Tails of the Apocalypse

Kael Takes Wing (a Mayake Chronicles short story) ^{by E.E. Giorgi}

They came every spring. Condors. They circled the sky and waited. Silently, stubbornly. They knew if they waited long enough, their reward would come; their hunger would be satisfied.

All they had to do was wait. Eagles hunted. Brown falcons hunted. Even humans hunted. But not the condors. They fed on death. And all other birds hated them for that.

Everyone but me.

To my young eyes, they were immense and majestic. They owned the sky. When the condors came, I poked my head from the nest and stared, fascinated. Their wingspan seemed as wide as the sky itself, their glide seamless, their flight as steady as the breeze. I was mesmerized. The feathers of their wingtips looked like fingers, spread out to embrace the currents of the air.

“Don’t look at them,” Mother would say, pushing me back inside the nest. Like everyone else, Mother hated the condors. She said the only reason they thrived was because of the Plague. The disease had wiped out most of the creatures on the planet. Humans, mammals, even fish. And yet the condors banqueted on the death and never got sick.

“Don’t look at them and don’t ever leave the nest,” Mother would say every time she left to hunt. “No chick has ever survived falling from its nest.”

I never met Father. It’d always been just the two of us, Mother and I, since the day I’d hatched. Mother must have been very self-conscious about this, because while all other falcons nested in trees, she’d built our home in a crevice among the cliffs overlooking the forest. She’d propped branches and twigs against the entrance to hide our nest from predators.

It was a gorgeous spot. The ledge around the crevice overlooked the river and the forest all the way to the waterfalls. When Mother came back from hunting at the crack of dawn, the sky was pink and crimson, and the water looked like a golden braid braced by trees.

The condors came after that, after the sun was already up. Mother would watch them warily from the ledge. The other falcon couples took turns guarding their nests, but being alone, Mother didn’t have that luxury. Maybe that’s why she never brought back a lot of food. Moths, crickets. Sometimes a small mouse. She regurgitated everything and watched over me while I ate. I never noticed she was getting thinner until much later, when I thought back on those mornings together. All feathers and no meat, as we birds say. That was Mother.

I should’ve known then. I should’ve known there was going to be a dawn when Mother wouldn’t return. The sun rose. The jays screeched. The condors circled in the sky, their black silhouettes racing over the profile of the mountains.

Clouds rolled. Humans came fishing, their loud calls echoing against the cliffs. By then I was hungry… really hungry. A lizard basked in the sun nearby and then slinked away. My stomach gurgled as I watched it go.

I raised my eyes and looked at the condors. I longed to fly with them, to soar on conquered winds. I stretched my wings and noticed how pathetic they looked. By now, the other fledglings in the tree nests had grown feathers and shed their down. I, instead, only had a hint of vaned feathers. The rest of my body was still covered in gray, stringy down. How I wished I had the beautiful, flawless wings the condors had, their fingered feathers so elegantly scraping the sky.

As I waited on Mother to return, that day seemed never ending. Sunset came at last, followed by twilight. My nest grew cold. Stars dappled the sky. A sliver of moon came out from behind the clouds, and in its milky light, the branches that Mother had placed to hide us drew long shadows across the crevice where our nest rested.

When I awoke the next morning, Mother had still not returned. I felt lonely.

Lonely and hungry.

I believe what kept me alive in that time, waiting for Mother to come home, were the condors—those same condors that were likely waiting for my death. And yet, every time I watched them soar high in the sky, I felt alive again, despite my growing hunger. I knew I belonged up there, that one day I too would conquer the skies.

At last, more than the drive to be with them, hunger made me force my fears aside. I needed to find food. I climbed out of the nest, squeezed through the branches, and crawled onto the ledge.

Oh, the excitement! It flowed through me as the wind from the ridge rustled my down. This is what it feels like, I remember thinking, the rush of the cool air under my wings. What it feels like to fly!

I stretched my wings. Fluffs of down fluttered in the air, reminding me how pathetic I was. Pathetic, weak, and hungry. I looked over to the right and spotted the lizard again, lounging in the morning sun. The sight made my stomach rumble.

