A Little Turbulence

For the next week, Aila seemed preoccupied. Many people asked her if she was doing okay; she got so tired of making excuses for a question she didn’t want to answer that she started giving involuntary grimaces at it. People stopped asking after that.

Kuléo asked, of course, because he had some idea of the meaning of it. Aila knew that he knew the answer already, but she just shook her head most of the time. Eventually she did reply to his question.

“Are we truly becoming Na’aulele, Kuléo?” she asked. “It’s not just the rumor. The other day, someone finally explained to me what happens at Kokonéfara. That was the place the musician had mentioned to me, at the club. What the ’ecstatic rites’ are. I’m not sure I feel entirely comfortable with some parts of the Ka’aulele culture.”

“It’s definitely very different in some ways,” Kuléo replied. “But you don’t have to do things like that. You were born and raised here; Parisian Na’aulele are already quite different than the ones who came from Hunéa. Enough so that we have no trouble being accepted among them.”

“I guess you’re right,” Aila said. But she didn’t look like she’d let go of anything at all.

The next night around midnight, Kuléo was woken by a knock on his door. After a few moments, it repeated.

“Just a second,” he called out.

He turned on his bedside lamp and carefully picked himself up from the cot he slept on. He shivered a little in the sudden cold, without his wings around him to keep him warm.

When he opened the door, Aila was standing there waiting for him, fully dressed.

“I have to do it, Kuléo,” she said. “Would you please come with me?”

“Have to do what, sweetheart?” he asked her sleepily. She smiled at his endearment.

“Try to fly home,” she said simply.

That woke him up quite suddenly.

“You’re going to visit your parents?” He paused. “No... I see what you’re getting at. Are you sure this is a good idea? I don’t think any of us has ever tried to fly through the aurora. No one knows what will happen.”

Aila shrugged and her wings flapped a little, then settled again.

“It’s just something I have to do. I have to know.”

“Give me ten minutes,” he said after a moment. “I’ll go, too.”

She gave him a big hug and came inside to wait for him.

“The physical effects of the aurora aren’t the only thing that worries me,” he said, putting his shirt on. “What will you do if you can’t go through?”

Aila bit her lip for a moment and then said, “I guess I’ll have to come to that when I come to it.”

He continued getting dressed, but he was visibly worried for her.

Fifteen minutes later, they were at the top of the building that the Catacombs residents used to catch air, putting on goggles they’d developed to make the high winds more comfortable to eyes of human origin.

Midnight’s midnight wings at midnight, she thought to herself with a quiet chuckle.

“Any plan?” he asked her before they jumped.

She shrugged. “No plan.” She dove off, and then she was soaring upward, with Kuléo only a moment behind.

The two of them found a thermal over a nearby building’s heating system exhaust, and spiraled upward until the aurora was slightly beneath them rather than high up in the sky. The air rushed past, and Aila looked out over her city with a kind of calm and fond camaraderie. This was the place where she had grown from a little girl, and finally found her dreams. But it somehow didn’t entirely feel like home anymore. Hours of stories about Hunéa, language training, being steeped in their ceremonies for years... it all added up to something. She felt a yearning like pain to see that place, even if it might be stranger than she could imagine.

The aurora was almost directly before them now. From this perspective, she could see that it didn’t look like the northern lights at all. If anything, it reminded her of her first time in the Temple of Change. It was swirling and rotating, shifting and changing, not just hanging in the sky like curtains. There was nothing to be seen “through” it, if one could say that there was any particular center or focal point of note. But there was what seemed like a localization of the patterns and a slight brightness of light in one area near the center, and that was what they headed for.

The Song was very strong now; she could physically hear what sounded like the most amazing, angelic voices singing. Something caused the hairs all over her body to stand up, and she felt not a few feathers stand up, too. Thankfully, it didn’t affect her flight.

And then they were there. Something changed in the air, and the energy-feel of everything around her just... shifted. She saw a sun-drenched island not far away–green, green, so very green. A great number of Na’aulele flew around it, and creatures that looked like dolphins swam in the water far below her, speaking to her in some unknown language.

As quick as it had arisen, it faded. They were past the aurora now, and still in Paris.

Undaunted, Aila flew in a wide circle and came at it again, from the other side. Just a taste was not enough.

Again, in the center, she looked the other direction now, out onto a vast ocean of the deepest, purest sapphire blue she could possibly imagine.

And then, beneath her, the lights of Paris.

She had to reach up carefully and remove her goggles now, because they were fogging with tears. Aila cried aloud, but it was not her typical bird-cry of triumphant flight.

Aila had so much trouble sleeping that night that she found herself moving her cot-bed into Kuléo’s room and sleeping next to him for comfort. Tonight they both needed comfort as much as anything else; Kuléo had gotten a look, too. And they felt a kind of trust and a connection from their first meeting that was only magnified in times of trouble. The two of them finally fell asleep, Kuléo’s wing laying protectively on top of Aila’s.

