Inherited

“Holy hell what were the chances?!” I say loudly to no-one but myself.

Actually pretty high, an answering thought rudely replied as I slammed the breaks on my fathers beaten up powder blue truck and grip the steering wheel in alarm. My knuckles start to grow white as I stare out at the giant funnel of black and grey debris twirling around violently high up in the sky several miles out from the road. It was still forming. Thank the lord.

This was why I avoided Nebraska most of my life. In tornado alley. In July. 

Hell yes I was considered an adventurous, daring daughter by my quiet family for my wild antics. But being smack dab in the middle of life threatening danger seems a bit extreme. 

When my mom moved back out to Nebraska my initial response was simply, “Why?” To which I reminded myself she’d fallen for a midwestern man and he never quite recovered from moving to San Diego for the formative years of my life, for a job opportunity. My dad’s parents were still out here and now that I was in college, they’d moved back to my dismay. The house they’d moved into was a large one built on the same property as my grandparents, something that had been passed down since the 1900s but still really well kept and spacious.

Every time I’d visited as a child the thought of a thunderstorm turned tornado threat was just a distant warning since we’d been lucky enough to never have it happen. In fact, in all the years our family line had lived here the only chaotic event was my grandfather going missing for a week after he married my grandma. It was a story we knew well but never spoke about since no-one knew where he had gone and even he seemed to have no recollection as to why or how. Now of course decades later when I was out here by my damn self trying to begrudgingly run some errands on my third visit this year the sky decides to open a portal to hell in front of me. 

The small bridge I’d just passed jumped into my mind and I glanced in the rearview, throwing the truck into reverse for about a half mile. As I threw the car door open the wet earthy smell of rain combined with a crackle of something more sinister hit me. I monitored the growing tempest of darkness while taking cover as I’d been told to do, wracking my mind to make sure I remembered what I could from my father lecturing me on what to do in the midst of a thunderstorm turned tornado. 

The ground crunched under my feet as I knelt under the bridge still moist from the rain earlier this morning. I felt myself shaking slightly from the chill in the air as it bit at my exposed face and hands. The atmosphere around me was remarkably still, the calm before the storm I thought. Guess I never thought I’d feel it in person. 

That’s when I saw the creature. A bird my eyes told me at first, a larger than normal-no human sized eagle? Strange, and what the hell was it doing flying nearby the gathering tornado? I stared at the figure, now circling and flying towards the bridge I crouched under. As it traversed the angry grey clouds I realize in horror that it was in fact much larger than an eagle, and as it was only a mile or so away it stared at me with piercing hazel eyes. 

Human eyes.

I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment because I certainly couldn’t trust my vision right now. Sure, there was debris in the air and it wasn’t exactly light out but there was no way. After a moment I look again, and this time the creature is closer, right in front of the bridge. Close enough to know it’s a she.

She’s perched now on a dried up dead looking tree, the branches starting to sway as the winds begin to be pulled towards to center of the storm. She’s no longer looking at me, but instead gazes towards the side of the bridge that is out of my view. Her feathers are a mixture of dark grey, black, and burnt umber brown as she extends them to an impressive length to fly down. Her body is the silhouette of a woman covered in an intricate formation of feathers all the way down her legs to a formidable set of black talons which seemed unreasonably large compared to the rest of her. 

In fact, the only truly recognizable and startling human feature was her stunning face, entirely that of a young woman with soft pale and translucent white as ice skin accented by perfect shapely lips. I gape in disbelief as she finally glances my way before flying fully out of sight only two wing beats carrying her across the landscape. She gives me not quite a smile but a smirk that holds a thousand unanswered questions of invitation burning through my mind. 

I’m standing faster than I thought, curiosity barely winning out over terror. Adventure over danger, thrill over reason. Never mind the storm, I could just run back for cover right? She didn’t go far…and what the hell was she anyway? There was no way I wasn’t at least going to try to see. 