Lizards are slow in the morning, I thought, steadying myself on the ledge. Easy pickings.

So I scooched closer. Slowly. And closer still. And just before I leaned forward to snag it, a full-grown falcon fledgling swooped down and snatched the lizard from under my beak, knocking me off my feet and over the ledge.

I’d imagined flying as the most rewarding experience of all. To stretch your wings and be free, weightless, liberated. And yet here I was, spinning in a free fall that seemed never to end, my useless wings a dead weight carrying me ever faster to the ground below.

I hit one tree branch, then another, and a third, until I reached the ground with a soft thud. The world around me turned black. As I passed out, I remembered what Mother had said.

No chick has ever survived falling from its nest.

For sure, my next encounter with the condors was going to be as dead flesh.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the boy. A human boy. I might as well have died. Condors ate humans, birds, and rodents alike, but only after they’d been killed by something else. Humans weren’t so considerate. They killed everything else in order to eat.

The boy wasn’t alone. There was a man with him. He took me from the boy’s hands and examined me. I cringed as he handled my broken wings and legs. I thought of Mother, wondered if she ever made it back to the nest.

And then I thought of the condors. My dream of one day flying with them was crushed. My beak hung open and silent.

The boy and the man argued, but I couldn’t understand a single word they said. They put me in a bag. The pain was overwhelming. I closed my eyes and passed out.

I woke up in a warm place. A fire was crackling nearby, and the scent of burning wood filled my palate. To my surprise, the pain was gone. I wiggled the tip of one wing, then the other. Still no pain.

Muffled sounds came from close by. Steps, voices, the clinking of metal. And more scents. Lots and lots of scents—like a new rainbow of smells entering my beak, olfactory hues I didn’t know at the time. I later learned to recognize them: fish stew, sweet potatoes, candle wax, soap.

The smells of humans.

I’d never inhaled so many scents before.

And yet here I was, snuggled in a wool blanket, alive despite myself, pain free, and with a sense of smell so strong it almost blinded me.

I lifted my head. The fire was burning a few feet away. The flames cast dancing shadows on the white walls. One of the humans was sitting on the floor a few feet away from me. No, it wasn’t the boy who’d rescued me. It was a girl.

A bit younger than the boy, she stared at me with large, wondering eyes. I startled and tried to hop away from her. I didn’t get too far, my talons skidding on the hard surface of a table.

I turned and saw the boy. “He’s going to learn how to fly,” he said.

I gasped. Suddenly, I realized, my sense of smell wasn’t the only thing that had improved. I could understand what they were saying! I was so shocked I slipped on the table and fell to the ground. The girl crawled across the floor and picked me up.

“Did you give him a name?” she asked, stroking my back.

The boy sat on the floor next to her and ruffled the down on my neck. “Kael,” he said. “I’m going to train him to be a hunter. Dad implanted a smelling chip in his brain. You’ll see.”

The girl tilted her head and made a sad face. “I don’t want him to be a hunter. I want him to be a friend.”

The boy scoffed. He took me from the girl’s hands, stood up, and placed me back on the table on top of the blanket I’d awakened in. “Leave him alone. He needs to rest. It’ll take a few weeks before his broken wings heal completely and the implanted chip is fully functional.”

I didn’t know what he meant. I realized I could understand the words but not the meaning behind them. The boy walked out of the room. I craned my head and looked over the edge of the table. The girl was still there, sitting on the floor. She looked up at me and our eyes met. There was something broken in her eyes, something we shared beyond our different genes, different species, different languages.

It took me a few days to figure it out. The girl couldn’t walk. Just like I couldn’t fly.

To be honest, these humans that had rescued me, they all had something weird about them. The mother was missing an arm and used a gadget with a hook in place of a hand to grab things. The father had chips and wires poking out of his ears.

The boy came and fed me in the middle of the night, when I was most alert. By then I’d been moved from the table to the kitchen window, where I spent most of my time both day and night. The boy would sit on the windowsill and look outside, and after a while I realized he could see in the dark, just like me. So that was his weirdness. His eyes were like my nose.