That night, Aila had a dream.

She is standing in a dark place; all is darkness around her. There is a floor under her feet, and light coming from nowhere.

Rustling sounds like silk come from different directions, sometimes echoing, sometimes almost as if the source of the sound were nearby. She turns her head to look for it, and then the sounds stop. When she turns to face forward again, she is not alone.

A girl not much older than her, perhaps in her early twenties, is standing about two feet in front of her. Her face is shadowed but shaped like Aila’s, and she has black hair. Huge, beautiful wings rustle lightly on her back as she breathes, echoing the sounds of Aila’s wings as she breathes. But the girl’s face seems sad, almost haunted, and her wings seem to have a depressing droop to them. Her feathers are slightly dirty and far past needing to molt.

She speaks in a melodic language that Aila recognizes as fluent, flawless Ka’aulele; but somehow her tone takes the melody from it.

Éilia wa hiahia hiki némuniawa o tatérinaia ’ié’ié. ’Ia, wanifu wa alulao ’uruhiki péi. Mélawi pa’a paiani nauéua hifika’i méha.

“I chased the dream for too long. And the sun was not the light. Just a beautiful ball of burning gases.”

Neither raises a hand to the other. They both look around for someone to take their pain, someone to join and show them the way, but no one else is there.

Aila wakes wide-eyed to the quiet drip of a faucet in the catacombs.

After that day, Aila asked each person she left the Catacombs with to start calling her Ma’ana in public.

“It was my name, after all,” she’d say very reasonably.

When anyone asked her why she’d want to give up the name that the Song had given her, the one that was so hard won from the pits of the hospital, she wobbled her head and said something about wanting to try out a nickname.

“But why, A.. Ma’ana?” her friend Irène asked her one day when they met up again at the Eiffel Tower. “You were so proud of it.”

Aila sighed. “There are some rumors going around right now about my old name. Just... please do me a favor, hmm? Don’t use it while we’re out.”

The two of them stared out at the cityscape in companionable silence. For the first time since she had first held the hand of the Ka’aulele woman, when she had been not quite eight, Aila felt more nostalgia and more love for the city below her, her country, her world, than the far off world of Hunéa and all of the exotic trappings of the Na’aulele. It was a strange feeling for her. But that first moment of contact and wonder had been strongly colored by her need for wings. Now that she had them, she was starting to realize that they were a separate thing from the Na’aulele in many ways.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Irène asked her in English.

Aila gave a little snort. “Nanuniani wuvi,” she replied. “Little wishes. Things have gotten so complicated, Irène. I don’t know.” She looked over at her friend with a smile. “I’m glad I have you here to anchor me. Sometimes I think I’m in over my head.”

Irène just laughed at her words. “Understatement of the year, my friend. Understatement of the year. But it’s always meant so much to you, and you seem so much happier now. You probably don’t remember what you were like, before.”

Aila stared back out at the city again. “Why are we talking about these depressive things? Let’s go get cheeseburgers.” They both laughed at that, and headed back inside.

In the twentieth century, a bidding war was waged over the restaurant space on the second observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. One entrepreneur bid for his Le Jules Vernes restaurant, featuring fancy and expensive French cuisine. On the other side, a hamburger magnate that was known the whole world over; their thoughts were that hungry tourists were more likely to buy in quantity if the food was cheap.

Beyond monetary concerns, a great deal of argument was had behind closed doors about what effects a burger shop in one of the most iconic tourist spots of France would do for national image versus the increased possibility for taxes and visits to the tower if one could plan on lunch there. Somehow, the burger corporation won, and now tasty cheeseburgers and fries were to be had for all.

No seats were available anywhere near a window, of course, so Aila and Irène had to make do in the center. They spoke in general, vague terms in case someone was listening, so as not to “out” Aila.

“That other world has always seemed like it must be home,” Aila said carefully. “And I love most of the Na’aulele I’ve known.”

“Buuuuut...” Irène prompted her after a moment.

“But there’s a lot to love here, too. And... I don’t know. They’re my people, right? I’ll just have to make it work.”

The rest of their conversation was spent talking about other topics: boys, clothes, music.

“Did I tell you I’m still recording some things occasionally with Képaki and Néhala?” Aila asked her.

“No way! That’s so cool...”

At one point Aila felt an awkward tug on one of her wings. She instinctively yelped and tried to lift it out of the way of whatever had yanked on it, and ended up nearly knocking another customer over. When it was out of the way, she looked down and saw a little boy whose mother was already scolding him.

“But it’s so pretty,” the little boy said, edging his way to tears.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Aila said reassuringly to both the boy and the mother. “But I’m pretty attached to these feathers, all right?” She smiled and patted his head.

