Wings a short story by James Lovegrove The bell rang, and suddenly the corridors and shafts of the school were filled with moving bodies, and the classrooms, libraries, laboratories and gymnasia were left empty and echoing to the slamming of desk lids and doors. Dust and loose leaves of paper settled even as the teachers began to shape their lips around the words "Class dismissed". Through the building the children flew with a great racketing roar, celebrating with their screams and whoops and yells the death of another school day. A dozen disparate streams of them converged in the main hallway, and when the hallway could no longer contain all these young bodies, all this enthusiasm made flesh, the main doors swung wide and spilled them out into the yard. There the children blinked and stood dazed for a moment in the sunshine like prisoners released from long sentences in lightless dungeons; but then, quickly adjusting to their new-found freedom, they fell to clasping hands and exchanging grins and sharing jokes and promising to meet up later that day, or tomorrow, or whenever; and dividing into pairs and knots of three or four and the odd solemn single, up from the yard they rose on single down-thrusts of their wings and off they flew along the windy streets of Cloudcap City, satchels in hand, shirt-tails and skirt-hems fluttering, blowing like dandelion seeds to all six corners of the compass. Amid all this fever to escape Az plodded along in his usual ungainly fashion. A few classmates patted him on the shoulder and said "See you" as they flew past, but Az's excruciatingly slow progress meant that no one was going to stay beside him for long. It just wasn't possible. It took Az over a minute to traverse a corridor or clamber up or down a shaft, using the metal rungs fitted into the walls especially for him, whereas it took the rest of them a handful of seconds. The other children swooped around him like swifts, like swallows, while Az was a beetle, struggling, bumbling, lumbering. The last few children were taking off from the yard when Az finally emerged into the daylight. He watched them rise into the sky, wave to one another and flit off in different directions. He waved too, on the off-chance that one of them might happen to look back and see him and return the gesture, but it was useless; their eyes were fixed on the horizon and home. Alone, and sunk deep in his own thoughts, Az traipsed across the yard. Normally he would have caught the airbus and travelled home with the elders and the fledglings and all the other clipped-wings, but when he came through the school gates he found his brother Michael waiting for him on the landing platform in his Corbeau. Michael was returning the admiring glances of a pair of girls who were wafting by on the other side of the street, but catching sight of Az, he forgot about them and raised a hand and cried, "Hey, little brother! Hop aboard!" Az climbed into the passenger seat beside Michael, dumping his satchel between his feet. Michael hit a switch on the dashboard of the Corbeau, and the blades began to rotate above their heads. Over the rising whine of the engine and the vip-vip-vip of chopped air he shouted, "Good day at school?" Az shrugged. "So-so." Michael looked carefully at the little guy and saw the gloom in his face, sitting heavy there like a cumulonimbus on a blue sky. He didn't ask what the matter was. He merely said, "I've got an idea - why don't we stop by the Ice Castle on the way home? I bet you anything there's a sundae there with your name on it." "Thanks. No," said Az, buckling on his safety belt. "OK, why don't we pop over to the Aerobowl then? I've got free passes. Come on. The Thunderhead Eagles are playing the Stratoville Shrikes." "Oh." "'Oh'? What does that mean - 'Oh'? The Shrikes, Az. You love the Shrikes." "No. 'S all right, really. Thanks. I just want to go home." Michael frowned. "Well, OK. If you say so. If you're sure." He glanced out of the cockpit to check the street was clear, then pushed down on the joystick. The autogyro sprang from the landing platform, soaring up into the sparkling air. The Corbeau, the latest model in the Airdyne 3-series, was the status-symbol two-seater of the moment - sleek, tapered, a giant's teardrop cast in bronze, every inch of the surface of its fuselage smooth and gleaming from the nose-cone with its ring of rivets to the scallop-grooved tailfins - and Michael flew it with the requisite recklessness, slipping and side-sliding through the air channels, descending suddenly, just as suddenly climbing, overtaking, undertaking, the aircraft responding to the tiniest nudges on the stick and pedals as though it were an extension of its pilot, a mechanical extrapolation of Michael's own abilities. And had Az been in any kind of a good mood, he would have been laughing uproariously as they nipped around the other traffic and whizzed past his schoolfellows at breakneck speed, leaving them standing just as they had left him standing earlier. But today, not even a fast ride in a classy piece of aero-engineering could lift his depression. If anything, it served to deepen it. They whisked down Sunswept Avenue, great cubes of apartment block blurring by on either side, then took a right onto Cirrus Street, then an up onto Goshawk, and shortly after that the Corbeau was settling down onto the private landing platform that poked out like a rectangular tongue from their parents' front porch. Az leapt out and was about to make his way up to the front door when Michael grabbed him by the arm and turned him around with a gentle but forceful strength, bringing them face to face. "Listen, little brother," he said softly. Az averted his gaze. "I know it's not easy for you," Michael continued, "and I know that sometimes it must feel like the whole world's against you because of what you don't have or what you think you don't have. Just remember this - it doesn't matter. You're still our Az, and one lousy pair of wings isn't going to change that. If I thought it would, I'd cut mine off and give them to you right now. You understand that, don't you?" Az nodded dumbly, not looking up. "Good. Well, take it easy on yourself. And maybe we'll go down to the 'bowl at the weekend. How about that? Would you like that?" Az nodded again, and Michael let him go. The whine of the autogyro rose behind him as he wandered slowly up to the porch. Michael's "Catch you later!" was cut short by a slammed front door. "Dear?" His mother's voice, from the kitchen. "Azrael?" She came out into the hallway, drying her hands on a dishtowel. "Was that Michael I heard just now? Isn't he going to stay for supper?" Az shook his head. "I don't know." "Some girl, I bet," said his mother, indulgent wrinkles multiplying around her eyes. "Maybe," said Az. Then: "I'm going up to my room." To reach the upper storey of the house Az had to use a contraption his father had built for him, a space-consuming succession of cantilevered wooden steps that rose diagonally through an aperture in the ceiling. His parents used the steps too whenever he was around. As a rule, they made sure to walk as much as possible when he was in the house, out of respect to his feelings. His room was like any other twelve-year-old's room, save that the door went all the way down to the floor (another of his father's D.I.Y. adaptations). The carpet was strewn with clothing, books, pieces of a long-abandoned jigsaw, some small die-cast biplanes and a larger scale model of a Corbeau which Michael had given him on his last birthday, saying it would do until Az was old enough to earn his pilot's license, at which point Michael would buy him the real thing. He dropped his satchel into the middle of all this debris and stretched out on his bed, flat on his back. Lying on his back, Az reflected, was the one thing he could do that no one else could. Some compensation. Yeah, right. What a talent. The kids at school were forever asking him to show them how well he could lie on his back. He stared up at the ceiling for a long time, trying to think of nothing. At some point during the long slow diminuendo of the afternoon, he fell asleep. And he dreamed. One morning Az wakes up to find he has grown a fully-fledged pair of wings. He doesn't know how they got there, he doesn't dare ask why. He simply accepts. His parents are happy and amazed. His mother cries, his father thumbs some grit from his eye. They forgive Az. For what, they do not say, but it is enough for Az to be forgiven. He kisses them both, and prepares to fly off to school under his own steam for the first time ever. Flying, he finds, is not so difficult. He has the instinct for it, and now he has the mea...
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