Wings 
      a short story by James Lovegrove 

      The bell rang, and suddenly the corridors and shafts of the school were 
      filled with moving bodies, and the classrooms, libraries, laboratories and 
      gymnasia were left empty and echoing to the slamming of desk lids and 
      doors. Dust and loose leaves of paper settled even as the teachers began 
      to shape their lips around the words "Class dismissed". 
      Through the building the children flew with a great racketing roar, 
      celebrating with their screams and whoops and yells the death of another 
      school day. A dozen disparate streams of them converged in the main 
      hallway, and when the hallway could no longer contain all these young 
      bodies, all this enthusiasm made flesh, the main doors swung wide and 
      spilled them out into the yard. 
      There the children blinked and stood dazed for a moment in the sunshine 
      like prisoners released from long sentences in lightless dungeons; but 
      then, quickly adjusting to their new-found freedom, they fell to clasping 
      hands and exchanging grins and sharing jokes and promising to meet up 
      later that day, or tomorrow, or whenever; and dividing into pairs and 
      knots of three or four and the odd solemn single, up from the yard they 
      rose on single down-thrusts of their wings and off they flew along the 
      windy streets of Cloudcap City, satchels in hand, shirt-tails and 
      skirt-hems fluttering, blowing like dandelion seeds to all six corners of 
      the compass. 
      Amid all this fever to escape Az plodded along in his usual ungainly 
      fashion. A few classmates patted him on the shoulder and said "See you" as 
      they flew past, but Az's excruciatingly slow progress meant that no one 
      was going to stay beside him for long. It just wasn't possible. It took Az 
      over a minute to traverse a corridor or clamber up or down a shaft, using 
      the metal rungs fitted into the walls especially for him, whereas it took 
      the rest of them a handful of seconds. The other children swooped around 
      him like swifts, like swallows, while Az was a beetle, struggling, 
      bumbling, lumbering. 
      The last few children were taking off from the yard when Az finally 
      emerged into the daylight. He watched them rise into the sky, wave to one 
      another and flit off in different directions. He waved too, on the 
      off-chance that one of them might happen to look back and see him and 
      return the gesture, but it was useless; their eyes were fixed on the 
      horizon and home. Alone, and sunk deep in his own thoughts, Az traipsed 
      across the yard. 
      Normally he would have caught the airbus and travelled home with the 
      elders and the fledglings and all the other clipped-wings, but when he 
      came through the school gates he found his brother Michael waiting for him 
      on the landing platform in his Corbeau. Michael was returning the admiring 
      glances of a pair of girls who were wafting by on the other side of the 
      street, but catching sight of Az, he forgot about them and raised a hand 
      and cried, "Hey, little brother! Hop aboard!" 
      Az climbed into the passenger seat beside Michael, dumping his satchel 
      between his feet. Michael hit a switch on the dashboard of the Corbeau, 
      and the blades began to rotate above their heads. 
      Over the rising whine of the engine and the vip-vip-vip of chopped air he 
      shouted, "Good day at school?" 
      Az shrugged. "So-so." Michael looked carefully at the little guy and saw 
      the gloom in his face, sitting heavy there like a cumulonimbus on a blue 
      sky. He didn't ask what the matter was. He merely said, "I've got an idea 
      - why don't we stop by the Ice Castle on the way home? I bet you anything 
      there's a sundae there with your name on it." 
      "Thanks. No," said Az, buckling on his safety belt. 
      "OK, why don't we pop over to the Aerobowl then? I've got free passes. 
      Come on. The Thunderhead Eagles are playing the Stratoville Shrikes." 
      "Oh." 
      "'Oh'? What does that mean - 'Oh'? The Shrikes, Az. You love the Shrikes." 

      "No. 'S all right, really. Thanks. I just want to go home." 
      Michael frowned. "Well, OK. If you say so. If you're sure." He glanced out 
      of the cockpit to check the street was clear, then pushed down on the 
      joystick. The autogyro sprang from the landing platform, soaring up into 
      the sparkling air. 
