Retreat

In the weeks following the disastrous party, it seemed that some lines were being drawn within the Ka’aulele community. Not everyone had heard what happened, and not everyone cared about it. Very few heard, really, and even fewer cared. They were a fairly live-and-let-live society. But the ones who did care were vocal; both the ones who were upset with her, and surprisingly, a fairly large number who were strongly supportive of her.

Either way, her secret was out.

Aila was sad that she had managed to introduce another point of contention and politics among them, and sad that it had seemingly derailed her intent to blend in as one of them, quietly.

“I’m sorry you had to become the pivot point of my own political struggle,” Dr. Halalo told her. “That’s what this is really about. The controversy of what I’m doing, boiling over finally.” He stared at the ceiling for a few moments, lost in thought. “We had achieved a kind of peace and grace on Hunéa,” he continued. “And the only way to take it farther was to lift up someone else.”

“Are all of the Temples of Change really grown over?” Aila asked him sadly.

“Not all of them, no,” he replied. “But most. We became calm and comfortable; Temples of Change deal with life and death, destruction and re-creation, something that few seem comfortable with.”

Aila left that conversation feeling unsettled, like there was a small rock in her shoe that needed removing. But she didn’t know what it was.

“We need a break,” Kuléo said to her one day.

She hadn’t left the Catacombs since the disastrous party. Her life had come back again to being trapped here, afraid to leave for fear of what might happen; it was an improvement over the first time, since she at least had her wings now, but that also made it that much more frustrating. She felt a need to get out into the open air and stretch them. It was a need that never entirely left her these days, but she felt that she had little choice in the matter.

Her birthday had come and gone down in the Catacombs, without even her normal visit to her parents. They had called for a few minutes, but their relationship with Aila had settled down into a simmer, just as Dr. Halalo had predicted; unfortunately, it was a quiet simmer of resentment over their estrangement. Aila, of course, couldn’t explain the irony of this to them, being part of the “problem”.

“You’re right,” she replied to Kuléo, the stress evident in her voice. “I’m not sure I can stand being down here one more second.”

Kuléo waited a beat and then replied, “You just did.”

Aila smiled at that, but it was still an uneasy, unhappy smile.

“Knowing how you’ve been,” he continued, “I took the liberty of talking with Péla and our musician friends. The musicians are heading out to the countryside for a week-long flight and recording session. It might go for two weeks if everyone’s still having fun.”

“And?” Aila asked, showing the first signs of hope in quite some time.

“And we’re all invited.”

Aila, Kuléo, and Péla dropped off the building near the Catacombs. Aila looked around half-frightfully for a pitchfork mob out for her blood, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. She was only so, so very happy to be out and in the air again.

They met Képaki and Néhala on the roof of their apartment. Some of the newer units actually had giant windows that would open to let the occupants fly directly out, but musicians of Képaki’s popularity didn’t command that kind of money.

“Hey, how’s everyone?” he asked.

“Never been better, with this fresh air,” Aila replied with a smile.

“So here’s how this works,” Képaki said, and proceeded to explain while they headed downstairs.

Rather than trying to ship the equipment to meet them, Képaki had decided to go completely minimal and split it up among everyone. The seekers had come a long way since their tentative, tiring flights on the hill; with only a small, light bag for each person, they would have no trouble bringing enough clothes for a couple of days and enough equipment for Képaki’s recording session. They had to carry enough water for a single flight segment as well, as even during gliding, flight could still be significant work.

The group of them were all adult fliers at this point, but Képaki warned them about the distance anyway.

“This is not like the relatively small sprints we make above town here,” he said. “This is more like a multi-day backpacking trip, but through the sky. The trip itself is the point of going, as much as the recording we want to do. We’ll have to take it slow at first and get your muscles used to being used so much. And even then, we’ll have to be careful not to overdo things. If someone gets too tired to go farther, there or back, they’ll have to take a train or a zeppelin back here to rest. So we’ll want to avoid that.” He paused for a moment and looked around at everyone’s faces. “Everyone still fine with going?”

Everyone nodded enthusiastically, and Képaki had to smile and shake his head a little. There was no way to explain how tiring these trips could be, but they were also exhilarating. Time would tell.

