La Figure Tragique

Aile stormed into the Molyneaux home, Maman just catching a sight of her tear-streaked and angry face as she ran toward her room.

“Aile! Aile! What is the matter? Come back here!”

Aile’s door slammed and locked.

No amount of pounding on the door from her parents, nor coaxing, nor bribing, would bring her from her room. Her collection of all things les volants she heaved to the floor with a clatter and a scream. Then she just sat on her bed, feeling empty.

Aile did eventually have to leave her room, to use the toilet, and of course to eat. But she did it in a sullen, withdrawn silence. Her parents worried as they never had at this sudden return of her earlier melancholy. She refused to tell them what was wrong, fearing to hear Iola’s words again, as she knew she would.

For days, she refused to go out. It was February break, so she had no school anyhow. She had quit doing her deliveries, and in fact had not finished the ones that were scheduled for the fateful day, either. Her friends, human and otherwise, called to try to talk with her and see what was wrong, but she refused to talk to them all.

A few days later, one of les volants came to call at the Molyneaux residence itself. He was young, perhaps a few years older than Aile, with mousy brown hair and brown wings reminiscent of an owl. He identified himself as Florian, a friend of Aile’s, concerned about her disappearance, and he was admitted into the apartment. He walked back to her room and knocked on the door. Aile, having been warned by noises of someone arriving, had locked her door; and when he knocked, she simply yelled, “go away!” He sighed.

“Éloa,” he said quietly and sadly. Hello. “Aile, we miss you,” he said in surprisingly good French for one of les volants. “Please, just let me talk with you.”

For some reason that even she did not know, Aile relented and opened the door for him.

Florian stepped into the room and took in the mess in just a few glances. Aile still had not picked up or otherwise touched any of her Ka’aulele paraphernalia since she’d stormed in and pushed it to the floor. He gestured at it.

“This is not like you, my friend,” he said. “This is not our sweet little ’wing’.” She heard him emphasize her name, just as Kuléo had; remembering that night softened Aile’s heart a little. “I heard that my grandmother said something that upset you. Can you please tell me? I wish I could help.” He paused for moment and then said reflectively, “I’ve never seen her so upset before. Both at upsetting you, and at something you talked about. But I can take a guess. Please, just tell me.” He sat on the edge of her bed, being careful not to get any feathers caught anywhere.

Aile just looked over at him, looked at his wings, and started crying her eyes out. She put her head in his lap and cried more, and he laid one wing over her protectively. At that gesture, though she had thought there were no more levels of crying to be had in her, she cried even harder. She knew the kind of trust it implied.

When she’d finally cried herself out, she felt a great catharsis. She still felt Florian’s wing covering her. The Na’aulele had not rejected her. Just her desire to be one of them... to be herself.

“I have nothing to lose anymore,” she said. And having already told someone once, it was easier to tell the second time. She told Florian what she’d told Iola, but in more detail, and with more calm. He listened quietly, thoughtfully.

“I’ve heard of this,” he said to her slowly. “Here, stand up in front of me, facing to the side, arms forward.”

She did as he asked.

“Mmm-hmm. There’s only one thing missing from this picture for you to be a perfect little image of les volants,” he said, surprising her by using the common French term. “You have the shape and the coloring, and just about everything else, close enough that no one would notice, anyway.” Aile blushed and felt a bit of the earlier warmth at Iola’s first words returning, and thought of the whispers in the ballroom as she walked in with Kuléo. “Fascinating,” he muttered to himself as if pondering some argument or thesis.

“What does it mean, Florian?” she asked plaintively. “That I’ve always felt like if I just push hard enough, my wings will sprout? That I look like one of the Na’aulele? That everything about us–them–seems familiar?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know, Aile. I really don’t know. But I will tell you that you’re not the first that I’ve heard of. I’m a little unsure of myself, even. You’ve heard me and seen me; without my wings, no one would give me a second glance as a human.”

