Small Lessons

After the incident with the club, Aila felt light and free as she never had. She could continue her life without interference from her parents. The seasons turned, and she lived with her friends and helped others with their dreams. It felt like a dream from which she didn’t want to wake; the only improvement would be one of those beautiful loft apartments with direct roof access.

A little after her fourteenth birthday, Kuléo finally “asked her out” officially; he had expected it to be a nervous-making event, but in the end he found that he was just happy to be with his best friend in an even closer way. Aila had had similar thoughts, he found out later, and they both laughed over it. Of course Aila had whispered scandalously with the other girls about boyfriends and what they were good for, when she was still little Aile Molyneaux; she found the reality of having one to be somehow much tamer and, at the same time, more satisfying than those rumors. Kisses and cuddles were had aplenty, and that was enough for her for the moment; Kuléo was a young gentleman from his wingtips to his toes and did not even think of pushing for anything else.

Dr. Halalo had his first major brush with death since his precipitous fall from the aurora. He had climbed a ladder to check on the state of the flame pillar in the Temple of Change, and had fallen off. He was quite high up at the time, and some bones were broken. Many Ka’aulele bones were somewhat hollowed inside to limit weight, and the hollowing also made them a bit more sturdy; but eventually even those had to fail under enough strain. Seekers had to delay their sessions with him for several weeks until he could at least stand up again. He seemed very troubled. Shortly after that, he announced a search for apprentices to take up his work and help him help others.

Aila had a hit-or-miss acceptance among the larger Ka’aulele population. At first, her obvious inexperience “outed” her fairly quickly, so she learned not to bother with any personal or private gatherings, even when she was invited to them by someone understanding. Inevitably a relative would show up and, at the very least, awkwardness would ensue. As time went on, she became somewhat better at things, and her faux pas could be written off as having moved to Earth at a very young age. But she always felt a little uneasy, especially after the older Ka’aulele woman had read her like a book in the ice cream shop. These things worried Aila a little bit, but her confidence in being a winged person showed, and that made up for a lot. What other kind of winged people would there be besides Na’aulele?

Eventually, Aila and Péla went back to find Képaki, the Ka’aulele/techno fusion musician. It turned out that the bird-woman with him, Néhala, was his girlfriend and also his singer; it also turned out that they created more music than just techno. Nearly every kind of human musical genre and nearly every kind of Ka’aulele musical genre had been combined by them into something new and amazing. Occasionally more than two genres were involved, and they had other friends who played instruments and sang. Képaki even convinced Aila to sing for one of his songs once, and he was so impressed with her voice and her intuitive weaving-in of the Song that he asked her back to do other songs later. She was surprised a few months later to find small royalty checks arriving in her mailbox at the Catacombs.

For two and a half years after the club incident, her life continued in much the same vein. She learned and learned until she could actually speak Ka’aulele fairly well, if with an accent. She could recite more history of Hunéa than many children who had been born there. She visited her parents on her birthday, with Kuléo as backup, but they were unpleasant experiences; Aila looked forward to her wing-day celebrations much more, for the Na’aulele celebrated them each year just like birthdays. She was sixteen in human terms; but she’d now had three wing-days, and internally thought of herself as being three sometimes.

And most importantly, she had grown. Grown, and grown, and grown, in both the normal human ways, and the normal Ka’aulele ways. She’d grown to a respectable 5’6”; and though she was still waify by typical human standards, her figure caught the eyes of many boys. But that was not what held their eyes.

Her wings were nearly at their full span now, a mighty nineteen feet across, flight-feather tip to flight-feather tip, when she held them out in flight position. She looked like some madman’s idea of a giant kite, or perhaps a butterfly that had never stopped growing, or perhaps... none of these analogies seemed to be enough when gazing upon those giant black, blue, and gray feathers, the largest nearly three feet long and a hand-span wide.

There was no doubting it: Aila was growing into a beautiful young bird-woman.

One day in the Catacombs, one of Dr. Halalo’s new apprentices found Aila and Kuléo while they ate lunch.

