Fly High and Cry Loud

There was a small crowd at her Temple of Change, mostly from the alchemy school. They had been following her progress, and everyone was excited to see what would come. It gave Aila a small case of nerves, especially after spending so much time out here alone every day. But there’s no way forward except to go forward, she thought. Let’s do this.

“Thank you for coming, everyone,” she said. The acoustics of the place, especially after her work on it, were such that there was no need for her to raise her voice for everyone to hear her. “We’ve been working on this place for months and months, now. It’s nearly the summer solstice, in about...” she glanced at her watch, “five minutes. At that moment, we will light the fire pillar and then... we’ll see what happens.”

There were some scattered applause and cheers.

“In the mean time,” she continued, “I will give you its name; the name that it chose, itself, in a way: Maki Kéikéi, the crossroads of the playful mind. A place for magic and seekers to find each other.” There was a moment of silence, and then a little more applause. Everyone had settled down to wait with great anticipation. There was a tension in the air, a sort of expectant sense of wonder, people glancing around in the hope that they’d catch the whole event. Aila smiled; she had counted on it. Their wonder would help to start the wheel spinning, so to speak.

She looked at her watch. Her fingers were disappearing into a fist, one by one. As the last one disappeared, everyone was holding their breath.

Aila raised her fist into the air and called out, her cry amplified by the acoustics of the place such that ears began to ring.

“’Ai! ’Ai! Akilì o lele imai! ’Anafi meha hifika’i... IMAI!”

On her last word, a flame seemed to descend from the sun itself, streaming down toward the pillar. It began as a deep red color, and shifted through orange, yellow, green, as it darted around the Temple, cleansing, bringing its light. It passed through everyone, but no one felt any burning, or even any heat; but they all felt a slight warmth, and a sense of refreshment. Every person present suddenly remembered something precious they’d forgotten from childhood, and many tears sprang to eyes.

The flame spun around the pillar now, as if climbing to perch upon it, working its way up to blue and then violet. When it touched the top, it was almost back to red again; a flame that was somehow flickering between violet and deep red was now sitting on top of the pillar.

Everyone was silent for a moment, and then the cheers were no longer scattered. They were whooping and yelling, and wings were flapping all around.

Aila just sighed with contentment.

As of yet, the Temple was simply an interesting curiosity. No one was entirely certain what to make of it, including Aila. She’d felt an incredible drive, she’d done the work, and she’d stepped back to marvel at the magic. But now she was metaphorically scratching her head over what to do next.

Her work wasn’t exactly a big secret; many in Montpellier and the surrounding towns had heard of what was happening. That sort of rumor was hard to keep back. Humanity was somewhat used to seeing bird-winged people flying through the sky, but seeing them work magic was something else entirely.

For now, the alchemy institute for which she worked was keeping people away the best they could. In spite of Aila’s intuition that there was nothing to worry about, everyone figured that there was no reason to expose people to danger that might sour them against everything the institute been working for. The general public could wait until the researchers understood what they’d built a little more thoroughly.

However, Marise Duguay was not exactly “the general public”. One of the local news stations was well known for their investigative reporting, and their star reporter had found a way into the area.

At that moment, she was riding in a hot air balloon that was making a fly-over of the Temple; Marise herself was standing at a small locked door in the basket, wearing a parachute. She had a small portable camera, and a hat with a second camera built in. Her theory was that, if she could get even a few moments’ worth of footage, it would be a huge coup. To avoid the troubles of having her cameras confiscated, she had also acquired cameras that would transmit a lower-quality version of what happened back to the balloon; it would relay that signal to the station, where it would be fed live to the viewers.

In the long run, there was no way to stop the public from knowing the truth. The terrible, terrible truth.

Marise Duguay had solid intelligence that something was happening at that place the alchemy school had been building. They were planning to do something to humanity; you might even call them terrorists, if you were so inclined. The rumors hinted at anything from making humanity more suggestible and putting them under the control of les volants, all the way up to forcing people to grow wings of their own. Like rumors of Aila’s history in Paris, they were not everywhere, and not everyone believed them, but it was starting to become a Newsworthy Issue, as Mme. Duguay would say. And it was her place to expose that conspiracy, before it was too late.

“Are you ready, Madame?” the balloon operator asked her. She glanced down at the thousands of feet separating her from the ground and grimaced. Anything for a story, she tried to tell herself. Marise nodded to him, and he opened the door for her. She jumped.

