Caught Blue Handed

“Hey, let’s go to a club some time,” Aila’s friend Péla said to her one day in November. They were working through paperwork in the office, feeling somewhat bored, and talking about the sort of adventures they’d like to get up to some day.

“I don’t know,” Aila said. “It sounds like trouble. They’re crowded and I’d be afraid for my wings. Not to mention that we’re still awfully young to get away with it. And my parents are still looking for me...”

“You worry too much,” Péla replied.

“I don’t think Dr. Halalo would want me to go, and I have a history of doing thoughtless things that could endanger things here,” Aila said humbly. That initial talk with him still had not faded entirely from her memory. “Even if I cared nothing for anyone else here, I’m not done growing my wings.”

“Eh well,” was all Péla said in response, though she knew Aila was speaking sense.

Over the next couple of days, however, the idea grew in Aila’s mind, beginning to compel her. She’d heard stories about the wild discothèque, and supposedly there were ones that even people her age could get into.

Eventually she approached her friend again with the idea of taking a trip to one.

“As if I didn’t give you the idea myself!” Péla responded in mock indignation. “Did you ask Dr. Halalo?”

Aila hemmed and hawed for a few seconds. “No, not really.”

“Oooo, were you planning to sneak out?”

“Something like that.”

“Let’s do it, then. This Saturday night. How about it?”

“Do you have a place to go?” Aila asked her.

“I do,” Péla said slyly.

“All right then. Saturday night it is.”

Aila was happy she didn’t have a session with Dr. Halalo before Saturday, because she had enough trouble just passing him in the hallways.

Am I doing the right thing? she would ask herself. And then, I have to grow up some day.

She went back and forth with herself on whether she was doing the right thing, and then Saturday night arrived. In the end, the same devil-may-care attitude that led her to visit the L’aide Alchemique offices eight months ago won the argument. She met Péla near the exit door in dark clothes.

“Let’s go,” she said, and they left the Catacombs complex.

Hmmmm? Oh, is it that time already? Dr. Halalo walked out of the shadows from where he’d watched them leave. May you fly ever upward, little Aila. You never deserved to be trapped underground anyway.

They’d walked up out of a Métro station, and back down a curving stairwell lined with black lights. Pounding techno music was already audible from inside. Every follicle on Aila’s body was trying to pop out, and she could feel hairs and feathers standing up all over.

“We could still go back, you know,” Péla told her, concerned at the slight trembling of her friend’s wings.

“No, no... it’s like I told myself, I have to grow up sooner or later,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

The two of them continued the rest of the way down the stairs and opened a door. The music suddenly doubled in intensity. A bouncer at the door took a few tries to get across his yelled request for cover charges, which were paid. Aila was nearly disappointed that there was not some sort of age check. She’d had her ID ready, but not her old ID with Aile Molyneaux printed on it, and with no wings in the picture. No, L’aide Alchemique had a few friends in interesting places, and a new ID had been printed for her. It had her blue and black wings quite visible, and gave the name “Aila Ma’ana Téwari”–basically, “Aila Midnight Molyneaux” in Ka’aulele. She had actually liked her original name, even if she couldn’t use it now, so she was pleased to be able to keep as much of it as she could while still integrating the new parts.

Still, even if it was a missed opportunity to revel in her newness, there were no worries with age limits.

They strode in on a scene of chaos.

A bar to the right was serving drinks of all sorts, both alcoholic and soft drinks. The whole place was a profusion of colors: red, blue, green, and black light neon; spotlights overhead rotating around a dance floor; shifting and changing light patterns on various walls and the floor. Metal stairs led up to a scaffolding framework over the dance floor, where people were standing and people-watching the crowd below. On a stage across the room, a DJ sat at a booth with stacks of records. Aila couldn’t tell the gender of the DJ by looking, though she eventually settled on female. Then the DJ’s voice cut in during a track switch, putting her into confusion all over again. Everyone who wasn’t dancing or people-watching was talking loudly.

Despite all of their imaginings, Aila and Péla were more than a little bit overwhelmed by the initial visual and aural blast. So they quickly ascended the metal stairs to the less crowded deck on top, where they could watch.

“Wow, I’ve seen movies, but I never quite expected it to be this intense,” Aila said, leaning directly up to Péla’s ear. Péla just shook her head. It was then that Péla saw Aila’s feathers and started pointing at them excitedly while poking Aila’s shoulder with a finger.

Aila turned to look and her mouth dropped open, too.

