A wish for wings

A dream repeated night after night of a memory she wishes she could forget. Sometimes, things are forbidden for a reason

“Mama said I mustn’t”

“Your mama doesn’t have to know. And besides, she’s wrong about them. Maybe if we ask nicely they’ll let us be one of them”

“Morgan, I really don’t think this is a good idea…”

“You worry too much. This is going to be awesome”

The dream always starts the same. With the memory of Morgan convincing her to do what she should have never done. In her dream the contrasts always seemed surreal, how dark the night was despite the fact that the sky seemed to be full of stars and the moon hung fat and full like a second sun. Morgan’s figure danced like a ghost ahead of her as they wove through the trees in the forest behind her home. The connection was always ironic to her now. It always amazed her how real it felt, night after night after night for the last fifteen years she had dreamt this same dream in excruciating detail. She could still feel the weight of the book in her arms, the musty leather cover cracked and dry beneath her small fingers. The ancient tome was almost as big as she was and older than her by a millennia. As she got older she marveled that it still existed at all. A book so ancient should have been crumbling to dust but there it was being manhandled through the forest by a seven year old girl. It smelled its age. In her dreams the smell of dust and leather overpowered even the pine trees that surrounded her. To this day the smell of leather could still cause her to break out into a cold sweat.

The clearing gave way before her, every blade of grass seeming to shine a brilliant green that couldn’t have possibly been true. It always went like this, her world painted in impossible colors but even upon waking she couldn’t remember it being any different. Her dream had replaced reality. She propped the book up between the roots of a tree and tried one last time to back out. The attempt had been half-hearted, after all what little girl doesn’t want to meet a fairy? Morgan hadn’t even bothered to respond. She already knew she had won. Instead she knelt beside her and opened the book, the forbidden book, the one she should have never stolen from the library. The one she never could have stolen had her parents been home, but they were out celebrating Samhain and her elderly sitter had fallen asleep on the couch hours ago when she thought the two little girls had gone to bed.

“Who will we summon then?”

Morgan’s shrug in the dark, her long blond hair slipping from her slight shoulder.

“What does it matter? Any of them would be wonderful!”

“Because you have to summon them by name three times or else they won’t come. Besides you don’t want to summon just any fairy. Goblins and trolls and the like are all smelly and ugly. If I’m going to summon one, I want a pretty one, with wings.”

She doesn’t remember why they whispered these things. Maybe for fear of being caught and found out at their forbidden foray. Maybe just because it was magic and magic required reverence like in church. Or maybe because it was a secret they shared and all secrets should be spoken as a whisper lest you frighten them off. As they spoke they flipped through the pages the single lantern they carried casting a flickering light upon the yellowed pages, illuminating images in a style that hadn’t been used for a thousand years and words in a delicate calligraphy that almost seemed to dance on the page as you looked at it. Finally, Morgan stopped and jabbed her finger at a page. Her nails had been painted a glittery pink.

“This one. She’s perfect. She’s pretty, she has wings, and her name almost looks like mine.”

Morgan smiled at her, a happy cheesy smile. The lantern picked out her freckles and the gap where she had lost a tooth but the adult hadn’t grown in yet and her bright blue eyes had almost sparkled with joy at the adventure they were about to have. But Kierna felt a thrill run up her spine. She knew that name. She’d heard that name. She’d heard it in one of her mama’s stories about the fair folk. She must remember not to call them fairies, they hate that. But she couldn’t remember, as hard as she tried. Try Harder! She wants to scream at herself. Don’t do this! Trust your instincts and run! Each night she dreamed this same dream and each night she desperately wanted to change what happened but she is trapped in this same scene. Each morning Kierna wakes exhausted from the effort of willing things to change, but it’s far too late for that. Instead she says

“OK”

Two fateful letters, laced with hesitation but said none the less and thus her fate was sealed and that of her dearest friend. They had gone about setting everything up. They had performed the ritual with all the diligence and care that a small child could muster. Images of a small women similar to Tinkerbell that shone with light and who’s wings rained glitter down upon them that let them fly with her danced through their heads and the called the Morrigan’s name. Once. Twice. Thrice. And upon the last syllable the lantern went out. In her dream, even the moon and stars seemed to darken. Between one blink and the next there she stood in all her glory, not at all like they had imagined. She was beautiful, but it was a cold beauty. Her face seemed to be carved out of marble, for it was fair and hard and cold. Her black eyes stared out of her pale face, stared at them with an emotion she couldn’t place at the time but she knew all too well now.

It was rage. An intense burning rage that somehow left her completely still. There were no lines to mark her smooth skin, no furrowing of brows or downturn of lips, but it was there all the same. She did have wings like they had wanted but they did not glitter with golden sparkles. Instead they were the black feathers of a raven’s wing, or a crow. Rather than glowing, they seemed to absorb the light around them so that the air around them seemed to darken. She was not small at all but loomed over them with a tall and elegant frame hugged by a black gown that seemed to highlight every curve and yet the edges were vague, like she was clothed in smoke. She had a copper scent that burned Kierna’s nose. Had she recognized that scent then she might have run, dragging her friend with her, but she didn’t. She didn’t recognize the blood and she didn’t notice the nails, long claw like talons on the end of her fingers. But she saw them now. She had dreamed this dream so many times that she took in everything she had missed the first time around.

