Life: Now New and Improved!

Aile returned home without incident or comment.

“Hi, Aile! How was your visit with Irène?” Maman asked when she walked in the door. For a moment she nearly betrayed herself by looking confused, but she recovered before she had a chance to show anything.

“Midnight, Maman,” she said in the alternate reality running inside her head. “Midnight.” But of course she didn’t say it out loud.

“We had fun,” she said instead. “Mostly watching TV and talking.”

“You kids. Don’t you ever play outside?” Maman asked, rolling her eyes theatrically.

That night Aile had a serious case of chills that kept her up for hours, but she rode it out and slept well afterward.

Each day after that, she dutifully checked her back for any sign of changes, approximately three times per hour, sometimes four, disappointed each time. She unconsciously took to humming as she walked through the house, and Papa and Maman gave her strange looks behind her back. But they said nothing, still.

The next time Aile saw her friend Irène, a story was demanded of her.

“I receive your mail for you. I pretend to be hanging out with you. I could get in serious trouble for all of that. I think I deserve to at least have an idea of what’s going on,” Irène said.

Aile knew she needed her friend as an ally. She pantomimed wing flapping motions at her, and pointed at her back.

“You didn’t,” Irène said in a scandalized and somewhat awed voice. Rebellion was a fabulous thing to young people at their age, and the sheer audacity of this rebellion left Irène somewhat speechless.

Aile merely nodded and said, “You can call me Midnight.”

Irène didn’t have much to say back to that, but she called Aile Midnight in private after that. Irène demanded her own nickname, and they decided on Daylight; she was the respectable side of Midnight. They both broke down in giggles over that, even as Aile knew inside that her name was much more meaningful. She also knew that it would be a great cover if Irène slipped and used the wrong name.

The weekend passed, and Tuesday rolled around. She slipped quietly into the door at Jussieu, walked down the stairs into the L’aide Alchemique complex, and became Midnight again. She was shown all sorts of rudimentary first aid and nursing procedures. She even got to help someone who had just recently sprouted his wings. Midnight winced at the appearance of his back; it looked as if something had simply burst through from the inside. And then she realized that that was exactly what had happened. And it would happen to her within two months. She couldn’t repress a shudder, and yet she was also elated at the idea. The strange dichotomy seemed to follow her through her life these days.

Midnight savored her time at the complex, as well, because of her private space. She had never had a room truly to herself, where her parents or friends would not barge in at their whim. She could store things here, personal things. Midnight started to move her collection of Ka’aulele paraphernalia to her room in the complex little by little. She would leave a little bit in her room at home to assuage any suspicions of her parents. But all in all, they seemed to relax a bit when it started disappearing. Perhaps Aile was working past her phase after all.

On Thursday, she returned for her next treatment. This time, Dr. Halalo simply looked her over and seemed to stare into her back. He listened to her heart with a stethoscope, tapped her knee for reflexes, and so on. She was done so early that she decided to actually go spend time with Irène. It was a good thing, too, because her parents decided to call and check on her this time. Aile answered cheerfully.

Next Tuesday, she helped with the secretarial duties at the more respectable-seeming clinic she had visited the first time. It was interesting to see the people coming through, and she smiled kindly at them, trying to imagine what their journeys through the Catacombs would be like. She saw the first “KtH” people coming in before they had started their process at all, and for the first time, she really felt empathy for them. She saw the same despair and hope in their eyes that she had felt before. She still couldn’t quite come to grips with their choice to remove their wings, but she could at least sympathize with their feelings.

A little while later, Dr. Halalo took her in for another “treatment” in the Temple of Change. This one was considerably less complicated, mostly consisting of his seemingly channeling the aurora energy near the ceiling into her through his hands for a few minutes.

The days flew by and turned into weeks, and the sensation that there was something inside her near her shoulders began to grow.

And then, one Wednesday, she did her perfunctory back check in her mirror at home, and saw two spots of redness.

Kamani was carefully massaging her back where the red spots were.

“I can feel them in there, starting to make a serious pass at growing,” he said. “You probably can’t feel anything from the outside yet, but I bet you feel it inside, huh?”

Midnight nodded. “Yes. It’s starting to become a bit uncomfortable,” she replied.

“Yes. It will only get worse from here, I’m afraid. If it starts to hurt too much, take some ibuprofen and put ice on it for a little while. But not too much. The bones are fragile yet, and you don’t want them to be damaged by the cold. It’s for the muscles and your skin, not the wings.”

Midnight simply nodded again. She thought back to the children’s book she’d read a mere year or so ago. It seemed like a lifetime. But the gruesome description of Ka’aulele wings growing was one she was not likely to forget.

And life continued on.

Her routine had started to seem like old hat. Her parents had actually started to become suspicious about her regular schedule for visiting Irène, and Maman confronted her about it once.

“We have a study session,” she replied without much thought. “It helps us keep our grades up.” And indeed, Aile’s grades had never been better, so her parents didn’t complain.

Finally a time came when she could start to see an actual bulge under the skin of her back. She began to worry at that point about how she would deal with her parents. Aile had spent some time pondering the problem and had not really come up with any good solutions. She took to wearing bulkier tops in spite of the warming weather.

