By Sarah Fallon

I’ve been flying my whole life. I don’t remember the first time. My mother told me it was when we migrated from the caves to the forest and I cried all the way. I don’t know my father. There are no men in the forest. I know they exist because I saw one on the outskirts. He was an old man, featherless with broken wings hanging uselessly at his sides. Mother told me not to worry, that he would die soon and was no concern of ours.

My mother had a son once. Years before I was born. She told me about it, crying, her tears turning to stone as they landed. She carried the body of my brother in her talons out to sea and dropped it to the waves and jumping fish. That’s what they all do. Boys are valueless here.

The men don’t come into the forest. They live in houses, not trees. I went to find them after I saw the old one. They jabbed pointy sticks at me.

One day two boys stood on the edge of the forest. They were daring each other to enter. I was watching from high in the shadowed foliage where I wouldn’t be seen. Eventually one did cross over into the woods and once he was out of sight the other fled. I followed him from tree to tree.

The boy reached a clearing near where we nested. One of us landed in front of him. He startled but she pressed out her breasts and smiled. He stopped. He held out a timid hand and she pressed her cheek to his palm. He let her kiss him and fumbled at her chest. She clawed at his clothes, so he removed them. I had never seen what lay beneath the rags men wore and the back of my neck grew warm. He lowered himself onto the earth and she nestled down on top of him. She moved and moved against him until in a squeal she flew back into the trees. He remained on his back, eyes closed and a faint smile on his lips. Another of our number flew down beside him. She kissed him and pressed herself against him until his middle appendage was upright again and repeated the process.

He came back again and again but one day, with a sullen pout, he brought two others. We had come to the ground to meet our lover but the others laughed and chased us. One took hold of my wings and my mother scratched out his neck. The other saw and screamed, lashing out even more violently against us. Caught in the middle, our lover too began to hit and hurt us. In the end we were scratched and bruised, clumps of feathers lay strewn about us, but it was only the three male bodies that lay dead in the grass.

In pairs we carried them out to sea. It was no matter, the others told me, some already swelling with young, more would always come. I myself had started to feel the prickle of a life inside me. I hoped it was a girl.

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