I listened to a feather and it told me a story. I feel obligated to share it, not for my sake but for yours.
It is a story about a girl who once said she feared nothing a very long time ago. And this was her tale:
There once was a boy, oh how I loved him so. He was my treasure a jewel of jewels. Who darkly smiled with hope. It is contagious really. He whose thoughts seem interesting in every way abstract, yet so charming, you’d wish you could play in his imagination all day long. Where it is never dark. Where we all have wings.
You want your desires to be fulfilled. Well, we all do. However, not everyone should be granted that courtesy so easily. Cause if we got want we want what would be the point of living, I suppose.
So back to this boy, the one I wanted, still do, but he‘s gone too far.
We meet on an apple tree. Yes, on top of an apple tree. I was collecting apples and feathers from a nightingale’s nest. I held the feather to the sun and admired it, the small soft brown feather between my fingers and there he was waiting for me too fall. And I fell. He did not catch me, he did not need too.
He called himself Icarus, he held a candle. He had a bag full.
I had fallen into the lake. Indignant at first I did not look at him, his voice velvet smoove cleanly floating words of concern, real concern. Not like my father’s sarcasm. Not as sharp as my brother’s insults, just pure unadulterated concern. He waited for me; I got out of the water. In my hand, I held a feather, a bag full.
It was dark, getting darker. When I left the water, He smiled the boyish sport he is. About my age eighteen or so. He said he was waiting for the sun to go down.
You are fearless, Icarus said. It felt natural to disagree to his remake. In response I asked why did he think this, I am just a silly girl who fell. A silly girl in the water.
You climbed to the top of the tree, on a limb and did not fear falling. You fell into the lake and did not fear drowning. Now that it is dark, do you fear the moonless sky?
It was not pride, it was not humility. It just was the way I am. I had fears, as silent as they were. An anesthetic life I lived. Feeling numb was what I traded for feeling hurt continuously by thoughtless words and objects, hate and more hate reserved for myself. What did I do to deserve this? Nothing. No one deserves this.
I told the boy, who held the candle, that I did not fear the moonless nights, nor the parasitic insect bites or the sounds of nocturne life. I told him I had run away from a place now very far from here.
The looks were exchanged. The boy’s eyes resembled an ocean on a quiet shore or maybe a sky before a storm. She did not fear hurt from him.
Then he pleaded to me, to stay because he was afraid of the dim night and the magic it held. I too ran away too, he had said. But my journey just started today. And when the sun is up, he asked if he could go with me.
You can stay as long as you wish, I said with a smile and a nod. I took the feathers and put one in my hair, an eagle feather. My long dark hair a home for flowers, small twigs and light bugs, Skin the color of driftwood. She is beautiful; I am Beautiful, one with nature.
I put my feathers together and sew them with a needle and a thread, a red thread the glistered in its damp state. Why do you carry feathers? The beautiful boy asked politely.
Because they are, pretty, soft, magical in a sense. So elegant they must have looked while they still hanged on the skin of the bird that once carried them everywhere like a good luck charm. Nevertheless, the bird grew old, died or just needed a new coat of charm.
I find it such a pity really, I do. To see them on the floor when they once were part of an adventure, in the sky, floating above the seven seas, perched on different exotic trees. Now doom to ruminate with filth and mud. A pity indeed.
In a way, I feel like I am collecting an echo of experience, a quiet story. The talk to me. They comfort me, with each I collect, I feel more confident, and now I have hundreds in my threads. May be I was once a bird, another life.
The boy looked at her with curiosity her words stayed with him. He began to make a fire and place a few candles around the apple tree and they sat their. Leaning on the tree eating apples, crisp and juicy. He did not seem to judge her odd way of thinking, he understood.
Why do you carry candles, wax, strings, and all? I asked.
I do not like the dark, like I’ve said I am scared of it. He whispered this.
Why it is no more dangerous than the day? She assured him in a very unassuring way.
Did you know that this darkness is the excess of color? He said a with a bit more strengh in his voice.
And that light is the lack of it. Light make me feel secure, it is simple and more importantly it does not hide things from me. But darkness it does, it is unsecure, deceiving, it is complicated, so much more complicated.
You know…Where I came from people loved to complicate everything.
Their Lives. Other’s lives. Work. Money. Love. Everything.
It does not always make things better, just is a bigger grave to bury yourself in. But I don’t want that for me… I want to live. I want to live for real. He coughed a bit, then some more. The smoke of the fire intertwined with the cool air in a dance, a very slow dance over the water. Into heaven desending.
