Wings

I saw her fall—right out of the sky and into a crumpled heap on the cold canyon floor. I saw the shaky movements that jumbled together to form steps, and I saw the tears and frustration on her face as glorious white wings spread and reached back toward the sky, but there was no wind to carry her home. I waited till her sobbing fury became only echoes in the canyon, then I approached. I didn’t say anything. I just crouched next to her broken spirit and waited for her to climb out of her tears. I didn’t wait long. Swollen eyes glanced slowly over me and I saw shattered irises hiding a broken soul. There was a touch of disdain that flickered as I offered my hand.

Her hands were ribbons running light as lace across mine as I helped her up. So this is an angel? All in white, just like the book says; she etched a contrasting picture against the dusty brown seats of my truck. We’re just lucky that I got one of the newer models though, I don’t think those wings could have fit in anything smaller.

Annie’s eyes were as wide as the clock on our wall when I brought this angel in, but she didn’t say a word—no one said a word. It was a silence that could echo on the rock walls we were surrounded by—echo for days.

Annie never argued about me bringing strangers home. A broken angel wasn’t any different. I think the shattered atmosphere that surrounded those white wings reminded her of our daughter. I sure saw it at least. There was a whole other world in Elise’s mind that we never knew about. It was well hidden behind the silvery silence she emanated. Never have I seen another girl who can have such a presence in so much silence. But Wings here, she carried that same hushed stillness.

A couple times we tried talking to her. Did she have a reason to be here? Was she really an angel? And of course Annie couldn’t stop with the “heaven” questions. I admit I was curious too, but her eyes—the stare she would give us; blue eyes melted into broken pools that solidified into silver ice. It gave me shivers every time, but I knew she wasn’t angry—not at us at least.

Months passed with the angel. Sometimes I would see her outside when I came back from working. She’d be stretching her wings and flexing them, but she never could do anything more than reach. Then she’d just look at the sky, frustrated and hurt, and eventually wander back inside. We gave her Elise’s old room, barely touched and just as still and silent as its new resident. Sometimes I would walk past it to bring the dogs in and I would see her fingers whispering over different memoirs; Elise’s rocking horse, one of the button eyes still missing from when the dogs got too rough. Her Raggedy Ann doll was still on the dresser, and Elise wore her down till the name fit. And books—endless books. She never stopped reading.

The angel’s eyes would show something different then, in Elise’s room; not the shattered silence that we’ve become accustomed to. It was an almost loving curiosity, like she wanted to understand something she already knew about. Sometimes I wondered if she did know. Annie mentioned it a couple times when we were settling for bed. "Do you think she knows?" she would whisper. I would shrug. Annie had questions, I had the same questions, and we both had the same silent angel who held those answers behind cracked eyes and broken wings.

"Todd, we should name her," it was a Sunday afternoon, quiet, as had become the norm for our house. Annie had given Wings a random assortment of books to look over, and was almost surprised that she could read. At the same time though, I told her, would you ever expect an angel to be illiterate?

We both looked at our silent guest as she read, trying to decide if there was a name that could measure up to the enormous white wings draped across the green chair she had settled into. What earthly title could illuminate this angel? What wouldn’t just bring her down to our mortal level? Annie and I pondered on that for days, wondering if there was a name that wouldn’t normalize the wings that made her so distinct. It was around then that I witnessed the angel’s first true acknowledgement of us.

Wings was watching me with the newspaper outstretched in her hands. The entire house seemed to freeze—even down to the dust being twirled around the room by the ceiling fan. At first I didn’t know what she wanted me to do, I was so uncertain under those solid eyes. I could see the question in them though, twirling and twisting just like the dust was doing moments ago.

I cleared my throat and looked at the page she had folded the paper to with the ribbon-like hands she had first offered me in the canyon. “SIX CHILDREN TAKEN FROM SCHOOL AND HELD FOR RANSOM” it read, and as I scanned the article I tried to form an answer for humanity’s greatest flaw. I heard Annie sympathize with the article as she read over my shoulder. "You want to know why that happened?" she asked the angel, who nodded, switching her silent gaze to her, but I don’t think either of us knew how to explain a broken world to a broken angel.

"Sometimes," I started, "sometimes the world doesn’t work right." She watched me as I tried to explain. I could see her eyes searching my face, looking for more—wanting more. "People aren’t perfect," I added. Her face grew sad, and she once again climbed back into the silent aura she carried on her giant white wings.

Every once in a while, Wings would emerge from her shattered stillness and prompt those same simple questions that had no simple answers. Piece by piece I tried to explain humanity to her, and I watched as the sadness on her face pulled her back into the still and quiet of whatever world she lived inside of in her head. Once, as I closed the door to my truck and turned to walk inside, I saw her outside stretching her wings. She had paused to run her hands down the feathery ridges curving around her shoulders. Concern flashed across her face, and for a moment I caught the faintest glimpse of how tiring and frustrating it must be to have a way home weighing on you constantly, white and glorious, but you can’t use it. I cut across the gravel driveway to the lawn; her expression didn’t change when I put my hand on her shoulder. "I know you want to go home," I said, "but you’re always going to be welcome here." I didn’t know if she needed to hear that, but she nodded to me and I dropped my hand.

"We could take her to a doctor?" Annie was becoming more concerned with Wings. I stared at her for a second. "Well…maybe a vet?" I raised my eyebrows and glanced over at Wings watching the news on TV. I told her that I didn’t think a vet could help, or even if he could, the angel probably wouldn’t go. Annie settled into silence and watched Wings, as did I. I couldn’t read the angel; the fall had broken more than her ability to fly, there was no emotion on her face that would let us into that world she hid in. We didn’t know how to help her any more than she knew how to take those last steps to take off.