Aile had been sneaking ice late at night to try to soothe her back, and grabbing an ibuprofen here and there from her parents and Irène. Eventually she had to buy her own bottle, and she hid it in her room in the complex. She kept only a few with her, and put one or two back in her parents’ bottle over time to avoid suspicions.

Shower times had become a serious problem as well. She definitely did not want to be surprised by her parents without her shirt. For the most part it was not a problem, but she took to getting up quite early to take her showers, just in case.

One day, Aile had the strange realization that she not only felt something in her shoulders as an object lodged in there, but through the wings themselves. Something in her mind let her, when she had certain vaguely-defined mental impulses, feel like she was actually connecting to something in there. She couldn’t quite move them, but it was almost like she was putting her hands on the controls finally and getting a feel for how they might move. She sat there on her bed moving her eyes around, as if seeing something no one else might, smiling, then smiling more, and finally jumping up and down a little bit on the mattress. This action brought her back down to Earth, as her arm motions caused her back and wings to ache again.

The next week, after one of her treatment sessions, she walked in the door of the Molyneaux home and everything changed again. Later in life, Aile would look back on this moment as one of the defining points in her life, and ponder upon the strange happenstance of it.

Aile had just walked in the door and turned around to close it. When she turned back around, she jumped. Maman was right there in front of her, and gave her a big hug. It was a spontaneous, love-filled thing for her to do. She was so happy to see her little daughter growing and maturing, and happy that she’d left behind her les volants obsession. But Aile didn’t just hug her back and smile. She did something else that was totally unexpected: she let out a little shriek of pain and shook momentarily.

At the time, Aile was wearing a thick top and a fluffy hoodie with a large hood. The hood was big enough to cover most of her shoulder area, so nothing was really visible; and anything that would’ve been visible could be chalked up to lumps in the layers of fabric. It was actually comfortable in some ways, because the extra warmth helped soothe her back as well. But it was not enough to stop a big hug, and it was not enough to save her from the pain lancing through her.

“Aile? Aile? What is wrong? Is there something wrong with your lungs? Or did you hurt your shoulder? Do we need to take you to the doctor?” Maman said, suddenly all concern.

Aile was still slightly out from the pain, and some part of her mind was shrieking warnings at her about the situation. But before she knew what was happening, Maman had grabbed her hoodie and pulled it down, along with her shirt, to examine her daughter’s shoulders. She gasped, and Papa came running. They both saw at the same time what she had been hiding. They looked at her back, looked at her face, looked at her back again. They seemed like nodding bobble-dolls, as if they’d both been struck speechless.

“You went and did it,” Papa said finally. “You went and did it! After all that talk of waiting... you lied to us! How could you do this? How long ago... How long were you planning to hide it from us?” He was shaking with anger now. “How long?” For once Maman was not trying to calm Papa. She was wringing her hands and crying silently.

Aile was shaking all over now, and not just from pain. She was truly frightened and had no idea how to deal with the situation or defuse it. She wanted to just turn around and run out the front door, and run, and run. All of her clever thoughts about magic and rituals and Midnight had flown from her head. It all seemed rather stupid now, when she was confronted by her parents’ reality. She seemed like simply a thirteen-year-old girl now, in way over her head. She sank to the floor and joined Maman in crying, but not silently.

The tableau held for perhaps ten seconds that felt like five years. Papa shook his head and walked away. Finally Maman seemed to come to herself.

“I’m going in the kitchen to make hot cocoa. Come in here when you’re ready,” she said. She did not sound kindly, like she might have in the past when saying something similar. She just sounded defeated. Papa walked out of their bedroom with his hands in his pockets, headed toward the kitchen as well.

Aile sat there in the entryway, quiet finally, for several minutes. She thought maybe she’d gone through the worst of her parents’ emotions, and maybe they could talk about it rationally now. She had warned them before, and they had not listened. She’d had to take matters into her own hands. Hadn’t she? ...hadn’t she?

Finally she stood up. Aile gave things perhaps another minute to finish calming down, and then she headed in there as well. They were leaning their backs against the counter.

Maman had a cup of hot chocolate ready for each of them, and she handed Aile’s to her.

“What can we do about this, Aile?” Papa asked. He was staring at her strangely intently.

“There’s nothing to do,” she replied. “My wings are growing finally and that’s that.”

“Oh, that is never that. There’s always something to be done. Look at you, Aile. You’re deformed now. There is an alien thing living inside you. You’ll probably have scars,” he said. Aile could never understand this attitude; to her she was becoming something even more beautiful.

She took a sip of her hot chocolate to give her time to think, and then another. It had a strange taste to it; she thought perhaps they’d put some alcohol in it to help calm everyone. They’d done that in the past, when emotions were running high.

“They’re not alien things,” she said. “They’re mine. They’re part of me. I can already feel them, and move them, almost. They’re beautiful,” she said, feeling a bit tipsy suddenly.

Papa and Maman just stood there staring at her, and suddenly she knew something was very, very wrong. Maman grabbed the mug from her hand before she could drop it, and Papa grabbed her gently as she started to fall.