Aile bit her lip in a pensive way that struck Florian as entirely too cute.

“Will you help me?” she said, looking up at him.

“What will you give up?” he asked her. “Oh, I don’t mean giving me money or something. All that stuff my grandmother said was true, though. Even if you do blend in as les volants, you can’t exercise your voting rights. You will have to take on another name. People who knew you before may not accept you for who you are. Can you stand that?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“The person who can help you, his services don’t come free either,” Florian continued relentlessly. “On Hunéa, we don’t use money as much. Services are traded for services. The larger the service, the larger the service, and I can’t tell you what he will ask of you. Are you ready to grant that kind of favor?”

“Yes,” she whispered again.

Florian paused for a long moment.

“You’re sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” she whispered a third time. “Yes, yes, and yes, more than anything else in my entire life.”

Florian sighed.

“I just wanted to make sure. Here is the address. Come alone during one of your delivery days. Tell no one where you’re going, what you’re doing, or who you’re seeing. As you saw from my grandmother’s reaction, many of les volants do not approve of this person. And unless I guess incorrectly, many humans would not either.”

Florian gave Aile one final hug, and headed for her door. “Au revoir,” he said to her as he left.

Aile just laid down on her bed with the piece of paper held to her heart, and felt calm wash over her once more. Finally, she had found the path again.

What neither Florian nor Aile realized at the time was that Papa and Maman were even more curious about what had tortured their daughter than Florian had been. What they had heard while eavesdropping at her door had left them feeling disturbed indeed.

Aile continued on her delivery helper routes the next day with a considerably lighter heart. She’d passed through sadness and infatuation, and was now simply feeling happy anticipation for what would come. Some apologies had to be made, but after a few days everything was back to (almost) normal. She’d even managed to get back into Iola’s good graces by saying the right words, whether there was feeling behind them or not.

“I’m so sorry, Madame,” she said to her the next time she came around, after a round of awkward apologies. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve always had a large imagination and I guess it got the best of me.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Iola assured her. “I was just concerned; I didn’t want you to get your hopes up too much, or get involved with unsavory people who will just cheat you.”

There was that suggestion of the doctor’s price, again. Aile smiled and nodded, and continued on her deliveries with stars in her eyes over just what that doctor could do for her, price or no price.

And even though the paper with the doctor’s address on it was burning a hole through her purse, she couldn’t quite bring herself to go. It was only when she was staring the real possibility in the face that she started to wonder if her plan was sane. She had no doubts that she wanted to have wings, that she was meant to have them, and that having them was right. Sometimes she almost felt them there, as if they were ghost limbs.

But all the warnings everyone had given her... What if something went wrong? What if she turned not into one of the beautiful Na’aulele but into some mutant thing that was not quite either? For that matter, would gaining her wings make her Ka’aulele? Would she be an outcast in both worlds?

Meanwhile, her parents were worried about what they’d heard. But they saw her doing nothing out of the ordinary, not coming home late nor talking to anyone strange. Eventually it was chalked up to the rantings of a distraught young girl, and temporarily forgotten.

One Thursday afternoon, a week before her birthday, the fey moods of Aile’s childhood caught up to her. She felt like she was daring herself, to see how far she would go; but something in her bones told her it was time to at least check the place out and see what it looked like. Maybe she could get a look at other patients. She called a friend and wheedled and cajoled, and her friend was finally convinced to do her delivery runs for her.

Aile had a couple of hours to spend on this outing, so she headed straight for a Métro station. Twenty minutes later, she was at her stop. Coming out of the station, she shaded her face from the bright sun with her hand, and started walking toward the address.

When she was getting closer, it became obvious that the address was for a large office complex.

I guess that stands to reason, she thought. But she had expected it to be, somehow, more... covert. Then again, what was more anonymous and covert than an office building?