“He says there’s a big enough group of Namaia wu’emai that we can take a trip out to the farm to let some of you stretch your wings.” Namaia wu’emai. New wings. It was Dr. Halalo’s term for those of his seekers whose wings had grown enough that they might be able to try some flight with little risk of damaging anything, wings or otherwise.

Aila could hardly contain her excitement. Any thought of hunger was lost in that moment when her sight of the Catacombs lunch room had been replaced with a dreamy vision of soaring through the sky...

“When can we go?” she asked, only barely managing to maintain her dignity.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” the apprentice said with a smile.

In the morning, a group of them left through various exits into the Métro system to avoid notice, and they met each other at the Châtelet station. They had the air of an elementary school field trip with a teacher and his helpers, or perhaps, Aila thought with a little chuckle, a mother bird with a line of chicks. They took a D train from there, out of Paris and into the countryside.

As the countryside rolled by, Aila thought about her strange life up to now. Eight short years since the Na’aulele had made their way into her world and changed it forever. And not just her world, but her life. She tried to imagine how things had been, back then, wishing for wings with no real way to have them. It was unthinkable now. They were as much a part of her as her head or her arms, and she couldn’t imagine not having them except as an exercise in abstract thinking. She could visit with her parents now in a peaceable way, but they were much like Kuléo’s–unwilling to look at her wings and acting as if nothing had happened. She shook her head and thought, It’s as Dr. Halalo said. There’s still a complication in there. But how to unravel it?

An hour later, they pulled into a quaint country town and disembarked the train. A truck with an open-aired bed pulled up where they were waiting, and the driver spoke to Dr. Halalo briefly. He nodded, and they all got into the back of the truck with as much dignity as they could manage.

The truck drove them to a farm in the countryside, in an area with some anomalous geography nearby. It backed up to a substantial set of hills, with a few more isolated hills in the middle of it. The land was laid out awkwardly for farming, and so, Aila later learned, they were able to obtain it for a substantial discount. However, it was perfect for the purposes of the Ka’aulele doctor, because there were several small hills, of varying sizes, where “new wings” could learn how to fly before doing rasher things like jumping off the Eiffel Tower. The land was put to use for some farming, however, as it helped supplement the food supply here and back at the Catacombs; these vegetables were not cheaper than ones bought in bulk from large farming businesses, but they were grown with a special type of care appropriate to the magical sensitivity of the people doing work on the farm and at the Catacombs.

About mid-day, the group arrived, and the “new wings”, Aila among them, were understandably excited about the idea of proceeding right away.

“Well, there’s no harm in it,” Dr. Halalo said with a little indulgent smile. “I caution you against getting over-confident and being disappointed with the results. Not many are able to do much on the first day. Just head out to that hill over there,” he said, and pointed, “and wait for me near the base of it.”

He headed inside to speak with the people managing the farm, and the others headed out to a medium sized hill.

At this point, Aila’s nervousness caught up with her a bit. She looked at the top of the hill and tried to imagine what it would look like to look down from it. She looked over her shoulder at the bulk of feathers that would carry her safely down the slope. Aila swallowed hard and mustered her courage; the threat of a little tumble was nothing compared to the promise of some air under her wings for the first time.

When Dr. Halalo arrived, he sent one of the others up to the top of the hill first.

“Now then,” he said, loudly enough to carry. “I’m going to raise a little wind. I want you to just hold your wings out to the side and bend forward a little, to see how it feels. If you manage to get airborne, go straight down the hill, flap your wings to slow yourself, and do your best to land down there.”

He went silent for a moment, and then sang a few quiet notes. Aila could feel the music resonating through her somehow, and hear its echo in the Song. And then there was a little breeze that picked up quickly into medium wind, headed straight for the seeker on top of the hill.

The seeker, a young man her age named Lé’aio, stood bravely into the wind as it shook his wings slightly. Then he started to wobble. Then he fell flat on his back. Dr. Halalo whistled a quick note or two and the wind died out again.

“What went wrong?” he asked Lé’aio in a didactic sort of tone.

“I forgot about how the wind under my wings would change my balance,” Lé’aio replied after a few moments’ reflection. “I guess it’s one thing to learn how to balance again with the wings, and another for them to be lifting instead of pulling down.”

