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Many lifetimes ago, the gods gave people wings, with the caveat that one day, they’d take them back. I have wings, and I don’t want them to disappear, even though everyone says they’re bad luck.
My Grandmother says they’re a curse, not a blessing, and that my destiny is on the ground, like a normal person, but I hear the stars singing every night, and I have to know what they’re saying. If you’re reading this, Grandma, I’m not sorry.
- Jon
The cliffs are quiet. They usually are, but Jon doesn’t find the silence creepy like nearly everyone else in Bournemouth. To him, they are a refuge from the whispers he has to hear when he goes farther than his gate, or the fascinated, horrified staring of the other children. People muttering prayers under their breath and turning away from him as he passes, or outright refusing to sell to him when his grandmother sends him on errands out into town. Even she, his guardian, looks at him with something approaching wariness and disgust. She doesn’t say anything when she finds the loose feathers scattering the house, but she tightens her lips disapprovingly every time as she sweeps them into the bin and then tells him to bind his wings tighter.
Nobody likes the cliffs. They say they’re a haunted, cursed place, full of ill-omen and mischievous spirits.
Perfect for a bad - luck child to spend his time in, then.
Jon clambers up onto the temple ruins, hopping daringly from stone to stone. At the base of the rocky structure, he’s got a pack full of bread, some cheese and fish, and his favourite book. That should be enough to keep him going, wherever he’s going.
The sun dips low on the horizon, and Jon stops his cavorting and turns to watch. Its orange eye casts his dark skin into light and shadow, reds and golds. His irises are a rich honey colour in the glow of the last day-light’s rays.
He sits and watches until the sky goes red, then mauve, and finally, a deep clear blue.
A breeze comes from somewhere beyond the cliffs, and it smells like fresh rain and something spicy, like a cooking hearth on the wind.
Jon pulls off his shirt, then, as the stars start to blink into existence one by one like distant, observing beings opening their eyes.
He reaches over his shoulder to unbuckle the leather harnesses holding his wings closed, one after another.
When the bands fall away, he groans, and bites his cheek as first one wing shudders and shakes open, and then the other follows, the tension barking deep into his back from muscles taut and muscles knotted. He almost wants to cry from the pain, but his grandmother always told him that if he was to be a boy, boys never cried.
Jon thinks about that now, then gives in and sobs into his fists as his wings tremble, shake, and twitch involuntarily. The tears glitter in the last light as they fall to the stone at his feet, but don’t last long. Jon breathes a sigh of relief when the cramping feeling eases, when he can stretch and twist and flap without pain.
His wings should be malformed, and patchy, and basically useless by now, and if his grandmother and the townsfolk had had their way, they would be. Bound and compressed until they grew in on themselves, became shapeless lumps of feather and flesh that could be hacked off when he was older.
His bad luck over, his shame removed at last.
But Jon loves his wings, always has and against his grandmother’s wishes, or even her knowledge, he’s been using them. He’s been practising. And today, he will fly, and he will leave Bournemouth and all the superstitious people he’s grown up with behind.
He is eleven, for goodness-sake. And he’s made up his mind to run away.
The cliffs are still quiet, when Jon decides it's time to go. He’s stood on the edge many, many times, and peered down to see if he can catch a glimpse of what’s down there, but there’s been a thick fog that covers everything since before he was born, and as he looks now, it's no different.
Well, one thing is different. The stars are singing again. Jon tips his head up to catch the melody, but it's so faint as to be ethereal. Jon walks back over to where his pack is, tying it to his chest, securely. He tugs on the strap a few times, just to see if it’ll go anywhere. With that sorted, Jon looks back to the edge of his known world. He could go home, he could have his wings surgically removed when he’s older, and he could live a normal life.
Normal’s never appealed much to him, though.
With an air of a person who’s decidedly late for an appointment, he strides towards the cliff edge.
He pauses, just a little, to look at the sky again, and then he spreads his wings and throws himself into the nothing.
Jon falls without a sound, and the fog swallows him up without a trace.
And he is gone.
If anyone misses him in the coming days, they don’t say a thing.
Just like that, Jonathan Sims, the tragic, unfortunate cursed child, ceases to exist. And life goes on.