Echoes of Forgotten Wings

Chapter 7: A Family Secret

The wind rose outside as if there was an angry soul wanting to come in with all its might, tossing and turning the frail walls of their small house. Ivo stood in front of the fire, warming himself but unable to calm down. His mother was sitting opposite him, her hands shaking slightly as she sewed a ripped cloth. All her life, she had been choosy in her speech; never wanting to bring unnecessary tales from the past unless otherwise called for. But this time, Ivo wasn't even surprised when he thought he felt something in the atmosphere change. It was like the air parted in a room – enough to let someone's horrifying secret come to light.

It had to be done.

"Mother," he said in a rather hesitant but purposeful tone, "do you have any idea what is that mark on my arm?"

His mother's hands came to a halt and the needle stopped just above the fabric. She didn't lift her face, but Ivo noticed her neck become tense. The pause felt long and oppressive almost to the point of being so uncomfortable that they could not be in the same place. Ivo continued, and his speech was no longer controlled. The tension within him had grown and boiled and erupted into words that had remained hidden for too long.

"I met someone," he said. "In the woods, I came across an elderly woman. She claimed it was a curse. About us... and the Skyborn. I need to understand this, Mother. What was our family's crime? Why am I branded?"

Her mother flinched at the very mention of the Skyborn, her heartbeat almost stopping. Gradually, she put her work aside, her hands shaking and retreating back into her lap. There was silence for a while, and when she finally talked, her voice was so low it could barely be heard amid the sizzling flame.

"Perhaps this is the best time for you to hear all of it," she said at last, looking at him directly for the first time. She held a pain so profound in her gaze that Ivo felt a tightness around his chest from it.

She stood up and made her way to a very old chest that had been in Ivo's room since he couldn't remember and had not been opened. Her mother knelt in front of it and caressed the edges of it before lifting the top up. Inside she took out a little packet that was wrapped in a threadbare piece of cloth. When she got back to her chair, she carefully opened it up and there was an old book which had its pages tattered and frayed, its cover carved with mystical shapes that twinkled gently against the flames.

"What was unable to die within us can at least be presented in this form," she uttered, as if fighting back tears. "This is the book of our family history. A history we have fought to erase for centuries."

He took the book in hand and started turning the weak pages until his finger froze on an illustration that made Ivo gasp. It was an image of a creature, striking yet frightening, with enormous wings ready to soar. But something was off – examining the drawing, its wings were bounded, encaged in chains about its torso which tethered it down. Below the drawing, one line was inscribed in a tongue that Ivo could not understand.

"The Skyborn," his mother whispered, her voice thick with nostalgia. 'Back then, they were most robust entities that safeguarded the heavens and the very earth. They were clean. They had not been touched by the avarice of man. Yet, that very clean state was the reason for their demise.'Ivo listened with his heart pounding as if what she said was a blow to him, loosening the life he used to think he possesses.