For a while, she was simply falling. The balloon had been quiet and peaceful, but it was nothing compared to her headlong rush toward the ground. She could hear nothing but the wind thundering past her. There was nothing around her, anywhere, just empty air. And the ground rushing up to meet her.

At first, she was afraid; she had never actually done this before, beyond a quick lesson at a skydiving school nearby. The instinctive panic of falling consumed her thoughts. But after a few moments, she sank into a peace that nearly made her understand why les volants were seemingly so excited about flight.

A little way up from the ground still, she pulled the cord on her parachute and headed down. She’d used a clear parachute, to try to avoid notice for as long as possible. There was a small but known risk that she would be intercepted on her way down and steered somewhere else, but she thought maybe they wouldn’t be looking up.

Na’aulele being Na’aulele, though, they certainly were looking up, and even flying around the area. Even if they didn’t think in terms of three dimensions from birth, they often liked to do exactly what Marise had just been thinking about: flying around and enjoying being in the sky. So she was slightly surprised when one was suddenly beside her in the air.

“Nice day,” the bird-girl called out French. “Hey, you’re that reporter on TV, aren’t you?”

Marise groaned; there went her last chance–to pretend that she had simply made a mistake with her skydiving exercise. But she held out her hand, marveling at this strange in-air encounter. “Marise Duguay,” she said.

“Aila Téwari,” the bird-girl replied; for she had been on-site today to do some more experiments. She dived in and grabbed Marise’s hand, giving Marise a bit of a start, but didn’t let go as Marise expected; instead, Marise was dragged along with Aila’s remaining momentum. “I have to assume that you’re here about the Temple.”

Marise sighed again. “Right you are. I don’t know what’s going on over here, but there are quite a few rumors, and I intend to find out.”

“Oh,” Aila said curiously. “All you had to do was ask. We don’t want the general public to come here yet, but we probably would have let you come to do a report.” Aila looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, I guess it depends on your intentions. We have no interest in sensationalism and rumors, but if you truly want to do an unbiased report, we’ll be happy to show you around and tell you about it.”

Marise was a little bit stunned and chagrined. She had tried to contact those responsible for the site at IAR for quite a while and had had no luck about it. All she had been told was that the general public wasn’t allowed on the site; she’d wanted to stick to her investigative reporter schtick and not tell them who she was, at first. After a while she just figured they wouldn’t want her visiting the site either, and she was determined to find a way to get a covert report.

And of course, all she’d had to do was ask. C’est la vie.

“Thank you,” Marise replied finally. “I admit that there have been quite a few, shall we say, interesting rumors about this place and what les volants intend to do with it. So primarily, I want to find out what you’re doing, and see if any of those rumors have any truth to them, if we need to worry. I do try my best to be unbiased, but some amount of unrest is starting to grow among the viewers who are paying attention to it.”

“Fine, fine,” Aila replied with a sigh. “It has to happen sooner or later; we can’t sit on it forever like a brooding mother hen. I have to warn you though, it really is a place of magic. I can’t guarantee anything. It’s why we’ve kept people away until we understand it better. For everyone’s own safety.”

“I think I’ll survive,” Marise replied drily. “I’m not sure I really even believe in magic or alchemy.”

Aila just shook her head. She’d met very few serious skeptics, especially in the face of les volants. But they did exist; the bird-people were simply written off as an evolutionary fluke of that other world. Certainly nothing to get worked up about in the vein of magic. And anyway, magic didn’t exist, therefore they weren’t magic. Simple as that.

As they flew down past the Temple itself, she caught a sight of Marise eyeing the pillar with its eternal flame. The woman was clearly not entirely given over to reason yet, but she was definitely goggling a bit.

They landed at the actual entrance so they could walk down the uneven, natural ramp into the Temple itself. At that, though, Aila stepped in front of her and raised her wings and her hands, barring her entrance.

“Before we go in, I need to tell you a few things,” Aila told her. “First of all, whether you believe in what we do or not, I need you to understand that this is a sacred space. It’s like any church you might enter. Please respect it and respect our traditions.”

“Your traditions?” Marise asked her with a little curl to her lip.

“Our traditions. Yes. Secondly, you can’t record this.”

“What?” Marise was in a bit of a fit at this statement. “That’s the whole point of why I came here. It won’t do me any good if I can’t get some footage.”

“No,” Aila corrected her, “that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to do a report on what’s happening here and why. I don’t believe it has anything to do with cameras.”