All of the light-colored feathers on the insides of her wings were glowing bright purple in response to the black lights. Whole rows of feathers glowed pink as if with some sci-fi radiation effect, the glow fading slowly back to the other colors farther down. She realized that those pink feathers were the newest ones to have grown in.

“Les volants,” she heard someone say nearby, and had little doubt that they were talking about her and Péla. But then she looked down at the dance floor again.

A music change had happened; typical club dance music was playing before, and it had switched to something with a slightly more driving beat, and complex melodies and harmonies that Aila had trouble following. The lights had dimmed, and the remaining dancers had pulled out all manner of glowing things: bracelets, wands, balls on the ends of glowing strings that they spun in complex circles, even what looked like glowing tongue piercings. And there, in the middle of the floor, were two Na’aulele with their wings glowing just like Aila’s, doing a dance much wilder than anything she could imagine gentle Kuléo teaching her. A singer with an ethereal voice came in over the track, and Aila knew what she was seeing and hearing.

The voice was singing in Ka’aulele. This was some new fusion style between music from Hunéa and European techno.

She could even understand some of the words, now.

“Cascading down over you like a waterfall...”

“Raising you up ’til you reach the sky...”

“I’ll race ’round you in circles like a flame, ’amahari...”

She couldn’t remember what the last word meant, but it had something to do with love. The music felt like it was pounding through her veins. Something in her blood was called by it.

“We have to go do that,” she said breathlessly to Péla.

“Totally.”

The two of them shed their jackets on a coat rack by the dance floor and walked out onto it, losing themselves in motions that seemed entirely instinctual. Circles with her wings slightly out and up. Another with her arms waving in the air and her wings waving to the sides like a Guanyin dance. Aila had worn a white spaghetti strap top (pulled up over the body like pants, and the straps thrown over and fastened later, of course) and it was glowing in the black light now too, a bright counterpart to her black hair and inner wings.

The song came to an end and it was like coming out of a trance; suddenly the noise faded, she was dripping with sweat, and wondering what she was doing out in the middle of the dance floor. Péla looked equally mystified about what impulse had led them out there, and they beat a quick retreat toward the bar, grabbing their jackets on the way.

“What the heck was that?” Aila breathed. Péla couldn’t hear her words over the renewed musical barrage, but she could lip-read. She just nodded.

“How’d you like it?” a young man’s voice said behind her. She turned around and came face to face with the two Na’aulele who had been dancing on the floor with them.

“It gets you right here, doesn’t it?” he asked. “I bet you two are too young to remember Hunéa and the ecstatic rites at Kokonéfara, hmm?”

“Oh, get over yourself,” the young Ka’aulele woman with him said with a friendly smile. “I’m Néhala, and that oaf is Képaki. Before you hear him go on about it any more, you should know that he wrote that song.”

“Waaaah! Really?” Péla asked. “It was amazing. A mix of old and new.”

“Indeed,” Képaki said. “A fine connoisseur of music, I see. Here’s my card; you can download my other tracks off my web site if you like.” He handed one to each of Aila and Péla. “See ya ’round, girls.”

Néhala rolled her eyes theatrically and they walked off into the crowd again.

“How cool was that?” Péla said to Aila when they’d left. “We met a musician tonight! And one popular enough to have his music played at a club.”

“I bet the DJ is his friend,” Aila said sarcastically, but her heart wasn’t in it. It had been an incredible song.

Across the room, the two of them heard words being bellowed loud enough even for them to hear it over the music. “We’re tired of your kind around here, bird-brain.” Nearly everyone turned to look at the altercation. “Why don’t you go home and take your dirty music with you?”

Képaki and Néhala were standing near the DJ booth, and a large man was standing near them, looking very threatening. Képaki was holding his hands up defensively and Néhala looked distinctly worried. Képaki was saying something she couldn’t hear, and then the man said, “I don’t care what you’re going to do!” Next thing they knew, the man had thrown a punch.

Aila and Péla didn’t wait a moment more, but rushed over to try to help defend their new friends. Képaki wasn’t fighting back, he was just trying to defend himself and back away, keeping his rainbow-dyed wings well back and away from the man. Néhala was crying for help. Aila ran up and kicked the man in the shin. He spun around to face her, and Péla moved in on the other side and kicked him straight up between the legs. He doubled over in pain and fell to the ground. After a moment, he tried to climb back to his feet, but he was too drunk to manage it.