      The Corbeau, the latest model in the Airdyne 3-series, was the 
      status-symbol two-seater of the moment - sleek, tapered, a giant's 
      teardrop cast in bronze, every inch of the surface of its fuselage smooth 
      and gleaming from the nose-cone with its ring of rivets to the 
      scallop-grooved tailfins - and Michael flew it with the requisite 
      recklessness, slipping and side-sliding through the air channels, 
      descending suddenly, just as suddenly climbing, overtaking, undertaking, 
      the aircraft responding to the tiniest nudges on the stick and pedals as 
      though it were an extension of its pilot, a mechanical extrapolation of 
      Michael's own abilities. And had Az been in any kind of a good mood, he 
      would have been laughing uproariously as they nipped around the other 
      traffic and whizzed past his schoolfellows at breakneck speed, leaving 
      them standing just as they had left him standing earlier. But today, not 
      even a fast ride in a classy piece of aero-engineering could lift his 
      depression. If anything, it served to deepen it. 
      They whisked down Sunswept Avenue, great cubes of apartment block blurring 
      by on either side, then took a right onto Cirrus Street, then an up onto 
      Goshawk, and shortly after that the Corbeau was settling down onto the 
      private landing platform that poked out like a rectangular tongue from 
      their parents' front porch. 
      Az leapt out and was about to make his way up to the front door when 
      Michael grabbed him by the arm and turned him around with a gentle but 
      forceful strength, bringing them face to face. 
      "Listen, little brother," he said softly. Az averted his gaze. "I know 
      it's not easy for you," Michael continued, "and I know that sometimes it 
      must feel like the whole world's against you because of what you don't 
      have or what you think you don't have. Just remember this - it doesn't 
      matter. You're still our Az, and one lousy pair of wings isn't going to 
      change that. If I thought it would, I'd cut mine off and give them to you 
      right now. You understand that, don't you?" 
      Az nodded dumbly, not looking up. "Good. Well, take it easy on yourself. 
      And maybe we'll go down to the 'bowl at the weekend. How about that? Would 
      you like that?" Az nodded again, and Michael let him go. The whine of the 
      autogyro rose behind him as he wandered slowly up to the porch. Michael's 
      "Catch you later!" was cut short by a slammed front door. "Dear?" His 
      mother's voice, from the kitchen. "Azrael?" She came out into the hallway, 
      drying her hands on a dishtowel. "Was that Michael I heard just now? Isn't 
      he going to stay for supper?" 
      Az shook his head. "I don't know." 
      "Some girl, I bet," said his mother, indulgent wrinkles multiplying around 
      her eyes. 
      "Maybe," said Az. Then: "I'm going up to my room." 
      To reach the upper storey of the house Az had to use a contraption his 
      father had built for him, a space-consuming succession of cantilevered 
      wooden steps that rose diagonally through an aperture in the ceiling. His 
      parents used the steps too whenever he was around. As a rule, they made 
      sure to walk as much as possible when he was in the house, out of respect 
      to his feelings. 
      His room was like any other twelve-year-old's room, save that the door 
      went all the way down to the floor (another of his father's D.I.Y. 
      adaptations). The carpet was strewn with clothing, books, pieces of a 
      long-abandoned jigsaw, some small die-cast biplanes and a larger scale 
      model of a Corbeau which Michael had given him on his last birthday, 
      saying it would do until Az was old enough to earn his pilot's license, at 
      which point Michael would buy him the real thing. He dropped his satchel 
      into the middle of all this debris and stretched out on his bed, flat on 
      his back. Lying on his back, Az reflected, was the one thing he could do 
      that no one else could. Some compensation. Yeah, right. What a talent. The 
      kids at school were forever asking him to show them how well he could lie 
      on his back. 
      He stared up at the ceiling for a long time, trying to think of nothing. 
      At some point during the long slow diminuendo of the afternoon, he fell 
      asleep. And he dreamed.
      One morning Az wakes up to find he has grown a fully-fledged pair of 
      wings. He doesn't know how they got there, he doesn't dare ask why. He 
      simply accepts. 
      His parents are happy and amazed. His mother cries, his father thumbs some 
      grit from his eye. They forgive Az. For what, they do not say, but it is 
      enough for Az to be forgiven. He kisses them both, and prepares to fly off 
      to school under his own steam for the first time ever. 
