Epilogue: Na’akilì ani’u lélé ni akilì lé (The Dreams of the Dream-Bringers)

“Way too early, sweetheart,” the midwife said. “I know it feels like a watermelon wants to come out of you at any moment, but there’s really no point in coming in until the contractions are a lot closer together.”

Aila groaned. She felt about twice her normal size, and the child inside her was quite ready to get on with her trial, too. Aila knew quite well, because she had been in touch with the little girl since almost before they’d known Aila was even pregnant.

Wanna see you, mama, the little voice in Aila’s mind said. Aila smiled gently and lovingly. It won’t be long now, she said in response.

“Are you okay, Madame Téwari?”

Aila nodded, coming back to the world around her. “I’m fine. Just thinking about my daughter.”

The midwife smiled, and reassured her that they should just call whenever the contractions were less than five minutes apart.

The call came later that night, from Kuléo, and she was admitted to the birth center. Aila and Kuléo had chosen it because instead of the bright lights, beeping, and drugs that had become a nightmare thing to Aila, the birth center was all soft beds, candles, and warm tubs of water. Rather than impersonal doctors in white coats, there were midwives and nurses that she had met and known during the whole pregnancy. The owner herself cooked meals for everyone who was staying there so that they could just focus on the first few days of being new parents.

Water birth centers were becoming more popular in general, but this particular one sported a feature that had decided Aila and Kuléo: they had Ka’aulele-designed tubs and beds in a couple of rooms. They were specially built to fit winged people.

“I figure that someone has to take care of you,” the owner had told them months earlier.

The next several hours were an exercise in pacing, laying down, standing up, wing flapping for a cool breeze and to shift muscles around, and more pacing. Finally she entered the tub and the main event started up.

“You’re nearly there,” the midwife said. “Okay, push, now!”

Aila let out a primal sound that was half scream, half howl of pain, a sound Kuléo hoped he would never hear from her again.

“I can see her now,” the other midwife said. “There’s the head. A little more...”

Kuléo was there, and caught their new daughter as she came into the world through a soup of blood, bathwater, and other undefined liquids. She had beautiful eyes that glinted from blue to green to yellow, like a faery well of indefinite depth, and they stared up quietly into her father’s face as if there were no more interesting thing in the world.

And there wasn’t, until she was handed back to Aila a few moments later.

“My little Néloa,” Aila said to her, rubbing noses with her daughter.

“Anuna,” Kuléo added, as was his right as father, by Ka’aulele customs.

Aila nodded. “Néloa Anuna Téwari,” she said.

Yes, mama?

Éloa imai, nénaki éia lé, Téwari katala ta. Welcome to our family.

Aila was exhausted, and as the adrenaline from the birth left her, she went straight to sleep.

“Flopped down was more like it,” Kuléo said jokingly to their friend Néhala. The musicians had happened to be in the area anyway, so they came over to help out with the new baby.

“I think I would too,” Néhala said with a smile. “So how’s the little one?”

“Néloa,” he said as he continued to work on cleaning her skin of its in-womb protection. The little girl turned her gaze upon him at her name.

“Aww, she already knows her name,” Néhala said. “It’s not entirely uncommon among Na’aulele, but to see it so strongly... I suppose it’s not all that unusual considering her parents.”

Kuléo blushed a little. “Aila, mainly.” He was working on Néloa in the tub with a little washcloth. “This is the second generation of na-Téwari that I’ve cleaned like this. Hopefully Aila’s feathers won’t need much cleaning since she kept her wings mostly outside the tub, but there’s something about it that takes me back.”

“Oh yeah, you were there for her wings too, weren’t you?” Néhala asked. “You’re a good guy to have around. So... I don’t know if I should ask this, but I guess it’s already gone through your minds. Have you figured out if Néloa is... you know...”

“If she’ll have wings and develop like a normal Ka’aulele child? No, we don’t know yet. We both feel that it’s likely. If a change went as deeply as this has, why not that far, too? And her responding to us seems like a good sign. But we won’t know for a while.”