Marise sighed theatrically. “Okay, fine.” She turned off her main camera. It didn’t matter; she had prepared for this eventuality. The one on her hat was still going to record and transmit up to the balloon.

“Good,” Aila said cheerily. “Last but not least, follow my instructions. All of this is partly for your safety, but I can’t guarantee it. Anyway, let’s go in.”

Aila folded her wings, turned around, and headed down the ramp.

Marise was not entirely sure what she expected inside the Temple, but her first surprise came from its general ambiance. Rather than crackling magical energy or sinister machinations, it felt like she was walking into a cave. Not just any hole in the ground, either; but some place of sublime beauty that had yet to be uncovered, a gem that would reveal its colors if it were only polished just so. The rock around her was dark and slightly damp. In the distance she could hear the muted sound of water, its source, and even its nature, not entirely clear.

“This is quite some entryway,” Marise said, staring around at it.

“Thank you,” Aila said over her shoulder with a smile.

The passage led slightly downward and curved to the left. The walls arched up from a mostly-flat floor. It was too regular to be natural, but too irregular to have been drilled out. Rather, it had the feeling of someone having asked it to become clay again while they shaped it slightly and touched it up. (Marise did not know it, but Aila had done exactly that, singing to it in a haunting melody that promised wonders of earth and coolness of water.) The passage arched overhead, but the sides did not quite meet; a little bit of the sky was visible between them, giving the subtle suggestion of folded wings. Stalactites jutting out from the walls held up bronze chains from which hung curious square lanterns. They didn’t seem to be candles or electrical or powered by gas, but they flickered slightly with a steady, natural light. Marise shivered, realizing for a moment what they must be, but her mind stubbornly refused to accept it still; she decided there must be some sort of fuel running through the chains.

The passage curved slightly back to the right again, and a small foyer opened before them. A stack of shoes was piled on a mat near the entrance, and a little pool of water was fed from some unseen source overhead and behind the wall. Again the curving walls of the room arched up overhead, as if they wanted to take flight themselves, a little bit of sky still visible. If it was raining outside, the water would fall just inside the area of the pool.

Marise stared around again, still taking it all in. She knew that the camera was still taking video, but it somehow felt that those images would be insufficient to describe it. She wasn’t sure how video could help viewers to see the place less than something else, say written words, but it felt that way. There would be some feeling of poetry missing.

Aila cleared her throat gently. Marise turned to look at her, slightly startled; her face looked as if she were trying to hold in a bundle of shifting emotions.

“It does that to you, doesn’t it?” Aila asked her and smiled. “Refresh your hands with this water, first. Yeah, that’s it. Then leave your shoes here on the mat, please, and we can go into the main temple.”

Marise felt a strange tingle begin to slide down her spine. Some part of her wanted to write it off as superstitious fear, but a second was insisting: no! no! Go back while you still can! Except she knew she couldn’t. Something else, some shadow of a memory of better years, when things had seemed more simple, tugged gently on her hand. It was the voice of a little giggling girl saying, come play with me.

She nodded and left her shoes and socks on the mat, following Aila barefoot across the rough stone floor.

They walked around another bend in a very short tunnel, and the Temple itself was laid out before them. Marise’s arm hairs were standing up straight, and she realized that many of Aila’s feathers were also ruffled out.

“It never gets old,” Aila said softly.

The inner part of the Temple followed a layout very similar to that of the entry tunnel and foyer, but more of it was open to the sky. Walls arched up overhead, looking just as if they’d happened to form that way. They, too, seemed to yearn to take flight, as if the little bit of elevation the earth could attain was not enough anymore; it wanted to soar, as the air did. Water flowed in over one of those walls, falling into another pool in a strangely uniform waterfall. Marise couldn’t see any way for the water to exit the pool, but it never overflowed. Another one of those great, strange rock protuberances jutted from a little rise, arched overhead, and atop it burned the strangest fire Marise had ever seen. It sat on top of a triangular bump of rock and seemed to flicker red to green to yellow to blue, in a curious rainbow pattern. Sometimes the lights combined to become brilliantly white, and then it was back to rainbow shimmers.

Sunlight shone down across the curved walls, forming strange designs on the floor and the water pool. Occasionally a light breeze would whisk through the area, ruffling Marise’s hair and Aila’s feathers.

“Come, sit over here,” Aila said as she gently tugged on Marise’s hand, leading her over to a smoothed stone bench, and Marise let herself be led.

