Fallout

In the week following Aila’s momentous night, she spent a great deal of time in bed, sleeping. Her body had suffered an unexpected intrusion, by the standards of her genetics; a certain amount of infection and fever was expected and taken care of by the staff in the Catacombs. Her wings had already grown an inch, and she felt every ache from it through her new nerve endings. But her spirits were buoyed by the new feathers growing in: still a somber medium gray, but the doctors assured her that her adult plumage coloration would soon become apparent.

What was not so easy to repair were her relations with the staff, especially Dr. Halalo. It had come out, of course, that she was whisked away from the hospital to avoid certain mutilation at the hands of her parents; the parents that supposedly had authorized her participation in the seeking of wings.

“You lied to us, and you lied to me,” Dr. Halalo had said. Aila had smiled and expected congratulations, or some other sort of welcoming gesture, when he had walked in; but his serious mood had quickly turned her smile upside down. He didn’t seem angry; simply concerned and hurt. “I understand how strong the need can be, to have your wings, to fly, to be whole.”

Aila glanced up at his overly stiff wings that were no use for flying anymore, back at his disappointed face, and then at the ground.

“Your parents have contacted the police,” he continued, “and they are now searching for you. It won’t be hard to figure out where you would be. We’re still pretty secret here, but word will get out sooner or later.” He sighed. “Aila... my young Aila. This is not the way. Did you not understand the ritual a few months ago, when we spoke of lifting yourself up, and lifting up the world? Beyond the turmoil you’ve caused for everyone here, yourself included... there is a complication you’ve given your soul.”

He sighed again, and noticed then that there were quiet tears running down her face.

“But I can see that you’re already starting to understand what I’m saying. You felt it before I came here, and would not admit it to yourself.”

He reached down and tenderly wiped away her tears, and tilted her face up to meet his eyes.

“We’ll find a way through this,” he said. “What’s done is done, and what must be done, must be done. And I agree that you needed this. Just, please be honest from now on, hmm? Speak plainly and let us not have important secrets from each other.”

Aila nodded.

“And I think your friend Kuléo has something to say,” he said, standing up and walking out of her room.

“Intense,” Kuléo said when the doctor had left.

Aila smiled a little then, and gave him a little nervous giggle.

“I was the same way,” he continued. “My parents didn’t approve either. In my case, I asked them first, and they were very strongly opposed. I ran away from home. I lied about my parents’ consent, too.” He shrugged.

“Are they still looking for you?” Aila asked him.

“I waited for a little while and then went to them, when it was very obvious there was nothing they could do. Eventually they took the heat away, but we still don’t talk anymore.”

“That’s sad,” Aila said, looking down. “I miss Papa and Maman already. And I don’t imagine them giving up as easily.”

“One day at a time,” Kuléo said. “One day at a time. And enough of that gloominess! You’ve got your wings!”

“I do,” Aila said with a bigger smile. She flapped them a little and then winced. “Well, sort of.”

Kuléo laughed. “It’ll take time. But there’s something important that we have to do, now.”

“Hmm?”

“Your party, of course!” he nearly yelled. Aila jumped a little, but then had to laugh, too.

“That’s right, isn’t it?” she said. “I met a Ka’aulele man on the zeppelin to Les Trois Vallées. He said his granddaughter had just had her wing party.”

“Just so,” Kuléo said. “And you just leave all those details to me, and focus on getting yourself going again.”

He bent down and picked up a tiny, downy feather that had shaken loose when she flapped her wings earlier.

“I believe you owe me one of these,” he said with a wink, and walked out.

Life in the Catacombs continued on for Aila. She attended classes during the day. She began to take on her patient care duties every afternoon instead of just the required once per week, in addition to her other volunteer work. It not only gave her something to do with the enormous amount of time she suddenly had on her hands, it took her mind off of the unfortunate trouble from her earlier deceptions. She found that some of the staff were slightly cool toward her now, but on the whole everyone tried to keep a level head. She was, after all, thirteen in a world that did not consider people of her years to be responsible adults.

Aila also spent some time adapting clothes that worked with her wings, and for the wings of others who were undergoing their transition.

