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It was dark.
Hawks don't like the dark; owls come out in the dark, and the world becomes eerie. Not that a hawk knows the meaning of the word "eerie;" it just knows that it's time to hide away and rest in his tree. The night belongs to other predators.
Tonight, though, I couldn't sleep, and it bothered me. I shifted on my branch, ruffling my feathers, and trying not to look out into the dark. It was impossible not to, though: hawk eyes are always seeing. My night vision wasn't great, but it was definitely better than any human's. I could see the dark clouds floating over the stars; I could see the blades of grass fluttering in the autumn wind.
Autumn. Autumn was a human word and a human concept. I had tried to shed all human things, for multiple reasons, but still they came to me, words like "autumn" popping into my brain at odd moments. Tonight, watching the grass move in the dark, feeling the air across my back, I thought about autumn. What did it mean? Cooler air, darker skies, more frequent rainfall. Eerie nights.
I couldn't sleep and I was itching for something I could not name. I felt watched. It was dark and all I wanted was to shut off my brain for another night, lose myself again in the rhythms of nature, night and day, feeding and flying and roosting. It was better that way, not to think, just to live as the hawk would live, no thoughts, no sadness, no self-hatred.
A light came on somewhere beyond the trees, and it spooked me, nearly flung me into the air, ready to flee, ready to escape from the oddity of an artificial light in the forest. But I stopped myself, peered into the darkness with the eyes of a raptor, pondered the faraway light. It wasn't artificial, not really, and yet it wasn't of the earth, either. It was too bright to be natural, and yet too faint to be human.
It moved, slowly, gliding over the grass, something in between yellow and white, something hazy and half-formed, and as it moved I felt a chill run through me. The hawk was just confused, just wanted to rest, just wanted to fly away. But the human inside felt something else. The human felt the darkness, the chill of fear. The human wanted nothing more than to disappear inside the hawk, but the human had never, never had that luxury, no matter how many times I wished for it.
The light came into the clearing and the human side of me was jolted into sudden, startling clarity. I was not the hawk: I was Tobias. I was Tobias, and I was wide, wide awake, screaming silently inside the body of a bird as the terror of what I was seeing shot through me like a bolt of shattering lightning.
The girl stood in the clearing, clean and perfect and shimmering in that hazy light. She raised her arms out towards me and smiled that fierce grin of hers, inviting me to come to her, daring me to meet her head on for our next adventure. The girl. Rachel.
No! This was a trick, an illusion, something meant to stir my heart and lead me astray. It was impossible for it to be real; she was gone, she'd left me, she'd left us all in that final battle. The battle, with all the blood and death and heartache, with all the terror that no amount of victory could salvage. I hadn't cared that we'd won; it had felt like defeat to me then, and it still did.
Did the yeerks still exist? Had they concocted this mirage to steer me into their trap, to turn me into one of them? Would this fake-Rachel catch me if I fell, would she carry me away to her Visser, for them to force me into slavery and death?
She seemed so real and yet so distant, faded and gleaming, beckoning and calling to me without making a sound, more beautiful than she had ever been. But she couldn't be here; in fact I could see the trees behind her, the fluttering blades of grass beyond her body. She was translucent and glowing, like some kind of ---
No. No! It couldn't be. I had seen so many fantastical things in my life. Heck, I was a boy in the body of a bird, for Pete's sake. But this? How could I believe in this? I had never before seen a ghost.
And yet there she was. Don't do this, Tobias, I told myself, steeling my heart, stilling my talons, which yearned to fling my body out of this tree and down into her glowing arms. Don't do this. And yet. <Rachel?>
If there was any chance that I could have her by my side again, if there was any way, I had to take it. I had to know. Why had she come here on this night, after so long, after leaving me alone for so much time? I didn't even know how long it had been. I'd been the hawk for too long.
She didn't answer; maybe she couldn't. She just shook her head, tossing her hair back, and grinned at me again, waved at me and beckoned me closer.
How could I deny it? How could I let her stand there before me and not go to her? Rachel had been my everything, and I was nothing without her. I was an empty shell of a hawk, with a dying boy lost somewhere in the background. To see her there now was like waking up from a very long sleep, a sleep full of nightmares.
<Rachel, I'm coming.> I took off, spreading my wings and soaring down towards that beautiful light, my heart growing and pounding inside my chest, my head racing with thoughts of wonder and joy. A ghost, my ghost, she had come back for me and I didn't care how she'd done it, I just wanted to bask in that hazy halo of light.
I soared down through that eerie night, getting closer and closer. There, she was there! I banked, preparing to land, lifting my wings –-
The light blinked out in an instant, the apparition vanishing from sight, and I felt my heart plummet faster than my body ever could. No, no, NO! She'd just been there, she'd been just there!
I landed hard in the dirt, tumbling over, until I lay on my back in the grass staring up at the clouds moving over the sky. But I could not see them; I could see nothing. I was nothing. You stupid idiot, I told myself, lying there uncaring, unseeing, wanting nothing but to die in that moment. There's no such thing as ghosts. She's gone and you'll never see her again. How could you believe? How could you?
Hawks can't cry; it's something I both treasure and loathe. Would I feel better, would I hate myself less, if I could sob into the dirt beneath me? Or would it just make me feel even more pathetic and worthless?
I'd fought in so many battles, clawed and scraped and killed so many creatures, and still nothing terrified me more than myself. I was a fucked up mess of a thing, not bird or boy, and I was a pathetic fool. What could a ghost give me, anyway? Memories of a time that was both better and worse than what I had right now. Filled with fear and violence and death, but also love and companionship. Rachel.
The hawk in me wanted to sleep, wanted to flutter back up into his tree and hide away from the cool, eerie night. But the boy, Tobias, could not move from the spot. I was rooted to the ground, too depressed to move, too distraught to care about my precarious position in the middle of a forest meadow, exposed to whatever predators might be watching for weakness.
Let them come, I thought, wishing again for the tears that could never come. Let them take me. Maybe then I'd see her again.