Once they were seated, Aila said to the suddenly quiet woman, “The fire used to flicker between red and blue. Dr. Halalo’s Temple is like that. It was the first one I ever saw, when I was adopted. But today, I saw this new pattern.” She spoke quietly, as people often do inside a beautiful zen garden; for this Temple was, besides being a Temple of Change, a superb example of Ka’aulele “contemplative gardening”. Waineri Akilì, they called them; literally, “dream garden”.

Marise and Aila just sat there in silence for several minutes, taking in the peace of the place. Aila could feel the woman’s mind calming, quieting.

“What happens now?” Marise asked in a low voice.

“How so?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Is there somewhere else we go, or is there some kind of ceremony, or...”

Aila shrugged. “It’s up to you. Only the individual seeker knows what they want to do here. But I can help you figure that out if you like.”

Marise nodded.

“Part of the beauty of this place,” Aila continued, “is the music in the air. You may not hear it with your ears, though many Na’aulele do. For most people, it’s a more subtle sense that picks up on it. You’ve been feeling the quiet... the inner silence, haefi kema, we say. Now you have to hear what runs through that quiet. Just listen.”

Marise had a moment of revolt inside her, some part of her rearing up again as if to say, no, this is all just some kind of trickery, there’s no real magic here. But the call of that other voice was too insistent, its presence too solid. She listened.

Then she heard something.

Aila could see it in her face the moment it started to register, as if someone had just heard a voice from far away and was holding up a hand to quiet everything else, so that she might listen better.

“It’s almost like a chorus of bells,” Marise whispered finally.

Aila hadn’t heard that exact characterization of the Song before, but it made sense to her, and she nodded. Whatever the woman said, it was clear to Aila that she had heard the Song.

“Does that help you understand?”

Marise nodded, looking at the waterfall. “Yes, yes it does. It’s brought back a clarity of thinking to me, a fresh feeling of possibilities that I’d always felt from childhood and later lost. I’d always wanted to explore, to figure things out. And I liked to tell stories. Investigative reporting seemed to be a great way to combine those things.

“But the industry gets to you over time. Everything is ratings, ratings, ratings. Sensationalism sells.”

She looked at Aila, then.

“But I want you to tell me truly now,” Marise said to her. “Is there magic? I started out this assignment thinking I knew the answer. I haven’t really seen anything here that you couldn’t accomplish by building a wonderful and serene garden. But what we’d call magic, actual magic, you know... moving things with your mind or something...” She sounded almost embarrassed to be asking.

“Respect is a type of magic,” Aila said with a smile. She fluffed her wings a little. “Don’t you find this magical? I thought you knew about my past.”

“I do,” Marise nodded, “or something of it anyhow. They say you were born human.”

“I was a little girl without wings, same as anyone else,” Aila replied. “And I was not going to grow them. But I did. Anyone can. Anything is possible now.”

Marise had a dreamy look in her eyes for a moment and then said, “Anything? What if I wanted to be the ruler of the world?” She finished with a little smile.

“Ah, well,” Aila replied. “We have ways of dealing with those. Just kidding. No one truly wants to rule the world. It comes from a center of insecurity. When you see that all things are possible, such goals no longer matter.”

Marise chuckled a little as if she’d believe that when she saw it, but then she realized that she now believed many things that she’d seen just this day.

“And do you do magic here?” Marise asked Aila.

“When it’s needed, yeah.”

“I think it’s needed,” Marise said in a small voice. “I want to believe. I need to believe. But there’s something in here...” she tapped her head, “something that keeps me from going all the way with that belief. Can you help me?”

“If you haven’t seen the magic in what we’ve already seen,” Aila replied gently, “then I’m not sure there’s anything else I could do that would really convince you. But we’ll try. How would you like to leave your own change on the Temple of Change? Do you feel up to that?”

Marise shrugged nervously. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to deface someone else’s work.”

“Ahh, but it’s not my work. It’s everyone’s Temple. It’s not meant to be locked away as a private sculpture. It’s here to help, it wants to help. So if you want to tell it one of your stories, perhaps it would grant you something you would believe, and you could leave your own little change.”

“Tell a story? Grant something? I don’t understand...”

“You don’t have to. You just have to believe. So, tell it a story. Not to me, to it. Whatever comes to mind.”

Marise sat quietly for a moment, then began.

“When I was little, I had an imaginary friend. He was a little hedgehog with a mohawk of spines and glasses. Sort of a punk rocker librarian, I guess. His name was Brendan. He’d emigrated from Ireland to southern France to get some sun.