“We receive donations from sympathetic thrift stores,” someone had explained. “Almost everyone here is in cheap couture.”

It was during this time that she first helped care for a “KtH” seeker. Originally she had thought to keep herself aloof from them, but those were thoughts based on a previous life. In that life, she was Aile, young human girl of Paris, who was bereft without her wings. Now that she had them, even if they were small and growing, it changed her view considerably. She felt more comfortable and self-confident already, and she was able to see the ones who did not want their own wings anymore with fresh eyes. And her guilt about her deception and all the trouble it would cause for these people continued to complicate her soul.

“What needs to be done each day,” her mentor explained, “is to carefully take off the old gauze... that’s it. Be very careful as you’re doing that to make sure that there’s no blood clotted to it. Ka’aulele blood tends to be a little bit more clot-heavy than human blood, especially in muscle.”

She continued her demonstrations and lecture for Aila, and Aila helped as best she could. The seeker himself was in his mid-forties and exchanged a little smile with her.

“I know it must be strange for you, to see someone wanting to lose theirs,” he said to Aila. “But when I came here I finally realized I was meant to be human. It’s never too late, eh? We strange ones have to stick together!”

“We do need to stick together,” Aila replied thoughtfully, dabbing his back with an alcohol swab as he winced. “Though I think we’re not the strange ones, honestly. The strange ones are the ones out there who deny that there is any seeking to be done. That all is said and done, in the world. I bet they got a surprise on Aurora Day.” The other two were somewhat taken aback by the strangely mature-sounding statement from a young girl.

But people were slowly learning a new respect for Aila, around the Catacombs. Something in her had changed since she’d had the fallout with her parents, and since her wings had started growing.

One day, someone sent for Aila. She followed the girl to one of the office rooms, wondering what was going on. As she walked through the door, a great cheer arose. All of her friends were there, as well as Dr. Halalo. He nodded to her politely, sensing some of the change that had come over her recently.

“And as you are embarking on Ka’aulele adulthood,” he said, “you will get to enjoy your first Ka’aulele celebration.”

He carefully hung thin paper streamers in a riot of rainbow colors over her wings, then said a melodious string of words in their language.

And with that, the celebrations began in earnest.

Aila’s heart was full and she was all smiles. She was mildly surprised to find her downy feathers standing out like goose bumps from the excitement. She realized only then that she had become so absorbed in her work, and her worry had gnawed at her so much, that she had hardly smiled in the past week. But it was all wiped away at her realization.

This is it! My wing party that I’ve wanted for so long! They’re treating me as one of them. Her eyes became teary at the thought.

Music that was, to Aila’s ears, exotic, but with a pleasant key and rhythm, was being played on equally unfamiliar instruments. What looked like a perfectly triangular harp, its frame made of glass that caught the light and refracted it in rainbows unique to the tones being played. Drums made of something that looked like large leaves stretched over a frame. A piece of wood that sounded like rain when it was turned over; this one, at least, seemed somewhat familiar to her. She was surprised when the Ka’aulele musician blew into it and it produced a sound for all the world like wind whistling past one’s face.

“Salut, mon amie,” a voice at her side said. She looked over and saw Kuléo and his beautiful pale golden wings. He held an elbow out and she placed her hand on it, following him over to the cake, her streamers fluttering around her.

“What do you think?” he asked.

The typically French cake was strangely familiar in the setting, but it was fitting for her, standing between two worlds. This was the culture she had grown up with, after all. But the cake’s top was anything but mundane. It was an airbrushed picture of a winged girl flying over the Eiffel Tower with a rainbow in the background.

“It’s wonderful,” she said somewhat breathlessly. Kuléo just smiled a huge smile and needlessly adjusted his clothes.

“We had to send up above for it,” he said, “but it’s a common enough thing now that no one asked any questions.”

The two of them danced a small dance in a hastily cleared space, and Aila was able to use her wings in it this time, if only a little bit. Dancing broke out all around after that.

Finally, the cake was cut; Aila was somehow not surprised to see that its inside was rainbow colored as well. Several cheers were raised in the Ka’aulele language, and she served the pieces, musing about the similarity to a normal human birthday celebration.