Everyone just stood there staring at him, panting from fright, wings a-quiver for several moments. Then they looked up at each other. Képaki looked grateful, upset, and shocked all at the same time. Aila thought, looking at his face, that it would be a perfect time for one of those strange thought-combining clauses in the Ka’aulele language. Then she thought about how one thinks the strangest thoughts in times of stress. And then the bouncers were there, keeping them all from leaving and maintaining the peace. And then the police.

Oh no, Aila thought.

ID cards were looked at, notes were taken. One policewoman did a double-take at Aila, gestured to a policeman, and whispered in his ear. He nodded.

“I’m afraid you’ll all need to come to the police station,” he said.

Aila looked at the floor, her vision becoming blurry with tears.

The worst had happened, after all.

Na’aulele posed a special challenge for the Police Nationale. For one thing, after five years, everyone still had only the vaguest idea where they fit into the legal system. Everyone’s best guess was “resident alien”, which was amusing for other reasons as well. It was also hard to fit one into a car. In fact, it was pretty much impossible. So when a call came about a fight involving les volants, which was noteworthy to begin with, they brought the tallest blue-on-white van they could find. The Na’aulele were herded into the back and had to stand. They held on to what they could, and the van pulled away.

“Do you speak Ka’aulele?” Képaki asked them in that language. Aila held up her thumb and fore-finger half an inch apart.

“I see,” he said in French. “Pity. They don’t. So you came here when you were very young, eh?”

Aila just shook her head. “I don’t really want to talk right now,” was all she said. “Nothing personal against you, Képaki.”

He looked at Péla and saw the same sort of upset and concern, and he just sighed and turned to watch the city passing by through the windows.

When they arrived, they were herded inside.

“You three, come with me,” an officer said. “You,” he pointed at Aila, “go with Officer Travert.” He pointed at a uniformed woman standing nearby. Aila’s heart sank even further. There was no reason to separate her except that they knew who she was. She’d spent eight months carefully dodging this moment, and here she was anyway.

Officer Travert led her down a hallway and into a room, and closed the door behind them. She gestured to a stool for Aila, and sat behind a desk. She then proceeded to look through and shuffle papers for a few minutes, leaving Aila to fidget.

“Hmm. Aile Molyneaux, I think?” Officer Travert looked up at her at last. There was no need to answer her question; the look on Aila’s face was enough. “And carrying a rather interesting ID card. A valid, interesting ID card.” She surprised Aila by handing it back to her. “There’s an interesting story here, as well, if I’m not mistaken. And I’d like to know what it is, from you, before I let your parents in here.”

At the mention of her parents, Aila’s feathers started to fluff out and her wings started to shake a bit again. She swallowed and tried to calm herself before she said anything.

“It’s like this, officer,” she started, and she told an abbreviated version of her adventures of the last year. Her need to have wings; her application at “the clinic” (she did not give a name for it); her time spent volunteering and having treatments (she omitted many interesting details here, such as their location in the Catacombs); her parents’ drugging her and taking her to a hospital; her escape and stay with friends. “And two of us made a bad decision to sneak out to the club tonight,” she said, the very understatedness of it dragging a semi-hysterical laugh from her.

Officer Travert leaned back in her chair and stared at Aila for a few moments. “And you weren’t born one of them? Wow...” The compliment brought a little smile to Aila’s face again. “Well. You tell a very interesting story, and I have little choice but to believe it since we have a human ID for you, human parents, and a girl with bird wings. Fraud, kidnap, running away, harboring runaways, truancy, more fraud... amazing. You’ve had a busy year for a thirteen year old girl.”

Aila looked at the floor again, depressed now. She thought it a foregone conclusion that Officer Travert would hand her over to her parents, and perhaps even go after L’aide Alchemique. With her in custody, they could eventually have the true location of it out of her.

She was thus surprised when Officer Travert said, “Whatever the circumstances, I’m not fond of the idea of giving you back to your parents. Even if you had some sort of mental disability that drove you to want wings so badly that you’d do all of those things, there’s no excuse for drugging your own child and taking them to a hospital for a forced surgery that would certainly drive that child to further mental distress.”

Aila looked back up at her. “I’m in your hands,” she said simply. “But I don’t want to live with them right now. I don’t think I’d trust them, and we probably wouldn’t get along anyway.”

“I can see that,” the officer said. She pondered for a few moments. “But we can’t have a young girl running around out there with no legal guardians and her parents trying to harass her. Oh, what a mess you’ve landed me with, Aila. I assume you’d rather be called that?”

Aila’s big smile and nod was all the answer she needed.

Officer Travert sighed heavily and pressed an intercom switch. “Send them in, please,” she said, and let go of the switch again. At those words, Aila’s wings began to shake a little again, and she half-flapped nervously, sending papers on the officer’s desk into new piles.