Képaki had laid the equipment out on his table: a portable digital recorder whose boxiness spoke of professional quality, two small microphones with cords and fuzzy covers, a disk covered in the same fuzzy material with a mount for a microphone, and a tiny laptop that only weighed a couple of pounds. This was all about voice, so not much more than that was really needed for an outdoor recording session. Képaki graciously took the laptop, as it was the heaviest item, and everyone else grabbed one or two things to add to their packs.

“Everyone visited the little birdies’ room?” Néhala asked with a grin. They all laughed, and a couple of them actually did that, then.

When they were all ready, the group trooped back up the stairs to the roof, and they were off to the southwest.

Aila had never flown in a large group of Na’aulele before, and it was a novel experience for her. Képaki flew in front since he knew where they were going, and Néhala flew on one side, Kuléo on the other. Aila followed Kuléo, and Péla followed Néhala. With a sudden burst of happy understanding, she realized that anyone looking up would see a “V” flying through the sky, just like any other flock of birds. She noticed, too, that it seemed somehow easier to go faster and stay aloft when they were flying together.

She looked down, watching the countryside slowly go by. It was a fairy-tale patchwork quilt of farms, roads, towns, trees, and all other kinds of green. It filled her heart with a kind of joy that she hadn’t felt in what seemed like ages, and she only just managed to keep herself from crying out her cry.

Képaki had told them that if anyone wanted to stop for a rest or another toilet break, they should call out, and he’d fly back to hear what was needed. The terrain in this part of France was not the most mountainous, so there was some concern over finding a place from which to take off again. But though they had to stop a couple of times, everything worked out fine; they were always able to find an obliging building that was just tall enough to lift off from. Bakeries were often good to fly near, because they often vented large amounts of warm air, perfect for catching back up into the sky.

After a couple of hours of this, Aila was on the verge of calling for a rest that she doubted she’d be able to come back from today. But then she saw Képaki call out and point, and in the distance there was a little town.

He locked his wings out into a gliding position, and they headed slowly down.

They had landed and procured several rooms in a small inn with a distinct old France charm to it–all aged stone and moss, green grass and flowers. When everyone had had a moment to set down their bags, the group met up in Képaki and Néhala’s room.

“Everyone did really well today,” he said. “Awesome work, guys. We put in eighty kilometers.”

Aila groaned loudly. “That’s all?”

“Hey, don’t knock it,” he said in English, and then continued in French. “For greenies, that’s a long pull. I know we’re only a little way outside Paris now, but this is actually a good place to stop.”

He paused for a moment, looking a bit uncomfortable.

“Most of our people have stayed pretty close in to Paris,” he continued. “Things get a little bit interesting from here on out. Just keep a level head, and don’t let anyone provoke you.”

“What does that mean?” Kuléo asked him with some concern.

“Let’s just hope you don’t have to find out,” he replied.

In the morning, they were all so sore that they were wondering if they could really do this, or if they needed to just go back to Paris and forget about it. But Képaki had answers for them again.

“After breakfast, we’ll go out back and do some warm-ups. You’ll see.”

Breakfast was largely fruit and yogurt, but Képaki asked for fish, and he pressed it upon the others as well. (“You’ll be happy for the extra energy and protein, soon.”)

They all walked outside, and Képaki had them line up in front of him. He raised one wing out in a stretch, they raised one wing out in a stretch. He raised the other wing out in a stretch, they raised the other wing out in a stretch. Képaki had them doing circles, fold-and-extend repetitions, front-back flapping as if they were flying, and some exercises for other parts of their bodies, too.

“I feel surprisingly good,” Aila said after they finished.

“Ready to embrace the sky again for a little while,” Néhala said, posing it as only half a question. The others nodded.

The owner of the inn allowed them to climb up to the roof above the second floor. Several of the others looked dubious at the takeoff distance, but Képaki was all veteran reassurance again.

“When you take these trips, you can’t always have a nice four or five story building to jump from. You just have to be aggressive and go with it,” he said, embracing his own words by diving off with his wings out. He swooped down to what, to the others, looked like a perilous distance from the ground, and then he was soaring again. They followed suit and realized, then, that it was not quite as close as it looked from above. Aila thought back to her Eiffel Tower stunt with Irène and smiled.

Her muscles were still sore, but this day felt like slightly less of a strain to Aila. She had found some kind of stride, and was interested to note that her wings seemed to have a mind of their own sometimes as they flew for these long distances. It left the rest of her mind free to wander and take in the sights; and, of course, to enjoy that never-tiring feeling of wonder that came with flying under her own ability.

