Wings

‘What if those who try to find the real me get lost too?’

She looked at him incredulously, amazed at his faith in people. Then she laughed.

‘Aren’t you just a sweet summer child? What you should be worried about, is not other people getting lost, but you getting lost trying to find them.’

He furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of her statement. ‘Me trying to find them?’

‘Well yes. All your life you wait and wait for people who never show up, and somewhere in between, you lose yourself. Now you’ve got nobody.’

He hid himself in the dusty library that was so devoid of life, for who in a dancing school had the time to read?

He slipped in easily enough, the door unlocked, and he could immediately feel the pressing silence. Yet it felt like the library had been filled with hissing whispers, voices that gossiped about life and its lies. The thick layer of dust muffled his footsteps, and he was thankful for that, because they would be looking for him anyway, his teachers and admirers, and he didn’t want to make it easy for them. The silent library seemed to be judging him, surveying whether he should be trusted enough to start their gossip again, or whether they should wait until he was long gone.

In honesty he knew that they would choose the first one, even though he knew that he was the farthest person from trustworthy. It was simply the fact that he did not have much cause to care about other people’s worries and fears. All he did was care about dance.

One could see it on him, judging from his shiny shoes whose soles were worn, skinny legs that could easily have belonged to a deer, smooth, sculpted features hollowed from excess of work. His coat-hid playbills, playbills that showed a dancer dressed in black gliding smoothly across the stage, his presence confident and measured. His face was lit in a smooth smile that just knew that it belonged to talent, and a talent he had worked for. If you saw him, that was all that you would see, but you wouldn’t care to know deeper, for you would already be mesmerized by his talent. No one really probed deeper into who he was and what he did.

But inside, that was a whole different story, he thought as he eased himself into the aisle between two bookshelves, the books’ gilded covers long faded. But it was not those books that interested him, interesting as they might be. No, it was a hidden diary here, one that belonged to the only person who had ever meant anything to him.

He hunted for it, knowing that it was hidden here somewhere, he knew it from all the clues she had left, as cryptic as the feelings they had.

And then he found it. On the top shelf, hidden between a book on runes and a book on dance, was a book, faded velvet, and with a name written in cursive.

It was her name, a disastrous name, yet a name that belonged to no one now.

She had wanted him to find it, or was he driven mad by his thirst for knowledge, and for truth, yet he knew that he was searching for it where there was none. Even she would agree. She had sung it that night, before she decided that she would fly-

‘I find no answers to questions that I do not know.’

He opened it, half scared of what he would find inside, weighing what would scare him more-the knowledge that there had been something, or that there was nothing?

‘Monster,’ a faint voice inside him whispered. ‘A faithless, heartless monster.’

He knew whom that voice belonged to, even if he had heard it from outside the wall. Yet it was never the words that hurt him. It was the person who said them did. Maybe it hurt because it was true?

He shook his head, trying to stamp out the voices, trying to control his spiraling mind.

Long story short, it wasn’t working.

The first page was covered with scribbles, dots and dashes that meant nothing. He flipped through, trying to find more things, yet they all detailed a life at their studio, a life that he very much knew, and a life that was all he had ever known since the age of eight. He was twenty-two now, and felt like he had seen way too much life without seeing any of it. He saw memories that even he had in his mind, yet memories very differently perceived. What was life and sparkles for her, was seen through a sullen glass, full of worries and nonexistent memories of lost childhoods.

He finally found the things he was looking for, entries that he was afraid to see in his own mind, memories that lurked on the edges of consciousness, buried in rooms that he was afraid to go into.

He remembered the last sunlit day so clearly, the room full of sunlight, and she was staring at him as he danced across the room gracefully. She had been sketching something that day, a pair of wings.

The drawing stared back, a giant pair of black wings, so innocently started, yet turned to the devil’s wings in his mind. On the other page was a sketch he didn’t remember; yet it had been made the same day. It was him dancing, only the same pair of black wings sprouted from his back, and his dark eyes were dancing with a wild light, a strange one, that walked in shadows, yet it was still a light.

