Phoenix

Wind Lesson

It couldn't be done.

She leaned back and shook her head. If she'd thought yesterday's task was far-fetched, this one was plain stupid. Shorty clearly had no qualms taunting death.

Shorty had led her into the forest, just as Gunner had done yesterday, but instead of following the river, they'd followed a labyrinth of trees, twisting and turning to suit the undergrowth so that within minutes she was completely disoriented. With each turn, Shorty had grown more and more excited, ducking and weaving with such agility that Ash struggled to keep up. Now, Shorty's face was flushed, his freckles more prominent then ever. And his eyes were on the grandest, most magnificent tree she'd ever seen. It had the girth of at least five human arm spans and the trunk, corded and rough, seeped bulbous growths. The forest around it, seemed to bend towards its sheer majesty and when Ash leaned back, her head spun with the effect of the wind billowing through the thick canopy, like a current through a sea of green.

"We call it the Elder tree," Shorty said between excited breaths. "Magnificent, isn't it. And right at the heart of the island." He grinned. "Today, we'll climb to the top."

Ash went back to her previous conclusion.

It couldn't be done.

In one quick motion, Shorty launched himself into the air and took hold of a low-hanging branch. With the ease and grace of a monkey, he swung himself around the branch to balance atop it.

Okay, maybe it could.

Ash felt a knot of bark with her fingers. Her hands were already cold and clammy, slippery in the worse of ways. She retracted her hand, rationality momentarily winning over her previous night's determination. But Shorty was already gripping his next hand hold and checking it for stability. She knew he wouldn't wait.

This was it. Climb and stay, fail and leave the island... or die.

She gripped the knot with both hands, wrenched her body off the ground, found toe holds in the snarled bark, heaved again and slowly inched her way up. Hand-over-hand, foot-over-foot, she steeled her mind. Imagined she was climbing nothing more than a very tall ladder.

A ladder that swayed in the breeze.

A ladder whose rungs threatened to snap at any moment.

The further she climbed, the thinner the branches became until they bent almost double under her weight and swayed with each gust of wind as though it was a blizzard. She was almost at the top when she stopped and gave in to the urge she'd been fighting since leaving the ground. She looked down.

The view hit her so hard, she felt faint. Closing her eyes, she clutched the trunk so hard the bark pushed a painful imprint into her cheek. For a fleeting moment, her mind failed and matter won out. A quick calculation of the distance to the ground versus the speed at which she would fall was enough to make her body and mind shut down.

There was a rustling in the branches above and when she opened her eyes, Shorty was shimmying back down the tree towards her, landing with a thud on the end of her branch, perfectly balanced, hands hanging at his side as though mid-way through a casual everyday stroll. "Almost there," he said.

Ash let out a rattling breath and closed her eyes again. Every sound was suddenly magnified, the wind whispering through the leaves, the branches creaking like hundreds of squeaky door hinges. Fear poisoned her muscles, shutting them down one-by-one and her mind's eye projected images of herself, spiralling like an autumn leaf to the forest floor.

Her grip on the tree faltered and her shaking hands released their hold. Her vision threatened to come to reality when suddenly, the wind dropped away, the trunk stopped swaying, and the warmth of a body held her in place and strong arms braced her against the tree.

"Rest. Breathe," Shorty said, his body atop hers anchor steady. "Breathe. Relax."

Ash closed her eyes and tried to match her breathing to the rise and fall of Shorty's chest. She felt his heartbeat through his plum-coloured robes, steady as a drum. Slowly, her mind and body regained their steel and, as they did, Shorty's grip loosened until his protective hold disappeared altogether. As soon as she was able to hold herself by her own accord, Shorty disappeared into the overhead branches.

She followed, one hand over the other, closing her mind to everything but the roughness of the bark and the slow burn of her muscles. Up, up, up she went until there was nothing left to climb. She burst through the thick, green canopy of the treetop and into the fresh air above, drawing four long, deep breaths of the wide open air. A bright blue sky daubed with cotton wool clouds hung almost low enough to touch. The island spread out before them in a swirling pattern of wind on water, wind on treetops, constantly shifting and rearranging of shapes and patterns.

"Welcome to heaven," Shorty said.

"Skreaaaaaahhhhhh!" Herald cried, surprising Ash with his closeness. He was right next to her, on the highest branch of the tree, his gaze fixed on the horizon, stead-fast like a well-trained guard. His golden plumage caught the sunlight, elevating him to island royalty. Eli, Gunner, Shorty, Miki and Oroton might wear royal-coloured robes, but Herald was donned in gold-feathered brocade.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped to the ground, not far off the base of their tree, and with three beats of his wings, he lifted into the air, hovered for a moment, before angling his body into a torpedo dive. He threaded the leaves soundlessly and disappeared from sight. Ash waited, holding her breath.

Moments later, he was back in the air, wings whomping,the carcass of a lizard dangling from his beak. He settled the dead lizard on the branch and, holding it down in his great talons, began ripping the meat from the bones with his beak.

"Charming," Ash said and turned her attention back to the view, wondering what Herald's honed senses could see and hear that hers could not. She was, once again, struck by the overwhelming vastness, just as she'd been upon seeing the shooting star. But this time, it did not feel quite so unmanageable. It did not make her fall. She realised in the midst of this feeling of insignificance that sometimes, things went how they went. They were inevitable. The bad she'd done, well, it was an act of inevitability. A bird had to eat. She had to protect her brother.

After some time, Shorty placed two knotted ends of a rope in her hands saying, "Hold tight." Before she could respond, he pushed her firmly in the back so that she slipped off the branch and dropped into the green abyss beyond.

The weightlessness was such a shock, all she could do was close her eyes and cry out. But when the rope pulled taught in her hands and the free-fall slowed, she opened her eyes to find she was travelling through the forest on a crude carabiner system. The trees rushed past, blurred, and re-emerged behind her in a stream. Wind buffeted her face, whisking her cries away from her mouth as soon as they were made. Birds startled from their nests and took to flight as she passed. One particular bird, a blue and yellow parrot with a bright red beak, kept pace beside her. It was then, with a rush of exhilaration, that she felt she was truly flying. 

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