The group stayed away from towns for the most part, stopping mainly at patches of local hilly terrain. This far north, there wasn’t much in the way of grand landscapes, but they found enough little hillsides to give them a takeoff perch. At each one, Képaki admonished them not to let their wings sit idle, and to keep doing one of the morning’s warm-up exercises every minute or so.

“Like any other muscle,” he explained, “wing muscles build lactic acid if you stop exercising them suddenly. Keeping them moving keeps it circulating back out.”

“Wow, you really know your stuff,” Kuléo said admiringly.

Képaki shrugged. “Just long experience. It started out in Hunéa with being a musician. We have a kind of mass transportation there, too, but it costs just like it does here, and it’s slow–boats, mainly, though there were also hot air balloon-ships. Sometimes I would do it anyway, because many of them would let you ride in exchange for being one of the crew during the trips, or for playing music to entertain everyone. People could also take stints using their wings to push the balloon faster. But I came to like the idea of striking off on my own, and relying on myself.”

“Hot air balloon-ships?” Aila said, her ears perking up immediately at the mention of the land from which the Na’aulele had come.

“Yes indeed,” he said, his eyes far away. “Some nearly as large as your zeppelins here, but no buzzing fan noises or roaring turbine engines. It was very peaceful, really, floating through the sky without needing to work your own muscles, the quiet sounds of the wind, music, and conversation around you. The alchemists gave each one an eternal flame so that it would never want for lift. Not that they were actually eternal, mind you, but I guess it was more poetic-sounding, and they were very long-lasting. The navigator would talk with the wind, and if you were close enough to the surface of an ocean, the mei’a would jump along underneath and yell greetings...”

He looked almost teary for a moment, and Aila almost regretted asking, in spite of the beautiful piece of story that she was already filing away in her mind. He shook his head and came back to the present.

“Well, new days, new adventures,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

The rest of their trip went on like that, stops here, stops there, warm-ups and exercises keeping them only a step ahead of exhaustion, especially in the latter days. Aila had only thought she knew what fresh air was; this country air was like drinking from a cool clear stream after years of only tepid, cloudy water. She had been to the countryside before, but she’d never had such appreciation for the quality of the air as when she was moving so much of it through her lungs; and she realized, too, that being far away from any sort of mechanized transportation made it that much sweeter.

As the group moved farther and farther from Paris and the aurora, they saw fewer and fewer Na’aulele. Even in the suburbs, where there weren’t as many, they weren’t an uncommon sight in the sky or on the ground. But as they moved farther out, people also began to give them stranger and stranger looks. They started to see people pointing up in the sky at them, startled. In that modern age of television and web news, many people all around the world had heard of the Na’aulele by now. But it was another thing again to see them right there in front of you, no longer an abstract concept.

On the evening of their third day, Aila saw the Pyrénées in the distance, and by afternoon of the fourth day, they were among them. Rolling farms gave way to steep hills with rocky points, and after a short time, those too gave way to canyons filled with waterfalls and mountain streams, ancient stone arches bridged across them for roads in need of repair. Aila had seen mountains from this vantage before, from a zeppelin; but nothing prepared her for floating above them with nothing between her and the terrain below. She could see details that she’d never seen before from such a height.

It was only after a moment of reflection that she realized that that was literally true, not just an effect of being outside a zeppelin; and it sent a little chill up her spine.

Képaki called out his own bird-cry, made some obscure gestures that, Aila had learned, were Ka’aulele sign language for “land”, and they started gliding down once again, toward a little town nestled in a mountain valley.

A large group of bird-people landing in the middle of the town square produced a variety of reactions. Some, trying to act urbane or perhaps having been to Paris recently, acted nonchalant, as if nothing interesting was happening. Tourists out for a hardy mountain holiday pointed and pointed, and spoke quietly to each other. A few had plainly not put any stock in the idea of les volants to begin with, and were running away to find somewhere safer from which to gawk at them.

They walked across the square to a multi-story building that was clearly the town’s inn. When they arrived there, however, they were in for a surprise.

“You can’t stay here,” the innkeeper said, trying to keep a look of some unknown emotion off of his face. “We don’t have beds that would fit you.”

