The Wheel and the Wing [6-11]
premise: a paraplegic (no legs) befriends a harpy (with wings, no arms)
6*
[Tomorrow has a name, and its name is Desde!]
It’d been next morning on the airport road
when Mitka uttered half of Desde’s name
and got a dozen Mitkas in return. She kept on
and on, despite him telling her to stop. [M]: Did
you put my guidance to good use? [D]: Why
would I, knowing I’d meet Mitka anyway? Mit
ka, mitka––[M]: If you don’t shut up, you’ll heed it
sooner than you think! [D]: Why, because
you’ll leave? Even if you do, I won’t use
any of it. They all sound like icebreakers that only
nab used goods. But hey, it worked for you! #
So they bickered until quieted by the wind
that billowed to the airport. He was afraid
that she’d be blown away, given her wingspan.
She cowered behind his wheelchair until,
looking at his feet, got an idea. She leapt
upon his chair and strapped herself in
by sinking talons into Mitka’s legs. Then,
she spread her wings and harnessed
the wind, slowly gaining speed until it was
as uncontrolled as the eddys feathers
broke. He’d never gone so fast before,
feeling the hitches that were really his own
trembling. He recalled a song his sister made
him learn: [There’s a wheel in every wing /
and a wing in every wheel. Home feels like
a wheel, fallen to its side / or a wing, attached
so wistfully]––was that how it went? He was
still unsure when the wind died down within
the air-conditioned airport. Desde whistled
like a bird whose only call was wind. After
some rest, Mitka readied to grab his wheels
like torches wind relayed to him. Though
the harpy guided him, it was Mitka who
went faster to the doors, while Desde was
still midway through the corridors, deciding
left or right. They passed the terminals
like teeth, gums like landing gates until
they came to a crack whose pattern mapped
the twist and turns inside it, as if casting
where it led. At its end, he heard a door
open so loud, it sounded like it slammed.
He had tripped the sensor, but it felt more
like he tripped over it. Though hesitant,
he entered through with haste and was greeted
by a dome of screens, staring down
like a mosquito’s eye, each fixed on a room
he’d been in and knew all about, save where
their cameras led. The feeds of the remotest rooms
took center stage, while those of lobbies
rallied at the edge, each shown larger than life,
higher than the cameras they fed on. The
mosaic hid how each room led to each––
how else could desde have delayed so much
in getting here, though treated with this peak
of peeks? Then, there was the bodycam foot-
age––moving yet confined––that dizzied him
and made him close his eyes in fear
his own sight would be used as proof
against him, unable to see that Desde
was laughing like an uncle who shows
a child porn. Afraid he’d go blind, he shut
his eyes––how could Desde sleep here
without migraines? Where could she hide
from the table of take-off times, the migrants’
records? Mitka took recourse in the corners,
where he glimpsed her shelves of stacks.
texts made out just by the scruff of light
remaining. She had rarities enough
to make them common, but that was what
made her room all the rarer. There was
news so old that they were pure obituary;
there were histories, scattered on
the floor like celebration––and then
there were the itty-bitty myths, the ones
that Desde thought all kids were taught
to copy. He was impressed that in an era
where all was original, she still held
originals. She let him feel and even
read them, only because she thought he had
before. Had she known his ignorance, she
would not have let him make her wait for him
to find out how this land was found:
DISCLAIMER. This work is write-protected
and copy-enabled. Copy and quote;
do NOT abridge and botch. Make this two,
not halved. With that out the way––
Welcome! Whether you pass the time
by reading of the past, or are wondering how
much time has past since you cracked
this page again––we welcome you a stay
for all your yets and coming soons. this
is not the beginning of beginnings,
but the start of our originality. Hero,
I invite you to gamble on this page.
~~~~~
...how Abietta was formed: A volcano.
Who found its form: Slow down, or you
might miss the land, like all others
who passed it by, who could not see it in
the fog somebody saw; and who else strafed
through that staring-contest of the lightning
and the meteor-shower? Who else
but the founder, who, while thinking of
home, touched land with his ship’s stern
and discovered the discoverer? Who
else could pry apart its planks, unmoor
its nails to make the corners of his cabin
tumbling out the seeds from his pockets
that’d come to be those trees that some
would perch on, others would hang upon?