Around the corner I find a sea of swaying green bushes surrounding the side of the dirt built up for the bridge. The creature’s back is to me as she lifts a wing and eerily uses it like a hand to push away the foliage to reveal an opening black as night. She is suddenly gone. Don’t do it…this is the dumbest idea you’re ever had..my inner voice yells at me to stop but I must walk towards the door, must see where she went. 

Something was pulling me, an invisible thread tugging and I couldn’t swat it away. Was this magic, or was I about to get killed and possibly eaten, perhaps not in that particular order? I believed in magic, I believed in all things spiritual, could this be something different?

My hands were shaking as I pushed aside the same entrance the creature went through. I am immediately in a large cavern. It is cold and crisp, the air smells oddly musky but fresh and water drips from rock formations overhead. As my eyes adjust to the light I see her. Wings settled, talons like daggers gripping the edge of the rock face she’s perched on, watching me with a stillness edged in deadly quiet. Her eyes are illuminated from some fire within and they are large and round, blazing with an intensity that makes me flinch. She does have a human face after all, I realize as now I’m closer to her than before. 

My heart pounds as I stare up at her in what feels an eternity before I take a deep breathe and start to realize the exit that was behind me has evaporated. Panic stabs through my chest as I turn around and pat my hands around what I thought was the entrance I came through. 

“But you just got here,” An ancient sounding voice croons like soft wind through leaves.

“I-uh you can talk..?” I manage to stutter as I jolt at her voice, leaving my hands to trace the wall, still feeling for an exit. 

“Of course,” she smiles and it is truly a thing of dangerous beauty, finally revealing what was behind those perfect lips. Her teeth are all horrifyingly sharp and pointed, yet white when I was expecting yellow and ancient. It was a predators mouth if I’d ever seen one. A chill drags itself down my spine and I realize this was a very dumb, very bad idea. 

“Wha-what are you?” I ask, steadying my voice. Keep her talking so you can figure out what the hell to do.

“I am your savior,” she answers, shifting her talons that glint like sharpened knives in the dim cave light. She cocks her head at me and to my shock glides gracefully from her perch to land right in front of me. I gasp and press my whole body to the wall, aware now of a stone shard that looks like its fallen from the ceiling not four feet from me. 

She notices my gaze and her eyes turn stone cold. 

“You fear me? When I saved you? You know, if you’d stayed out there you would have died. That storm would have swallowed you up, like countless others before you.” Anger laces through her slithering voice and I shrink back in fear.

“Th-thank you…I just don’t know where I am or what this is and my family will be so worried about me…” I say steadily, watching her expression change from anger to something more hidden, something like slow calculation. 

“You’re right to be afraid,” she looks away, back towards the darkest part of the cave and I get a chilling feeling there’s something unnerving in the depths there. 

“I know you,” She turns back towards me a second too late which gives me the jump to snatch the stone shard. I hold it up at her trying to keep my hands from trembling and telling myself I am damn brave and this creature will not have an easy meal today. 

“You dare!” She hisses, taking another step towards me, her wings unfurling in a whirl of glory. She is a nightmare to behold but I stand my guard. All I can think of is my family, expecting me to make it through this storm and praying to see me again. I wish I had seen them more often. I wish I could see them again. 

“Please, I don’t want to die, let me go and I’ll never bother you again,” I say.

Her rage is palpable and I’m sure I will have to fight off her gnashing teeth any moment now. Suddenly, she throws her wings down and turns away, showing long flowing locks of dark glossy brown hair. Her tail is long and the feathers swish violently as she composes herself. Something like sadness washes over her beautiful profile features and suddenly in that vulnerability she seems much more human than creature.

“Look over there,” she says slowly, her eyes flicking away. Confused, I glance to the opposite direction of where I grabbed my weapon and I see something gleaming in the corner by a moss covered boulder.  

“Take that and be gone. The time the storm would have taken you is over.” 

“I don’t- I don’t understand,” I say. 

“You don’t have to, but you will.” She murmurs, her voice now sliding through my ears like water over pebbles. 

I take several steps in which I make out what she had motioning to and I realize it’s a coin. I carefully pick it up, turning it over in my hands. Even through the dirt I see that it’s gold and on one side there’s an eagle, the other a woman with the words ‘Liberty’ above her. How uncanny. 

