To anyone who found their way here looking for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales: I'm sorry to disappoint you. This is just a random person online taking his idea and his questions, and doing her own Calendar of Tales. You're more than welcome to stay and read my story too, though I have to warn you, I am definitely no Neil Gaiman.
Here's how this works: I asked a question. People answered the question. I used one of the answers to write a short story based on it.
___________________________________________________________________
If August could speak, what would it say?
In Colombia August is the windy month. I think that it could whisper freedom. (answer from Camilo. The one from April.)
The wind whipped in my hair, tugging on my wings and whispering sweet things in my ear as I sat looking over the valley spreading out beneath me, a river flowing between the tall peaks. The sun was setting behind me and to my left, bringing out every drop of color around me. It was a beautiful sight, one that I had always loved. This view was home, after all. The beauty was still there, but now it filled me with unease I couldn’t quite shake.
Someone landed behind me, light on their feet. I turned my head to see who it was, then turned back. Fen sat down next to me.
“How’s the wing?” he asked after a moment of companionable silence, clearly trying his best to be casual.
“Aching,” I said. He waited to see if I would continue. I didn’t.
“What did the doctor say?” he prompted.
“That it should be fine for flying, as long as I take it easy and don’t try too much too soon.”
“Tessa, that’s great! That’s where you’ve been all afternoon? Where did you go? How was it?”
I gave my friend a tired look. It took him a while to realise what the look meant. The smile on his face vanished.
“You didn’t go?”
I shook my head and turned my gaze back to stare over the valley.
“How could you not go? Getting back in the air is all you’ve been talking about for months! Do you know how many times you’ve asked me how long until late summer? You hate feeling like you’re chained to the earth.”
“I know. I just… I got nervous,” I admitted. “I wanted to wait until you could go with me.”
“You’ve been waiting for me half the afternoon? You could have come get me. I’m sure Ginnie would have let me leave early.”
“I didn’t want to bother you,” I told him. “It’s okay. And I think I needed some time to just get used to the idea. I’m not scared, exactly. I feel like maybe I should be, after a fall like that, but I’m just nervous. It feels odd to think about putting weight on the wing after so long of avoiding even moving it because it hurts. So I didn’t want to go alone.”
“Well, I’m here now,” he assured me. “Do you want to go now?”
“I think…” I paused. “Just sit with me for a while longer?”
“Okay,” he said. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I leaned my head on his shoulder and we stared silently out over the valley as the sun set. The first stars slowly began to appear on the horizon opposite to the sunset.
Eventually, I sighed, shrugged his arm off me and stood. I flexed my wings, just feeling the movement. I looked down at Fen and smiled, nervous.
“Will you fly with me?” I asked, holding out my hand to him. He smiled, a smile far more confident than mine, and let me pull him to his feet.
“Ready?” he asked, and I nodded solemnly. He grinned, and together we stepped off the cliff before I could think for too long.
I spread my wings out and winced at the pain shooting through the left one. But it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. As my wings caught the wind, for one glorious moment I was free for the first time in what felt like forever. The only thing in any direction was air, and wind, and life. I closed my eyes and simply enjoyed the feeling of my untied hair whipping around my face.
I flapped, and almost fell. It hurt. So much. A lot more than I had expected, based on how the wing had felt being moved when my weight wasn’t on it, how it had felt a blink of an eye earlier. And if that wasn’t enough, I realised it was weak. Months of rest had almost healed it, but had also weakened the muscles I needed for this. On both sides, but the hurt left side was even weaker than the right. The unevenness of the flap made me twist and lose some of my balance.
I gave Fen a panicked look. It was too early. I shouldn’t have taken to the air yet. Not this high up. Definitely not this time of the day, when the winds were blowing down from the mountain and into the valley, taking me down with them.
From just the look, Fen understood me. He always did. Even on a normal day he was much stronger than me, and now the difference was even starker. With his help, I managed to get back to the cliff we’d taken off of. Barely. As a sweaty mess and with a painfully throbbing wing.
***
“Let it rest for a few more days. And then take it slow. No more taking off from cliffs that high until it’s stronger again and less painful.”
I left the doctor’s house in a foul mood. I had been stuck on the ground for too long already. It had become my prison. For a moment I had had a glimpse of freedom, but it had been a lie. And I wasn’t only stuck on the ground: I was stuck in one place. I had never thought about walking much, why would I have, but I had soon learned it to be slow and inefficient, learned to hate the ever-present uphills in the mountains. The town was small, I had always thought. On foot it seemed huge, places only a short flight away now taking a big part of my day to reach. I had been stuck close to home for far too long.
And at the same time, a part of me was relieved. I was afraid of using the wing. I was afraid it wouldn’t hold, and I would fall again. That I would never be well enough to fly again. That I would fail. But I knew, if I could, I would try, because I couldn’t take this anymore. So as long as I couldn’t try, I couldn’t fail. Being told I had to stay ground-bound meant I had more time before I had to face not being able to fly despite trying.
What followed were the longest weeks of my life. I had thought life with an injured wing had been tough. No. Well, yes. But life with an almost healed wing was worse. I felt like I should have been able to fly. I should have been able to go out with my friends. I should have been able to get back to normal life. But I couldn’t. Being almost able to do something I loved was more frustrating than simply not being able to do it.