“We don’t need anything special,” Képaki said rather reasonably, ignoring the innkeeper’s discomfort. “The same kind of beds you give anyone else would work fine.”

The innkeeper was looking around nervously as if trying to buy time, and then he said, “I don’t think you’d fit through the doors.”

“You’d be surprised,” Képaki said drily. “It’s not a new problem for us to deal with.”

“Well, I can’t have you staying here anyway,” the innkeeper said, finally coming to the point he’d be trying to avoid. “The fliers are bad luck, is what everyone is saying. And whether you are or not, you’ll drive away the rest of my business.”

Aila took in this exchange with a heavy heart, and in fact was on the verge of tears; not because of their treatment or being denied service, but simply because the whole situation was so sad, and so tiring. This was ignorance for no good reason, a meaningless continuation of the same sorts of prejudices against otherness that she herself had been subjected to over and over. Why did it have to be this way? And anyway, they had nowhere else to stay.

The innkeeper looked over at Aila and they held eye contact for several seconds. He seemed to wilt under her honest, unhappy gaze.

“Oh, all right, at least you can come have dinner. As for the rest, we’ll see. Come on in,” he said, turning around and heading to a dining area.

The group looked at each other, more than a few wary faces among them.

Finally, Kuléo shrugged. “One step at a time, I guess,” he said with a half-hearted smile.

Thankfully the innkeeper did have tables with benches, to which they were shown. He stood there looking at them awkwardly for a few moments, then passed out some menus.

“I’m not sure what you...” he started. “I’m not sure what you eat, but maybe there’s something on there for you.”

Several in the group had to work hard at not cracking a smile at the innkeeper’s naivety, but they succeeded for the moment. This was, after all, a first contact type of situation. Diplomacy was important.

“Pretty much anything that anyone else would eat,” Néhala replied kindly. “Though typically not eggs.”

The group all found things on the menu that were to their tastes, and they enjoyed the kind of letting-go relaxation that could only come at the end of momentous labor. They talked over all the things that had happened to them on their trip, side sights that they wished they could’ve seen, ideas for how to make it all more efficient in the future; for there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that they’d want to do it again, some time.

“Well, I might sit it out,” Péla said with a little bit of embarrassment. “It was fun this time, but I’d just as soon let a zeppelin carry me that far.” There were some half-hearted nods at the table; for normal trips, it was still quite a bit easier.

They heard a gasp, and turned around to see the innkeeper’s wife standing there in an apron, hand over her heart, and a look of envy on her face.

“Basile didn’t tell me you were all so lovely and colorful!” she exclaimed, walking over. She looked as if she’d touch Aila’s wing, but she drew her hand back, perhaps realizing at the last moment that these were real and true parts of their bodies, and just as off limits as anything else. Her eyes took them all in, in turn: Kuléo’s pale gold; Néhala’s cream mottled with brown spots; Aila’s black, blue, and white; Péla’s charcoal gray and cream; and Képaki, whose faded rainbows implied that he had not decorated his dove-white wings in quite some time.

At that moment two girls came running out from behind her, yelling “yaaay!” and scampering around the table. She quickly turned and took them to task, but it was clear that they had the same kind of stars in their eyes as their mother, and less social fear. Each of them ran right up to one of the Na’aulele and under their wings as if in a grand game of peek-a-boo; this resulted in instinctive reactions of wing lifting and flapping, which made the little girls shriek with good-hearted screams and laugh some more. This was quickly followed by everyone else’s laughter.

A startled Basile stepped out from the kitchen into this scene, carrying some of their food. He was clearly disturbed at the noise for a moment, but then realized that his wife and two daughters were all loving these strange new guests. Ahh, I guess they can’t really be all that bad, he thought.

Their food was served, and the children were shooed from the room. As they ate, they discussed their plans for the upcoming days. Képaki had thought to stay here and do their recording in the surrounding mountains, since he was directed here by a human musician friend; but his friend hadn’t reckoned on the strange reception one of les volants might receive. They were just discussing if they needed to move on to another town when Basile the innkeeper walked back in on their conversation.

“Well... as to that...” he said hesitantly. “I think it’s fine if you stay here. I’m not sure an old man can turn his prejudices in one day, but you seem all right to me, anyhow. And it’s not like things are bustling here, anyway.”

They all looked at each other, slightly surprised by this reversal, but happy as well that they might not have to fly on that night.