“We used to play, we did. When I listened inside, I could see where he was, what he looked like, what he said to me. He told me things that I couldn’t have known as a child, couldn’t have heard, or couldn’t have understood. He told them to me in a child’s terms. Brendan gave me good advice, and he helped me sneak around by telling me when my parents were paying attention at night.

“Other children found out eventually, and they made fun of me. I got into a fight with a clique of girls over him, and I knew I would have to keep him more hidden. Brendan said the same thing to me, so we both decided it was for the best that he go deeper into hiding, and that I only talked to him in my mind or when I was at home alone.

“One night my parents caught me playing with him in my room. They couldn’t see him, of course, and I was taken to a psychiatrist. They bandied around words like ’schizophrenia’ and ’multiple personality disorder’, but I got much better at hiding him, and they shrugged their shoulders and left me alone. I got so good at hiding him that even I stopped hearing his voice, stopped seeing him. Over time, it progressed on to believing that he hadn’t been real, and then to forgetting.

“I’d only remembered the story when I came here. My little piece of wonder, I suppose...”

Aila reached over and hugged the woman, and they both sat quietly for a few more moments. Then Aila tilted her head as if she’d heard something; her feathers ruffled lightly again.

“I think... Here, stand up for a moment.”

The two of them stood up and looked at the bench. Where it had clearly been smooth stone before, there was now a lovely carving of a girl in pigtails running through a field, followed by a vaguely humanoid hedgehog with a mohawk and glasses. Marise saw it and let out a little sob, recalling what had happened back then in all of its emotional intensity, and seeing this beautiful rendering of it exactly as her mind’s eye would have had it.

“How...?” Marise asked. “And why? Remembering it all now, I feel so bad for how I treated my friend.”

“It’s not too late,” a strange little voice said behind her. “We can still be friends.”

Marise whirled around, looking at the pathway that had led over to the bench. Aila could see nothing, but she guessed what happened and imagined the encounter. She had a little teary smile for them as Marise knelt and seemed to reach out and hug the air, somehow clearly meeting resistance. A little whirlwind danced through the area and was gone.

“Many ’impossible’ things are possible,” Aila said to her when she had stood up again. “It’s just so easy to forget. Never forget, never surrender those dreams. That’s what this place is about.”

“But... oh dear. Brendan really does live in my head somehow, doesn’t he?”

Aila shrugged. “I couldn’t begin to tell you. All I know is that this–” she tapped her head “–and this–” her heart “–are bigger spaces than we give them credit for. If it’s not keeping you from eating and doing your job, then why not? And even if it keeps you from your job sometimes... Maybe you needed a different job to feel fulfilled. You can’t just cut pieces of yourself out to make yourself fit someone else’s ideas.”

Marise let out a huge whoosh of breath. “Wow.”

“And I have to thank you for the bench,” Aila said to her. “I’m so glad you could contribute that.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” Marise protested.

“You did the most important thing you can do in any magical space: you felt very strongly, and with intent.”

When Marise checked back with the station later, she found that the cameras had stopped working almost from the moment she had dropped off the balloon. There had been some sort of a malfunction with the transmitter. Strangely, they hadn’t recorded anything but static on the local storage, either.

Eh well, you win some and you lose some, right? a little hedgehog voice said inside her mind.

Amen to that, she replied, and gave him a little mental hug.

“Marise Duguay has been strangely absent from TV lately,” Aila remarked to Kuléo a few days later. She had a slightly smug expression on her face.

“All right, what happened? Out with it!” Kuléo had walked up behind her and started tickling her feathers, which produced a startled yelp from Aila before she could stand up and turn around.

“Well, she was going to do this exposé on the Temple,” Aila started, and related some of the story to him, but only some of it. After all, she was still privy to some secrets that ought to remain so. “And then she left much happier,” Aila finished up, “and has been strangely absent from the news. I guess she’s rethinking some things about her life right now.”

“I wonder why they never showed anything on the news,” Kuléo mused. “If she had some kind of live feed going back to them, you’d think they would be showing it; but there hasn’t been a peep.”

“Who knows?”

The day after, she was back at the offices of IAR, clearing up some long-delayed paperwork. A great deal of writing-up needed to happen still, as well as responding to grant providers. Since the first member of the public had finally gone through and had an experience, Aila also had to write about that for research purposes. All in all, it was a busy day.

So when someone knocked on the door of her little office room, she didn’t even turn around. She just grumpily asked, “What?” as she continued to write.