I tried to stay detached, but as time passed, I confess I grew accustomed to these moments with the boy. The house—not really a house, more like three or four rooms the family shared in a huge building full of humans—was silent at night. The windows were always open, and you could hear crickets chirping outside and water rushing in the river.

The boy always brought morsels of food when he came to see me. I still wonder at how strongly I could smell the meals he’d give me. The insects and rats Mother would bring to the nest never smelled so tasty. Human food instead made my stomach growl in anticipation. Now I’ve pretty much gotten used to it. My sense of smell is no longer just a part of me. It’s who I am.

The boy would talk to me and tell me how my wings were going to heal, how he was going to teach me to fly. He’d sweep a hand across the sky, point to the moon, and say, “Imagine when you’ll be out there, riding the winds.”

Yes, I looked forward to those moments when darkness fell and the boy would come to feed me. Which, of course, was a terrible thing. Me, a brown falcon still dreaming of flying with the condors one day—how could I afford to become friends with humans? The fact that they’d rescued me didn’t matter. I had to leave as soon as possible. I had to return to the nest, to prove Mother wrong. “Look, Mother,” I would tell her. “I fell from the nest and yet I survived.” And I had to find the condors again. Soar in the skies with them.

So I waited. Waited until my broken bones healed and my vaned feathers grew in. Waited until the boy would teach me how to fly so I could realize my dreams and return to where I belonged.

Except I wasn’t the same anymore. They’d changed me. The smells I could see as patterns on the wind, the fact that I could now understand them. I’d sit on the windowsill during the day and listen as they talked among themselves.

I soon learned why the boy could see in the dark. His eyes weren’t made of flesh and blood. They were made of chips and wires, just like the mother’s arm and the father’s ears. The girl I still hadn’t figured out.

From what I overheard, she used to be able to walk but got sick and spent many days in bed. When the fever had passed, she could no longer walk. The mother and father were very upset about this. But the girl—she didn’t seem to mind. She’d crawl across the floor to the window, where she’d sit and watch me.

“Tell me what you see,” she’d say. “Tell me what you see when you look out the window.”

I did tell her. But only in my head, because my beak could not create all the sounds humans make with their soft beaks—lips they call them. I’d tell her about the river, how I was born hearing it rush beyond the cliffs. I told her about the waterfalls, though I couldn’t see them from the window; but I used to see them from the crevice where Mother had built our nest, the sprays of water rising over the forest. And I told the girl about the condors, too—about how I loved to watch them soar high in the sky, the sun glinting off their black wings. I don’t know if the girl could hear my thoughts the way I could understand her words. But she’d sit there with me under the windowsill, and stare out the window as I relived all those memories.

I was no longer a chick by then. I’d become a fledgling, my body covered in white and brown feathers. Mother had done her best to feed me, but as a single parent she could never leave the nest for too long, so she rarely brought back much to eat. As much as I hated that the humans had implanted stuff in my head, I confess that I finally felt strong and healthy in a way I’d never felt before. When the breeze blew in from the north, I’d spread my wings and catch the wind in my feathers. The boy would come yelling, “He’s going to do it! Kael’s going to fly!”

But I never did.

Every time I stretched out my wings, the memory of my fall flashed before my eyes. Maybe that’s why no chick recovers from a fall. It’s the haunting memory of the ground spinning up toward you. It paralyzed me. I longed to leap from that window, to return to my nest. I didn’t belong with these humans. I belonged up there with the condors. And yet I couldn’t make that leap. No matter how many times the boy would tell me I could fly, I just couldn’t do it. The thought of falling again terrified me.

Oddly enough, the girl was experiencing the same thing. Her father would pick her up and make her stand, gently holding her against his side. He’d tell her how she’d walked for a long time before she got sick. How her legs had forgotten how to walk, but that if she tried hard, they would remember again.