      Flying, he finds, is not so difficult. He has the instinct for it, and now 
      he has the means. A little practice, some plummeting and frantic 
      fluttering, and he's on his way. 
      Heads turn and mouths gape in the school yard. A cry goes up. Look! Look 
      at that! Did you ever...? Who'd have thought...? 
      Az alights in the middle of the school yard and his peers cluster round 
      him, jabbering excitedly. They fire off a million questions at him. They 
      ask him if they can touch his wings. He tells them they can. They touch 
      them with reverential awe and care. It tickles. 
      Word gets around, and before he knows it Az is a celebrity in school. He 
      is clapped and cheered wherever he goes. When he glides down a shaft with 
      his wings outstretched, every feather intricately splayed to catch the 
      air, he descends into a hail of hurrahs. When he kites along a corridor, 
      keeping pace with the rest of his class as they hurry from one lesson to 
      the next, they grin and encourage him every flap of the way. During break 
      time Az is asked to join half a dozen impromptu games of balloonball, and 
      though he has never played before, has only ever watched from the 
      sidelines, he soon gets the hang of it, and even scores a Horizontal 
      Slide. The seal is put on his popularity when Mrs Ragual interrupts Phys. 
      Ed. to ask Az for a demonstration. The class goes outside and Az soars and 
      barrel-rolls and loop-the-loops for their benefit. Mrs Ragual tells him he 
      is not just a good flyer, he is a great flyer. Then the rest of them join 
      him in the air, and together, under Mrs Ragual's approving eye, they pass 
      a happy, truant half-hour simply doing what they like best, wheeling and 
      whirling and squealing and squalling like a flock of mad seagulls. All the 
      time Az is the centre of attention, the focus of everybody's admiration. 
      After all, anyone who can make one of Mrs Ragual's Phys. Ed. torture 
      sessions FUN has to be some kind of a hero. 
      He woke up. He dared to touch his back. Still wingless. He rolled 
      disconsolately over onto his side to look out of the window at Cloudcap 
      City all laid out in neat rows and columns and tiers, up, down, left, 
      right, reaching as high as the stratosphere and as low as the cloudtop and 
      as far as the horizon, each block suspended by means of six-way 
      electromagnetic positional stabilisers to form a three-dimensional 
      latticework of buildings, between and through and around which tiny 
      figures and aircraft of all shapes and sizes were threading their way. 
      Most of the buildings were cubic in shape, but there were oddities. The 
      cylinder of the Freefall Dance Palace was one, the annular Aerobowl 
      another, the spike-spired mace-ball fantasy of the Cathedral of the 
      Significant God a notable third. 
      The air being clear and his eyes being sharp, Az could make out the 
      bird-trawlers a mile below on the cloudtop, casting their nets into the 
      wilderness of white. He could also make out the sky-mines that ringed the 
      city, forming a circle of stability on which the whole meniscus of 
      floating buildings depended. The sky-mines looked like tulips balancing on 
      lofty, delicately slender stems which pierced the cloudtop and went all 
      the way down to the Ground, from where they sucked up the juices that kept 
      the city running. Service elevators, like glass aphids, crawled up and 
      down the stems. 
      He lay there watching the view for he didn't know how long. It seemed like 
      no time and all time had passed when his mother called up from below, 
      summoning him down for supper. Az clumped down to the kitchen, from which 
      emanated smells which even his gloom-ridden brain recognised as 
      mouthwatering. 
      "Go and call your father," said his mother. "Then you can lay the table." 
      Az went out into the hallway again, walked along a little way and stopped 
      at the large trapdoor that led down to his father's workshop. He listened 
      hard, and heard from below faint sounds of banging and tocking, clonking 
      and clanging. 