The woman stood in the circle they had made to hold her. She stared down on them with her burning eyes and the seconds seemed to drag out into eternity. This was always the point that her stomach clenched. She knew what happened next. Finally the woman spoke in a voice that rang like crystal.

“You have summoned me. What is your wish?”

Morgan grins at the lady and leaps in with her wish before Kierna can stop her. Before she can say a word of warning.

“I want wings like you! I want to fly to fairyland!” Morgan all but yelled.

And then the Morrigan smiled. Her eyes still burned and yet the smile did touch them. She took joy in what she was about to do. Her too sharp teeth should have been a warning. Why didn’t Morgan run? She could have still run. The circle still held her. But instead the Morrigan reached out her hand.

“Shake my hand and the deal is struck. I will take you back to fairyland with me upon your very own wings.”

“No!” She had screamed it. Even then she had tried to stop her friend. But Morgan was too innocent, too naïve, too trusting, and it had been her end. She reached across and took the Morrigan’s hand and broke the circle. In only a moment everything had gone so wrong. The moment flesh touched flesh, Morgan began to change. She got her wish. For a fairy never lies. But instead of the beautiful wings she had wanted, the girl was changed into a crow before her eyes. It was not a fast change. From where she stood, she could hear the bones breaking over and over and over as they shrunk and reformed. The feathers poked through her skin like a million barbs and when they came through, they were soaked in the girl’s blood, looking more red than black. The beak forced its way through her skin, ripping it open and forcing her teeth from her mouth as the fell from her face onto the earth before her.

And through it all she screamed, she screamed and she screamed and she screamed in an unending wail that slowly changed as she changed. She looked at me in those final moments before her beautiful blue eyes were crushed by her shrinking skull, spattering forward in twin fountains of gore. Only to be replaced by small beady black eyes. As awful as this scene was to witness, it was that look, that final pleading that was the very worst of it. In that moment I didn’t know if she wanted me to save her or to kill her. I wished I could have done either, but all I could do was scream. All I wanted was to run as far away as I could. To go home to my bed where it was safe. To wake up and realize that it wasn’t true that it had never happened. But her scream drew the Morrigan’s attention from the grisly sight she had been watching so intently. And now that the circle was broken, she was free to leave. She strode toward me. Each graceful step crossing enormous distances that her mind simply refused to accept. No matter how many times she saw this scene she could never see clearly how she had done it. She reached out that taloned hand for me. Her intent was clear, I would suffer the same fate. She reached for me and I lept back, my whole body arching away from her. Every muscle in my body strained to put as much distance between us as possible.

Her wicked smile suddenly changed though. As I moved back, my necklace, which had previously been hidden in my shirt flew forward and the tiniest tip grazed her finger. It was an ugly thing made of iron instead of silver or gold and the pendant was a little yellow flower called st john’s wort encased in amber. I didn’t like it, but my mother made me promise to never take it off and back then I still listened to my mother. The necklace seemed to burn her and she retracted her hand quickly to her chest. Her eyes appraised me and for the first time she spoke to me and me alone.

“I will not forget this. I have a longer memory than you have life. One day you will not be protected. And on that day, I will come for you.”

She turned and strode back to the thing that was once my best friend. The feathers had already dried but still they were crusted with her blood. She looked up into a nearby tree then and raised her hand. A raven flew from the tree and landed on her arm. She whispered something to it then in a language I did not understand and yet sat like a knowing in the back of my mind. If I could only bring it forward, I might understand. And all while she spoke she stared at me from beneath lashes so thick they almost looked like feathers themselves. And just as suddenly the bird flew from her hand. This was always the point I finally ran like I should have long before. I ran but I heard the flapping of wings behind me. That was the sound that always carried me into wakefulness, than and the sound of my own scream. My family had long since stopped coming when I screamed. They had become so used to it that it didn’t even faze them anymore.

Kierna opened emerald green eyes and stared at the ceiling of the room. Sunlight gleamed off her buttercup yellow walls and helped to dispel the darkness. Her curly red hair was a snarled mess beneath her from all the tossing and turning. She slowly pulled herself back to the present as she slowly got up and went into the shower to clean the sweat off from the night before. She had never seen Morgan again. They had found her several hours later lost, dirty and bruised in the woods. The forest she had known her whole life had seemed to shift around her that night and she couldn’t seem to find her way home. She had told them what had happened. Told her parents and the police and later the psychiatrist. But no one believed her. No one except her mother. Shock they had called it. They told her that it was her mind’s way of dealing with a traumatizing event, making up things to make it seem less real, but it had always felt real to her.

They never found Morgan, just a clearing in the woods with blood and teeth and skin. They all assumed that she had been murdered in front of me. And that my mind had found a way to adjust. Years of therapy later, I almost believed them. Some even told me to pretend that what I remembered wasn’t real and then maybe the real memories would come back. Maybe then I could help describe the real killer. They had kept an eye out for someone matching the basics of my description. Tall women, black hair, brown eyes, pale skin. But the sketch they had drawn didn’t really capture her at all. How could it? How could paper capture the otherworldly element that radiated off her. They brought in dogs and CSI and investigators and for months they searched. But as time passed and nothing new was found, the case went cold. Eventually, most people moved on and forgot about it. But not me. I remembered. The rational adult wanted to believe everything was ok and that the murderer was long gone and I was now safe. But every night I dreamed and I remembered and I knew she would come for me.

 

Author's Note

Possible prelude to a longer story. Worth continuing?