The world had changed since Aila’s Temple “went public”. In some ways they were subtle changes, like people being a bit more individualistic with their appearances. In others, the world was hardly recognizable. Dolphins of Néloa’s time spoke human languages, as did several other “animals”. Whole groups of humans who had become something new and fantastical moved off and created their own nations, both “virtual” (as social groups spanning the world) and literal (taking up land no one else had wanted, and using alchemy to make it more habitable). Many human social structures had turned all around, too, as people became less wrapped up in their old insecurities.

Ka’aulele historians told everyone that this sort of change, if it had come to them, and it seemed likely it had, was far in Hunéa’s past. But it seemed to have come much more slowly and gradually for them. Earth had held its course for so long that when the dam finally broke, it was quite a sight.

But some things about human nature never changed: the birth of children often brought people together.

“Kuléo,” a crackly voice said above him as he walked back to the apartment to check on everything. “Kuléo. Kuléo.”

A flash of black feathers was around him for a moment, and then there was a crow perched on his shoulder.

“Hello, Graak.”

The black bird tilted his head this way and that, and then spoke again in his birdy voice.

“Parents. Aila’s parents. At your nest.” Some crows could talk nowadays, and they often took on names as well, but their range of words was still limited somewhat by bird anatomy.

“Élari,” he said, and the bird flew away. Kuléo smiled wryly. He knew that Graak would be around later for treats in response to his help.

Kuléo had decided to walk instead of flying so that he’d have a few more moments to clear his head after the last few days of whirlwind craziness. He wished he could get there faster now, but perhaps it was better not to push things with Aila’s parents by coming in for a landing there. He found them in the lobby of the building, waiting on a bright orange couch.

“Kuléo, my boy!” Jean Molyneaux said, and ran up to give him a big hug. Aila’s father backed away then and shook his hand vigorously. “Congratulations!”

“Oh, do tell me about my grandchild,” Adeline said.

Kuléo just stood there, a bit stunned. At Aila’s graduation, they had seemed to be warming a bit, again. Since that time, there had been a visit or two, and periodic phone calls, but there was always a bit of distance. Now, however...

“It’s good to see you both,” he replied to them. “Her name is Néloa Anuna Téwari. She came to us a couple of days ago, 3.3kg, 50.8cm. Black hair, blue eyes, and cute as a button.” Kuléo noted, with amusement, that Adeline gave a little happy gasp as he said “her”.

“Oh, can we see her?” Adeline asked. “We came on an aero as soon as we heard.” Aero shuttles: another strange fallout from the appearance of the Na’aulele, but this one a bit more mundane: scientists had finally combined the old experiments of flight with new studies on Ka’aulele wings to produce a new type of flying craft that looked ready to unseat the zeppelins at last.

“Sure, sure. I bet Aila will be happy to see you. She was asleep when I checked last, but she’ll probably be up to feed Néloa in a while. Do you have bags to take up?”

“Well, we don’t want to impose...” Jean started. “Normally we’d get our own hotel room. But Adeline thought maybe it would be nice to help you all get some sleep when Aila comes home with the baby.”

“We can use all the help we can get. Thank you so much.”

“If your graduation was a wake-up call,” Maman said to Aila as she cradled the beautiful baby, “then this little miracle... Just being friendly isn’t enough. There’s strange bad blood between us that just has to stop. We want to be a part of Néloa’s life, and we want to be part of yours again.” Papa nodded.

Aila had little tears running down her face and seemed to be somewhere halfway between crying and laughing.

“We have to love you for who you are,” Papa said. “Because in the end, you’re still our daughter. Chewing old, long-cold soup won’t feed anyone. So we have a bird-person in the family... baaaah, who cares? It seems like everyone does, these days.” He smiled wryly.

Aila learned forward from where she sat and gave them both big, squeezy hugs. She did something else then that she would not have in the past, for she felt their sincerity: she wrapped her wings around a little and hugged them that way too. And for once, they didn’t flinch.