      Construction. While a working man, Az's father had spent much of his spare 
      time dabbling in home improvements, which were usually for Az's benefit, 
      like the steps and all the doorways in the house. When his forty-year 
      career as a maker and mender of clocks had finally wound down, however, he 
      had turned his hand to invention, and had begun building a series of 
      thises and thats and the others - gadgets he hoped one day to patent and 
      sell by the million, devices intended to make everyone's lives that little 
      bit easier. So far, not a single one had proved patent-feasible. A 
      portable trouser-press had made its mark in all the wrong ways. A 
      clockwork toothbrush had been a gum-mangling disaster. A pair of 
      self-sharpening scissors that had almost cost him a finger. But he went on 
      making these things nonetheless, toiling away by the uncertain light of a 
      gas-lantern, in secret, in the strictest of privacy, hope springing 
      eternal with the completion of every new invention until that invention 
      blew a gasket or slipped a cog or collapsed in a heap or simply failed to 
      start. Then it was "Oh well, back to the drawing board," with a sigh that 
      contained neither defeat nor despair. It was almost as if Az's father 
      wasn't really looking forward to the day one of his devices worked and was 
      a success and made his fortune and meant that he never had to make 
      anything else again. The old man was happy just to be in his workshop, out 
      of harm's way, tinkering, occupying his hands and his time. 
      Az called down, and the sounds of construction ceased and his father's 
      muffled voice came up. 
      "Yes?" 
      "Supper." 
      "Coming." A moment later his father bustled up into the kitchen. "Give me 
      a hand here, won't you, son?" He turned his back, and Az helped him unzip 
      and wrestle his way out of the plastic slipcovers he wore over his wings 
      to protect them from dust and stray sparks. His father's plumage had 
      greyed at the edges, was rough in patches like a fledgling's, and had gaps 
      where pinfeathers had fallen out and would never grow back again; but they 
      were fine, proud wings all the same, and in excellent condition for a man 
      his age. 
      "Outside, please," said Az's mother, referring to the dusty wing-covers. 
      Her husband obediently popped them out onto the back porch. "I shudder to 
      think of the state of that workshop," she went on. "Knee-deep in shavings 
      and scrapings and wood chips and what-have-you." 
      Az's father clasped a fist to his chest. "I would rather die than have you 
      clean in there." 
      "I wasn't offering," his wife replied. "I was merely remarking." While Az 
      finished laying the table, his father washed his hands in the sink. Drying 
      them on a towel, he said, quietly, as if it was no matter at all, "Do you 
      know, I really think I'm onto something this time." 
      Az's mother, who had heard this statement or statements pretty much like 
      it a hundred times before, said, without looking up from the stove, 
      "That's good, dear." 
      Az said nothing. 
      But when his father sat down at the table, there was a gleam in his eyes 
      Az could not remember seeing there before, a light of excitement 
      brightening the well-yellowed whites. "No, I mean it," he said. "I've been 
      working on this particular project for some weeks now, and I think I'm 
      close to cracking it." 
      "Eat," said Az's mother, placing laden plates in front of them. They ate. 
      His parents, reckoning Az was not in a communicative mood, left him alone 
      and chatted between themselves, chewing over trivialities and 
      inconsequentialities the way long-married couples do when the weighty 
      subjects have all been thoroughly discussed and all that remains is the 
      nitty-gritty and the fine-tuning and the splitting of hairs. Finally Az 
      could bear it no longer, and said, "What?" 
      "What what?" said his father. 
      "What is it? The something that you're on to? What?" The gleam re-entered 
      the old man's eyes. "Never you mind, Az. Wait and see." By this time Az's 
      mother was intrigued too. "Go on, Gabe," she said. "Give us a clue." 
      "What, and ruin the suspense?" "Is it going to make us rich?" Az asked. 
      His father made a great show of considering the question. "Well, in one 
      sense, yes. In another sense, no." He grinned enigmatically. "Wait and 
      see." 

      Az waited several days, and still did not see. Every afternoon when he 
      came home from school he would stop quietly by the trapdoor and listen to 
      the tink and bonk and clatter and whack-whack-whack of industry, and the 
      tuneless humming with which his father often counterpointed the rhythm of 
      his labours. The sounds seemed no different from the sound his father 
      usually made down there. They were infuriatingly ordinary. 
      His attempts to extract from his father even the tiniest hint as to what 
      was taking shape in the workshop were met with gleeful stonewalling. 
      Endless questions could be asked over the dinner table, only to be 
      answered with a "Maybe" or a "Could be" or a simple "Not saying". Once, 
      recalling that his father had recently bought in several sheets of copper, 
      Az asked whether these had some bearing on the mystery, but his father 
      pointed out, rightly, that he was constantly buying and bringing in sheets 
      of copper. It was, he said, the most tractable and obliging metal to work 
      with. 