Dr. Halalo nodded. “Again.”

After perhaps twenty minutes, Lé’aio had had his fill and ceded the hill to others. He hadn’t had any lift-off, but he’d certainly learned a lot about how it felt, and that was the main point of the exercise today.

The others filed through, and Aila’s turn came closer and closer. She was the last to go, owing to her desire to watch the others carefully and learn from their mistakes. She wanted a lift-off on the first day. No one else had done it yet.

“Aila?” Dr. Halalo finally prompted. She nodded and walked away from the group and up the hill.

When she arrived there, she waited for his whistled wind, feeling it inside her as well, as it approached. It was a rushing, swirling mass of air that was almost like a living thing. She held out her wings, and bent forward slightly to catch that wind.

And was promptly thrown to her back.

She laid there for a moment, and the group at the bottom of the hill started to become slightly concerned until they heard a noise from her. Laughter.

She stood up and answered Dr. Halalo’s constantly repeated question. “I’m over-confident,” she said. He actually smiled a little at her.

This time, she asked for something that the others had not: help. Kuléo and another seeker came up the hill and held her down by her body while she repeated the exercise. This time, when the wind came, she didn’t fall over. She was able to try different things and learn how to balance her weight with her wind-blown wings and her torso muscles.

She motioned her helpers away, and the wind came a third time. Aila felt that she almost had it, but then she fell down in an undignified tangle of limbs and feathers. This time she wasn’t laughing. I’m so close! she thought.

“Maybe we should call it a day for now,” Dr. Halalo said. “You’ve all done a great job for a first try.”

“Please, just one more time?” Aila called back down plaintively. He nodded, and called up the wind again.

Okay, Aila, you can do this, she thought to herself, spreading her wings and leaning forward once more. She could feel the wind in the distance, rushing and tumbling over itself like an invisible river. Just think of what Papa and Maman would say if they could see this. Yeah, maybe they would still be curmudgeons. Maybe nothing short of me mutilating myself would make them happy. But think of Irène and her...

Aila looked down suddenly and saw that her feet were several inches off the ground, and she was in the air, Dr. Halalo’s wind rushing over her wings. It felt as if the air was gently trying to usher her into the sky. Welcome home, it whispered to her. You are welcome here.

Even the people on the ground could see Aila’s sudden smile, bright and luminous. She tilted her wings... just so... and suddenly, she was rising in the face of Dr. Halalo’s wind. Ten feet, twenty feet, thirty... Aila tucked her arms to her sides, remembering her “lessons” with Kuléo so long ago, and pointed her toes out behind her. She heard the doctor letting go of the wind and had a momentary sensation of stomach drop-out. But no, she reminded herself, they just welcomed me. It calmed her enough for her to lean into the wind a little more, and then she was falling.

...Except she wasn’t. Instead of plummeting to the ground, she fell along a graceful curve. It was like being on a roller coaster with no track, or perhaps a track that pointed in any direction she wanted... forever. She screamed aloud in joy, and only realized afterward how much it sounded like a giant bird’s cry.

Some previously unknown instinct prompted her to flap her wings lazily, muscles pulling against chest-bones that had grown large. She rose even higher, even without Dr. Halalo’s wind. It didn’t just change my body, she thought with a shiver, but my mind, too. I’m changed through and through. Aila welcomed it and reveled in this discovery, in her newness.

She heard loud voices below her. Some seemed to be upset or perhaps worried, some were cheering her on like mad. Just a little higher, she thought. Just a little longer.

Aila flapped again and the whole farm was visible beneath her. And other farms around it, like a patchwork quilt. No zeppelin window to stand behind.

It’s just like the dream, she thought. Except this time, I’m not falling. She cried her cry aloud again, and then started thinking of how to land.

Aila started to glide around the hill in lazy circles, but she was still going quite fast. She had heard Dr. Halalo’s instructions about how to land, but they seemed to make no sense now. In fact, watching the ground getting closer and closer, nothing was making any sense. Her sense of grace and wonder were leaving her as the other part of her brain, the one that apparently hadn’t gotten around to changing yet, started shrieking at her about the ground coming closer and closer, faster and faster.