“Sure,” Képaki said, taking in the mood of the group, “We’d planned to be here for three nights or so. Will that work?”

Basile nodded, and they discussed rooms and prices. That finished, they all turned back to their dinners.

They all had nice, hot showers that night to relax their muscles, and then a solid night’s sleep. In the morning, they went up to the roof of the inn and dropped off again into flight, carrying just the recording equipment this time. Despite it being well into summer back in Paris, and despite their being much farther south, the mountains were still quite cold. They all wore sweaters and jackets, most of them customized from normal clothes for wings. Bringing their wings as near as they could was also much like wearing a cozy blanket.

Képaki led them up the mountains into a tiny canyon, almost more of a grotto, and they landed again. The walls were steep granite; it was formed into two “rooms”, one of which contained a rushing little waterfall, and another that was larger, wider, and relatively quiet still. Water from the waterfall ran from the first area, through a fairly narrow crevice, and became a little pool in the second one. Presumably, it drained out of the bottom somewhere and became a spring or a waterfall farther down.

Aila walked around the relatively small waterfall side and looked around speculatively. Her mind’s eye was in the artist’s place; she was seeing it with a flame here, a little nudging the water there.

“This could make a great Temple of Change,” she said, not even meaning to speak out loud.

“You guys would know about that, hmm?”

Aila turned around, startled, and found Néhala standing next to her, looking out at the waterfall grotto.

Néhala smiled and looked at Aila then. “I think it’s a beautiful thing,” she said. “You all, the seeking, the carrying on and honoring of our culture. I know that many don’t see it, but in some ways, I consider you to be more Ka’aulele than many of us who were born on Hunéa.”

Aila’s eyes widened for a moment, and then she looked away, slightly embarrassed.

“I...” she started, and had to try again, in a quiet voice. “I’m not sure anyone besides Kuléo has ever said anything so sweet or kind as that to me. It just... I don’t know what to say.” She looked almost teary. “I’ve wanted to hear those words for so long, and I’d started to wonder if it was even possible anymore.”

Néhala just walked over and touched Aila’s heart with her palm. “Fuwa ka’ala ’ia ua tapani, kuleiu éia lé,” she said simply. Fly high and cry loud, my friend. She walked away, back to the others, and then Aila really did cry for a moment, tears of happiness.

The main group was back near the other end of the tiny canyon, far enough from the waterfall area that the noise wouldn’t interfere. Through the day, Képaki recorded Néhala, Aila, and then the two of them together for various songs. Their voices twined together and echoed off the walls with a beauty reminiscent of the soaring choir music of old, sung in a grand cathedral. During one, Aila could almost physically feel their emotions intertwining with the Song; she looked over at Néhala, and they held hands, pouring out their voices in joy. She felt as though she’d found a long-lost older sister.

That evening, Képaki downloaded the recordings from the day into his tiny laptop, cleaned them up, and played some back to the group. There were some amusing outtakes that everyone laughed at, but overall, it was a rousing success.

Over the next couple of days, townspeople heard who (or what) was staying at the inn, and they found excuses to drop by and peek discreetly. When they saw that les volants were not, in fact, three-headed gryphons, some became more bold and actually started talking to some of the group. When word got out that they were in town to record music, and Basile overheard some of what it sounded like, he asked them if they’d do a little performance in his dining area in exchange for a free night. Néhala and Aila agreed to sing with two townspeople who played a fiddle and a drum, respectively. Képaki recited some epic poetry from Hunéa, translated into French. Their show was a hit with the townsfolk, and Basile even wrung his hands and tentatively apologized for his behavior earlier, and asked them to stay a little longer and play some more. But Képaki made their excuses for them by way of his cat needing food at home, and they all left the next morning.

Everyone agreed that the flight out had been fun, but they’d all had their fill. So they flew to the nearest zeppelin port and got a ride back to Paris in comfort.

In the little mountain town, on the whole, no longer were les volants strange and slightly feared. Some maintained their prejudices, but more of the townspeople had begun to wonder how the good book could have forgotten to mention that angels were so brightly colored.

And Aila and Kuléo, thrust again into the dank darkness of the Catacombs beneath the crowded, noisy, and air-polluted city of Paris, wondered how they could ever fold their wings and stay away from the countryside that had already started to feel like home.