“Don’t want to cause any more damage,” he said to Maman. “I’m glad we planned for this after the first fight.”

“Oui,” Maman said. “A shame, this business. But at least we have a good surgeon we can take her to, right away.”

Aile fought to stay above water, but her consciousness treacherously pulled her under.

She woke in a nightmare world. Bright lights, antiseptic smells, white uniforms. Aile was being wheeled down a hallway on a gurney, propped up under the shoulders somehow so that the nascent wings didn’t push into her further. She was still very groggy and unable to move. It didn’t stop her from struggling and trying, but the most she could accomplish was fluttering her eyelids enough to see her surroundings through them. Aile–No, Midnight, she said to herself. If I’m going to die, then I will die as myself, with what dignity I have.

Midnight thought back on her life up to now. The very young years of playing with her parents when they still seemed to have a light shining through them, before they had started in on their social climbing. In hindsight, she now knew that the Song had run through them at that time, enough for them to hear a note here and there, anyhow. And perhaps to have a premonition of what was to come, to give her an unusual name like that. It was pretty and creative, but unusual nonetheless.

A nurse’s station, more bright lights. The gurney continued on, no matter how much she willed it to stop.

Midnight had spent many wonderful years studying all sorts of legends of the winged: fae mythology, Christian angels, Egyptian bird-people. Each one had filled her with a joy and a wonder. At that age, it seemed like anything could happen, anything could be possible. She hadn’t really thought through the practicalities of it. What small child ever does? And now, she realized finally, she had never finished that process: thinking through the practicalities. A defiant part of her mind wanted to spit at that thought and tell it what she cared for practicalities, when her very sense of self was on the line. But she was still just a young girl; full of defiance she may have been, but she didn’t have the advantage of years of confidence; and she had no plan to put into action, in any event.

They were in an elevator. “Surgery,” she heard vaguely in the background.

Midnight began to contemplate death now, and the real possibility of it. Her nightmares of years ago, long gone now, came back to her, and she understood them with new clarity. Her wings were as essential to her as her heart. She had soared high and tasted the stars, and now her wings would fall away. And having already started dying, it is right. She would fall and fall, down to the pavement, and be no more.

The gurney was out in the hall and pushed through another door. At that moment, the Song came to her again, full strength, as if she were in the middle of the ritual in the Catacombs.

It sang to her of green things, of blue skies, of the wind whistling past her face. It sang to her of beautiful, cottony clouds below her, that she could swim through and come out all damp. It sang to her of family, of love. Of helping people and raising them up, taking them beyond their boundaries and giving them wisdom. Of helping her parents, forgiving them for trying to help in their ham-fisted way, and bringing them wisdom, too.

Of life. Wonderful, wonderful life.

Suddenly, she knew her name.

The strong oak.

The bringer of light.

The dream.

It was so obvious now, it nearly hurt. It was there all along, and the Song whispered it in her ear. But she tucked it away and held it close for now, fearing for it to be stained by the place she was in.

Midnight started to struggle in earnest then, willing her muscles with all their might. She fluttered her eyelids for all they were worth. She managed a full-body shudder at that point. The gurney stopped suddenly, and an argument broke out above her. She was starting to be able to understand the words again.

“The patient is not well enough sedated, Kai!” a female nurse was saying.

“She’s already prepped!” a man with a German accent replied. “She still looks pretty out to me, and if we don’t get this done soon, we’ll have to reschedule. A whole time slot will be wasted. The cost will be enormous.”

“I’m telling you, it’s inhumane to try to operate on someone when they’re half awake.” The nurse sounded indignant at that point.

“What’s the problem here?” Another man’s voice came closer to the gurney. Midnight could almost make him out clearly, now. Her eyes were clearly open. “It looks like your patient isn’t sedated,” the man said, stating the obvious.

The other man, a young nurse apparently, slumped his shoulders and gave in. “You’re right,” he said. “I should’ve listened. I just thought...”

“Kai, is it? Why don’t you sit this one out and we’ll talk,” the other man said. Kai’s shoulders slumped further.

Midnight was awake enough now to look around and see the argument taking place. Another nurse, another woman this time, walked over and picked up Kai’s side of the gurney, and it continued onward, but in a different direction now. She was being taken to a room with an IV and a television.

“You don’t have to do that,” Midnight tried to say, but all that came out to them was “Mrmfyuddnt.” She still didn’t have enough strength in her muscles to fight them, physically.

“It’s okay, dear,” the new nurse said. “How scary is that, to think of waking up during surgery? We’ll get you fixed right up and on your way again.”

Midnight’s eyes were saying No!, and she was mumbling and trying to shake her head, but the nurse wasn’t watching. She’d turned away and was squirting clear liquid into a tube with a needleless syringe. The original nurse had been hooking the tube to Midnight’s IV needle when she wasn’t watching.

Dully, Midnight wondered how she’d failed. Freedom had seemed within her grasp again, and the Song seemed to be singing to her of freedom. But her consciousness was dragged under again as the nurses watched her solicitously.