“Calm, sweetie,” she said to Aila.

Aila nodded again. She thought back to her first impression of the Temple of Change, and her first time really hearing the Song. Then she heard it again; she’d neglected it lately, but it was still there. It gave no judgement. It never did. But it calmed her immensely and bolstered her confidence. Somehow this would all turn out right.

She was surprised to find that she could feel her parents’ energy before they even neared the office. She supposed it had something to do with all her work with her wings and the Song, and all of her “quiet” time spent down in the Catacombs. But they were in quite a turmoil.

The door opened; Papa and Maman were entering the room; Papa stopped and gaped; Maman dropped her police coffee mug and it shattered on the floor. They were not staring at Aila, but at her wings.

Suddenly she was not calm at all. She was feeling anger; anger at her time spent running from them; anger at being forced to live underground for six months when all a winged person really wants is to feel the wind and the sun on their wings; anger at their arrogant attitude in taking her to the hospital to begin with; and as much as anything, irrational as it seemed, anger at them taking her parents away from her.

So she did not look down meekly or take a stance of reconciliation. Instead she deliberately spread her wings to show the brilliant shades of black, fading to blue, fading to off-white.

“Is this what you were looking to cut out of me?” she said, defiance lacing her tone.

Officer Travert just shook her head and buried her face in her palm. Maman gasped at her wing movement and nearly fainted away, and Papa was doing something that was out of her experience entirely: he looked like he was about to cry. He was so far out of his depth.

“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly, more to the Song and its honoring of her than to her parents, but she meant it to both. She turned and looked at Officer Travert, and her parents filed in and sat on the remaining chairs. They, too, faced Officer Travert, as if they were afraid to look at their daughter now.

The silence dragged out for over a minute until even the normally inscrutable Travert couldn’t stand all of the emotional faces staring at her. She cleared her throat, and the spell was broken.

“Aile,” Papa said, and she winced a little at the name. Now I know how Kuléo felt, she thought. “I can’t understand why you did this thing. But why did you run away for six months? Mon Dieu, we’ve been so worried about you!”

Aila’s almost-hysterical giggle at his statement was as elegant of a reply as there could be.

“Aile,” Maman tried. “All you had to do was talk to us! Why did you leave us hanging for so long? We’ve spent so much money and time searching for you and being afraid that you’d... you know...”

“Died?” Aila finished for her. “We did try that. The talking thing, I mean. It nearly ended in an incredibly precious part of me being ripped away.”

Her parents stared at her nervously.

“Oh yes, she knows,” Aila said, pointing her thumb at the officer. “The drugging, the hospital, all of it.”

Papa and Maman looked nervously back at Officer Travert as if waiting for her lightning bolts to descend, but she merely looked over the papers on her desk as if bored.

“Aile, my dear daughter... I’m so sorry we did that,” Papa said, still looking like he was trying to avoid looking at her wings. “It was a terrible mistake. But we were so worried for you. You’re just so young, you don’t have the experience...” He was actually slowly wringing his hands now, and Aila began to feel some compassion for him. She remembered back to how much she’d missed her parents and wished she could rush across and hug him, and everything would be all right. But he would flinch from the proximity to her wings; nothing could be all right. To him, they were a foreign parasite attached to his human daughter.

“Aila,” she said. “My name is Aila, now. I’m sorry I ran away for so long without calling or writing you,” she continued, feeling genuinely contrite for the first time in this meeting. “But I think you understand my fears and why I didn’t do so.”

A small bridge had been formed. Aila and her parents both pondered what it could mean as the moments of silence stretched out. Finally, Maman spoke again.

“You could come home with us again,” she said to Aila. “But I don’t think it would do, with those... those...” She gestured vaguely above Aila, who raised an eyebrow. “Well, it wouldn’t do. You wouldn’t fit in the house, and we wouldn’t have what we’d need for you to live comfortably. It would also be more than a little scandalous if Papa’s company found out. You could always go back to the hospital, voluntarily this time. Things could go back to normal. We could all be happy together.”

Aila felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing; nothing had changed, nothing at all. She extended a wing again, being careful not to blow Officer Travert’s papers all over, and also being careful not to let her feathers anywhere near her parents. They were about as far from her trust right now as she could imagine.

“How could you say that?” she said in a little voice. She couldn’t keep the tears from her words, nor, after a moment, her eyes. “What a terrible thing to say to your child. ’We can take you home and love you if only you’ll cut off your arms.’ How can you call this disgusting, a mutation, a disfiguration?” Aila gestured at the soft, colorful feathers floating near her. “They’re so... so very beautiful. And they’re a part of me. A part of me that was missing, not added.”

