Icariana

I find her by the riverbed after the end of the world, wings tucked under her grubby ribs. Some new kind of being, or else some rich maniac’s attempt to engineer homo deux before it all went down. Or went up. Tides, lava, nukes, spaceships. Those last ones, especially, aren’t ever coming back down.

I’ve come across my fair share of bodies, but none of them alive, and none of them winged. She blinks groggily as I carry her out of the scorching sun. Home is a cave dressed up like one. I lay her down on the mattress—she weighs less than the portable generator—and fetch a cup of water.

She sips with puckered lips. She’s hollowed out—hungry, exhausted, dehydrated if the fourth cup is anything to go by—but she doesn’t look much older than me under all of it. Slim brown eyes and shorn dark hair, roundish face, and of course the wings, spilling from the slits in her dress. They’re like grimy clouds across my bed.

“What’s your name?”

I don’t know if she can speak; her motor control seems fine but—

“Seraphine,” she says.

All right, that’s a little on the nose, but I’ll take it. Seraphine’s voice is surprisingly smooth, low and clear like a warning bell. Everybody else—the few there are left—rasps like they swallowed the generation ships’ dust clouds. “I’m Kya,” I reply. “Let me get you something to eat.”

†

Seraphine doesn’t remember much, but she says she remembers flying. She tries some experimental lifts, but her body crumples before she can get a foot off the ground. Her wings shed feathers that fall mutely as I catch her. “You need to get your strength back.”

“Flying,” she murmurs desperately into my chest, half-conscious, less a behaviour than an instinct, some immutable part of her she needs to exert over and over again.

“Strength,” I reply.

Strength is food. I can scrounge up a decent amount. There’s not a lot of variety, but I’m not picky. My goat Mantle does the heavy lifting: cheese, milk, everything silky and creamy. I know where to find cactus and nuts and dates if the season is right. There are dwindling bags of beans and tough grains from the last time I stumbled on a caravan. Water is precious. After her first day, we drink in small measures. These are the blightlands. The sun came too close, and we do our best not to shrivel.

I get used to cooking for two, and to sitting opposite someone while I eat. Seraphine eats like a bird of prey: sharp, tearing bites. Fortunately, she’s not picky either. She likes the cheese. I start making more of it.

I show her how to cut open saguaros and scoop out their insides. She’s deft with her fingers. I demonstrate how to make nut paste and milk curds. Once she asks, “Is there anything you miss eating?”

Anything with flour. Beef. Carrots. Rice, unthinkable in this dryness. Chocolate. But instead I find myself saying, “Strawberries.” Luxurious, sweet things. I had them once as a kid when trade was on its last legs and the growers hadn’t yet been packed off past the atmosphere.

“A fruit?”

I wonder again where she’s from, what hole she was locked up in. So many things seem new to her. Not the abandoned planet, though; that she never asks about.

“Yeah, fruit.” I describe it, and think of Mom. “Maybe they have it way up north still, but it wouldn’t grow here.”

Seraphine gets stronger every day. I start thinking about going upstream. There’s rumors it’s less scorched there. That things actually grow. I haven’t wanted to before, because I’ve built too much safety here to abandon for maybes. But now that Seraphine’s practically healthy, my encampment seems less safe than stale compared to the way she moves through it. Like my world is too small to fit her. In my quiet moments, I look at her and think we could risk the maybes.

Then one day she says, “I want to fly again.”

“Oh,” I say.

Somehow I’d forgotten.

†

We stand on the cliff above the caves. There’s a decent northeasterly wind, a little cloud cover. Seraphine’s tried some jumps and experimental flexes, but this is showtime.

I realise I’m terrified, but before I can speak—I don’t even know what I want to say—Seraphine steps off the edge.

The world tumbles, and then her wings snap out and my breath swallows itself. Whoosh and a twist and a laugh and a burst of white feathers arcs past me. Seraphine slices through the air. Her wings burn with the reflected light of the sun, the glow almost harsh.

She circles before darting skyward again. Suddenly she’s tiny. Then she’s diving again, wingspan eclipsing the sun. But while I’m staring at her, she’s staring at the horizon. “I need to fly out further,” she shouts.

My euphoria crashes. “How far?”

She shakes her head, half a shrug, face obscured by feathers and motion. “As far as I can go!”

It’s a lack of a question that hurts the most.

I want to grab her legs, hold on, never let go. Even if it sends us both plummeting into the scorched earth.

But I don’t. I make a gesture that I think means okay. I smile. I let her fly.

Slowly, she vanishes from sight.

Girls with wings were made to soar. Girls with nothing get left behind. That’s the way the world works, even after it ends. I make my way back down the cliff. I have so much space, and too much cheese.

†

Seven nights later, there’s a thud outside. I freeze, slowing on the butane crank. There isn’t another sound, but I know better than to trust silence. I grab my prod and climb up to the cave entrance just as a shadow descends.

Even when Mantle bleats happily, I can’t bring myself to believe it. But Seraphine is there tucking her wings in as I gape. She smiles like my head isn’t spinning to pieces, and lifts her cupped hands. “It took longer to find than I thought.”

Strawberries, fat, red, still dewy.

“Where?” my mouth asks, even though I know.

“North,” she says. “Just like you said. There’s people up there, Kya.”

In this moment, I don’t tell her about all the times when she was gone that I started thinking about jerky and portable rations. Things I’d have to leave and things I could bring along to go after her, to go anywhere that wasn’t still and scorched. Right now, I just show her how to pluck the leaves off the fruit.

There’s only six. Three each. Every burst of juice makes the lump in my throat grow. They taste like somewhere I’ve forgotten. Somewhere I could know again. When the berries are gone and my hands are sticky, I ask her to tell me all about it.

She begins, “Far up the river, there is a field...”

© 2022 Wen-yi Lee

About the Author

Wen-yi Lee is a Clarion West alumni from Singapore who likes writing about girls with bite, feral nature, and ghosts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons and Tor.com, among others. She can be found on Twitter @wenyilee_ and otherwise at wenyileewrites.com.