After that, Aila received several presents: surprisingly stylish tops adapted for wings, a set of the curious wing-markers she had seen earlier, and even little knitted covers for her still-small wings. “It still gets cold down here, underground,” her friend had said to her with a smile. “You can enjoy these while your wings are small enough.”

All in all, it was one of the best nights she’d had in the Catacombs.

“Hmm, Audrey... Audrey...” Aila searched along the corridors for the room containing her next “HtK” seeker, to check up on her wings as they grew. “Strange, it’s not a Ka’aulele name. Ah ha! Audrey, room fifteen.” She knocked, announced herself, and waited for a few moments.

“Oh, hello!” The woman said when she opened the door. Aila was quite surprised as well, because Audrey was the woman who had sat with her in the waiting room of L’aide Alchemique on that day she herself was screened, a day which now seemed to have been an eternity ago. “It looks like you got in too,” the woman said with a giggle that seemed at least ten years too young for her age. Aila smiled.

“I did, I did!” she exclaimed, smiling. “And I’m practically a regular staff member now. Let’s take a look at your wings, too.”

The two of them chatted about their experiences up to that point while Aila worked on Audrey’s little wings.

“It was really a bit more difficult for me, it sounds like,” Audrey said. “She told me that there was little chance I’d ever be able to fly with them, because my whole body was already pretty set. I asked, isn’t that what magic is all about? Doing the impossible? But in the end, I guess they have to work with what’s there and change what can be changed. For someone as young as you, all that needs to be done, apparently, is to set the natural process in motion.”

“That’s really interesting,” Aila said truthfully. “I guess I’d never really thought much about it. So you won’t be able to fly? That’s... it seems very sad. Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say something like that to you...”

“No, it’s fine,” Audrey said. “I knew, coming into this, what the risks and possibilities would be. The possibility is not zero, it’s just not very high.” Aila nodded. “But,” Audrey continued, “it’s just the having my body be right, you know? It counts for so much.”

“Oh, that I do know,” Aila replied. “So I’m curious... why did you keep your name?”

Audrey winked at her. “Actually, I chose a new name, too. Why this name? Well... that part’s a secret.”

“Ahh!” Aila exclaimed suddenly to one of her fellow office helpers one day.

“What is it, Aila?” asked the startled girl.

“If I don’t get out into some fresh air and sunlight, I’m going to go insane.”

By this time, Aila had become quite cabin feverish. She had been stuck in the Catacombs for over a month, and had only been able to visit “topside” by way of the strange open-air passages that could be found various places in the Catacombs. She’d had to take a flashlight and venture out of the normally used tunnels in order to find them, but she had a lot of free time for exploration now on any day she forewent her volunteering.

Bearing in mind her earlier problems, she went to see Dr. Halalo, to see what he thought about the idea.

“If you need to go, you need to go,” he said. “But please be careful. Your parents and the police are still looking for you. They don’t know exactly where to look yet, but they can’t have been sitting idle this whole time.”

Aila nodded. “And I wonder if my wings will be a problem,” she mused. “They aren’t exactly normal-looking for Ka’aulele wings yet.”

“I think that will not be a problem, actually. A number of our young are now coming of age in this world, and children with little wings have become a not-uncommon sight. It’s a bit warm for putting a hood up now, but perhaps you could at least wear a hat to disguise the rest of you. And of course there’s the cloaking glamour, which I understand you can do fairly well, now.”

“That should work,” she said with a smile that was still all little girl. “Thanks, Dr. Halalo.”

He nodded and she left him to his work.

She left the Catacombs through another locked door near another Métro station, Place Monge; Aila had learned early on that several had been built in case something was wrong at one of the stations, or it was closed for construction, or any number of other contingencies she couldn’t think of, no doubt. But she was happy to have an exit that wasn’t Jussieu in case the intelligence files of the police were more extensive than they let on.

Aila had been over a month down in the tunnels, without venturing even as far as one of the stations. So at first the experience was almost culture shock for her. The crowds of people she didn’t know, the noisy trains, the ads all over the curved walls; it was almost too much to take in again all at once. Had she ever really lived among this riot without really noticing it?