‘It’s still not good enough,’ he had remarked critically, staring at the reflection in the mirror.

‘Must be nice to have nice things, but that’s why I refuse to have them,’ she had answered.

He had looked back. ‘That makes no sense.’

‘The voices in my head make no sense, yet they’re still there.’

Wings, wings.

Looking at the drawing made him think of what was hidden deep inside the library, a product of an abandoned child’s madness, and a product of someone who had lost meaning to life. It was his.

He came across a piece of poetry.

‘Fly now, my pretty bird,

You who are made of feelings that I once had,

Fly across the skies, for I never want you back.

Fly with broken wings you will,

Because deeply broken you are,

Because flowers shall never reciprocate,

The deep love that you so hold in your heart.’

He froze, and stared across at the shelves.

Deep love, shall never reciprocate.

He felt a crack going through him, a crack he hadn’t felt ever since he was seven years old. So it had never been anything. Not for her, at least.

‘But there is nothing new in that, you idiot,’ an oily voice inside of him whispered.

And there was nothing new in people who loved you leaving you, not for him at least. He should never have fallen for it. Never.

Reading the diary made him feel worse than ever, the person who was ‘broken, but he works,’ was now broken, perhaps broken beyond repair.

In his head the shadows that so desperately tried to grasp him now had full reign, for she who could stop them was in a grave now, and broke him while dead.

He hastily flipped through the pages, only to feel worse at what stared back at him from the pages. It was his story that stared back, a story that he had never wanted to read.

He saw a six-year-old boy crying in the hallway, waiting for people who never came back. He saw him go into children’s homes and retain a childlike faith in people. The faith that people came back. And then when more people let him down, he hid his pain behind a smile.

And somewhere in between real tears and fake smiles, that child became mature, and love became locked in abandoned alleyways in his heart.

Then of course, came dancing and a whole roster of people calling him cold and faithless. Those words never mattered, until she said them.

It was so strange how a single person could so easily break an organized life, throw it into shambles, and leave.

This was a different kind of ‘leaving,’ for the person who left had been trusted and loved, only the love had been a little too late. Not to mention the fact that love had ruined the only thing that had ever been there for him. They said that a dancer died two deaths, one when the stopped dancing, and the actual one, and the first one would be way more painful.

So he was dead now, a dead boy loving a dead girl, there was a tale to make men weep. Or fools, for that matter, for who else would believe in the power of love but fools?

And now she was gone, to a place where even he could not reach her.

The worst part was that more than sadness, there was only a plain kind of emptiness, an emotionless feeling. He had seen it a long time coming when the moves no longer vibrated in his heart and soul.

For the last time, he regretted breaking his rules of ‘trusting’ people. He never should have trusted her.

‘But love makes you do crazy things, right?’ his father’s voice echoed faintly in his head. Like father, like son.

But both had known not to trust people because ‘I love you,’ could easily turn into ‘I’m leaving you,’ or just a silent goodbye, and the silent goodbye would be the worst death of all.

So three deaths.

He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, and most of all he wanted to fly away from the darkness that slowly tore him up inside.

And as his fingernails dug into his skin, he knew that he was going to fly with the wings. Not him, per se, but his monster would, and this monster would be no angel. It would be borne from the most evil devil that heaven had sent, as a punishment for those who labeled it ‘love.’ His thoughts wandered to the dark basement below, where a pair of huge black wings were locked inside a glass case, one of the greatest mysteries the school hid. But now they would find a new owner, and unleash the magic that had always been there.

'Do you hate someone?'

Why yes, he did, and it was the one who made him believe in love when there wasn't any.

‘Sometimes, it hurts to go through the memories that broke you, because they still have the power to break you again.’ He remembered his mother saying.

You were right, mother. You were right.