Wind

published in the Extreme anthology (2012)

by Anec. Independent, NYC

            When I first fell, I heard the wind around me, like the rushing of a train along the tracks behind my grandparents’ house in Ohio, but so vast I could hardly imagine any other sound. I was frightened. I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw and torn, and then I just whimpered as tears fell down my cheeks, but of course I couldn’t hear a thing aside from the wind.

            It was dark, not a glimmer or spark of light, and my imagination brought all sorts of terrifying visions before me. A distorted, smiling face with wide eyes, a man with a knife held ready to plunge into my chest, tiny spiders leaping from the walls to eat me starting with my eyes and working their way inside, up through my brain and down to my heart and lungs and stomach. I didn’t want to think about scraping against the stone walls around me or hitting the bottom and my body crumpling, snapped bones and dark blood, so I tried to tell myself that fairies were brave, that fairies didn’t cry at being lost in the dark and falling down and down and down, but I’d lost my wings and I didn’t think I’d ever find them.

            Mommy made them for me out of wire hangers and glittery green fabric, because I was the wood fairy in my second grade play. I watched her cut the cloth and bend the wires and fit them together, closing the gaps with her sewing machine, and she let me help when she needed an extra hand, because of course she didn’t have three hands, so I could hold the cloth while she pinned it or make sure the wire didn’t bend out of shape while she sewed tiny stitches all the way around. When she didn’t need help and I was bothering her with my questions about fairies and knights and if she’d tell me just one more story, she sent me up to the third floor to pick the rest of my costume out of the dress-up clothes I’d been collecting since I was five. I pulled out each item and laid them all side-by-side, pink silky skirts and white loose blouses and sparkly tiaras and old Halloween costumes that were mine or used to be my brother’s. One by one, I picked the clothes I didn’t want to wear and put them back in the box. This fairy wasn’t a princess, because she lived alone in the woods, so the tiaras and the skirts all went away. She wasn’t a knight or a Power Ranger, so the gray plastic armor and the red and white suit went away. She wasn’t a sorcerer, so the long blue and black robe with the gold edges went away. She was a wood fairy, so I kept the brown Indian Princess shirt with the ragged short sleeves and the green Robin Hood pants and the brown felt shoe covers to go over my sneakers so it looked like I was wearing moccasins.

            Mommy packed everything in a white plastic bag that said “Gordy’s IGA” in big red letters on the side and drove me to school, even though I usually walked, because she was coming with me to watch the play. We didn’t have to leave for half an hour after I meet my friend Hanna to walk because driving is much faster than walking, but I was ready to go and the morning took forever and ever, so I went outside and pretended I had my fairy wings on already and twirled in circles around the backyard until Mommy called me to the garage and said it was time to go. When we got to school the classroom looked like it had shrunk because everyone’s parents were sitting in our kid-sized chairs. They looked funny with their legs all sticking out or their knees almost up to their chins, and I thought maybe when I was a fairy they’d all be monsters with long long legs, and I’d have to vanquish them. But then I remembered that my mommy would be there, too, and I didn’t want to vanquish her, so I decided they could stay people and I’d protect them from the monsters instead.  We went to the bathroom so I could put my fairy clothes on and Mommy fixed my hair. She’d put it in lots of tiny braids the night before, so it wasn’t straight and brown and boring. It was wavy and shiny instead, but it was still brown. I got to wear my fairy wings for the play and I saved the princess from the evil king, and then Mommy took my costume home with her and I had to be a kid again.

            That weekend we went to the park for a picnic, and I begged and begged until Mommy said I could wear my fairy wings, but not until we got there so they wouldn’t be crushed in the car. We passed the sign that said “Irvine Park” and Daddy stopped by the playground and my brother and I had to help unload everything for lunch and bring it to the table before we could go play. I carried the bowl of cookies and I really really wanted to ask for one but I knew Daddy would say it would ruin my appetite and take them away, so I just held the bowl and breathed in deep until it was time to put them down on the picnic table. Mommy hooked my wings on the back of my shirt and said I had to be very, very careful so I wouldn’t crush them or bend them or get them dirty, because they weren’t washable and she didn’t want me wearing dirty fairy wings around the house. I promised I’d be more careful with them than with anything ever, and then she came to watch us on the jungle gym while Daddy started the grill and put the chicken on, and when it was done he came and got us and we all had barbecue chicken sandwiches and baby carrots and lemonade and chocolate chip cookies.