      One evening, while flicking through a magazine, Az held up each page of 
      advertising in turn and showed it to his father, asking, "Is it like 
      that?" To which, in every instance, his father replied, "Something like 
      that. Only completely different." Eventually Az became so aggravated that 
      he threw the magazine down and left the room, hearing his father chuckle 
      merrily behind him. 
      There was no question of secretly investigating the workshop, violating 
      the privacy of his father's sanctum sanctorum; so in the end there was 
      nothing for it but to wait and wonder. 
      One good thing, though, came of this continuing mystery. Az was so busy 
      thinking about what might be in the workshop that he forgot to dwell on 
      his own problems. Teachers marked the disappearance of his depressive fits 
      and were quietly pleased, although a tendency to daydream in class was 
      noted in the normally diligent pupil. His classmates were for the most 
      part indifferent to the change in his temperament, although a few of them 
      did notice that Az no longer scowled so hard when he walked. His mind 
      seemed to be elsewhere, on something outside himself. The more sensitive 
      among them recognised this to be a healthy sign. 

      Eighteen days after his first announcement, Az's father made a second, 
      even more impressive announcement. It came one suppertime. Michael had 
      dropped by on his way to pick up a girl called Raphaella and take her to a 
      harp recital at the Cathedral of the Significant God. The family were 
      halfway through the main course when Az's father tapped his wine glass 
      with his fork, cleared his throat and said, "A short speech." 
      Everyone groaned. 
      "A very short speech. Just to say that this Saturday will see the 
      unveiling of a device that is going to make us the happiest family alive. 
      I want you to be there, Michael, if you can make it." 
      "This isn't another of your exploding specials, is it, Dad?" said Michael. 
      "Like the self-heating coffee cup?" 
      "It's something," said the old man, with an extravagant display of 
      self-restraint, "that is going to make us the happiest family alive." 
      Michael turned to Az. "We're going to be millionaires," he said with a 
      confident wink. That night Az hardly slept at all. It was ridiculous, he 
      knew, to get all excited over a dumb invention of his father's that might 
      not even work. But there it was. His father's enthusiasm was infectious. 
      And so Az lay awake trying to imagine what form the device would take, 
      what use it could be put to, how big it would be, how practical, and he 
      ached for Saturday to come so that he could see which, if any, of his 
      suppositions turned out to be correct. 

      The day of the unveiling arrived, and Az and his mother watched Michael 
      and the old man haul the device up from the workshop and carry it out onto 
      the landing platform. The device was covered by a tarpaulin, so that all 
      anyone could say about it was that it was twelve feet long, thin at either 
      and end, bulky in the middle, and angular all over. Az thought of the 
      dinosaur skeleton in the Museum of Ancient Artifacts. 
      "Well?" said Az's mother, giftwrapping her impatience in a laugh. 
      "One moment," said his father. "First, a short speech." 
      As before, the family groaned, as they were supposed to. 
      Pretending not to notice, Az's father ruffled his wings and grasped his 
      lapel like a politician. "Once," he began, "long ago, we were not Airborn 
      but Groundling, and we lived an earthbound life, circumscribed on all 
      sides by natural boundaries - mountains, rivers, seas. Since then, the 
      race has moved onwards and upwards, and now we live lives as close to 
      perfection as it is possible to get. We are paragons, living embodiments 
      of all that the Groundlings aspired to. This is our heritage and our 
      privilege. A privilege that should not be denied to anyone. Least of all, 
      to flesh of my flesh." Here, he looked straight at Az, and suddenly 
      everyone - except Az - had a pretty good idea what lay hidden beneath the 
      tarpaulin. 
      There might have been more to the speech, but Az's father sensed that the 
      game was up, and, like any good showman, he knew he should not let the 
      audience get ahead of him, so with a grand flourish he swept back the 
      tarpaulin, revealing his creation to the world. 
      Four faces were reflected in a relief mosaic of burnished copper. Three of 
      them gawped, wide-eyed. The fourth grinned with pride. 
      Finally, someone spoke. It was Az's mother. 
      "Wings," she exclaimed, the word tailing up into a question. 
      "Wings," her husband confirmed, bringing the word back in to land. 