She didn’t see anyone walking around who might be a patient of the mysterious doctor, just the normal contingent of Parisians, human and Ka’aulele, that one would expect in such an area. Suddenly the trip felt like a waste of time; why did she bother to come if she wasn’t planning to go all the way?

No guts, no glory, she thought to herself.

Aile walked into the lobby and looked for an address board. The suite number listed on the letter was on the board, but all it said, cryptically, was “L’aide Alchemique”. Alchemical help. Her finger hovered over the button next to the name, her stomach feeling a bit sick with nervousness, until Aile became paranoid that someone was watching her. Finally, she pressed the button. A moment passed, and then a woman’s voice came from the speaker.

“Oui?” was all she said. On top of everything else, it definitely intimidated Aile a little bit. She cleared her throat.

“I’m here to... to...” For a moment Aile was at a loss for words, because in her heart of hearts, she wasn’t really sure what she was there for. To grow wings? To become Ka’aulele? In her indecision, her need to speak was taken away from her. The woman’s voice laughed quietly.

“I see,” the voice said. “Please take the elevator to the fourth floor, and turn right. Our office will be on the right.” A buzzer sounded next to her.

Farther along the wall, a brass hinged door, more of a framework or a trellis than anything deserving of the name, covered an old-fashioned elevator. She moved it aside, pushed aside an internal door as well, stepped inside, and then closed the two doors. A row of black buttons poked out of a brass control panel, and she pressed 4. The elevator began moving swiftly upwards, and she watched the floors go by in fascination. Aile had always enjoyed old elevators like this one, somewhat rare these days, for being able to peek in at each floor and see how it was, how people lived and worked.

The elevator stopped abruptly, and she unlatched the two doors, stepped out, and re-latched them. The hallway was incongruously decked out in modern drab: cream painted walls, ceiling-facing light fixtures in glass, dark gray carpet. Aile turned right and headed down the hallway, her legs increasingly feeling like gelatin. Yet she did keep walking, daring herself to take each next step, not quite believing that she would do it.

Finally on her right was the office in question: L’aide Alchemique. She turned the door latch and went inside.

“Ahh, you must be the girl from the lobby,” said a woman behind a counter. “Are you here to see Dr. Halalo?”

“I think so,” Aile responded. She decided that boldness was probably the way to proceed. “If he’s the one who can get my wings to grow.” The woman smiled like she was close to a laugh again.

“If anyone can do it, sweetheart, he can. Just take this clipboard,” she said, “and fill the forms out. Make sure you sign them, and then bring them back up here. You do you have your parents’ permission, right?”

Aile swallowed hard. “Of course, of course.”

The woman behind the counter smiled again as if she knew many things that people were not willing to say out loud. “There’s a box for you to check on the form for that. So just go ahead and do that. You’ll need a signed consent form from your parents before you can actually visit Dr. Halalo. What we do here is preliminary screening, to see if it makes sense for you to go forward. So there will be some standard medical tests and a counseling session. There’s a small fee for everything, since what we do isn’t exactly covered by insurance.”

Aile nodded, sat down with the clipboard, and started going through the questions. Name, address, telephone, medical history, the important parental consent box.

Address and phone were a problem. She couldn’t have mail coming in from this place, or phone calls, when her parents didn’t even know she was here. She listed a friend’s information, making a mental note to make sure to talk to Irène about taking mail for her.

Then the interesting questions started: Why do you want to change? Where do you see yourself in ten years? What do wings mean to you?

What do wings mean to me? she thought to herself. After only a few seconds, words came to mind. Freedom. Completeness. And another that somewhat surprised her for a moment: Love. That’s true, she thought. If I had them, I would love them, and love myself even more.

She answered everything to the best of her ability and handed the clipboard back to the woman, paid the fees from tips she received from her delivery work, and then sat back down in the waiting area.

