Island Getaway

The day was endlessly blue, the heat rose in shimmering waves from the sand, painting everything with a golden glow, birds bickered in the treetops and I was utterly miserable.

I scrunched my bare feet deep into the sands, feeling the grains congregate between my hooked toes and I sighed. Another day in paradise.

I didn’t turn around as Tony threw himself down beside me, sending a spray of golden grains into the breezeless sky. 

 “There you are, Celeste. Your mum’s looking for you.”

I scowled at him but he only laughed. He never took my moods to heart.

“My mother can keep looking,” I told him dourly.

“She says she wants to talk to you. It’s about something important.”

I gave Tony a dark look. My mother and I differed greatly on the things we deemed important.

The sunlight glittered off of the transparent dome arcing over the sky and out into the ocean depths far out to sea. It was little more than a slight hazy sheen separating us from the world out there, but, if you squinted, you could see the place where the sea grew darker beyond the confines of our prison.

I stared out there now, imaging once more that I had managed to break out. An impossible dream. I had tried many times before. Last time, I had almost drowned trying to break through the wardings sealing us in. Would have done, too, had Tony not been there with me. As if following my thoughts, Tony said:

“Planning your next great escape?”

“Maybe.”

“Perhaps they’re just not ready for us out there, Cel.”

It was the constant refrain of the Elders. I had had it battered persistently through my eardrums, ever since I was old enough to squawk, but I had never expected to hear it from Tony. He held up his hands defensively as I turned to glare at him again.

“All I’m saying is that there are worse places to be,” he said. “Golden sands, warm waters, blue skies. Lots of people would love to trade places with you. How many people really get to live in paradise?”

“What’s got into you?” I snapped.

He shrugged. “There are worse places to call home.”

How would you know? I thought bitterly. You’ve never seen any of them any more than I have.

Some of the Elders remembered the time before, when we lived and roamed freely, but Tony and I were third-generation brats. We’d been born on this island and I was pretty sure I was going to die on it, too, and be buried on another damn day of glorious sunshine.

I trapped Tony’s head between my hands, making sure my talons were retracted. I could barely stretch my hands around his cheeks, for Tony had a lot of his grandfather’s genes in him. His blood had been diluted down of course, by the Elder’s Intermarriage Decree, and though he might pass for mortal on a cloudy day, his head was still determinedly bullish, large and square. The thick shag of black hair on his head barely covered the small horn nubs poking through. He was sure to grow a tangled, bramble-beard by the time he’d finally finished slogging through puberty (an extra-long and extra-arduous affair for long-lifed beings such as us). I always teased him that he was bull-headed in more ways than one, and he always told me to stop harpying on about it, but I was not in the mood for joking with him today. I could see my amber-golden eyes reflecting in his large, dark ones.

“Why are you saying these things?” I demanded quietly. He reached around with one of his dinner plate sized hands and tugged on my wing stubs playfully, until I squawked in annoyance and smacked him on the arm. He just laughed. Nothing I ever did could hurt him. He could have ground me down to fine powder and blown me away on the tropical breeze, only he never would. Tony was the gentlest person I had ever met. I sometimes wondered how he had ended up best friends with someone like me.

My stubs strained pitifully and I calmed with them a force of will. They were a perpetual source of shame to me. My mother had beautiful flaring wings, which spanned out wide and high, and my elder sister Arielle had inherited them too, dove grey and summer soft, but my father’s blood ran too strongly in me it seemed. Damned genetics. If she had been allowed to marry another harpy I could have had beautiful wings like hers, and gone soaring through those endless blue skies in this wretched prison island. But she was not. None of us were.

No fables were allowed to marry or interbreed with other fables, by order of the Elders. They could only wed heroes or demi-gods, or others of the mortal shaped beings that were trapped here endlessly with us. They hoped, Mum said, that if we could water down our blood enough to pass for mortal, we might be allowed to leave. She’d said it sadly. She knew it wasn’t a hope she could hold for herself, but she cherished it for her children and grandchildren. I knew better. They shoved us in here to forget about us. No matter how mortal we made ourselves look, they were never going to let us out again.

Tony used to agree with me. Now it seemed like the Elders had got into his head at last. I didn’t like that one little bit. If they can get to Tony, how long until they get to me, too? There’s nothing like a minotaur for stubbornness, after all…

“Just go and talk to your mother, alright?” he sighed. “She’ll tell you everything, I’m sure.”