“Well, if it’s a bad time...” Dr. Halalo’s voice said behind her.

Before he knew what was happening, she was on her feet, at the door, and giving him hugs.

“Hello, Aila,” he said, with an actual smile.

The two of them spent the next hour catching up on everything that had happened. Dr. Halalo was impressed with what had happened with Marise Duguay.

“I’ve been out to the Temple myself,” he said. “It’s a fine, fine piece of work. I couldn’t have asked for better from a student. And now, you’re the first person not born on Hunéa to have created a Temple of Change; and one of only two to have done it in decades.”

Aila blushed under his praise. “I have you to thank... for everything.”

He snorted. “I hardly think so. All I can do is help shift a current, tip a balance. The energy, the ideas, the drive, they all come from you. In fact, I’d like to share something with you soon, I think.”

Aila looked up at him then, interested.

“I’m getting on in years. And I have some apprentices back in the Catacombs now, but I think there are others that could use help, judging from the friend you sent to me earlier. I’d like to teach you the wing growth magic.”

“But, but...”

He chuckled. “But what? I know you’d love to do it.”

Aila nodded enthusiastically.

“Well then,” he said, standing. Aila hadn’t noticed until now how he was limping these days. “There’s just one more thing to be done while I’m here.”

“Dinner?”

He laughed again. It was strange to Aila to see him do it so much in this visit, but she felt that it suited him.

“That, yes. But... perhaps you’re ready for your naming ceremony finally?”

Aila nearly answered him reflexively to mention her “complication”. But she felt inside and realized...

“I feel so much more clear,” she said to him. “I haven’t even thought about it in months.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “The very best sign that it’s finally left you. And what did it?” he asked in his teaching voice.

“I found my path. Helping others find the path to realizing their dreams. I had spent so much time staring inward...”

“...that you lost your connection to others,” he finished. “Well, if it works for you, it works for me.”

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 young woman of about her age is standing about two feet in front of her. Her face glows with an inner light, and it is Aila’s face, with Aila’s black hair. Huge, beautiful wings rustle lightly on her back as she breathes, the feathers shifting around between shades of black, blue, and white.

The woman speaks in a melodic language that Aile wouldn’t have understood, and an earlier Aila might have understood only imperfectly; but this Aila understands all of it, as if it were she herself speaking.

“Éloa, faléia,” she says with a smile. “Téfani éia lé.” Love and greetings, my sister.

Aila trusts herself completely. She reaches up as if to touch the other Aila, and the other Aila reaches out to touch her as well. Their hands meet in a little electric spark. Aila’s hand is warm, so very warm. And they feel each other’s emotions like thoughts.

Come with me, they say.

Become with me.

Become me.

Let go of your pain and join my light.

Aila starts to walk toward herself, both at the same time. They are both surprised for a moment as two more join them.

A little girl with no wings, but clearly as day, Aile Molyneaux.

A teenage Aila with slightly tattered wings.

They all join hands in a circle, now.

Let go of your pain and join my light.

None of them are sure which it came from, or perhaps all of them. But they all walk forward to a growing brilliance of warmth and rightness.

At last, feeling her past laid out behind her and her future spread out before her, Aila knows who she is.

“We stand here between. The water and the air. The light and the dark,” Aila said in a clear, ringing voice.

“We are seen... and unseen,” Dr. Halalo intoned as he passed a hand over his face. “We are no one, and everyone. Guides and lost travelers. Wise ones and fools.”

“We invite the watchers, our kith and kin, and our little cousins to bear witness, and ask them to protect us as we work,” Aila intoned again. As she spoke, several birds alighted around the rim of Maki Kéikéi. She noted with wry amusement that they were almost all some kind of corvid: crows, blue jays. There was one dove, which she mused might be there for Dr. Halalo. And one other with strangely striking golden wings.

“Today we are here to bring inspiration and invocation from within, from–and for–this seeker, and the winds and tides of her being,” Dr. Halalo said.

A sonorous tone rang out and then hung in the air, mixing with the sounds of the waterfall. Kuléo stood off to one side, holding a Tibetan singing bowl in his outstretched palm as its sound tapered off.

“I greet you, Grandfather and Grandmother Jay,” Aila said. “I bow my head and spread my wings low as I thank you for being with me and inspiring me in who I am. I open my nest and my heart to you as your creativity and cleverness, your fierce loyalty to friends, inspire me in who I am.”