Over the next few weeks, Kuléo’s parents were a constant contrast to Aila’s, one that became more and more of a burr in his feathers. Kuléo’s sister knew about the baby’s birth almost immediately, and so his parents would have as well; his sister called them on the next day to congratulate them, real happiness in her voice, but his parents waited nearly a week, and their call seemed to imply something more like “well, we did it, is that good enough?”

“It’s just intolerable!” he fumed to Aila. It was one of the few times she’d actually seen him this upset. “I know they disagreed with my having wings, but do they really have to take it this far? It’s their granddaughter. Why are they taking it out on her?”

Aila sighed deeply. “First thing you need to do, dear, is calm down. Take deep breaths.”

He did that for a few moments, and some of the anger seemed to leech out of him, to be replaced by something else.

“Why am I such a bother to them?” he said in a plaintive voice with a little catch to it. Aila hugged him, and then he joined her, and they shared a few moments of quiet and relative calm. Then Aila laughed a little.

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

“We’ve been obsessing over my complication, and we’ve totally overlooked yours.”

“What sort of complication?”

“A soul complication, dummy,” she said with a fond smile. “You’ve had a chip on your shoulder for years about your parents.”

He pondered for a moment and then he nodded. “You’re, right... you’re right.” Kuléo got a determined look on his face, at that. “Time for this to stop. How would you like to take a little trip north?”

They took a zeppelin north from Montpellier Aeroport that weekend. Aila’s parents had gone home already, and they were happy to hear that the family was coming to visit so soon. Kuléo’s sister was also happy to hear about his visit, as she hadn’t seen Néloa yet.

Kuléo’s parents were not called. “Let them have a taste,” he said darkly.

“Good, good,” Aila said. “Depression turning to anger is a good sign.”

His wing would have whacked her on the head if she hadn’t been prepared for it and ducked to the side. That got a little laugh out of him.

“You know me too well, mon amie.”

The trip was mostly uneventful, though they were both very tired. The two of them had little desire to take a trip so soon, with little Néloa waking up at all hours for feeding and comforting. But Aila agreed that it was something that needed doing.

A number of hours later, their zeppelin deposited them at Charles de Galle Aeroport, and they were off to take a Métro to her parents’ apartment, where she’d grown up, and where they’d stay while they were there.

“It still makes me feel a little nervous,” Aila had said as she’d shook her head. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

“True...” Kuléo replied, “but I think it’ll be worth it to have someone to help us with Néloa again and catch up on some sleep.”

That argument decided Aila right away, and they accepted her parents’ offer to stay there.

The first stop on their tour, the next day, was Kuléo’s sister.

“Melina,” Kuléo said when she greeted them at the door. “So very good to see you.” They kissed each other on the cheeks and then shared a big hug. “Ooof! Watch it, you’ll twist a wing muscle.”

Melina laughed at that. “Ahh, you. I sometimes forget. I’ve given you bear hugs since you were a little boy. But it does change things, doesn’t it?”

“This is Aila,” he said to her. “Aila, meet Melina.”

The two of them both reached out a hand to shake, and then Melina changed her mind and gave Aila a big hug, too.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Melina said. “And uaah! What pretty wings you have.”

“The better to flap at you, my dear,” Aila replied in a mock-menacing voice. The two of them broke down laughing at that point.

Everyone came inside, and Melina fussed endlessly over Néloa.

“Will she have wings, too?”

“We’re not sure,” Kuléo replied. “We think so. The early tests of her bone structure and DNA seem to imply it. But we won’t know until she gets a little bit older.”

“That would be so sad,” Melina said. “To not be able to go flying with Mom and Dad.” Aila was a little bit startled at her perceptiveness.

“It will be as it will be,” Aila said. “And at least if she really wants them and they aren’t growing, we have a way, now.”

The three of them, Kuléo, Aila, and Néloa strapped onto Aila’s front, took a Métro toward Kuléo’s parents’ house.

“It feels like forever since we’ve done this,” Aila mused.

“It has been forever since we’ve done this,” Kuléo replied as they watched the stations and tunnels fly by.

“It’s a good thing you’re so far south, little brother,” Melina had said to them before they left. “There’s been a goodly amount of drama. Some of it over you, some of it not. I think they’ve gotten a taste for drama lately.”