Mum and Dad were both sitting at the kitchen table when I came home. I expected a tongue lashing for my tardiness but, to my surprise, she just gestured to the empty seat across from them. Feeling nervous now, I sank into it.

“Celeste,” she said sharply, her nails clacking out patterns on the table top. It was a poor battered thing, scratched and scarred from the many family arguments we had. “We’ve…well, we’ve had some news. It’s a big decision, but we want it to be your choice. Whatever you decide, we will support you in that. You don’t have to decide right away, and we can talk it through with you, help you see how you feel about it…” she looked over to Dad now, her words running out, and I felt the wave of apprehension in me notching even higher.

“Dad?” I said. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Have you heard of an ankle monitor?” he said carefully.

“Who would want to monitor ankles?”

“No, no, it’s some kind of device that the mortals invented. It can keep track of your movements and record your actions, things like that. The Elders have struck an accord with some mortal officials. They say that, properly monitored, some of our kind who are able to pass for mortal will be able to go back out into the real world, as a sort of tester scheme. If it goes well, perhaps they will allow more of us to leave. Perhaps, in a few more generations, there will be no more need of the island at all. They would like you to be one of the trial experiments.”

“Experiments?” I squawk in outrage. “I’m not an experiment.”

“Celeste, aren’t you listening? They want you to be able to leave, and all you have to do is wear an ankle monitor! Isn’t that a trade worth making? I thought that was what you always wanted!” Mum snapped.

“They want me to leave as a mortal. I’m not a mortal. I’m a harpy. And what about those that can’t pass? What about you and Arielle? What about Tony?”

“It’s a start,” Dad said soothingly. “If it goes well, if you can persuade them that we are no longer dangerous…”

“We were never dangerous to start with,” I snapped, even though I knew that was a lie. The truth was, back when our kind had roamed the worlds beyond, back when we had been plentiful and powerful, the war between our kind and the mortals had been gruesome and dark. Fables had been strong and, though I was loathe to admit it, often cruel. They never dreamt that the mortals would find a magic strong enough to lift an entire island out of time, nor that they would be able to trap all our peoples helplessly within it. The tides had turned now though. We were few, our magics and our strength diluted, and the mortals had grown plentiful and powerful with technology.

Our time has passed. Mum said it wistfully every time she was drunk on the cheap hootch we made. The world has changed without us. Perhaps we are better here in our own world, away from the rest of them. But I did not believe that. I would never believe that.

“I want freedom. This isn’t freedom. Not really. It is a half-promise and enough rope to hang yourself. I leave this island as a harpy or I don’t leave it at all.”

Mum and Dad shared another look. I knew it very well. It was that one which said I was being foolish but they didn’t have the strength to argue with me any longer.

“Consider it, at least,” Dad said tactfully. “They are not coming to collect the experi- the volunteers- until next week. You don’t have to decide today.”

“I’ve decided,” I said. “I won’t change my mind.”

“You won’t be able to marry Tony, even if you stay. The Elders would never allow it. You both have too much fable blood in you to risk interbreeding yet,” Mum said. I reared back, my cheeks scalding.

“Tony and I are just friends!”

She hummed disbelievingly.

“I just don’t want you to stay for a boy, that’s all. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Celeste. Don’t squander it.”

I stood up so quickly that the chair thudded against the floor. Mum screeched a reprimand, but I scarcely heard her, already out of the door, slamming it behind me.

Tony still hadn’t moved from the water’s edge. He was still sitting there, staring out at the endless blue surrounding us when I returned. You could scarcely tell where the sea met the sky. Perhaps I would get to find that horizon though, if I went on their terms.

“Did you know?” I asked without introduction. He didn’t reply. “About the ankle monitors? About what my mum wanted to tell me, did you know?”

“Yes.”

I winced, unable to restrain the pain of that single word. Tony and I didn’t usually keep secrets from one another.

He turned to look at me, his over-large eyes dark and unreadable.

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you think I should do? You’re the one who said they weren’t ready for us out there. You think I should stay?”

He didn’t reply.

“Tony!” I hit his arm as hard as I could but he didn’t flinch. I suspect he didn’t even feel it.