Kuléo rang the bowl again, waving it in a wide arc.

“You, sister, fey friend of bird-kind who was known as Aile. You are a guardian and a nurturer of dreams, especially dreams of flight and all things feathered. For this calling, I name you Aila ’aulele Na-nuniani. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

Dr. Halalo plucked a loose blue down feather from her wing; from the flinch on Aila’s face, it clearly still hurt just a little bit. He used a clip to put the feather in Aila’s hair.

“Wear this proudly now, upon your head, that you remember dreams, and their imminent possibility.”

Kuléo rang little finger-cymbals in an arc near the area.

Dr. Halalo pulled a feather from Kuléo’s golden wings, and Kuléo pulled one from Dr. Halalo’s. Each of them clipped a feather in her hair as well.

“Wear these feathers in remembrance of the friendships and love that everyone needs in order to bring those dreams to reality,” Dr. Halalo said. “Never forget them as you help others to their dreams.”

The three of them turned to each of the elements in the Temple in turn, and shouted a phrase.

“Lélé ikani!” Dr. Halalo, to the water.

“Na’aufuwa!” Kuléo, to the air.

“Alula o faléia!” Aila, to the fire.

“Fuwa ka’ala ’ia ua tapani!” All three of them, to the Temple’s rock.

Suddenly, a piece of rock jumped away from the wall, flashing into a dove and rocketing away from the Temple. There was a moment’s silence as the three of them stared slightly open-mouthed at where it had been, its shape clearly outlined by a new piece of sculpture in the wall itself. Aila was the first to smile and laugh a little, quietly. It’s beautiful, she thought.

The three of them joined hands and looked slightly upward.

“We thank you.” Dr. Halalo.

“Watchers.” Aila.

“Little cousins.” Kuléo.

“Kith and kin.” All three.

The three of them stepped apart.

“Go if you must.” Dr. Halalo.

“Stay if you will.” Kuléo.

“The spiral is open, but never broken.” Aila.

Kuléo rang his singing bowl several times in a row, and the ritual was over.

She was now Aila, Bringer of Wishes.

“I’m restless,” Aila said to the air.

She was relaxing with Kuléo in their apartment. They were sitting on their couch–one from the same company that had built Iola’s comfortable chair.

“You’ve got a well-deserved break,” Kuléo said quite reasonably. “You worked and worked, and now you are just looking for some other outlet for all that energy. It happens to everyone.”

“I suppose.”

“How’s your Temple project coming along?”

“That’s just the thing,” Aila said, looking at him. “It’s not. It’s finished. It works, very clearly. But we’re still not letting anyone in. I don’t think it’s even out of a fear of danger or public perception at this point. It’s just like... like we’re waiting for something. Some condition that has to be fulfilled before things can really get started.”

“And until it happens...”

“...I don’t feel that I’ve earned my name still,” Aila finished. “It’s like the potential is hanging in the air, but... I’m missing some knob I have to turn or some trigger that has to be pulled.”

“Are you sure it’s not waiting for someone else?” Kuléo asked.

“I don’t think so. I think it’s me. It just feels like, if we just open it to the public, it’s going to fizzle. There’s some kind of something that’s built up... and we have to let it go with a bang or it’ll just be a pretty zen garden.”

Several more months passed, and Aila grew more and more restless, like something crazy inside her was waiting to burst forth.

“Fuwafuwa,” Kuléo said to her once with a smile.

“Yeah, not just an expression of anxious energy anymore,” Aila said with a little smile. She had been sitting there twitching her wings aimlessly. “Okay, that does it. I’m going out on a walk. You want to come?”

“A walk, huh? It seems so prosaic sometimes, these days.”

“I know. But for grounding, I still know no better way than to have my feet on the ground. Some things never change.”

“I think I’ll just stay here,” Kuléo responded. “I might just distract you anyway.”

“All right. See you in a while.”

Aila left the apartment and started on an aimless ramble. Her thoughts ran all over the place. Why had she been born needing wings? How was it possible that the Na’aulele had just happened to touch her universe at the right time? Was she a product of that touching, or did she somehow help to bring it about? Was her name, her job as a dream carrier, a dream bringer, something she had from birth, or did it come about through her actions?

Before she knew where she was, she found herself near the news station that Marise Duguay had worked for. She had never really recovered from her visit to the Temple. Aila hadn’t heard that she had been fired or replaced, but she seemed to be on an indefinite sabbatical. It was strange that that one incidental touch had changed a woman’s life so much, but hadn’t that happened to Aila as well?