            Daddy said we should go for a walk. I didn’t really want to but my brother asked if we could go see the Bear Cave and then I was excited. I used to believe my brother when he told me that there were real bears living in the Bear Cave, but I didn’t anymore because I was seven and I’d been in the cave before and never seen any bears, and I didn’t think Mommy and Daddy would let us go inside the cave if there were bears in there, anyway. My brother also said there was a big hole in the floor at the very back of the cave and if you went in too far you’d fall and never stop falling because the pit was never-ending, and I believed him because the cave was big and dark and when I went in it felt like you could keep going and going and never reach the back. My brother said he’d gone all the way in, but he never went very far when I was there and anyway how could he reach the back without falling into the pit? He said he jumped over it because he knew exactly where it was, but I don’t think anyone can jump that far, because people aren’t fairies and only fairies can fly.

            The hill up to the Bear Cave seemed very long but it wasn’t steep so we weren’t tired when we got there. Mommy and Daddy told us to be very, very careful and Mommy knew I was afraid of the dark so she told me all I had to do if I got scared was turn around and I’d see the light from outside. But I was a fairy because I had wings and fairies aren’t afraid of anything, not even the dark and the bats and monsters that could be hiding in the back of Bear Cave, so I went into the cave before my brother even though I’d never done that before. I’d always followed him so I wouldn’t go too far and fall into the pit, because even if he lied and pretended to be braver than he really was, he was still my big brother and I knew he wouldn’t take me anywhere I could get hurt.

            I wasn’t scared this time because I knew even if I fell into the pit I could flap my wings and fly back to the top, and then my brother wouldn’t tease me anymore for believing in fairies because he’d see that I was one and they are real. He’d listen to me then even though he’s older and bigger because I have magic and he doesn’t. As long as I’m a fairy I know better, even when there’s a glowing light in my room that I don’t remember seeing before that turns out to just be the smoke detector, but it could have been something really scary so I had to check. The cave was dark but I could still feel the rough rocks through my sneakers and I heard water dripping at the back of the cave, and I wanted to know where it was coming from, so I went back and back and the dripping got louder but not faster.

            When my foot landed on nothing I fell forward and down and my wings caught on the stone on the edge of the pit. The hook came loose and they fell off and flew away without me. I could see them for just a second, even in the dark, but they looked like a big pale moth swooping down to attack my face and I ducked and that’s when I started screaming.

            I think I was spinning at first, because I fell in on my belly but then I think I was upside-down. I was dizzy and I thought I might puke and my head was being squeezed tighter and tighter, but then I flipped over and I felt better. My knees and elbows hit the sides of the pit and it felt like I was bleeding, like when I fell when my brother tried to teach me to roller blade and sent me down the big hill by our house, but this time I couldn’t see the blood and the little black specs of gravel stuck in my skin and that wasn’t as scary as watching myself bleed. My throat started to hurt and I stopped screaming and then there was just the loud wind. I thought I heard someone laughing but it was just an echo and it went away before I could tell who it was.

            I don’t know how long it’s been since I started falling, but I don’t hear the wind anymore. Maybe you can’t hear the wind this deep, maybe you can’t hear anything. I can’t see anything, either, but that doesn’t bother me because I think all I would see would be wet brown rocks, and that would be boring, so I’d rather imagine the wood fairy flitting up to her tree house with an acorn cap full of water to drink, and that’s easy to see in the dark.

            I wonder if Mommy and Daddy and my brother miss me, or if they’ve even noticed yet that I’m gone. Did they pack up the picnic things and go home without me, or are they still waiting just outside the cave? Maybe Mommy and Daddy went to work and my brother is at school and no one has even noticed I’m not there. I think it’s only been a few minutes. I think it may have been a hundred years.