While she was waiting, another human came in. The woman looked around nervously, jumped a little when she saw Aile (who smiled back at her), and then walked over to the woman at the front desk. The same interview was repeated, sans parental consent speech, and the woman also received a clipboard. The waiting area was not large, so she was forced to sit near Aile.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Aile asked. She couldn’t help taking the opportunity to talk to another who felt the same way, even if the poor woman was so nervous. “All my life... fairies, angels, Pegasus, and all the rest. I’ve always loved birds and wanted to fly like one. But more than anything, I just feel half-grown.” Aile’s words seemed to calm the woman down.

“Yes, it’s like that, isn’t it?” she responded. Once she calmed down, she, too, had stars in her eyes. “You’re the right age for it, too. They say Na’aulele don’t gain their wings until a little before your age. And then you get a whole puberty cycle for everything to grow properly. I’m not sure how much they’ll do for me.”

“Stick with it, is what I say,” Aile said after a moment. “You never know. In a world where someone can grow their wings, after all, what could be impossible?”

The woman just smiled and went back to her paperwork.

“Aile Molyneaux?” a man called from behind a door that had just opened.

“Good luck,” the woman filling out her paperwork said. Aile nodded and headed through the door.

The man guided her through all of the standard tests that any visitor to a doctor’s office could expect to have the dubious joy of receiving.

“Stand on this scale...”

“I’m just going to put this cuff around your arm and it’ll squeeze a bit...”

“Do you have any allergies?” This in spite of her already having filled out the form about it.

“A little poke...” Two vials of blood were drawn.

X-rays of her chest and arms, from several different angles.

Then she was back out to the waiting room again. It was empty this time. She guessed the other woman had gone on for her medical tests, too.

A little while later, another woman came out from another door and called her name, and Aile went back with her. She was led to a small, cozy room with comfortable couches, lighting much easier on the eyes than anything else she’d seen so far, and a window looking out toward the Métro station. The woman who’d come for her sat down on one of the couches and gestured to another one, for Aile.

Aile studied her while she gathered her paperwork. The woman seemed unusually thin and light, and she had stunning green eyes. With a bit of a shock, Aile realized she was looking at one of the Na’aulele who had gotten rid of her wings. Aile tried, and failed, to suppress a shudder. She could not stop the slightly sick feeling in her stomach, either. Thankfully the woman was not looking. Why couldn’t she have just given them to me? Aile thought. And what kind of a place have I gotten myself into? Aile did not have her wings yet, but she reflexively felt like reaching back to make sure they were still there.

“Hello,” the woman said finally. “I’m Denise Chastain. I understand that you’re here because you’d like your wings,” she said with a small smile.

Aile nodded uncertainly.

“I want you to know,” Denise continued, “that I have no intent to cross-examine you or make you pass a test. I’m here to listen to your thoughts and concerns, and let you know if I have any concerns. If my concerns were grave enough–say I thought you were doing this simply to rebel against your parents, who, of course, have given your consent to be here–then I might recommend that you not go forward. But for the most part, especially for someone as young as you, I want to help you think about the questions you filled out in the waiting area.

“So, Aile–and might I say, that’s a very appropriate name! Can you tell me what’s on your mind?”

Aile spent the next half an hour discussing things with Denise that even she had not remembered until the appointment. But Denise was not frowning and did not seem overly concerned. However, she also saw Aile staring at her, and staring over her shoulders periodically.

“Go ahead and ask me the question that’s on your mind, Aile, or we can’t really go forward,” she said at one point. Aile was slightly taken aback at the woman’s perceptiveness, but she answered anyhow.

“What happened to your wings?”

“Just as you are here because you feel that you must have them,” Denise responded, “I came here because I felt that I must not. From the moment I came to Earth, I knew that this was where I belonged, that among humanity was where I belonged. Flying is useful, but to me, they always seemed like dead weight on my back. I like zeppelin flying so much better. Strange, is it not? Yet not any stranger than feeling that you belong among Na’aulele, really.”

