It took me a few days to figure it out. The girl couldn’t walk. Just like I couldn’t fly.
To be honest, these humans that had rescued me, they all had something weird about them. The mother was missing an arm and used a gadget with a hook in place of a hand to grab things. The father had chips and wires poking out of his ears.
The boy came and fed me in the middle of the night, when I was most alert. By then I’d been moved from the table to the kitchen window, where I spent most of my time both day and night. The boy would sit on the windowsill and look outside, and after a while I realized he could see in the dark, just like me. So that was his weirdness. His eyes were like my nose.
I tried to stay detached, but as time passed, I confess I grew accustomed to these moments with the boy. The house—not really a house, more like three or four rooms the family shared in a huge building full of humans—was silent at night. The windows were always open, and you could hear crickets chirping outside and water rushing in the river.
The boy always brought morsels of food when he came to see me. I still wonder at how strongly I could smell the meals he’d give me. The insects and rats Mother would bring to the nest never smelled so tasty. Human food instead made my stomach growl in anticipation. Now I’ve pretty much gotten used to it. My sense of smell is no longer just a part of me. It’s who I am.
The boy would talk to me and tell me how my wings were going to heal, how he was going to teach me to fly. He’d sweep a hand across the sky, point to the moon, and say, “Imagine when you’ll be out there, riding the winds.”
Yes, I looked forward to those moments when darkness fell and the boy would come to feed me. Which, of course, was a terrible thing. Me, a brown falcon still dreaming of flying with the condors one day—how could I afford to become friends with humans? The fact that they’d rescued me didn’t matter. I had to leave as soon as possible. I had to return to the nest, to prove Mother wrong. “Look, Mother,” I would tell her. “I fell from the nest and yet I survived.” And I had to find the condors again. Soar in the skies with them.
So I waited. Waited until my broken bones healed and my vaned feathers grew in. Waited until the boy would teach me how to fly so I could realize my dreams and return to where I belonged.
Except I wasn’t the same anymore. They’d changed me. The smells I could see as patterns on the wind, the fact that I could now understand them. I’d sit on the windowsill during the day and listen as they talked among themselves.
I soon learned why the boy could see in the dark. His eyes weren’t made of flesh and blood. They were made of chips and wires, just like the mother’s arm and the father’s ears. The girl I still hadn’t figured out.
From what I overheard, she used to be able to walk but got sick and spent many days in bed. When the fever had passed, she could no longer walk. The mother and father were very upset about this. But the girl—she didn’t seem to mind. She’d crawl across the floor to the window, where she’d sit and watch me.
“Tell me what you see,” she’d say. “Tell me what you see when you look out the window.”
I did tell her. But only in my head, because my beak could not create all the sounds humans make with their soft beaks—lips they call them. I’d tell her about the river, how I was born hearing it rush beyond the cliffs. I told her about the waterfalls, though I couldn’t see them from the window; but I used to see them from the crevice where Mother had built our nest, the sprays of water rising over the forest. And I told the girl about the condors, too—about how I loved to watch them soar high in the sky, the sun glinting off their black wings. I don’t know if the girl could hear my thoughts the way I could understand her words. But she’d sit there with me under the windowsill, and stare out the window as I relived all those memories.
I was no longer a chick by then. I’d become a fledgling, my body covered in white and brown feathers. Mother had done her best to feed me, but as a single parent she could never leave the nest for too long, so she rarely brought back much to eat. As much as I hated that the humans had implanted stuff in my head, I confess that I finally felt strong and healthy in a way I’d never felt before. When the breeze blew in from the north, I’d spread my wings and catch the wind in my feathers. The boy would come yelling, “He’s going to do it! Kael’s going to fly!”
But I never did.
Every time I stretched out my wings, the memory of my fall flashed before my eyes. Maybe that’s why no chick recovers from a fall. It’s the haunting memory of the ground spinning up toward you. It paralyzed me. I longed to leap from that window, to return to my nest. I didn’t belong with these humans. I belonged up there with the condors. And yet I couldn’t make that leap. No matter how many times the boy would tell me I could fly, I just couldn’t do it. The thought of falling again terrified me.
Oddly enough, the girl was experiencing the same thing. Her father would pick her up and make her stand, gently holding her against his side. He’d tell her how she’d walked for a long time before she got sick. How her legs had forgotten how to walk, but that if she tried hard, they would remember again.
The boy wasn’t as sweet. He would snarl that if she didn’t start walking again, they’d chop off her legs and force her to get fake ones. I’d seen humans like that, not in this family, but in other groups that lived in the same building. They had legs made of rods and wires. I took the boy to mean that his sister was going to be forced to get legs like that, too.
But no matter what they’d tell her, the girl couldn’t walk. Or wouldn’t. Just like I couldn’t fly.
Then one day they took us outside. And that’s when everything changed.
It was a nippy, fall morning. The leaves were changing colors, and stripes of gold mottled the sea of green sprawling beyond the river.
The boy hooded me. It was something new to me, and I didn’t like it. But then he pressed a button under my right wing and everything went dark. The boy could deactivate me just like that, with a flick of his fingers. They all had buttons like that, only humans carry them at the backs of their heads. The next thing I remember is waking up to the sound of rushing water.
The air was different. It smelled crisp, tinged with the scent of leaves and river moss. And then there was this strong odor, sweet and rotten at the same time. I could feel the ground moving beneath me.
The boy unhooded me. I swayed forward, then closed my talons around his gloved hand and regained my balance. He was holding me while sitting on the back of a horse, a beautiful creature I’d only seen from my perch on the windowsill. I’d observed these animals run along the river with the same elegance and power as the condors, only on the ground instead of in the sky. And now, for the first time, I took in their strong scent.
The father and girl were there too, mounted on a second horse. The girl was riding in front of the father, clasping his sleeves as he held the reins.
“Are you ready?” the boy asked, holding his gloved hand in the air and the reins in his other. When the father replied with a nod, the boy kicked the horse and prompted it to a fast gallop.
I squawked and tilted forward, my talons digging into his glove. The memories of my fall overwhelmed me. Wind whipped my feathers and fear pounded in my veins. The horse ran along the riverbank, the rhythmic beating of its hooves so like the hammering inside my chest. The boy held up his hand and told me to spread my wings. I obeyed. It was instinct.
“You can do it,” the boy yelled. “You can take off now!”
But I couldn’t. My wings were frozen, my talons clutching the leather of his glove. I was petrified.
The boy pulled up hard and stopped the horse. The second horse swept by us, and just as it ran by, the father let go of the reins, picked up the girl, and propped her up on his shoulders. The girl cried out, but it wasn’t a frightened scream. It was joyous! She was having fun! Then the father reined the horse around and came running back toward us.