The boy wasn’t as sweet. He would snarl that if she didn’t start walking again, they’d chop off her legs and force her to get fake ones. I’d seen humans like that, not in this family, but in other groups that lived in the same building. They had legs made of rods and wires. I took the boy to mean that his sister was going to be forced to get legs like that, too.

But no matter what they’d tell her, the girl couldn’t walk. Or wouldn’t. Just like I couldn’t fly.

Then one day they took us outside. And that’s when everything changed.

It was a nippy, fall morning. The leaves were changing colors, and stripes of gold mottled the sea of green sprawling beyond the river.

The boy hooded me. It was something new to me, and I didn’t like it. But then he pressed a button under my right wing and everything went dark. The boy could deactivate me just like that, with a flick of his fingers. They all had buttons like that, only humans carry them at the backs of their heads. The next thing I remember is waking up to the sound of rushing water.

The air was different. It smelled crisp, tinged with the scent of leaves and river moss. And then there was this strong odor, sweet and rotten at the same time. I could feel the ground moving beneath me.

The boy unhooded me. I swayed forward, then closed my talons around his gloved hand and regained my balance. He was holding me while sitting on the back of a horse, a beautiful creature I’d only seen from my perch on the windowsill. I’d observed these animals run along the river with the same elegance and power as the condors, only on the ground instead of in the sky. And now, for the first time, I took in their strong scent.

The father and girl were there too, mounted on a second horse. The girl was riding in front of the father, clasping his sleeves as he held the reins.

“Are you ready?” the boy asked, holding his gloved hand in the air and the reins in his other. When the father replied with a nod, the boy kicked the horse and prompted it to a fast gallop.

I squawked and tilted forward, my talons digging into his glove. The memories of my fall overwhelmed me. Wind whipped my feathers and fear pounded in my veins. The horse ran along the riverbank, the rhythmic beating of its hooves so like the hammering inside my chest. The boy held up his hand and told me to spread my wings. I obeyed. It was instinct.

“You can do it,” the boy yelled. “You can take off now!”

But I couldn’t. My wings were frozen, my talons clutching the leather of his glove. I was petrified.

The boy pulled up hard and stopped the horse. The second horse swept by us, and just as it ran by, the father let go of the reins, picked up the girl, and propped her up on his shoulders. The girl cried out, but it wasn’t a frightened scream. It was joyous! She was having fun! Then the father reined the horse around and came running back toward us.

“Now, Akaela,” the father yelled. “You’ve got to do it now!”

He clasped her hands and lifted the girl, her useless legs dangling behind his back. The horse ran faster at us, sprays of sand arching from under its thundering hooves. The father cried out again, and something popped out from the girl’s back.

All of her shirts had an opening at the back, a horizontal flap a couple of inches beneath her shoulder blades. Now I could see why. Rods came out of her back, extending and unfolding just like wings. A canopy stretched between them, and as it opened, it caught the wind and lifted the girl. The father held her hands, but her weight was no longer borne by his arms. The wind was carrying her along like an invisible hand holding her. The girl lifted her legs until they were no longer dangling, her body straight and parallel to the canopy now.

So she could move her legs.

The girl started laughing. Both the father and the boy cheered her on, shouting, “Fly, Akaela, fly!” When the father let go of her hands, the wind picked her up and she took off. She shifted her body, tilting the frame, and glided over the river, stretching out her arms and grinning from ear to ear.

She was so happy, it made my heart melt. She, too, now could fly. Like all brown falcons. Like the condors.

No, it wasn’t an elegant flight. It was clumsy and bumpy. Once more, the father reined the horse around and ran to fetch her before she dropped into the water. But it was her first flight. And my, did that make her happy.

I envied her.

I wondered how condors learned to fly. They too must’ve looked clumsy and totally out of their element when they first took off. And yet, those I’d seen from my nest were so graceful. I raised my eyes and there they were, their black silhouettes ever-present against the daytime sky.