So day after day I bit down my frustration and did my best to make the wing strong enough to hold my weight again without hurting. I didn’t take to the air again. Once was enough to tell me I wasn’t ready yet. I stayed on the cursed ground, my eyes constantly finding their way to the high mountain peaks all around me, and did my stupid wing-flapping excersices. Even they hurt. Some more than others. I soon learned the worst ones. It took a lot to grit my teeth and wince through them instead of just avoiding them. On a lot of the days I couldn’t do as much as I wanted to before I was so sore and tired I had to stop, the ever-present mountain wind whistling mockingly in my ear.
At least I had wonderful friends. It would have been easy for Fen and Rowan to simply forget me, go out and do their thing and have fun, but instead they opted to be stuck on the ground and at my house almost every day. They stayed even when my frustration over my situation boiled over and all I wanted to do was to scream at the world.
And then, one morning, I woke up, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out of the town. I needed to have nothing but sky above me, at least for a little moment. I hadn’t gone flying yet, and I wouldn’t now. My wing wasn’t hurting much anymore, as long as I was on the ground, but I wouldn’t trust it for a moment to hold my weight. Not yet. I needed more time. But today, I also needed to get away.
So I simply headed uphill on foot, towards the closest peak. It was a stupid idea. I wasn’t a mountain climber. I didn’t need to be. I never needed to climb. I didn’t know how far I would actually get, but I had to try. What made it stupider was that I went alone. I knew both Fen and Rowan would be busy. I couldn’t expect them to be able to go with me today, and I didn’t want to wait for when they could. So I packed some food and water and started walking.
It was rough going. Most of the way there wasn’t anything even resembling a path, because of course there wasn’t. Whenever there was a path it was made by animals. Sometimes the surface I was walking on wasn’t as steady as I thought, or it was covered in gravel and sand with nothing or very little growing on it to keep it together, and it crumbled under me. I almost twisted my ankle once or twice. I had no idea how I would get back if that happened, with a twisted ankle and a wing that wouldn't hold my weight. As I got out of the relative shelter of the town, the wind picked up. The wind was normally my friend, the thing I most loved about the mountains, but it made walking tricky and heavy and pulled hard on my wings, even though I tried to keep them as tightly tucked as possible. There were times when I needed to stop for a moment to plant my feet firmly on the ground and brace myself as a stronger gust passed me, unable to move without letting the wind throw me around.
By early afternoon my legs and lungs were burning and my hair was plastered to my face with sweat despite the constant, cool mountain wind. So I stopped, sat down, and had something to eat. I was almost too exhausted to be hungry, but I knew I needed energy. I sat on the slope, looking out over the mountains, simply enjoying being off my feet. I wondered if I should turn back. The peak seemed barely closer than it had been when I started out in the morning, despite the fact that the town now looked so small, spreading out below me to the right. Maybe this was the best I could do. Half-way up the mountain would be as good as it got for me.
I sat for a little longer, sipping my water, letting the wind blow my thoughts away. Eventually I sighed and stood up. I couldn’t go on. I knew I couldn’t. The stubborn part of me, the one that usually won, was for once trumped by the reasonable me. My already tired body just wasn’t up for it. I wouldn’t make it much higher than this either way. I knew I’d have to turn back soon, if I wanted to be back home before it got too late. So I turned around, resigned to my fate, and started my hike back down the hill.
I took it slow. I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to the confines of my home, and I knew it might be a long time before I was this high up again, in a place with a view like this. I stopped again quite soon, at what I thought had been the most beautiful spot on the way up. There was an almost vertical cliff, opening to an unobscured view of the town on the right, the valley below the town on the left. So I sat down again, dangling my feet over the edge, and enjoying the view for a long moment.
Eventually I had to leave that place too. I stood up, rolling my shoulders and stretching out my wings for a moment, to work out some of the stiffness caused by having had them pressed against my back all day. A bad moment. A strong gust of wind appeared out of nowhere, pushing on the full area of my spread wings. I tried to pull them in. To take a step to balance myself. It was too late. The wind had already thrown me off the cliff. I found myself falling uncontrollably.
For a split second, two conflicting instincts warred in me.
Spread your wings, you moron!
Do not put weight on that wing, it will hurt. So. Much.
My wings whipped open. The second instinct braced for the pain, gritting my teeth, wincing against it, like that would make it less.
It took me a second to realise that the pain wasn’t nearly as strong as I had thought. It was there, but it wasn’t bad, even as I flapped to straighten and stop myself from falling. The left wing was still clearly weaker than the right, I would need to remember to take that into account, at least for a while, but it was holding.
For a moment I just glided, paralised by surprise. Then I laughed, and I cried, and I screamed my joy into the wind.
***
I looked over the valley spreading below me and watched as Fen and Rowan soared through the sky. The wind brought me Fen’s call.
“Come on, Tessa, we’re waiting! We don’t have all day!”
I smiled, and let myself fall off the cliff. I snapped my wings open, and winced, more out of habit than actual pain. A dull pain was still there, might always be, but that was okay. I could fly, and that was the important thing.
As I joined my friends the wind threw my hair all around me, tousling it into knots, whispering freedom in my ears.