“I want pretty wings too,” he said, and his mother looked like she was about to start in on him again about having things he couldn’t have.

Aila felt a little bit sad for him, whether he was expressing a real desire like hers or not. She reached around and felt along the inside of her wing where some little downy feathers had started molting anyway, and came away with one without even having to pull on anything. It was fluffy and sky blue. She reached down and handed it to the wide-eyed boy, who just stared at it, and then started saying “volant! volant!”

“Thank you,” the mother said to Aila with a smile. “I think that will keep his interest for the rest of the day.”

The little boy had a bear hug on her leg, but the mother persuaded him away finally. Aila waved, and he waved back.

“Moments like that make it all worth it,” Aila said, and she saw that Irène was a little bit teary.

“That was so sweet of you, Ma’ana!”

They had just about finished anyway, so they took their trays to the trash and walked back out onto the observation deck. The main deck below had a large fence, presumably to prevent suicides. But the upper deck, set back a little way, didn’t.

“Will you come to my wing-day party?” Aila asked Irène when they were back outside.

“Yeah, sure! How do I get there?”

“I’ll meet you at the Cardinal Lemoine Métro station next Tuesday evening at 18:00,” Aila replied.

She went back to her mild brooding out at her city, and then the devil-may-care feeling of old took hold of her. She gave a theatrical sigh.

“It’s time, Irène,” she said.

Aila turned and hugged her friend, said goodbye, and started to climb up a diagonal on the tower structure. Irène was trying to pull her back down, but stopped when Aila gave her a smile. A notable amount of conversation was starting to happen around her, all of it directed at her. People were pointing and faces looked worried. She balanced on a horizontal cross-piece, feeling no concern at perching on such a small surface. With a last jaunty salute at her friend, she spread her wings and jumped.

The conversation was not just noisy now. People were actually screaming, and not entirely with delight and joy. Aila had cleared the bottom fence by a mere foot, and then she was soaring off and away from the tower. She flapped her wings lazily to gain some speed, and then did a loop, to cheering and applause back on the tower. Many tourists had still never seen a bird-person up close.

Irène turned and left quickly to avoid the inevitable inquiry that would happen. The guard rails were there for a reason, even for people with wings. Aila had just been lucky that the wind was blowing that way, today.

Then again, Irène thought wryly, with Aila’s love of tricksiness, probably not.

Aila met her friend in the train station right at 18:00. Irène gave her a thorough scolding for her reckless actions at the tower, and then they both laughed like little girls about it all. Apparently there hadn’t been an inquiry after all, because everyone thought it was just some eccentric part of the entertainment value that the Tower management had provided courtesy of les volants. No one from said management had actually been watching at the time.

“I’m really sorry to do this,” Aila told her friend. “But I have to blindfold you. It was the only way I could get you invited.”

“That’s fine,” Irène said, warming to the cloak and dagger feel of it. “Agent Daylight at your service.” The two of them giggled.

Once she was unable to see where they were going, Aila led them out of the station proper and back through an unlocked door, down a service hallway, and to the locked door for entering the Catacombs. She held up her ID key-fob, and the door beeped. She pushed it out of the way and led Irène into the first tunnel. After walking perhaps fifty feet, Aila removed Irène’s blindfold and handed her a flashlight from her bag.

“It’s too dangerous to do it blind the whole way,” she said.

Irène’s eyes were wide and she just said, “Wow, awesome!”

When they reached the L’aide Alchemique complex, Aila greeted, and was greeted by, several people. She led Irène to her well-lived-in room, clicked on some Christmas lights, and invited her to sit at one of her chairs. Aila kept a few chairs because they made the non-winged people more comfortable, and she could sit on them still by turning them around and facing the back. She did so now, resting her chin on the back and looking at her friend.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“Super cool,” Irène said. “And Batman has nothing on you, either with his secret hideout or his wings.”

Aila smiled.

When party time rolled around, Kuléo met them at Aila’s room and led them farther into the complex. Irène turned to Aila and discreetly waved air down her neck with her hand, then pointed at Kuléo. Aila smiled back at her and lifted her eyebrow suggestively a few times.

Again Dr. Halalo met her at the door and hung little streamers on her wings. She could now understand his words, however.

“You’ve been complete for four years now, Aila. Fly high and cry loud.”

A cheer went up in the room, and the music began. Irène gawked like a tourist, and Aila smiled indulgently at her.

“Welcome to my world,” she said simply.

A piece of cake, much dancing, and an amusing incident that ended in ice cream on her nose later, Aila led Irène back out the way they came in. When she was not too far from the entrance to the Métro station, Aila again blindfolded her friend and led her out of the door, through the service hallway, and out into the main part of the station.

The two of them hugged, and Aila watched her friend disappear past the ticket turnstiles, then headed back inside.