Her parents just shook their heads and kept looking anywhere but at her wings.

“I can’t live with you anyway,” Aila continued. “How could I trust you again? Would I have to buy and make all of my own food?”

“How will you get schooling?” Maman asked, dodging Aila’s question. “How do you eat? Is someone actually monitoring your... modifications?”

“We have tutors,” Aila replied. “It’s better than the school I was attending before, anyway; if I went back to that school I’d be getting a lesser education and I would, as you say, cause a scandal. Our food is taken care of as well. All I have to do is help with the others, and I would happily do that, anyway, to repay what they’ve done for me.”

“And what is this place you keep speaking of?” Papa asked. “’We’ this and ’our’ that.”

“Do you really think I’d tell you?” Aila asked him, not even meaning it to sound particularly defiant. Papa just looked away.

“Yes, well,” Officer Travert spoke up suddenly, causing everyone to jump a little. They’d almost forgotten where they were and why. “Your daughter has committed some small crimes, mostly against you. And you’ve committed some not quite as small crimes against her, even as her parents. You mutually agree that you no longer want to live together. All that remains is finding Aila a guardian.” She looked down at the papers she’d been shuffling again. “If they’re willing,” she said to Aila, “the group you’re with could sign to become your temporary guardians. Monsieur and Madame Molyneaux, you would need to sign papers as well. We’re willing to drop everything if you will all come to an amicable agreement. Budgets are not what they once were, and one less active case would help us considerably as well.”

“I’m sure they would,” Aila said at the same time as Papa said, “That’s probably best for now.” They looked at each other and then away again.

“Very well, it’s all decided. I’ll be right back with the necessary papers.”

The three of them just sat there in silence, though Aila caught Maman occasionally peeking over at her feathers. Surprisingly, to Aila, they were looks of grudging admiration, not disgust; but it was not something Aila thought she would ever say out loud.

Officer Travert returned and had them each sign a form. Aila was pleased to write her name as Aila Ma’ana Téwari, knowing that it was her name now, and no one else would try to refute it.

They all stood, and her parents looked at her as she looked back at them. Normally this would be the time when hugs would happen, but Aila was afraid to let them near her wings, and they had no desire to come near them, themselves.

“Well then,” Papa said finally. “Adieu. There’s a place for you if you decide to come home later.” Aila shook her head, and her parents walked off.

“Stay a moment,” Officer Travert said to her, and Aila sat back down. “I didn’t tell them everything, of course,” the officer continued. “But this company that requested the ID, Halo Holdings, has requested a number of other IDs over the years. They have also become the guardians of a number of other minors in the capacity of an orphanage. So, if everything is as you say, and I have no reason to doubt you, I have no doubts they’ll take you on as well.” She stood.

Aila stood as well, smiling and nodding, and feeling slightly sick at the extra police scrutiny she had brought to Dr. Halalo once again. No doubt all of that had been uncovered as a result of the investigation into Aile Molyneaux.

“As far as I’m concerned,” she continued, “we’re done here, and you’re free to go. Your friends who were involved in the club brawl are waiting for you in the lobby. Everything turned out fine there as well. And if I may say so...” She looked over at Aila’s wings again. “They’re so lovely. Such a shame about your parents, but c’est la vie, hmm?”

“Mmm, c’est la vie,” Aila said with raised eyebrows. “Thank you for everything.”

Officer Travert nodded to her, and the two of them walked out to the lobby.

The group was indeed waiting for her outside. Péla ran to give Aila a hug.

“So,” Képaki said, “I hear you started out one of them!” He didn’t sound upset at all; in fact he sounded somewhat awed.

Aila nodded.

“Wicked cool,” he said in English, and the two of them left the building.

Aila’s heart was full; it was the best thing she could possibly imagine hearing. It made up for fifty, no, a hundred angry old women at ice cream shops.

Dr. Halalo surprised the two girls by meeting them at the door. They were immediately contrite, but he waved their explanations and apologies away.

“You see what I said?” he asked Aila. “The lesser issue, come to a conclusion. The aura never lies! Goodnight.”

With that he turned and walked away. Péla wanted to know what he meant, but Aila knew now, and she didn’t want to take the time to explain in the wee hours of the morning.

The “complication in her soul”. How had he known what would happen? Or had he? The eerie uncanniness of it stayed with her for quite some time.