At that moment, I understood him. What he meant. I understood completely.
We kissed, so easy, so simple, and so soft. No complications.
We woke up side by side that morning with our fingers in each other’s hair.
Then we promised that day under an apple tree that they would stay together and in a year would revisit the apple tree by the lake. Where we both fell. A day full of oxymoron. Symbolism.
We always agreed on where to go and we were happy. Wither it was deep in the forest of south america, in a boat in the middle of the pacific ocean or walking through the slums of India. We never said we loved each other, not too complicate things.
The girl with her feathers. The boy with his wax. A needle and red thread wove them together loosen and pulled and spun.
A candle always burned a light, a way out I suppose. Living, experiencing and adventuring the world and each other.
Icarus never did stop coughing. Once in a while I saw the trickle of blood as he coughed up and the boy with his soft blue eyes told me not too worry, it would pass. I believed him.
Just like a storm we had witnessed once togther before. It was the ending of a hot sticky summer day and we took cover in a cave, the rocks glittered and moved with the thunder and lighting. It felt good to rest our bare skin on the damp moss. He told me the thunder did that because there are air currents that create strong updraughts and water droplets and ice particle that rub against each other and “boom” we have static electricity.
He seemed to know everything about the world around him. All this interesting information he kept in his mind, it sort of reminded me the silly facts in the bottle caps of fruit drinks. Always with something clever to say. It was admirable.
Everytime he touched my skin by accident I felt that silent boom. I feel the quake, the tremble and the lights going off and on. Flickering like the candle light in the cave every time a breeze came in. Some candles blew out. But he wasn’t as afraid of the darkness as he had been at the beginning of our journey at least for my sake. It is easier to be brave when you have someone you care about he said to me.
His skin had darken since the encounter under the apple tree, colored by the candle light and sun he adored and trusted. His hair dark grew long, but he cut it short around his ears in a trip to a small village in italy where he lost a bet. A silly bet really, not worth mentioning.
We drank wine which was cheaper than water, probably a bit too much wine. I remember singing chants a chaman had taught us too scare away the snakes and pumas in central america, some sort of protection while we slept in trees and tents. The Chaman had given me the new blue feather now in my hair and something for fertility, oh naughty chaman. I also recalled angry Italian men muttering drunken words at us, telling us to be quiet. We just laughed it off, dizzy from the alcohol we fell into a sweet slumber. We lived a nomadic life, one of gypsies traveling the world.
Once in awhile he would write letters and send them when we travel past a post office. He said it was too his parents. He told me all these lovely stories about his mother and father, they seemed so nice and sweet. It was a mystery to me why he would ever have wanted to run away from their loving care. They were not as nice as my father or my brother. I never knew my mother really, so I can’t say much about her, she had died in some odd car accident when I was still in her. They couldn’t saved her, but they saved me. I think my father resented that.
The next day we met a lonely old Spanish doctor, named Rodrigo Rodrigez de la Luz who resembled Don quijote, spoke good English and had a hobby or as he called it “a passion” for taking photographs. He had asked me to be his model for some pictures he wanted to take. Saying I resembled his mother in his youth he dressed me up in a beautiful red dress and put flowers in my hair.
Icurus laughed as I tired to imitate the graceful Spanish dancing we had seen a couple of times in street shows in Madrid. Fluttering a elegantly decorated fan in the air, like a butterfly net. The Doctor was a kind old man, yet lonely, the past had not been to kind with him. He later offered to take me and Icurus in for the night, he had noticed that Icurus had been coughing and noticed some blood in some napkins he found in the little restaurant we ate together. He told me a list of things he could have had. Stomach ulcer, Pneumonia, a Nosebleed that drips blood down into the lungs, Laryngitis, tumors…some serious conditions and some not as serious.
The doctor told him that he should go and get tested but Icurus had told him he rather not. This troubled the doctor servilely. If you care about the girl you should go to the doctor. Icurus stood quiet there for a moment realizing a unspoken emotion.
That night at the doctors guest room I pressed my ear to Icurus’ chest to hear him breathe as he slept. No water in his lungs, but he seemed weak in a way I could not understand. I kept my face there, comforted by the rhythmic breathing. He wasn’t telling me something. I began to worry and now things became complicated.
And like that storm I waited for the coughing to stop. But it didn’t stop. We left that morning, I gave the old man a kiss on the cheak making his Spanish blood rush into his face.