      And wings they were. Larger than lifesize, correct in every detail, 
      lovingly crafted in beaten copper. A pair of metal, mechanical wings. 
      Every feather was there, perfect down to the fine comb-teeth of its 
      filaments and pinned into place with a free-floating bolt; every joint, 
      too, from the ball-and-sockets at the base of the armatures to the hinges 
      at the elbows; and a complex system of pulleys and wires connected the 
      ensemble to a leather harness which was just the right shape and just the 
      right size for the torso of a boy of twelve. 
      "Come on then," said Az's father, taking Az by the shoulder. "Let's try 
      them on, shall we?" Michael stepped forward to help, and together he and 
      the old man loaded the wings onto Az's back and tightened the straps of 
      the harness around his chest. 
      Az submitted passively to the fitting, not knowing what to think, not 
      really thinking anything. The wings were very heavy, and when his father 
      and Michael let go, he teetered and would have overbalanced if Michael had 
      not caught and steadied him. 
      Az barely listened as his father explained how the wings worked. "You see, 
      they're designed to take the action of the muscles in your shoulders and 
      translate it into wingbeats, so you'll simply be employing the natural 
      abilities God gave you. You may have some trouble adjusting to them at 
      first, but that's only to be expected. There's no reason why instinct 
      shouldn't take over almost straight away. Trust me, Az. You'll be up and 
      soaring in no time." 
      Bookended by Michael and his father, Az staggered to the edge of the 
      landing platform, the wings making a soft shimmering clatter with each 
      step as hundreds of copper feathers shook against one another. He peered 
      down. The rippled surface of the cloudtop was awfully far below. The 
      bird-trawlers plying their trade down there looked as tiny as gnats. 
      He glanced back over his shoulder. At first he could see nothing but 
      copper wing, but he dropped his shoulder slightly and the wing flattened 
      out, and then he could see his mother. There were tears in her eyes. "Go 
      on," she said to him, smiling bravely. "Don't be scared. You'll be fine." 
      But he wasn't scared. He was embarrassed. The clench of his jaw wasn't one 
      of determination but one of humiliation. He felt clumsier than ever 
      burdened by these huge metal prostheses. He felt neither Airborn nor 
      Groundling but a horrid amalgamation of the two. A joke, a parody. What 
      would they think of him at school when he turned up on Monday morning 
      strapped into this ugly clattering copper contraption? 
      "I don't think I can go through with this," he said. "Nonsense," said his 
      father, mistaking the tremor in Az's voice for fear. "Michael and I will 
      make sure you're all right, won't we, Michael? Whatever happens, you won't 
      come to any harm. Trust us." 
      "Will you at least hold on to me?" Az implored. 
      "The only way to learn is the way I learned," said Michael. "The way we 
      all learn." "What way is that?" said Az doubtfully. "The hard way," said 
      Michael, and with a grin that was devoid of malice and yet still wicked, 
      he grabbed Az's arm. Az's father on the other side did the same, and 
      together, chanting "One, two, three," they heaved Az out over the edge and 
      into space. 
      And let go. 
      There was a moment of sheer disbelief, followed by a moment of sheer 
      terror. Then all that was lost in the sickening uprush of falling. The 
      weight of the wings yanked Az head over heels onto his back, and down he 
      went in a wind-shivered rattle of metal. Down he plummeted, making no 
      attempt to right himself or flap the wings, unable even to entertain the 
      notion of saving himself. Down in a state of dreamlike apathy, with no 
      thought except that he was going to die. Hypnotically down, past building 
      after building, past windows and doorways, past light aircraft and happy 
      citizens out for a Saturday morning glide. Down, down, down, with no hope 
      of rescue, and no desire for it either. Down without a gasp or a scream, 
      for an elastic stretch of seconds, the platform above receding, the house 
      and all the houses around it shrinking, the sky growing smaller and 
      filling up with more and more city. Down towards the cloudtop and the 
      Ground from where the Airborn race once sprang and which now lay forever 
      hidden. 

      There was a tentative knock at the door. "Can I come in?" "Sure, Dad." 