Walking up the steps, she found herself thinking back to her entrance to the Catacombs, feeling that surreal sensation of coming back from death again. It felt like she had been away from all of the noise and crowds and bustle for years or perhaps decades; it seemed like the memories of it belonged to a different person.

I guess they do, in a way, she thought.

Aila felt a lift at the early summer sun shining on her face... and her wings.

That’s right, she thought. I’ve never been out above with them. The thought surprised her, but it was an exhilaration of another sort. Here they were for everyone to see, finally, small and gray as they might be for the moment.

She picked a random direction and started walking, just looking surreptitiously at all the people, the buildings, the stores, the cars trundling by. It was only then that she realized how badly she missed her city. And only then did Aila realize how badly she missed home and life with her parents, Irène, and all of her other friends and routines. She sighed with feeling.

Aila found a nice place to sit on the grass outside Jardin des Plantes, the great botanical gardens. Children ran and yelled happily; a man walked his dog by; someone was playing a guitar near the edge of the grass for coins. She would love to have gone to see the sights that she had never seen, despite having lived here all her life, and to see the ones she had seen anew. But for this outing, she planned, responsibly for a change, to stay close to the Métro station.

She’d only been sitting there for a few minutes, wool-gathering with nostalgia, when a woman walked up and spoke to her.

“Do you speak French?” she said in an overly loud voice. Aila smiled at her innocent ignorance. However, she was also thrilled at this confirmation of her grouping with the Na’aulele.

“Oui, Madame. How are you?” The woman relaxed a little at Aila’s perfect, even Parisian French.

“I’m well, thank you. I’ve just come out for a bit of shopping, and I saw you sitting here. I’ve never had a chance to talk with one of les volants, and you’re so cute! Those adorable little wings. I couldn’t help myself.”

Aila smiled a genuinely bright smile at hearing this further compliment on her progress.

“Thank you so much,” she said.

At this point, Aila had a bit of a shock and had to work very hard to keep it from her face: she finally recognized this woman as one of her grade school teachers from a few years ago. The woman didn’t even recognize her old pupil Aile. Of course not; why would she? It wasn’t like humans turned into les volants, or vice versa...

“You look so much like one of my old students,” the woman said, as if she were reading Aila’s thoughts. “I don’t guess you would know her, though. Aile Molyneaux?”

Uh oh. She did recognize her.

“I’m afraid I don’t, Madame,” she replied carefully, starting to affect a little bit of a Ka’aulele accent. Aila had learned it well from living with so many of them for a month.

“Hmm. Well, you two would be such cute playmates. Perhaps I’ll have to call on her some time. Can I give her your name? She was always so interested in flying people.”

Aila started to sweat under her hat now. There was little possibility of getting out of this without a scene or her old teacher visiting her parents and letting them know exactly where to look.

“Aila!” a young man’s voice called, and she looked over to see Kuléo striding toward them.

“Ahh, my brother, looking for me to walk home together. It was nice to meet you!” she said, walking away quickly.

Her teacher tilted her head as if thoughtful. She had a few extra hours today, to go see her old pupil.

Looking in her address book for the Molyneaux address as she walked back to the Métro station, she took a different train, one that went to Aila’s old neighborhood.

“Okay, hold them out straight, straight as you can, there you go.” The man held a measuring tape up to her.

Aila’s wings had each grown another two inches. She had also started growing in several rows of mature feathers. They started out as little spiny points, and itched like mad. Those had eventually started giving way to something that was, honest to goodness, recognizable by any person as a feather. Aila was very curious what colors she would turn out to have; so far the first few faded from a warm, medium gray to white, with hints of blue.

It was several weeks since her outing up to the park. She’d lived the first few days in fear that her old teacher had followed through on her comment about visiting her parents, potentially revealing the area she was staying in, but no other sign of pursuit was noticed by anyone in the area. So Aila began to relax a little bit again, enjoying the definite sensation of air displacement around her new feathers. She was fond of walking around whooshing her wings, and then giggling to herself. Everyone indulgently pretended not to notice.

