a few trees closer to hear what he was saying.
“Her laptop is missing. The phone pinged up here somewhere, but service is so spotty we couldn’t narrow it down.
Yeah, she turned the car around, finally realizing she was on the wrong road, only thirty miles too late.
How should I know that? What do you mean I shouldn’t have let her drive up by herself?
She’s an idiot. You never should’ve hired her in the first place. I know, Cassandra.”
He listened for a little while as my boss yelled in his ear.