And Icarus and Me, hand in hand walked again ready to walk on some unforgettably adventure. Something was eating me up inside, words, thoughts, questions, I had dared not ask till now. But just as I was about to speak them out loud something happened.
Icarus started to cough loudly, he feel to the ground and he coughed more blood. I was about to scream for help, but he held his finger to his lips. In a gesture that said not to say a word. He got up, slowly but he got up.
You are dying aren’t you? I said.
He nodded slightly to conform her fear, her only fear.
She kissed his forehead and held him close, she didn’t seem sad. She didn’t realize she was crying till she saw that her tears were damping up his hair. He looked at her, stupefied. He had never seen her cry, only out of happiness but these weren’t tears of joy, but of a deep sadness.
Her evergreen happiness wasn’t there anymore… Things were getting complicated.
They said I only had one year left, the doctors… a severe lung cancer (or tuberculocuis the feather didn't say clearly ). I refuse the treatments. I didn’t want that for me, living my last days in a hospital. Treatment after treatment, pill after pill. Just to prolong my life just a bit more. I didn’t make me feel better, It made me lose hope. I didn’t want to waste my last days moping with ennui about the things I’ve never done. Death is the last thing we all get to do, why did I have to worry about it so much?
But mother cried, sweet mother. Her red and white hairs in a bun. And my father only grew silent. I was complicating their lives, they were so much more happy before I got sick. So I left. So that they could be happy again. So they could laugh again.
Please don’t cry, he asked of me softly. I did eventually and we drifted, to a new land closer to the land they had both meet for it was almost a year. A blessed year. And soon we would return to the apple tree near the lake.
He saw things were getting complicated, finally the happiness we had had been tainted with blood, death.
And once again he found himself wishing for light, not candles but a eternal sun. He wanted to live on the sun. To some it may have seemed to be a silly idea, but for him it was utopia dream a world of only light and no darkness.
That night we kissed in candle light under a slither of a moon, the choppy water lapped like a panting dog. Once again, under the apple tree that marked the beginning of our adventure. I feel asleep and suddenly hours before dawn, Icurus had an idea. He got all his wax that conquered fear of the dark and my feathers full of confidence and silent experiences and made wings. He climbed up the apple tree still strong and alive just as before. The Tree would stay like that long after he was gone he thought to himself as he climbed on the branches until he reached the top.
The morning sun stung my eyes. I looked around to find my lover on the apple tree. He smiled at me. I smiled back. I told him to be careful Icurus, do not fall, I called out with the same concern he had showed me once a while back.
He jumped from the branch. Then something truly amazing happened. Icurus did not fall but flew. Up into the sky, like the birds I envied so much. I wanted to be there up with him in the sky. He flew too high, his wax melted, and the feathers loosened. The red string loosened as well.
I screamed, Could he hear me? No, he was too far, way too high.
I watch terrified as he went higher and higher in to the morning sky. I watched twice as terrified as he fell faster and faster to the unforgiving earth. Then the dreadful sound that would haunt me forever “boom” like electricity in the sky, he was gone. He had missed the lake by not that much. I ran toward him. His bones crushed, he was not breathing, my poor Icurus. I silently hoped for him too get up and put his finger to his warm lips and calm me down again, but he never did. The feathers from his waxwings flew twirling eerily down into the lake. My lovely charms with their silent stories floating on water. My dear, dear Icurus, the sun betrayed you.
I dug your grave with my nails. They bleed, Icurus, I lost my mind, cause I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t. Sorry. I, a girl once stood fearless here by this very tree. Until I meet you Icurus. Love in a way is fear. I did not want to admit I could do either. However, I fear I love you.
I craved your name on our tree, with my fingers and now I am bleeding Icurus. I whisper our love story to the birds, so they could carry them on their wings, so someone would know our adventure, our experience and our story.
I burnt a candle so you would not be afraid of the darkness, my dear Icurus. I will do this every day. I sent the letter you had in your backpack, it was too your sweet mother and quiet father.
I did not want to be alone, not again. Please understand. I wanted to be with you. My mind is lost, it is winter and there are no apples in our tree. So I climbed up the apple tree for the last time and jumped out, I feel into the water, frozen and cold. This time I did not bother to get out. And why would I? I am just a silly girl in the water.
So as I did please listen to the stories the flutter of wings can tell. You may learn something. Just as I did, A story of Wax, feathers and red string.
-The End-
-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- Dedicated to my Icarus, you never fail to inspire. I hope to never see you fall.
| My Profile
A Story Of Wax, Feathers & Red String. blog