Who else […] turned the glass into metal,
trapped its transparency into the bubbles,
then molded bubbles into blades, and from
that well, found something to wield: a spear
he used as well as his own bones to craft
walls keen as skin, roofs as neat as manes.
He had no feathers yet for pillows, but used
torn sails as sheets, the ones with holes so big
they tangled him––the ones that drifted, even
without wind. He pleaded with his mind for a
long sleep––and when he woke, he found
in each tear, a limb. He looked under the sheet,
and found a girl whose sulfur was attracted
to his silver. He heard her bad song, and
then she heard his compliment. Thus, then,
he found in himself a few more inches
to complete the voyage, and knew what toil
he’d have to give for that sea-smelling girl.
He soon delivered her first child, thinking
if it couldn’t be the first of the good, then it
might be the last of the bad––Oh, to be less
the first sailor here than the last to leave
the continent he sailed from! He waited til
the child was heavy enough to need two-
hands to carry before he let her venture
with him to the peak, pumice so strong
that walking smoothed their callouses. When
they reached the pit of lava, he raised her up
to thank the Volcano for what it gave
before it stopped him, then revealed to him that
the child was not his, and the wife he’d took
One to another. At that news, he did not lower
the child, but poised her to the pit
as if to shut it good. But as he took aim,
he hesitated, half pitying the child
yet half committing to her death that
his arms, with as much chuck as grip,
ripped from their joints and followed the child
instead. His hands cushioned her as she fell
just a finger short of falling, toying with his limbs.
The volcano bellowed again: “Just who
do you think fathered this child? And who,
the husband of this woman?” The founder
No longer able to hold her, bent down
into the child’s eyes and saw in her iris
the rim of the volcano––and repented. “I made
your woman cheat––yet how much more
had I, thinking I’d been cheated by the one
who let me hold her? how could I be
a father, if I could not even be a son?”
and wondered whether he would bereave
or orphan more by falling in the lava.
Only the child blocked his immolation,
wielding his own bloody arms like a goalie.
He had wished to be the volcano’s son
and thought he was the father of its child;
He had kissed the shore at first landing,
had kissed it at her baby’s birth, but now
he bowed upon the peak, lower than
he’d ever done with hands, and in return
was kissed by pumice. It bellowed thrice:
‘Yet have we not shared her––are we not
half-brothers, having been in the same womb?
Take her, so that my child may have a half-
sister.’ His now-wife brought him back, while
her child carried his arms. No amount of
gauze could stop his blood from flowing,
til none was left––Only then did it become
as dry and peelable as glue, enough
material to sculpt two wings. Unravell-
ing the last layer revealed a feather,
the first one coming in the lineage he’d
make, starting with her second child.
Within their cabin made of his chaste ship
he found a dock, strong enough to snap
the chain of anchors he had left at home.
The last thing their door needed was a lock.
it was their second time when their mix of lips
supplied her first child with a name: Abiet,
who was now as high as her mother’s navel,
and was allowed to name her sister
as she came into the world. How sad
it was that she was bad at naming! So bad
that her sister later named the land
after her: Abietta, the child of the Volcano.
~~~~
tell me @desde_real. Or, attach it to
a kite! I’ll find my way to it. Thank you. #
Mitka shut the book. Desde was surprised
this was the first time he’d heard this island’s
first myth. Yet his generations only
spanned two: his Abiettan history started
with his father, who came here on a plane
of eggplants. With his family this fresh,
no wonder that he and his sister had to be
the roots; his parents, leaves. Desde
was younger, but knew more of her past
through nursery rhymes; greener, but
staked deeper. Her lineage was as tall
as his was broad: the harpy hailed
her grandmothers as sisters, while Mitka
had cousins more fatherly than his own.
She was an only child, as was her
father, and his, each the only harpy
in their generation; while Mitka knew dozens
of twins, raised by single aunts. Despite this
He had many in-laws, while she had none
who weren’t eventually linked by blood. She had
much ancestry with arms, yet she still knew
the winged way up, each fork to the founder.
[D]: Can’t you relate? You, who do not tread
the road your fathers did, should trample on
your fathers. Climb up––it should be easy!
Your way narrows, while mine just widens.
[M]: Maybe? It’s foggy after grand and great.
Sometimes, my cousins tell me rumors
that, fifteen or fifty generations back, we had
an emperor in the mix! Isn’t that funny?
