Wings of Clay

Her brother never understood the warning in Icarus’s plight. He’d love to fly too close to the sun, he said, to fly at all. He would lift her, giggling and shrieking, and she would hold out her arms while they zoomed around the living room. Afterward, they’d fall onto the couch helpless with laughter, the decorative blue pillows bunched around them like waves. When she cried, he told her to pretend her tears were seawater and drink them down. To fall simply meant that you had flown.

Now she felt like a whistle her brother had made in art class before—well, before. A bird of clay, darling red wings that would not flutter. It made a variety of sounds depending on one’s placement of fingers and mouth, from a twitter to a low, sweet moaning, but that wasn’t what birds were supposed to do. Whistling was a function, not a purpose; a singing creature meant little if it had nothing to sing about.

Her mother took the whistle to the hill sometimes, to the dead patch in the grass where the lightning had struck his homemade hang glider. She wailed and whistled, whistled and wailed, called his name until her daughter wanted to shake her. He isn’t coming back, ma. You told him to stay away from the sun and now look where he is.

Her mother said it soothed her, though. Sometimes, when she held it, she felt his spirit. The girl snuck it off her bedside table once, tried a whistle, but whatever peace her mother received would not come to her. She could not capture his spirit in her hands, his wild laugh, windblown smell, his exuberant smile. It was just her, alone, standing in an ocean of grass with a bird that could not fly.