She tried flapping her wings with them tilted back like she remembered seeing birds do, and it did slow her down, but now she didn’t feel quite so in control of that roller coaster track. Aila was coming in for an injurious landing indeed, when suddenly she became aware of Dr. Halalo’s wind song again. She slowed, coming at a more controlled pace. She was perhaps five feet above the ground when he let it go, and she landed on her front with a hearty oomph.

“To remind you to follow directions,” he said with a mischievous smile. “Nice flying up there.”

Aila pulled her wings in and stood up shakily. She was exhausted from the sudden use of previously unused muscles, but she shared Dr. Halalo’s mischievous smile. “If that’s what not following directions gets me, call me a rule breaker any time.” Her fellow seekers laughed and cheered, and they all walked back toward the farmhouse, massaging muscles and smarting from bruises.

The group would be staying for a week, although Dr. Halalo himself would only be staying for a few days. His apprentices would help the seekers with their learning while he returned to continue treating others.

They ate dinner that night around a giant table in a large room in the farmhouse. The room was a maelstrom of voices and smells. More than a few conversations centered around Aila’s impressive display earlier in the day. Some thought she had been too impetuous, some were jealous, and still others were in plain admiration. Kuléo fit a little bit in the first and third camps.

“That was really reckless,” he said to her. “But super cool.” He ended with a smile and a nudge to her ribs.

She smiled back shyly. “I just couldn’t not do it, you know? Something just sort of took over in me, with all those years of not flying... I couldn’t not do it.”

A few people nearby murmured and nodded. They knew, too. They just hadn’t been lucky enough on the first day.

Aila was just pleased to find a dish with Szechuan peppers in it, for the first time in years.

After dinner, everyone broke off to find their rooms. Aila was sharing with two others, a younger bird-girl and an older bird-woman. She went back out to find Dr. Halalo, to ask him about a question that had been on her mind all day. Finally she found him sitting on the porch outside, staring off into the quiet darkness around the farmhouse.

“It’s a nice evening,” he said as she sat down on another bar stool, leaning on the porch railing.

“It is,” she replied. “Quiet.”

“Yes, that it is. It’s so much easier to hear out here.”

Aila hadn’t noticed it consciously until he mentioned it, but the Song was there and stronger than ever. Purer, somehow.

“I had a question for you,” she said after a moment, and he nodded. “If Na’aulele have such powerful wind magic, why bother with the wings? I’ve heard rumors and mutterings about how... our wings came about. It wasn’t naturally evolved.”

Dr. Halalo just stared out, waiting for her to collect her thoughts and finish speaking them.

“I know about raising ourselves up,” she said, “and the symbolism that has, but why not just do it with wind magic? Or with smaller wings?”

He stayed quiet for a few moments more, and Aila started to wonder if he intended to answer.

“Rising up is about more than moving into the sky,” he said finally. “We don’t create the wind; we just ask it to move. When it moves in our way instead of its natural way, it follows a different path. It has effects farther on.”

Aila thought of the story of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane. She mentioned it and he nodded.

“We don’t create the Song either,” he continued. “We just call some of its notes forth, again by changing the path of air. Calling a wind is just taking it a step further–using your Song to change the path of the air. In the end, it’s not good to be constantly calling things to move against their nature.”

Aila nodded, trying to grasp at some bigger picture she was sure Dr. Halalo was seeing. Gears within gears within gears, Songs within Songs within Songs...

“It’s a favor,” he said. “In the end, nature gives in to our whimsy sometimes. True creation...” He looked at her and pointed at his head. “That comes from in here. An alchemist is like a conductor, both in the symphony sense and the wire-to-heaven sense. Forces like the wind give in to our whims because they’re curious to see what new patterns we’ll set in motion, the changes-in-motion... life. Abuse that trust, and it stops listening.”

Aila fell quiet, suddenly troubled. She looked out at her world and thought about all of the people who had no sense of wonder, who would do what they pleased just because it was in their power. And more than anything, she wondered at the appearance of the Na’aulele at this moment.

Was it a motif of some larger music?