“Wait-who are you?” I try again, my awe at her winning out again in a final attempt to understand if this was actually my reality. I place the coin in my jacket pocket and step back to where I am still hoping they’ll be a way out. 

“The wind,” she answers and suddenly I hear a loud scrape behind in me. I whirl around to see my escape clear as day again, the shrubs surrounding it swaying in the winds against an angry sky outside the cave. I don’t think to look back again until I have leapt through the threshold. There is nothing there to show any sort of dwelling existed.

The truck is unharmed and the storm has moved well past the bridge in the distance as I drive home, mind reeling and body still shivering. The panic in my parents faces turns to tears as they hug me and unleash a torrent of worries they faced. This included wondering where I was to finally realizing she’s stuck somewhere unknown in the middle of a tornado. 

I don’t tell them what fully happened. Or about the creature, about her. Because maybe, it wasn’t real and if it was would anyone believe me?

Grandpa and grandma seem less worried, “I knew you were on your way back,”grandma says as she plants a kiss on my forehead and squeezes the air out of my lungs. Grandpa is quieter. “What happened out there?”

I take a deep breathe, desperately wanting to actually talk about what I saw. 

“I survived” I say instead.

It is close to eleven at night and I sit with a glass of strong bourbon and the gold coin in front of me at the dining room table.

I hear a shuffle to my side and I see my grandpa staring at me from the hallway behind me. He looks like he hasn’t even begun to try to sleep. Without a word his gaze flickers to the coin on the table. A stunned wave strikes his face, he mouth falling slightly open, eyes wide and unblinking. He walks slowly to the table and reaches a tentative hand for the now clean coin that I washed off earlier to get a better look at.

“Grandpa?” I breathe in confusion.

“You saw her,” he says this like those three words don't have the effect of my stomach dropping to the floor. I stare at him as he picks up the coin, flipping it between his fingers, the dim kitchen light illuminating a mixture of unreadable emotions on his face. 

“I was in the middle of a storm. I was outside securing what I could of our property when I saw her. Windblown chicken wire had banded together to form a mess that had caught one of her legs. Blood was everywhere and I watched her struggling to get out…I thought I was saving her. She was…so spectacularly mystical I couldn’t help it, I was drawn to her.” He continues to hold the coin, his voice steady as he stares off into the memory. 

“Thought you were saving her?” I dare to whisper.

“I freed her and next thing I know I’m in this cavern, swept away in her talons and begging for my life…” he pauses and looks up at me, his mouth set in a serious line, hand still now closed around the coin. “But she let me go, she got to know me and her kind normally despises men, kills them and hunts them even, but she took pity on me since I was trying to save her. She saw my heart, it looks like she saw yours too.”

“The coin, its yours?” I ask in disbelief and reach for my bourbon to take a sizable swig.

“1927-D Saint Gauden's Double Eagle,” he says without pause. “Very rare, and made of gold. She wanted a possession of mine. They usually take one from their…victims.”

I swallow another gulp and it does little to assuage my pounding heart. 

“When you were missing…” I finally say after a pause in which we stare at each other lost in thought. A week…he was with her for that long. I couldn’t imagine. 

“But what is she, did she ever tell you?” I ask urgently, her hazel blazing eyes flashing in my head, her talons as long as my forearm glistening in the cave light.  

“Wind spirit, servant of gods long gone.” He almost recites, like he’s heard it before, like it has haunted his mind for so long.

“She saved me,” I say softly. He nods and holds out his hand with the coin in it.

“Take this, it’s yours now. In case you may need it again.” He gives me a crooked grin and suddenly his eyes glow for a split second, as if lit from within. I pull my hand away not sure of what I saw, and he turns away back down the hallway.

“Goodnight sweet girl,” his voice carries a cryptic lilt and a trail of secrets follow him out. “I’m so glad you made it back.”

As I grip the coin tightly in my hand I have a peculiar and sickening sensation. 

Wind spirit, I’ll see you again.