“It’s your turn, Kael,” the boy said. I felt jittery with fear, giddy with anticipation. But if the girl could fly, then I knew I could do it, too. Her legs had been motionless until the minute her canopy swelled. That’s when she realized she could move them, that she could raise them high so her glide would pick up speed. It’s an instinct we birds know well, but sometimes you’ve got to teach your body those instincts all over again. And if a human could do it…

The boy yelled, kicked the horse’s flanks, and off we went. My talons squeezed his glove again. I dipped my head forward. Speed made my blood pump faster.

You can do it, Kael. You can do it.

I stretched my wings. I could feel the pull in them, the wind lifting me. All I had to do was open my talons and let go. It was in my head, though.

The fear.

The fall.

My heart wanted to fly, yet my head wouldn’t let it.

Then the boy did the unthinkable. He slid his hand out of the glove. And there I went, me, my stretched wings, and the glove still clutched between my talons.

It was a fantastic feeling.

Liberating.

Inebriating.

Terrifying.

And it lasted two seconds before I tilted my wings too much and almost slammed into a tree. But it was done. The boy had unlocked my wings by letting me go.

On our next attempt, he never let go of the glove.

I did.

I flapped and took off, found the thermal—the column of hot air rising up from the ground—and rode it like I’d been doing it all my life. Like the humans rode their horses. I flew over the river and above the forest, my eyes feasting on the landscape sprawling below. I skipped across the scents on the air, and they lifted me, drawing me forward. Herons took off from the water as I swerved by them. I saw the waterfalls in the distance and flapped my wings until I found the perfect currents that took me right over them. I dipped in the cloud of sprays rising from the water.

I felt strong, I felt alive.

I could finally fly.

I wanted to tell the world. No, not the world. I wanted to tell the condors.

So I left the waterfalls and rode the thermals back to the river. I saw the boy, the father, and the girl running with their horses at full gallop along the bank. They waved at me and cheered me on. They didn’t say, “Come back.” Instead, they yelled, “Look at you, Kael. You can fly now!”

I can fly.

Mother would be proud.

I flew over the forest and back to my nest in the crevice. Other brown falcons were taking off from theirs in the trees. They looked up at me in wonder, a young fledgling they’d never seen before. Or didn’t remember. I rode the ridge lift as it pounded against the cliffs, found the ledge, and landed in front of the crevice where Mother had built our nest.

How long ago was it? Days? Weeks?

I’d lost count.

The nest was empty, the branches that Mother had so lovingly propped against the crevice all but blown away. The down she’d used to make my bedding was dirtied with rat droppings. The smell was rotten and foul. I was disgusted.

A forlorn feather clung to the entrance of the crevice and flapped in the wind. It was from my mother, one of the few she’d left in the nest to make it warmer. I plucked it with my beak, freed it, and watched it twirl in the currents until it vanished.

Goodbye, Mother, I thought. I can fly now. I can survive.

I spread my wings and took off again, rising over the cliffs. The condors were there, their finger-feathers gliding on the winds. They drew circles in the sky. My wings had grown tired, my breast muscles sore. Yet I ignored the pain and kept rising in the sky until I reached my idols. I sensed no communication between them, just mindless gliding and waiting like machines, ready to swoop down on the first carcass they saw. I circled with them. I flapped my wings and called out to attract their attention. I wanted them to see me fly.

One of them flew over me, and his full shadow embraced me, his wingspan at least three times mine.

I circled and called to them, “Can I be one of yours?” But they never replied. After a while, my fatigue caught up with me. And I felt lonely.

So very lonely.

So I withdrew from the lift drawn by their wide wings and glided back down. Back home.

Back to my family.

My name is Kael. I’m a brown falcon, and my family is made of humans. A father, a mother, a boy, and a girl. They all have something special. The father has wires in his ears, the mother has a hook for a hand. The boy has eyes that can see in the dark. The girl has a flying sail that unfolds from her back.

They made me special, too. They gave me a bear’s sense of smell. And they taught me how to fly. I can hunt at night, like my brother. And I can glide over the cliffs, like my sister.

Not all families are equal; not all are made of the same species even. In my family, I’m the only feathered animal. I don’t mind that and neither do they.