Aile nodded. Suddenly Florian’s strange words, and his name for that matter, made more sense to her. She felt sad about his situation. Whether she was sad for him losing his wings, or sad that he had the same sort of dysphoria, she wasn’t entirely sure. But Denise’s thoughts would follow her all the way home.

The secretary out front thanked her for her business, and Aile left the office. Phew, she thought. There it is. It’s done. She was tired and yet a little elated that things had proceeded far beyond her planning.

However, she had very little time to waste getting back home. She bolted out of the office building after taking the stairs two at a time, not wanting to wait for the elevator, ran back to the Métro as fast as she could get there, and took a train back home. She came home only ten minutes late, not enough to cause any sort of panic.

The other warnings she had been given as part of Denise’s session, about what might go wrong, echoed through her mind as well.

Incorrectly grown wings. Mutant wings, Aile thought.

Wings she couldn’t actually fly on.

Wings in all kinds of strange colors and feather types.

The mix of species keeping her from having her own children some day.

“This is biology we’re talking about here,” she had said. “And combining two alien biologies, at that. It’s amazing that it works at all. And it usually works well. But I must be honest with you to help you understand the risks.” Alien, schmalien, Aile thought. But she hadn’t voiced her thoughts. The tests would prove what she already knew about herself: that she was some kind of Ka’aulele changeling whose wings just needed some encouragement.

That didn’t stop her from spending long hours at night, awake when she should have been sleeping, thinking about these things.

A week after her appointment at L’aide Alchemique, her friend met her after school and handed her the strangely unmarked, manila, jumbo-sized envelope.

“What is it, some kind of secret spy papers?” Irène joked.

“Something like that,” Aile replied evasively.

“Fine, don’t tell me.” Irène huffed off.

Sigh, Aile thought. Yet another person to whom I must apologize. But under no circumstances could anyone else know what was happening and what was in the envelope.

Another unforeseen complication came upon Aile then: she didn’t know where to go to look at her results. The envelope was not thin; it probably contained x-rays and a number of lab reports. Her name would be on them. A quick glance inside through the top proved her fears correct. Opening it at home was out of the question, but so was any public place she could think of. Eventually she settled upon spending some time in the restroom of a large library nearby.

The first page caused her the most elation, of course: Congratulations, you’ve been accepted as a candidate for HtK (Human to Ka’aulele transmutation). Excited to see her x-rays and medical tests, she pressed onward.

“All normal,” a scribbled doctor’s note said at the bottom of the x-rays. And indeed, they looked very normal–for a human. She felt disappointed somehow, like maybe they’d mixed her x-rays up with some other nearly-thirteen-year-old girl named Aile Molyneaux. But that was like listening to the first few lottery numbers as they were called out. She might still win. And it was hard not to be excited about the x-rays that had been marked up to show where wings might grow.

“Normal human levels,” one of the blood tests concurred. “All normal,” another one said. “Slightly high liver count, should be fine,” yet another said. Before she knew it, she’d reached the envelope itself. There were no more pages. Every single test had been totally within parameters–for an average human girl.

Aile was unquestionably, completely, certifiably by experts in both biologies, human.

The next few days were numb for Aile. She wasn’t sure what to think anymore. The acceptance letter was the best birthday present she’d ever received. But there was actually some part of her now that was starting to listen more seriously to those voices of “reason” that had been so hated: was it really all just fancy? Was it a phase she would grow out of? She put on a good show for everyone, but she was in serious turmoil inside.

Every time those voices started to win, however, and she was on the verge of throwing the packet away, something stopped her. It felt like swimming upstream against a strong river. Upstream from that river was everything she’d ever known; downstream was the largest, most fiercely raging waterfall she’d ever imagined. But there was something that told her that the waterfall was not as tall as she’d thought, and anyway... she could just jump and fly down.