The next time the angel came inside from stretching her wings she was holding a giant feather in her hands, staring at it in confusion and reflecting the sadness that laced her silence. She was watching me as she held out the feather. I took it from her; it was softer than I thought, but the spine was stiff and strong. Still it was light, gentle—just like her hands. I twirled it as I looked it over, not sure what I was looking for, but the concern in her eyes kept my attention on finding whatever it was. Annie handed me my glasses as I examined, but nothing new became clear. The angel walked away, and my heart froze in my failure. She returned shortly though, to my relief, and was holding one of the pillows from her room. I watched silently as she took the feather and held it against the white pillow case. Suddenly I understood. "Honey, her feathers are dulling" Annie announced the conclusion I came to. They were; in contrast to the white pillow case, her feather became grey and lost the glory I knew they had when she had fallen.

"Was she sick?" I had asked. She shook her head. "Did she know what was wrong?" Again, she shook her head. She placed the feather on the table and walked back to her room—brow furrowed as she stroked her greying wings. Annie and I were both worried, and it grew everyday as we saw that the changing of the angel’s wings seemed to be driving the cracks in her eyes even deeper. We had our first fight in a long time then, about whether we really should take the angel to a doctor. Annie had strong mothering instincts that had been dormant since Elise, and the sorrowing, winged figure in the next room had awakened them. She needed to protect her more than she could protect our daughter. I convinced her to give the angel time before exposing her to the world. The next morning though the angels wings looked like they had been shaded with charcoal. Ash grey and furled, they seemed to slump with the sorrow the angel showed on her face.

For a few moments she just stroked her wings. I could see on her face that she was puzzling something out; she was holding one of the books she has been reading—one of Elise’s, Where the Red Fern Grows—and she kept staring at it like you would a puzzle piece that just wouldn’t fit. Then her face was still and her eyes were sad. When she looked around at us though, her eyes were—perhaps for the first time—aware of us. And just like that we became part of her puzzle.

Wings hardly watched the news anymore, or read Elise’s books. She would just sit outside on the porch, absently running her fingers through the dogs’ fur. Still though, her wings darkened. Shade by shade I could see them fading to be filled in with charcoal dust.

"Todd," Annie was looking at me, "do you think that’s why her wings are getting darker? She’s been here too long? Maybe she can’t…you know…survive as an angel on Earth?" I shrugged, mulling over what she had said. "Do you think they’ll just…fall off?" I said I hoped not. I was sure of very few things with our silent guest, but I knew that this angel needed her wings.

The angel’s wings were black. It took me a moment to realize—I had become accustomed to their slowly dimming color. She knew it too, knew that they were black. I could see the fear on her face, but I could also see anger. It trailed behind her charred wings and attached itself to whatever object her gaze rested on. In this silent blaze of anger, it was the TV and the bookshelf that had to swallow a mouthful of burning rage.

Elise’s room had no more books. I didn’t discover till much later that the angel had stored them in various drawers and closet corners. Annie was the first to notice though that the book shelves were empty. "Does she not like them? She was pouring over them just a while ago." I told her I had no idea, but the image of her holding Elise’s book like a mismatched puzzle piece came to mind. Maybe she had solved the puzzle. "Do you think she destroyed them?" The simmering fear in Annie’s voice made it shake. She had always held out hope—always preserved everything just in case.

We gave up on watching the news. It made Wings restless. The paper too—we took to a brief glance before tossing it. It didn’t take long though before a connection with the world had to be made. Even within the fortress of the canyon walls, we needed to be informed.

"The world never ceases to amaze." Annie had finally turned on the news. We had missed two shootings and a kidnapping.

I think the angel gave up then. I think she succumbed to being broken in a broken world. It was like Elise all over again. I could see Annie struggling with it. Hope never died in her mind. The windows were always clear and she would keep the door unlocked as long as she could. This angel that we had though—this angel that was rotting in front of us—had fanned the embers of Annie’s hope even brighter. She would always say that there was hope, because the walls of her mind couldn’t absorb any other truth.

It was Thursday and as I pulled in from work and saw Wings petting the dogs on the porch, I resolved to be hopeful too. To hope for a different ending than that of my daughter’s. I sat down on the steps, careful to avoid the big, black wings spread across the porch. I talked to her, knowing that she was in that rotting, silent world that was only hers. I told her that she was wrong. I told her that this mortality she was in didn’t break you, it made you human. And if humanity is so broken, then someone must have an eye on us to keep on fixing us. Somehow, I said, it had to be worth it.

Wings looked at me for a long moment, and I still felt the restless uncertainty bubbling inside me that her eyes gave me. Then she walked away. Black feathers brushed the dirt up on the ground as I watched for a moment, then went inside. She never followed. We searched, but that was the last time we ever saw the angel. At first, Annie’s world collapsed again. She was torn—I could see. Part of her was still with Elise, and she thought that maybe some of it had come back with the angel. Then the angel left, and she couldn’t keep herself from ripping again.

Annie had to heal, when she did though she still had hope—new hope. She likes to think that the angel learned to fly again—that she went home. I’m not sure. I never could read her, and that last face she gave me held the same sad cracks and shattered silences that it always had. I have had dreams though; dreams that illuminate white wings on shards of grey ash. Sometimes she turns, and I can see her face, and I’ll ask her why she fell. Her wings would arch and reach, and that flurry of wind she’s been waiting for since crumpling to the ground would come—and she would fly with wings that had bled black till there was nothing but glorious white left.

Then she’d smile, and the smile that graced her face then changed everything I would remember about it. Sunshine would bounce off this face in the afternoon as the dogs licked it. Giggles would ripple from the mouth until they reached Annie’s smiling face. This face would become the face I’d cherished for years and had long since left dusty in a vacant room.