Air Born | Generation Icarus #1

Miguel - The missing piece?

A few days later, after a strict dawn-to-dusk routine of alternating who was exercising and who was on lookout, we'd already made massive progress. It was unnatural how quickly our bodies improved. Our feathers were longer, our muscles harder, and our stamina had doubled. Our wings were almost perfectly even in breadth and feather length, but there were subtle differences in the shape of our feathers, and in the shape of the wings themselves.

Unfortunately, none of that made any difference to our flying abilities. It didn't matter how many ab crunches, push-ups, chin-ups or stretches we did, how hard we flapped or how high the trees we jumped from, we could not control our so-called flight.

"We're just too heavy," Tyler complained after an exhausting afternoon of trying to launch from the ground. "And we're not the right shape."

He threw himself into the grass in disgust, stretching out and apparently preparing to sunbathe.

I understood his frustration — my muscles had been aching constantly for two days but I also knew we were on the right track. We just had to find the next piece of the puzzle.

I began playing with Abuelita's crucifix, making it appear and disappear as I flicked it in and out of my hand. The habitual movements were soothing and let me focus on a silent prayer, asking for guidance.

"How did you do that?"

Tyler's voice jerked me out of the semi-trance and I instinctively slipped the cross out of sight. "Do what?"

"What was that in your hand?"

A little sheepishly, I let Abuelita's crucifix drop a few inches on its chain, dangling from my loose fingers. I flicked it again and it vanished. "A trick I learned a few years ago. It kept my hands busy and entertained the street kids, with the added bonus of making them think twice about picking my pocket." Slipping the chain self-consciously around my neck, I tucked the cross back under my shirt.

Tyler blinked at me. "Have you got any other hidden and potentially useful talents apart from sleight-of-hand?"

"Nothing I can think of right now," I said, still oddly embarrassed. "What about you, any secret skills?"

He snorted. "Not unless you count being an expert at piloting simulated fighter jets on a state-of-the art console game."

"Interesting, but probably not particularly useful," I joked.

"Not really." He yawned. "Although, now that I think about it, five years of being a CAP cadet might be handy."

"You didn't mention that before!" I said, laughing in disbelief.

Tyler shrugged, his feathers rustling in the grass. "That's how I know all this survival crap. Staying alive is a little more important than moping about my Air Force career going down the toilet before it had even started." He rolled away so I couldn't see his face. "I wish I'd gone to more martial arts classes, rather than extra flight experiences. Then maybe I'd feel more confident about protecting myself."

"Let's hope it never comes to that," I said, quietly. I could hear and understand the pain in his voice all too well.

Thanks to our extreme physical exertions during the day, we both slept heavily and the following morning Tyler woke in a more cheerful frame of mind.

"It must be technique," he announced, reaching for my phone. "I need a proper look at that slow-mo. Hopefully it'll actually load this time."

Plugging it into the solar charger I'd picked up on my shopping trip, Tyler scrambled up one of the taller trees to locate a better signal. Every now and then he'd flap his wings as much as he could within the restriction of the branches, trying to boost his climb.

"Any luck?" I called, after a while.

I heard an exultant "Uhuh!" and then Tyler appeared a few moments later.

"It's not just thrashing up and down, or forward and back," he began, shaking out his wings and arms, a couple of small feathers coming loose. "Watch this ..."

Talking me through each stage of the movement, he tried to imitate what he'd seen online. Holding his wings wide, he tilted his arms and swept them both forward in front of him. Then, instead of scooping down and back as if he was swimming, he rotated his wing arm back and up, letting his wing elbow loosen and his wing partly fold to reduce its surface area, before stretching wide and forward again.

"Look, our feathers have to be smooth and strong on the downstroke," Tyler said, talking too fast in his excitement, "and then when we twist and pull back on the upstroke, they all split up and let air through them. But it also pushes air behind us, like thrust!"

Stepping back to give us both room, I tried it. At first it felt horrendously unnatural and wrong, like I was twisting all the wrong way. How could this possibly get us in the air, let alone keep us there?

But as I watched Tyler's wings, and I adjusted each flap of my own, I felt my muscles easing into the new rhythms. I could feel the changing air pressure on either side of my feathers, like I was holding a large panel out in front of a gentle fan, the gentle breeze resisting and pushing on the new muscles in my chest. Was this the missing piece of the puzzle?

"Here goes," Tyler said, grinning nervously.

I stepped back as he bent his knees, held out his wings, and took a deep breath. I could almost hear him counting down in his head.

On the inaudible three, he jumped into the air and flapped his wings as hard as he could, the sound heavy and irregular, like a huge sail being shaken out. A choppy downdraft swirled in all directions, picking up a handful of fallen leaves and sending them skittering across the grass. I squinted against the wind.

For a heart-splitting moment, he seemed to sag downward. But the rhythm of his flapping smoothed out and his feet remained in the air, about level with my head. My gape began to spread into an ecstatic grin.

Even over the thumping of his wings, I could hear his ragged breathing. He was in the air, but he wasn't climbing, or moving forward. He hovered roughly in place, his feet bobbing slightly in between each flap.

It felt like minutes, but probably only a few seconds later, his flapping stuttered and he dropped roughly back to the grass. As soon as he landed, I ran forward to grab his shoulders.

"You did it! You did it!"

Tyler wheezed, struggling to breathe. He leaned forward, gripping his knees with trembling hands, but even around each painful inhale I saw his smile.

"What did it feel like?" I asked, semi-patiently waiting for him to recover.

Finally, he straightened up, wincing and rubbing his chest. "Exciting — and frustrating," he said, still panting. "I could feel the lift pulling on my shoulders, but it was like the ground was sucking at my feet. Damn gravity!" He chuckled weakly. "Maybe I should chop off my legs. That should get rid of the deadweight."

"Might make take-off and landing difficult," I said.

"Yeah." Tyler tried to walk, but fell back on his butt instead, the fall leaves and grass crackling underneath him. "It'd be better to have retractable gear."

The mental image made me laugh, until I thought about how birds tucked up their legs while flying.

"Alright, my turn," I said, adrenaline already pumping in anticipation.

There was something I HAD to try.