Aile spent time every day looking at herself in the mirror, trying to imagine herself at twenty, thirty, fifty. With wings, without wings. With wings, without wings. With wings, she was content, wanting to hug herself. Without wings... it was someone else. It might be her body, but she was not the person she was looking at.

Then, one day, ironically, Aile’s parents were the catalyst that she’d been waiting for.

“Aile,” Maman said one day when she came home a bit late from her deliveries.

“Yes?” she replied curiously. Maman paused for a few moments, a bit unsure how to proceed.

“Do you want to become un volant?” Maman asked.

Aile froze solid for a moment, in the middle of the act of setting down her school bag. She felt like ice had taken over her stomach, and it was only with a great effort that she managed to continue the motion. Her hesitation was as good as an admission, though. Somehow, they knew.

“Oui,” she replied, matter-of-factly, with a lift to the eyebrows as if to say, and what are you going to do about it?

“Come in here,” her mother said, walking away without looking back, in exactly the same tone and motions she would’ve used when Aile was about to have an object lesson earlier in life.

Aile was a bit concerned, but she’d already endured worse, so she shrugged and followed Maman to their dining table. Papa was waiting there for them. Maman gestured to a chair. “Sit.”

“Aile,” he began; and with that word she could see that both of her parents were quite worried. “Aile,” he muttered to himself quietly and rolled his eyes. “What a name we chose.” He sighed and began again. “Aile, what has come over you? Why would you want to do this thing? Why would you want to be one of... them? They’re alien. They’re pretty and they seem nice enough, but they’re not us. You can’t be one, no matter how hard you try.”

“Can you imagine what people would say?” Maman continued. “And that’s even if you somehow succeed, which I can’t see happening. We’ve heard about this insane doctor before, and whatever he does... It’s just not possible. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Even if he can do something,” Papa countered, “it may come out all wrong. You might be deformed and hideous. And even if you weren’t...” Papa trailed off, unsure how to continue. “You wouldn’t be truly human anymore. You wouldn’t be one of them. You’d just be a deformed human with... something... on your back. You probably couldn’t even fly. Why, oh why do you want to do this thing?”

Aile just moved her eyes back and forth as they threw their volleys across at her. Her cool calm ruffled them more than anything else she could’ve done.

“I’ve heard all of these things, from multiple people,” she replied finally. And it was only at this moment that she finally realized the truth. “But it doesn’t change anything. I am what I am, and what I am is a winged person, and that is what I must be. I cannot live as one of you, especially with them,” she waved her hands to the sky ambiguously, “around reminding me of what I’m missing.”

“But you are one of us,” Papa said, getting angry now. “Nothing you can do will change that, don’t you see? And to think, living your life as some disgusting, not-quite-human thing from another world...”

“Papa, please, calm down,” Maman interjected. Papa remained quiet but was still visibly agitated. “Please,” Maman said to Aile, “please just don’t do this thing right now. Just wait a little while. It’s just a phase, you’ll see. You’re so young right now! How can you know that you want to do this thing that will change your life forever? Just don’t go to that doctor right now.”

Aile was moved by her parents’ concern, but unwilling to change her mind. She’d heard these words too many times in her own mind, and defeated them too many times, for the words to have any effect now. However, she could see that this would pose an obstacle to her plans. They knew what she wanted, but they didn’t seem to know how far she’d gone. The knowledge of the acceptance letter in her room burned in her mind, and she was almost sure her parents could telepathically read it out, somehow. Aile felt a need to throw them off the trail before it led somewhere.

“Fine,” she told them. “I’ll do what you ask. No doctor for now, and we’ll see what happens.”

Her parents breathed huge sighs of relief, and life was back to normal again.

The next day, Aile spoke to the families on her delivery help routes and informed them that she would not be coming by tomorrow, and would they be fine without her help? And the day after that, she came home from school, told her parents she was heading out for deliveries, and would then be spending the evening with her friend Irène.

She walked out the door and took the next step on a long, long journey.