Rachael Jones: The Fall Shall Further the Flight In Me

She fixed me with a piercing look. “What do you mean , ‘what rain’?”

“Right. I’m sorry. I forgot,” I admitted. My hand trembled, and tea splashed from my cup. When I bent to pour myself more, rocks clicked in my pockets and a trickle of pebbles bounced around my feet.

My mother gaped at them. “What’s this?” She grabbed my arm, and more stones spilled, and without their weight my feet left the ground instantly like terrified sparrows. “You — you’ve been stalling! How long have you been ready?”

“You don’t understand.” I tried to pull away, but how did one gain traction, treading on air?

Her fingers dug like claws into my wrist. “Oh, Daughter. Oh, you mustn’t do this. Have you learned nothing from me?”

The prayers buzzed and nipped at my face. My feet dug into air. She was only one lame old woman, and somehow I yanked away, stumbled several steps higher. I floated level with the high windows. Inside, wings fluttered in the rafters. I pounded on the glass. “Sano!”

“Ananda!” she yelled back, voice muffled through the glass.

“Who are you hiding in there?” my mother demanded. She tried the door, but it was locked. Sano’s flapping grew more frantic.

I skipped across air over the hut, but did not know how to descend. I had so little sin left. Every step carried me a little higher. I knelt over the roof and dipped a hand downward until my fingertips just brushed the straw.

The prayers swarmed in my eyes, and I swatted at them, casting for something to weigh me down, anything to bring me near her. A chimney swift hovered near my shoulder, its tiny vestigial talons almost invisible against its underside. Down in my empty pocket, I fished out a little brass key — the one that unlocked the door.

Down you go now. Down the chimney, little swift.

Thunder rolled, but it did not rain.

There is another way the holy women of the sky can learn to fall. It is not artful. It is not celebrated, or even condoned. But it is very, very swift.

If a woman wants to reach the ground in a hurry, meditation will not do. But there is no faster way to still one’s wings than to tear them off. As many as you can reach.

One’s errand would have to be very urgent to attempt such a thing.

She had changed during her time in the hut. I’d expected her wounds to heal over, but instead bones had grown like shoots from the many, many holes. Some had even sprouted a fuzzy black down. They all flapped at once. I could just make out Sano’s body at the center of the scintillating sphere as she stepped into the yard. Her feet no longer touched ground. She must have been lighter than me, judging from the speed of her ascent.

“Ananda!” she cried out. “’Tis myself that is ascending now!”

I grabbed at a wing-bone as she rose past me. It cut me like a blade, but I pulled her close, clasped her through the beating flurry until her wings embraced me back. One by one, they ceased their frenetic flapping and rested against me. Slowly we descended, together heavy enough to fall.

“Don’t let go,” Sano said.

“I won’t.”

The saints of Earth leave the ground in search of Heaven. They step on water and ascend the air. Falling is an art reserved for demons.

What if, when the saint reached Heaven, the angels were amazed? If the saint explained Earth wasn’t Heaven at all, but only another destination? If the saint’s coming caused a great debate among the people of innumerable wings? If their priestesses called it blasphemy, but their people, raised on falling dreams, saw a way to Paradise?

What if lightning were not a natural phenomenon, but the war machines of furious angels, weapons against a schism?

My grandmother had reached Heaven after all.

“It was years ago, and thy grandmother ascending in our midst, so confused,” said Sano. “And asking wouldn’t we take the prayers from her, but we could not, to be sure. We are not gods or angels.” Our toes touched my hut’s roof. We hugged tighter, afraid to lose each other. “We do not send the rain. We only go to war.”

“Why did you come here?” I asked her.

“Because she said they would have sent another like her, and another, and another, until someone showed them their errors. Our priestesses, the rumors they quelled this time, and my people they convinced thy saint was mad. But if another saint of Earth arrives in our city, it will be war for certain. It needs to end.”

“Will you toss aside the prayers of others so easily?” asked my mother. “Oh, you will fall too, and then what will we do?” She knelt among the roses, cane in lap, cheeks wet with tears. Pity pricked my heart. My whole life I had been intended to carry their prayers to Heaven. It had been no different for my mother, only no messenger came in time to save her from a wasted life, a pointless fall.

I clutched Sano tighter. “I am sorry, Mother. I won’t be like Grandmother. I can’t.”

Sano whispered in my ear. “Let go, and trust me.”

I let go of her waist. The moment we lost contact, her wings fluttered, and she rose like a kite. My own lightness bore me up alongside her. Afraid, I clutched at her, and Sano gave me her hand. It felt cool and clawed and secure in my palm. Hand in hand, we shot straight as arrows toward the mountains, neither falling nor flying as long as we touched.

There is another way to fall: toward someone.

My Love and I have become flying, falling things. We have no need of a Paradise above or below. We are not saints or demons. We are fallen women. We are broken angels. We have an embrace that anchors, a kiss that soars, and a love that balances entropy.

We sow our garden from seeds the swifts bring us, and whatever grows, we eat with thanks. We dine on plums and parsley and rose petal tea.

One evening late in the fall, when leaves paint the ground in sunset colors, Sano points upward and shouts my name. High above, a dark speck floats down from the clouds: an old woman descending step by careful step.

Rachael K. Jonesgrew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Contrary to the rumors, she is probably not a secret android. Rachael is a World Fantasy Award nominee, Tiptree Award honoree, and winner of Writers of the Future. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of venues worldwide, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons , and all four Escape Artists podcasts. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.