“I don’t know, alright? I don’t…I can’t…” he ran his large, square hands through his thick hair. “Everything is so muddled. I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to leave me. But is that just selfishness, or is it because I really think it would be bad? I can’t decipher my own motivations, I can’t untangle them from my own feelings and I…I just…I don’t know.” His voice almost fell into a lowing, mournful wail at the end, like a bull in distress, and I remembered once again how different we were from those mortals they wanted us to pass for. Different, but no less valuable, I told myself sternly. He took a deep breath and gathered himself back under control.

“When do you have to decide by?”

 “They’re coming to collect the experiments next week. They’ve got these monitor things that will let us out of the gate.” I stopped abruptly as a thought began burgeoning in my mind. Tony frowned at me.

“Uh oh,” he said. “I recognise that face, and it always means trouble.”

*****

I hadn’t said goodbye to Mum and Dad. The thought still churned guiltily in my stomach, but they’d only try to stop me. They wanted me to go, I reminded myself. They’ll understand.

I’d kissed them both at the breakfast table this morning. Mum had looked surprised. Dad had looked a little sad. I think he had guessed, but he didn’t say anything. He just stroked my hair like he did when I was a fledgling and told me he loved me.  

Those might be the last words I ever hear from him… The thought curled insidiously around my stomach, but it couldn’t weaken my resolve now.

The ankle monitors had sensors in them that operated the dome, we were told. So that the door would only open for as long as it took for the person wearing the monitor to pass through it. The mortals were coming to attach them to the lucky few.

Still, I lined up with the other experiments on the sea front, as the mortals arrived. They came in large, metal boats, trussed up tightly in uniforms with shields and guns. We were unarmed and I did not have to fake the fear I felt at the sight of them…though perhaps I over-exaggerated the meek tremble in my lips and the ducked cowering of my head.

“First one forward,” a man behind a thick visored mask barked, jabbing his gun at us, trying to separate us from the crowd of onlookers. I saw Tony there, lingering by the edge of the crowd and he gave me a thumbs up. I nodded back and stepped forwards.

The ankle monitor turned out to be a long thin black strip of metal and plastic which beeped disconcertingly. The guard beckoned me forwards and ordered me brusquely to present my leg. I did so, but just as he was bending down to attach it, I screeched loudly, making the guard flinch.

“No!” I screamed, backing away and stumbling into the patiently waiting volunteers queuing quietly up behind me. They tumbled down in a chaotic squabble of limbs, loud and distracting. “No, I’ve changed my mind! I want to stay here! I want to stay! Don’t touch me! Please!” I kicked out wildly in my panic, and my feet connected with the box of monitors sending them sprawling through the air and sand, making the guards scrabble to collect them again.

A gun pointed at me and I froze.

“Stop making a fuss and move then,” the commander snapped.

He hauled me to my feet and threw me away across the sand. I buried my face in my hands and sprinted away, sobbing loudly. I didn’t stop sprinting until I rounded the corner into the undergrowth of the island forest. A few minutes later, Tony also came sprinting up.

“Tell me you got it,” I panted. He held up the strange black strap with a triumphant grin.

We waited until the guard boats had bobbed away with the volunteers safely stowed on board. We waited until the Elders had returned to their huts, congratulating themselves for the minor concession they had won. We waited until the sun began to extinguish itself, blood red in the sky. And then we pushed out the little raft we had made, out into the evening tide, still clutching hard to our stolen prize. My breath caught in my chest painfully as I helped row the raft up to the hazy dome—the horizon beckoning us through that sheeny mist. I expected any moment to be rebuffed from the border as we always were, but the monitor beeped as we approached and a red light flickered. The mist dissolved around us and, scarcely trusting to our luck, we pushed on through.

We were out. We were out. The air was cold outside the permaculture of the dome, and my wing stubs fluttered miserably against the chill, but I didn’t care. I tipped back my head and laughed, my voice echoing through the free sky.

Tony carefully fetched out a tiny banana leaf boat he had made, placed the precious monitor within it with a note explaining what we had done and pushed it back through the haze. Again, the mist dissolved to let it through. We watched as the tide sent it slowly bobbing back towards the shore. If they were sensible, the Elders could use it to free everyone, even if they had to do it one at a time. We couldn’t make them see sense, of course, but we had at least given them the opportunity to try.

I turned to Tony and he grinned back at me, still brandishing the oar. We had a long row ahead of us before we found any land, we suspected, but it hardly seemed a chore.

“Where to, Captain?” he asked, throwing a mock salute.

“Anywhere we want to go, Tone. Anywhere at all.”