      Az glanced up from the book he was reading, an adventure story about sky 
      pirates, as his father entered the room. The old man's head was contritely 
      bowed, and his wings drooped so low their tips were almost touching the 
      floor. The look of shame that hung on the old man's face was so comical, 
      Az could hardly fail to smile. His father gestured at the edge of the bed. 
      "May I?" 
      Az nodded. 
      The old man sat down. There was a long silence while he deliberated over 
      his next move, then he reached out and laid one hand on Az's leg. He 
      patted the leg, the action affectionate yet mechanical. It was clear that 
      he had several things to say but no idea in what order to say them. 
      Az helped him out. "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." "My feelings?" "By 
      not trying." "Oh. Well, I wouldn't say my feelings were hurt, exactly. I 
      was a little ... disappointed? No, not even that. I did hope... Well, it 
      doesn't matter now. How I feel doesn't matter. It's how you feel that 
      matters." 
      "I feel fine. Honestly." "The doctor said there may be some delayed 
      shock." "I feel absolutely fine, Dad. Guilty, though." "Guilty?" "For 
      letting you down." 
      "You didn't let me down, Az," said his father with an exasperated laugh. 
      "How can I get that into your thick skull? I don't mind. Really I don't. 
      It's enough for me that you're alive and well." 
      "Well, I think I did. I mean, the wings would have worked. Almost 
      certainly. Definitely. If I'd tried. I just didn't try. I didn't want to 
      try." 
      "Oh," said his father. For the sake of his own conscience, it was what he 
      had been hoping to hear. "Well, anyway, you'll be pleased to learn that 
      I've taken the damned things along to the scrapyard. Never again." "But 
      you are going to carry on with your inventions. 
      Az's father frowned. "Perhaps. The fun's sort of gone out of it." 
      "But what about making your million?" 
      "It's just a dream." 
      "Dreams are important." 
      "Az," said his father, then paused. "When your mother was pregnant with 
      you, the doctors suggested she ... she shouldn't have you. Health reasons. 
      She wasn't so young any more. But she was prepared to take the risk. Quite 
      determined, as a matter of fact. And because she was, I was, too. We both 
      wanted you more than we'd ever wanted anything, no question about it. And 
      when you came, we couldn't have been happier. We loved you the instant we 
      set eyes on you. You were different, but that only made you special." His 
      father looked deep inside himself. "Even so, it hasn't always been easy. 
      You understand. For any of us. The looks we sometimes get, that mixture of 
      compassion and disappointment, like we've somehow let the whole race down. 
      Sometimes... Anyway, what I'm saying is, I was wrong to try and make you 
      the same as everyone else. I'd convinced myself I was doing it for you, 
      but of course I was just doing it for myself. And now I can't help 
      thinking what would have happened if Michael hadn't been so quick off the 
      mark, if he hadn't caught you when he did..." 
      "But he did, and I'm fine. It just wasn't meant to be, Dad. That's all 
      there is to it." "Please believe me when I say that I had your best 
      interests at heart. It simply never occurred to me... I just assumed that 
      to fly must be your dream, your greatest, wildest dream." 
      "Oh, but it is, Dad, it is. I dream about having wings all the time. The 
      thing is, I've got so used to the fact that it's never going to happen, it 
      doesn't bother me so much any more. Sometimes it's better to have a dream 
      and not have it fulfilled than make do with something that's like your 
      dream but not quite as good." 
      "Say I'm forgiven anyway." "You're forgiven anyway." "Thank you." The old 
      man thought about tousling his son's hair, but checked himself. That was 
      something you did to little children. To boys. Instead, he patted Az's leg 
      one more time, and left the room. 
      Az shut his book and turned over to look out of the window. 
      Cloudcap City, his home, lay suspended in the bright afternoon sunshine, 
      shadowless and huge, its interstices busy with traffic, thriving with 
      life. It pleased Az to think that, even if only for a handful of seconds, 
      he had plunged through that city unaided, unsupported; that he had had a 
      taste of flight, however brief and unwelcome. It filled him with a weird 
      kind of serenity. 
      In this world he would always be a floorbound, wingless freak. There was 
      no changing that. But in his dreams... 
      In his dreams, he would always be able to fly. 

      © James Lovegrove 1995, 1999. 
      This story first appeared in Heaven Sent (Creed, 1995; Daw, 1995).