It was somewhat ominous, but it was good to have the knowledge to work with.

At last they were standing at the door to his parents’ house. Kuléo took a deep breath and then let it out with a whoosh.

“Ready?” he asked. When Aila nodded, he knocked.

Kuléo’s Papa answered the door, and for a moment he had a blank look on his face like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

“Pierre,” he said to them. “What a surprise. We didn’t know you were coming. Come in, come in.”

He stepped aside and held an arm out.

The three of them stepped inside, and the door was closed behind them by Kuléo’s father. Aila and Kuléo walked down the same entry hall, and into the same dining area, which contained the same chairs that were nearly impossible for winged people to use comfortably.

“Oh, would you look at that...” Kuléo’s Maman said as they came into the room. “What a cute little baby.”

“He is, he is,” Papa said as he came into the room. “What was his name again?”

By this time, even Aila was scowling; she knew it was irrational, because there was no way they could’ve known that they would hit so many “buttons” between the two of them so quickly, but their obliviousness was its own kind of disappointing.

“Her name is Néloa,” Aila said firmly, though trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice for diplomacy’s sake. “Néloa Anuna Téwari. She’s a month old.” And you still haven’t bothered to visit, she added internally, though at that point she was wondering if maybe it was for the best.

“Mmm. What a curious name,” Papa said. “Pretty though,” he added quickly as he finally caught on to the fire behind Aila’s eyes.

“Do you all need a place to stay?” Maman asked them. “Your room is still up there pretty much as it was, Pierre.”

Aila admired Kuléo’s calm, but knew that inside, he was probably grinding his teeth a little. His parents still seemed to be playing the “nothing has changed” game, hoping they could pretend that it was so and dodge real discussion.

We expected some awkwardness, but really, Aila thought. I thought they might change for Néloa.

“We’re staying with Aila’s parents,” Kuléo responded levelly. “They came to visit us right after Néloa was born, and they were pretty excited to see her again so soon.” Hint, hint.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” Maman replied. “Would you all stay for dinner?”

It seemed to Aila to be the only way they knew how to interact with people peaceably. She knew the feeling all too well from her childhood; though with the difficulties between her and her parents somewhat past, she allowed herself a little internal chuckle at it, now. How different everything had been.

Things seemed to thaw a bit after that; perhaps his parents were in their element and felt a little more comfortable there, despite the four giant wings hovering behind one side of the table. There was even some discussion of the birth, and of their work at the university.

“So, are you that Aila?” Papa asked. “The one who was on TV a few years ago.”

“That Aila,” she replied with a little of her normal mischievous grin coming back. “That’s me.”

“I wonder if, you know, if the baby will be all right since you’ve worked with all that radiation,” Maman replied.

Aila worked her mouth for a few moments, not knowing what to say exactly. In the end, she couldn’t help herself. “It’s not radiation. It’s magic. The doctors say she’ll grow up to be a fine, healthy bird-girl.”

Papa and Maman stared at their plates for a few moments, and then Papa shook his head as if to say, c’est la vie.

Everyone ate in silence for a few moments.

“Papa, Maman,” Kuléo said with what sounded like resolve in his voice. Aila unconsciously grabbed at the table; she knew the sorts of things that happened when he was in this mood. He snorted a little. “I’m not Pierre anymore. I’m Kuléo. I’m Pierre too, but you could have the courtesy to call me by the name I want to be called by.”

The two of them were staring at him now as if he’d grown more than wings.

“Pierre was always good enough for you before,” Maman said. “Pierre is the name I gave you when you were born. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still my little Pierre even if you’ve changed so much I can hardly recognize you.”

Kuléo looked at his father as if to say, well?

Papa just shook his head and looked away. “Why does it matter so much anyway?” Papa asked the table, finally.

“It matters because it’s the name I want to be called,” Kuléo replied. “And it’s an important part of who I am. Why can’t you use it? I’d understand if you slipped once in a while, but it’s been years and years and you don’t even want to try. Why?”

