Flying, Again

//Are you ready?// Gunther asked me.

I flapped my wings a couple of times, //I think so. It still hurts a little, but mostly just stiff.//

//Well, come this way, then.//

I hopped after him. I hated this. Eagles didn’t ‘walk’ well, we were built for flying. And this corridor was long, small, with many doorways. It must have taken several of them to haul me in here. I was glad I had been unconscious.

We came through one final doorway, and I stopped, blinking my eyes. It was so bright… and I had been inside so long. I stood on the back of a ledge, still in the shadow, and still the light hurt my eyes. I blinked a few more times, and then hopped forward, then again, until I stood on the edge.

We weren’t very high up, here, perhaps only a half mile as the Grubbers counted such things. My heart leapt at the open air, and, with a giant leap, I took off. Free, into the air. Diving down and finding a thermal, which took me up, up, up….

“Whaawhoa!”

I looked over, a couple of miles to my right, and there was Kh. “Kh!” I said, and the two of us rose, together, moving closer and closer, until talking was more comfortable.

“We were sure you were dead!”

“Almost,” I said, “my wing was broken.”

Gheerraa looked at me, “Your wing was broken? How did you survive?”

“I… the Grubbers fed me.”

“The Grubbers?? They fed you??”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ok. Come to club?”

“No. No, I have something to do first.”

“Oh?”

“I need to talk to someone…”

I waited, in the thermals nearby, until Mom had flown off and Dad had taken her place. I’m sure they had seen me, but no one said anything until I landed at the edge of the eyrie.

“Whaawhoa?”

“Father.”

“You shouldn’t come here.”

“I had to come. I had to talk to you.”

“I see. We were worried. We had heard… we had heard you were dead, actually.”

“Oh, yes. I suppose you did. I’m sorry. Well, as you see, I’m alive.”

“Your mother will be glad.”

“How is the egg?” I asked. I knew father was right, that mother would be glad, but I also knew what occupied all of her thoughts.”

“Good, good.”

“This time.”

Father looked at me. For a long time I said nothing, then, “I found out that I was never an egg.”

“I see,” Father said, and then looked down at his leg, and began preening himself. I knew he would say nothing else, and I turned and took off.

“Whaawhoa!” Jehenna said. “Gheerraa told us that you were alive.”

“Yes, I am alive,” I said. “Have I missed any poetry?”

--

It was late the next afternoon before anyone worked up the courage to ask me about my time with the Grubbers and, in the end, it was Whehehnarr.

“So, you took food from the Grubbers?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said, and hid my head under my wing, just for a minute, working up my own courage. I had known I would have to tell them. “Yes,” I repeated, pulling it out again, “and there is something I have to tell you.”

They all waited, patiently, and I finally managed… “I found out I was never an egg.”

None of them said anything for a few minutes, until, finally, Jehenna said, “I wondered. You knew all those words, and you have always shied away from certain subjects.”

“Are you… are you mad?” I asked.

“Mad?” she asked, surprised, while Gheerraa came behind me and started preening me. “No. Whyever would we be mad? My own mother was never an egg. But, how did you find it out?”

“I met some people that I had known from before I wasn’t an egg,” I said.

“Really?!” Whehehnarr said, crowding closer. “How did you find out?”

“I… I can still speak some of that language.”

“So that is why they didn’t kill you?”

“Yes.”

We didn’t say anything for a few minutes more but, over the next two days, they got the whole story from me. Without saying anything about it, they all did all the hunting and kept inviting me to share. I knew if I had crashed somewhere where they could have gotten at me, they would have done the same thing when I was injured… just as I would have done.

“What are you going to do now?” Jehenna asked, two days later, when the two of us were coasting through some thermals near the Poetry Club.

“I’m going to have to go back and meet them, at least,” I said, referring to my parents.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “Mother still remembers some of how the Grubbers live, and it would be… wrong of you not to do so.”

“Yes, yes, I think that is right,” I said.

“Well, I hope you will come back,” she said.

I looked at her, feeling things neither of us could say. “Yes… yes, I will be coming back.”

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