Aila sat down on a bench, letting her wings spread out to the sides, staring up at the stars, or what she could see of them in-town, anyway.

What next? Where do we go from here?

“Hey, you,” a voice said behind her. Aila swiveled her head around and found Marise Duguay staring at her.

“Speak of the devil,” Aila said with a smile, and invited her to sit on the bench. Aila noted that Marise left a little space at the end, presumably for Brendan. Then something totally inexplicable even to Aila occurred: she saw Brendan. One moment there was an empty space, the next there was a little hedgehog man with a mohawk. He saluted her.

“Wow,” she said. “I see him.”

Marise nodded. “More people have been seeing him lately. It’s freaked a few people out, but by and large, people seem to be sort of resigned to what’s happening in the world. It’s not the predictable place it used to be.” She laughed a little. “I’ve even gotten a few apologies.”

Aila smiled at them. “That’s great.”

“So how’s your Temple coming along?” Marise asked her.

Aila looked down at the ground again. “It’s not. It’s like it’s waiting for something...” She repeated what she’d told Kuléo.

“Off with a bang, huh?” Marise asked her. Then she got a mischievous grin that was totally out of line with what Aila remembered of the woman when she first parachuted down. “I’ve been on a break from my TV work. But I always intended to pick it up again. Maybe what your Temple needs is a grand opening. A strong statement: the dreams and the magic are here and it’s too bad, come and get ’em. Just like Brendan.”

Aila gave her a curious look. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well, here’s the idea...”

It was ten minutes until air time, and Aila was all nerves.

“Is everything ready?” she asked Marise, who made shooing motions that were no doubt intended to be calming.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t worry yourself. Trust me, the thing you need to be doing right now is calming yourself and forgetting that anyone else is watching but me and the few camera people in the studio.”

“Everyone’s been contacted?”

“Everyone’s been contacted. News networks across France, across Europe, internationally. People are ready for this, Aila. Les volants have been in our world for many years. They appeared, they integrated, and everyone is saying the same thing you were: now what? So there is a real interest out there from people wondering what one of them would have to say on a major worldwide news conference.” Marise flinched. “Oops. I wasn’t supposed to remind you of that. Just stare at the camera and pretend like you’re just doing a test take. No one to look at it or listen to it but you.”

Aila took a deep breath and checked her outfit, her hair (recently redone into clean braids) and of course, her wings. Every feather was in place. There was no further excuse for waiting. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

“Hello everyone, I’m Marise Duguay,” she announced when the ON AIR sign lit up, “investigative reporter for Montpellier news. We have a special program for you tonight.

“I set out to do an exposé on the Ka’aulele Temple of Change outside our city, and I got more than even I bargained for. I’m here tonight to share these important results with viewers here in town, in France, and around the world.

“I have several special guests for the show tonight. The first I’d like to introduce is named Brendan.”

Brendan waddled up to the table and hopped up onto a stool. He was no longer remotely hazy or invisible; everyone could see him quite clearly. He was not insubstantial, he was not a cartoon. He was a little hedgehog man with a mohawk and glasses, leaning his chin on his paws and staring at the camera. “Nice t’ meet ya’ all,” he said in a lovely Irish accent.

A few people in the studio cried out when they saw him–weren’t flying people enough strangeness for one lifetime? At least one person fainted dead away.

“Brendan is my childhood friend,” Marise continued when things were quiet again. “I shut him out of my mind for many years, and had totally forgotten him until the Temple of Change brought him back to me.” Brendan reached over and patted Marise’s shoulder, and she touched his arm gently and fondly.

“Well, now that I have your attention, I’d like to introduce my second guest: the young bird-woman who built that Temple and made this all possible.” Marise gestured off-screen. Aila took a deep breath and walked over to sit on a stool next to Brendan.

“Hello, Marise,” Aila said to her.

“Glad you could make it,” Marise replied easily. “So, tell us about your project, about les volants, which you call Na’aulele, anything you like. The world is listening, and I thought you had an interesting message to give it.”

Aila took one more deep breath and looked into the camera.

“Bonjour, my friends. As you’ve no doubt guessed, I’m one of les volants, the Na’aulele. My name is Aila Ma’ana Téwari.” She paused dramatically. “But I was born with a different name: Aile Molyneaux. For those in our audience who aren’t French, it’s a human name, one unknown to Na’aulele until well after my birth.

“I’m here to talk with you about something very important today."