“It’s the smallest thing that’s wrong with you these days,” Maman replied, finally rising to some honest anger. “Forget your name, I can hardly recognize you anyway. What are you, now? What’s this arrogance? Where’d my cute little human boy go?”

Kuléo seemed poised on the edge of a scowl. “I was never your cute little human boy. You don’t just decide you want to have your parents angry at you, become unaccepted in society, both human and Ka’aulele, and then devote half your life to caring for others with the same problem. It’s not something you do on a whim, and it’s not a lifestyle. You have to be assertive to survive. If I didn’t say anything earlier in life, it’s because I didn’t even think it was possible. Why torture myself? And what would you have said?” He switched to a mocking voice. “Oh, little Pierre, why would you want such a thing?”

There was quiet for a few more moments as everyone tried to process the sudden honesty among this family that was all too often shrouded in passive aggression. Néloa had begun to whimper quietly, sensing the mood. Kuléo looked at her with a sad, tender expression, and then he stood.

“I love you both,” he said. “I love you so much.

“But you have to realize something. People change. Life is change. No one will stay the same as they were as a child. Sometimes the changes are small, sometimes they’re big. But I’m still your son and I still love you. I think maybe somewhere in there you know what I’m saying is true. For now, though, I don’t see any reason to expose my family to the angst.

“The work that Aila and I are doing down south... we’re helping people. We’re learning, we’re bringing people together. It’s not scary, it’s beautiful. We’re helping them achieve their dreams. It seems a little more important than holding to an unrealistic standard of ’body rightness’.

“And I don’t see any reason to keep beating myself up over our bad relationship. I’ve tried, and I’m not responsible for how you feel. Please feel free to call any time you want to work things out.”

Aila stood, with Néloa in the sling on her front, and they all trouped out the door in silence, Aila giving them a shrug and a sad face.

Kuléo thought he heard his mother calling after him as they walked away, but he didn’t turn back.

“Mom, you really need to get out and see the world a little,” Néloa said to Aila.

Aila just smiled. “I’ve seen so much in my time, so much more than most. I feel blessed already.”

It was an old argument with them. After she had graduated from her secondary school, Néloa had spent several years just traveling the world, Képaki-style. Képaki had returned to Hunéa to live his last years in peace, but Néloa had learned much from him as a child. She had been bright and precocious, just like her mother.

Néloa’s white wings rustled a little in pique. She had had this discussion with them more than once, and she continued to worry that there was still something her parents had left undone. She could almost sense it under the surface, but she could never quite puzzle it out. But Néloa knew it had to do with traveling somehow.

Eventually she shrugged. “I just want you to be happy, to give you something back for the great life I’ve had so far. Grandma and Grandpa Molyneaux, and Grandma and Grandpa Bisset when they came around finally... I’ve had a full family, and so much more than many children did. I want to give you something back. And I know this thing you haven’t done has something to do with travel.”

Aila looked at her daughter anew; this was a new bit of information that she hadn’t heard yet. And it was sharply perceptive. Aila smiled ruefully and looked at the floor with a sigh.

“I think we taught you too well,” she said jokingly to Néloa. “Little meddler.” A bigger smile to show her fondness. “Okay, fine. There is one thing we’ve always wanted to do. But it didn’t work the first time, and we’ve both been afraid to try again.

“Would you like to take a trip to Paris, dear?”

In the couple of decades since Néloa had been born, the world had changed still yet more. Old rivalries and resentments still simmered here and there, but it was hard to be too upset with your neighbors when your innermost dreams were close at hand, and, in many cases, already realized. It was a long time, too, in which science had advanced, with all those would-be inventors and lovers of gadgets having had things clarified for them, being inspired and driven. Anything that talked had spurred a debate over whether it was a sapient being worthy of the same rights as humans; and when plants started communicating, too, the lawmakers threw their arms up in the air and gave up. Humanity as a whole had simply adopted the Ka’aulele word tanau, “thing that talks”.

