Air Born | Generation Icarus #1

Victoria - Don't look down

Then I made the mistake of looking down. The sight of the moving ground threw me off balance. I wobbled, forgot where my feet were, and began to drop.

Frantically, I thrashed in the air like a sinking swimmer. Pivoting sideways, I lost half my height, but just as the hard ground reached up for me, I realised that my legs had parted in my panic. I locked my knees and pointed my toes, desperately trying to make myself as straight and aerodynamic as possible. The effect was immediate, but still too late. Landing roughly in a thick clump of coarse grass, I lay on the ground, winded and dizzy.

"Tori!"

I tried to sit up. It took considerable effort to move my wings out of the way, but eventually I was semi-upright and managing to haul in air.

"That was awesome!" Appearing on either side of me, Tyler and Miguel grabbed my shoulders and pulled me onto my feet. "It worked! I can't believe it! How do you feel? How was it?"

I groaned. "I'm nowhere near fit enough for this."

"What happened?" Miguel asked, his hands tightening on my arm as I stumbled.

Self-consciously, I laughed. "I got distracted and broke the rhythm. As soon as my tail split, I was done for."

"We need something to lock them together, then," Tyler said. "But we have to be able to unlock them so we can land and walk."

"Some kind of hook?" Miguel suggested.

"Worth a try." I tried a step with wobbly legs. "The straps hurt, though. Gonna have to work on that."

"But hey, guess what, Tori?"

Looking up at Tyler, I frowned. "What?"

"You flew!"

Turning, I saw how far I'd come from the lightning tree.

"Oh my God," I said as it slowly sank in. "I really flew?"

"You really did." Miguel grinned.

"Oh my God!"

Tyler was almost jumping up in down in his excitement. "My turn!"

As soon as he was on the right branch, he threw himself into the air. His extra days of training showed as he unfurled his wings, sending a spiralling downdraft that ruffled our feathers and swirled the vegetation around us.

Miguel laughed as he watched his friend. Tyler's wings moved powerfully and evenly, and his tail clearly lifted his legs as he brought his ankles together. He whooped, the sound echoing, and flapped one, two, three, a dozen times, shooting right across the clearing. Almost gracefully, just in front of the wall of trees, he split his legs and lowered his hiking boots, his wings scooping down rather than forward, and he dropped the last metre or so onto the rough ground. He fell into a half-crouch with one hand bracing himself on the earth, but otherwise he stayed completely in control.

As Miguel and I clapped and cheered, I lost my balance and sat down hard beneath the lightning tree.

"You okay?" Miguel asked, hunkering down next to me.

"Yeah, I'm just not used to the exercise." I tried to loosen the straps around my lower legs with shaking fingers.

"Allow me," Miguel said, reaching out to help.

"Oh, I got it. Thanks, though." Sliding the straps off my legs, I began rubbing life back into my indented calves.

Miguel picked up one of my tail pieces and turned it over in his hands. "They held up amazingly," he said.

"They have," I said, looking at the piece in his hand. All the feathers had remained in place. One of the aluminium sticks in the 'bones' of the kite had bowed but nothing had broken.

Tyler thudded toward us, jumping over the ancient rotting branches in the grass. Realising he was out of breath too, I felt better about myself. My heart rate was almost back to normal already — that is, to what was normal now for us.

Tyler's bronze eyes met mine. "The tails work almost perfectly! Your idea was the key, Tori."

I smiled, thrilled that he was so pleased with my efforts.

Miguel put my tail down. "Almost?"

"Like she said, we need to work on the attachment to make it more comfortable, maybe pad it out so it doesn't dig in so much, but otherwise, we have lift off!"

"My turn!" Miguel said, finally betraying his excitement. And that was the beginning of the rest of our chaotic afternoon — although we did do our best to stay quiet and take turns keeping watch.

With the extreme exercise that Miguel and Tyler had been doing, they were soon able to fly around the clearing several times before stopping for a rest. I didn't think I'd be able to, especially after the late night, but even I completed one full circuit by the time the sun was setting.

"Now we just have to build up our stamina, and then we can fly for longer and actually start flying up," Tyler said, as he unstrapped his tail ready for the hike back to camp.

Miguel nodded. "It might have only been over a few days, but the workouts definitely helped."

"I don't think it'll take me long to catch up," I said.

He smiled. "I bet you'll be flying rings around us in no time."

"Speak for yourself," Tyler joked.

Laughing, I tucked my tail under my arm. "Oh, shots fired!"

While trooping down the hill back to the new campsite, we animatedly discussed the possible alterations that we'd have to make to the tails to improve them, and speculating about what sort of stuff we would need to somehow acquire.

On arrival at our temporary home hidden behind the trees at the base of a small cliff, Tyler was reluctant to even put his tail down. Now he had actually flown, he didn't want to let it go.

I knew how he felt.