The Catacombs had truly started feeling like home, even if they also felt somewhat like a cage. Aila yearned to perch on a mountain cliff somewhere, cry to the wind, and then take off flying. But there would be no mountain outings for a while, and no flying for a while, either.

She had been re-learning basic things about life in the past month. Things that used to be so simple, like sleeping: others assured her that she could sleep in nearly any position eventually, but she was afraid she’d roll over and crush something or tear out feathers in the middle of the night. So she had to learn to sleep on her front at all times, which was not entirely comfortable either. Taking showers was another difficult one; she tried all sorts of acrobatics to reach around and clean her wings while stretching them out as far as they’d go, but it simply wasn’t easy. At least she was able to give her wings a rinse and then shake and flap them to dry, but it was not everything she could have wished for, and often resulted in feathers that needed re-sorting.

Aila also found herself doing silly bird things like tilting her head at things she found curious. Others were habits that she had had before, but had never noticed until she had wings to observe, like a desire to keep her arms close to her when she wasn’t using them.

Other strange observations about Na’aulele in general had started to come to her since she had her own wings that she could touch and play with as much as she liked, without social taboo. They were incredibly sensitive to touch; she would well understand why it had developed into the taboo that it had. That sensitivity also gave her some of her first tastes of what it would be like to fly; when she tickled the feathers underneath, it almost felt like the air lifting her off her feet. It was a strange thing to say, standing on the ground, but there it was.

The most surprising, though, was learning about their smell.

“I don’t want to break any more taboos,” Aila said to Kuléo once. “But do your wings have a... particular... smell?”

He laughed, knowing exactly what she meant.

“Yes. It’s the oddest thing. Sometimes they smell like fresh spring rain. Other times they smell like nutmeg. The worst is when I’ve just gotten them wet, but not washed them.” He wrinkled his nose, and they both laughed.

“It’s not very pleasant,” she said. “Mine smell almost like cinnamon. I had never really thought about it much until now, since those smells are common anyway, and they must bathe regularly, so it’s not so obvious. But I guess all Na’aulele must have some sort of smell like that.”

“I had a friend who kept birds once,” Kuléo responded. “He said similar things about them.”

“I guess we’re bird people after all, hmm?” Aila mused.

One day late in June, Dr. Halalo came to her with some unfortunate news.

“These are all over the area around Jardin des Plantes and the Place Monge Métro station.” He handed her a bright colored flier.

At the top, the words “HAVE YOU SEEN ME?” were typed in a boldly attractive sans serif font. Directly under this, a picture of Aila from school about a year ago, and the words “Aile Molyneaux”. Finally, at the bottom, “Jean and Adeline Molyneaux”, the phone number she had given so many people in her early years, and a notice from the police, also with a phone number.

Aila just stared at it, not really knowing what to say or do.

Clearly, they wanted to find her still. In some part of her mind, she had started to wonder if they really cared about her, after the hospital incident, and then hearing nothing about a search. But it was clear now that they were still very determined. They still cared. She found that her page was slightly blurry, and then a wet spot appeared on it. She still missed them so much, and missed being home.

But could she trust them now, after what they’d done? Would she literally have to watch her back the rest of the time she lived there? Would she have to make all of her own food, from all of her own ingredients, to avoid being drugged again? And sneak out to the Catacombs for her continued treatments and volunteering without her parents finding out where it was, and descending with a brigade of policemen or something...

No, it was unthinkable. There was no way she could go back to them until she was sure they were reconciled. But it also made things very difficult to have them searching for her like this.

“Perhaps I could write them a letter,” Aila said finally. “Maybe if I explained that I’m doing fine and that I’m not coming home until we can make up...”

But Dr. Halalo was shaking his head slowly.

“I can’t know how this makes you feel,” he said. “But I can take a guess. I’m sorry, Aila. But yours is not the first case I’ve seen like this.” She thought of Kuléo. “Writing them right now will only add fuel to a fire that has started to change its character. It’s a slow, steady change. Right now, it is a fire of fury and upset. It must become a fire of love and compassion. But that change can’t happen by stoking it. Does that make sense to you?”

Aila nodded, tinges of magic-meaning in his words recalling to her that first, most amazing, ritual.

But the memory of it did not ease the hurt.