New apartment buildings had sprung up, built from strange new materials that let them soar hundreds of floors into the sky and have walls made of glass that could be turned porous for a breeze, or opaque for shade and privacy. Inside those buildings, plants crawled vertical gardens and provided extra oxygen and food. Much of the ground space was now given over to parks and habitats for animals who were still not tanau or who wished to remain in their natural element (including not a few human tanau). Space elevators had finally become reality, and there were gravity-free hotels that could be visited relatively cheaply.

Outside of the cities, many small communities more akin to Ka’aulele villages or towns were popping up in bare spaces and reclaiming the land for the forests and natural balances from older urban blight.

The only thing that the new sciences seemingly couldn’t conquer was the aurora. Not the Northern Lights or the Southern Lights; no, the hole in the fabric of reality that stubbornly hung above Paris and periodically admitted new Na’aulele who were finding Aila’s new world more and more to their liking as the years went by. It remained one of the inexplicably Ka’aulele things about their world, and no amount of science seemed to be able to convince it to admit anyone its whims didn’t favor.

“You made all this possible, you know,” Néloa said quietly to her mother and father. They were sitting on benches with low backs as dirt zipped by. It was the Ka’aulele seating section of a new type of rapid transit popping up various places in the world: high speed underground rail. The cars were automated and could make a trip between Montpellier and Paris in about half an hour.

“Did not,” Aila replied with a smile. “That’s the whole point. I helped them,” she waved her hands around, “make it possible. They just needed some inspiration.”

“Mmm hmm,” Néloa said, not convinced.

“Arriving soon at Paris Châtelet station,” the automated announcer voice said overhead.

“Did I tell you the story about my ’soul complication’?” Aila asked her.

Néloa rolled her eyes, and Kuléo laughed; of course it had been discussed many times. “Okaaay, okaaay! I’ll leave it be.”

The three of them stopped in at the Catacombs to see their friends remaining there. Dr. Halalo had moved on long ago, of course. Not long after the “time of miracles”, as some had started calling it, his wings had inexplicably healed. He had physical therapy for them, and then just like that, he was flying again. It didn’t take him long to head back up to the aurora, where he lived out the rest of his life in peace on Hunéa. Much of the rest of the operation had moved above ground now that Temples of Change were not so strange anymore. Mostly the Temple itself was all that remained underground.

“And now you’re going to follow him,” their old friend Péla said with a wink. She hadn’t changed much in the years since the club incident.

“Now we’re going to try,” Aila said. “Would you like to go too?”

“I tried not that long ago,” Péla said. “It’s okay. I’ve become resigned by now to never seeing it.”

Aila reached over and gave her friend a hug.

“I hope you have more luck, though,” Péla added.

Finally, they were on the roof of the building used by the residents of the Catacombs so long ago. Most Na’aulele and other winged people had moved on to using the elevators that were around the cities as take-off points, but there was something nostalgic about roof-jumping for Aila and Kuléo. They’d brought flying coats and goggles too, and had found some for Néloa as well.

“It just feels right somehow,” Aila said.

The three of them dropped off the building, and then they were up, soaring into the sky, a sunset beginning to form on the horizon. Aila called out her flight call, and Kuléo answered, just like before. And now, their daughter called out her own as well. That, too, felt right.

Soon, the aurora was in front of them again. All three of them could feel the Song singing through their very beings, until it became an actually audible thing. Aila shared an unreadable look with Kuléo, and moments later they were plunging through the middle of it again, rainbow lights shimmering all around them.

Everything... shifted. As they left behind a Paris sunset, they were greeted by a Hunéa sunrise. Mei’a jumped in the ocean below them and called out to them, and a sizeable tropical island spread out in front of them. Na’aulele stood on the shore pointing, and others flew around the island on various errands, or just for the joy of it.

It all started to fade for a moment, and Aila was sure that it would be the same experience all over again. So close, and yet so far away.

But there was something different this time. This Aila was guilt-free. This Kuléo had spent a lifetime working with dreams and the Song. Néloa had been born into all of it. All three of them felt the realities shifting around them, somehow uncertain, but yielding. And all three of them listened to the Song, and let go. They just let go.

As you will with me, Aila whispered to it in her mind.

And then they were through, flying down to greet long lost cousins on the beach.