[D]: So, you’re telling me that your fathers fled
as soon as they got the means to––while
mine, even with the wings to leave, were
born, wedded and gave birth on the same peak
and even did their best to die on it, sending
their ashes there as an apology for failure? #
As the sun sank like the puncture of a fang,
the point she wished to make now stretched
into an edge. Desde hated those
who could only sleep at night by dreaming of
the noons down under. She hated those
who had two hour-hands, but only one minute
to spare. She hated those who were
imported here to make more exports,
and those from planets that eclipsed her own
though coming from its dark side. In short,
she hated foreigners! Just talking to them
brought out an anger otherwise foreign to her,
so she let the issue drop. Yet that didn’t stop
Mitka from cursing her under his breath,
a curse that he regretted once it was rewarded
with an earthquake, so small and personal
like music for the deaf, but powerful enough
to make her fall. He rushed to help her, and
thanked god he’d only cursed instead of swore;
He fell out his chair to take a closer look
and found her writhing on the floor and
laughing––she was mocking his disability!
so well, that it would have been a perfect
parody, had it not been for her lack of arms.
She crawled closer to Mitka, the pair of them
Like eyebrows, bunching up in mounting rage
Before he grabbed at her and made her flee
Back up the stairs. She cocked a brow at him
before descending, each step making her
loom greater over him. When she reached
him on the floor, so shamed after he missed,
she tossed on him a blanket and issued him
good-night. To turn his mask-crate to a bed
She flung its contents to the ceiling, a mask
for every star. For his pillow, Desde took
the first step from the stairs and put it where
it’d also be a step up out the bed. It was
her grace that he should stay here free,
but his torment that she and her disses
should live freer in his head. Why ungrave
his disability––what else kept him rooted?
She’d gone too far, but wasn’t that what wings
did? Why did he expect someone like her
to understand him––someone so blind to her
limits, that she couldn’t even afford to look
down? someone who led not by support,
but example––and even when she helped,
helped doers? She was singular in
her generalizations, and had pushed him
in mocking Mitka’s wheels, so far that
he wondered if he’d stay. Yet wasn’t it his
wheels that got him in, too crippled to be
tray her? If he could walk, she wouldn’t
have let him in––so had her trust been built
upon neglect. Oh, what oaken suspicions
lay in the why of trust! How privileged
to sleep here after dark, even if the dark
made slipping by a breeze. From the floor above,
Desde scanned past footage, making sure
that no one tailed them. While she stood sentry,
he would have slept––sleeping was the only time
he looked perfect––were it not for the dunno
of the dark, lighter than his coffee earlier.
So he scoffed at sleep for now and in his ch
amber, continued on his mask, each shaving
softening his bed. Gradually, he tired of his work
outrunning him, and wrapped his head in sheets
to mute her constant stamp and humming
and the blue. From her fidgeting, she’d shed
enough down for another pillow by
the time he woke again at midnight from
the lightning, stringing along the storm
that sometimes seizes Abietta, like a palm
over a puppet. He never thought that rain
could deafen lightning. In each flash’s wake
his face startled him, most scary when
Mitka was scared. Desde was snoring, but
the flyers on the feeds ran on. The floor above
jutted so much it clipped not just the top
of the projection, but the bottom too.
The film went back three days, shallow
compared to the glacial archive of the faces
it could find in crowds. All Mitka had to do
was tap on one, and it’d show which flight
they’d take, and all their priors. The scanners
even gauged fatigue, showing those who slept-walk.
There were some layovers, who braced
both haste and sleep. Then there were
the Abiettan exiles––who had no bags,
but weighed their heaviness in miles; and had
much dreams in common, but no words
while watched, soon to be deported. To survive,
they’d treat their mother tongues as stepsons,
most fluent in their new one when they warn
they aren’t fluent––having just enough
to teach classrooms their old one, starting with
the P in plane, unable to piss for dread
a plane comes knocking, without room
for him or even a pilot, its only passengers
a camera and a gun to drop its load on him,
returning only with his death certificate.
These exiles scurried past the tourists,
who had not planned on bringing souvenirs.
Where was Desde, that the lightning nor
the taped crowds could wake her––and
above all, the ace of her own snoring?
He could only sleep when she stopped,
and woke up when she had gone.