Star Pure Wings

*Star Pure Wings*

The screams pierced the night, raking the air with unending pain and sorrow. The sound took on a life of its own, and roamed the village like a feral beast on the prowl for a hapless soul to drag to some hell-den and salivate on. The peasants called upon God for salvation whilst hanging pagan charms from their windows. Women sang songs against spirits in the old tongue to frightened children, and the men sat tensely in whatever furniture there was to be had.

Running down the muddied street the midwife almost tripped on her own coarse shift and worn shoes, but she straightened up in time to catch her woven basket, and the goods therein: rags, hot water, knives, rose, lavender, and clary-sage. Yes, almost time now for the widow, big as whale rising from the depths she was. Though for quite some time the midwife, who was one of few who bothered to have the counting-knowledge in the village, had been quite puzzled. The widow’s husband had died some year ago, he nearing old age, and she not yet 18. While the young woman was flowering, the midwife herself knew the husband was as withered as dried walnuts, and besides, no baby took a year to emerge from the mother-den. Strange though it was now that she thought back, the widow’s husband was found a few miles out the village, crushed as though having fallen from a cliff, yet there was no cliff near this village.

But there was no time for thoughts like this, or like any other, except for ones involving the prospective mother and child. As the bony midwife tore through the widow’s door the birthing-stench of fear and fecundity hit her the same time one of those weapon-screams did. Reeling she almost lost her footing again, really this was too much for an old woman like she!

Nevertheless she rushed to the widow’s side and barked orders at the few unwilling souls attending the birthing. The widow, though looking at her one thought more of an innocent girl, with her small breasts and hips, heaved like a mighty volcano, spewing fury in verbal nonsense.

“It’s the feathers,” she yelled “ the man-bird-creature. How can you leave me so?” She wept at this, and kicked her feet in a futile little gesture.

“She’s been screaming nonsense like this the whole time,” the mayor’s wife said. “And yet I see nary a chicken nor its feathers anywhere about here. I think she may have gone mad with grief over the loss of her husband. Perhaps she thinks one of the great eagles came and dropped him?”

“Perhaps,” murmured the midwife, more concerned with dabbing herbs to speed the process in the birthing tunnel.

“It’s the feathers, the wings…” the widow sobbed as blood flowed onto the bed.

“In the name of Jesus,” the midwife cursed, knowing that the girl here was already forsaken.

The women in the room all stood and stared, not a one moving.

“Hurry up useless wenches,” the midwife howled. “Knife, hot water, blankets, now!”

The midwife ignored the whimpers of the girl as she stuck a hand in to feel the baby. Something was odd, perhaps the child was deformed. God help her but it seemed too much at times, to lose the mother and child? The cruelties of this world were unbearable at times.

The paling girl moaned against another gush of blood the color of fall leaves “Hope, it must end in hope,” tears and then blankness. The girl was gone, damn her, perhaps bless her, leaving the empty shell for the midwife to deal with.

Needing no further urging the midwife split the woman with the knife and brought the child forth with her hands. Covered in blood she had no thought but of clearing air for the child’s first breath. Not a cry did the babe make, but upon looking into her eyes the midwife was so startled by the midnight blue depth and truth of the tiny girl-child’s gaze that she wept, and did not notice the “deformity” that had so hampered the little innocent’s birth.

Attached to her back, unsullied by blood, were star-pure wings.
***
“Hopey Harpy, Hopey Harpy, hell bound is Hope the harpy!” the children screamed and laughed at their made-up rhyme as they ran in a small mob after Hope.

The girl ran desperately down the street in her coarse shift and bare feet, and of course the cloak that seemed glued to her back, to cover her “abnormality” as Auntie called it. Her hair fanned out behind her with the force of her speed, reflecting like pale rays of sun off the morning dew.

The oldest of the mob, a big boy with dark hair and gapped teeth, yelled at Hope’s back, “ ‘Yer mother screwed a harpy!, Do ye hear that demon-face? She did a harpy!” His own wit sent him and the rest of the crew into gales of laughter, which eventually forced them to stop running for the humor in it all.

Hope decided she had had enough, for the last 14 years of her life she had heard all about how her mother had slept with a harpy and then had her husband killed by her unnatural lover. Village idiots! Was she the only one who knew anything around here?

“Harpies are all female you idiot, they capture males to breed with, not the other way around! You hear me, there are NO male harpies, I am therefore not a harpy!”

“Hmm, if ye be a harpy,” said the gap-teeth “then I wouldn’t mind you capturing me for some breeding!”

Big and small the youthful mob fell to collective knees and wheezed their amusement. If Hope had been aiming to hit a target with these imbeciles it seemed she had missed, and hit herself instead.

At the very least they were occupied with making fun of her instead of chasing her, and peace was to be had a few steps away at Auntie’s house. Auntie wasn’t really her Aunt, she had no kin in this village. Rather Auntie was the very same midwife that had delivered Hope from her mother’s womb. Auntie looked at her in the strangest way sometimes, a mixture of fear, joy, and a love that was almost zealous in its manner. Not the love of a parent for its child, but the fearful love of something wild and unpredictable, yet something that one could not possibly hope to comprehend. It was the only love she had known though.

“They after it again?” the midwife asked Hope, looking up from crushing herbs with her mortar and pestle.

“Of course,” Hope replied “there’s nothing else to do here.”

The midwife sighed her agreement and went back to her rhythmic pounding, leaving Hope to her own devices. Usually she would have picked up one of the few worn books the midwife owned, but today they seemed so monotonous. Everything seemed so dull, she wished she could just fly away…. Ha, what a funny thought that was, she had wings, yet she didn’t even know if she could use them, having been told at every turn the beatings she’d receive if she tried.

“I’ll be back soon Auntie,” Hope said as she strode purposefully towards the door.

“Don’t you wander off the main street, ye hear?” the midwife asked, her gaze conveying volumes of other “don’ts”.

Hope didn’t answer but turned down the street, and after throwing a gaze behind her shoulder to check for busy eyes, headed off that same street and off into the shelter of trees and golden leaves. She’d only managed to sneak off here a time or two, mostly the midwife or her cronies kept a close enough eye on her to curtail any wandering urges. She found a beauty in nature that just wasn’t present in the squalor of humanity. The color of the autumn leaves was finer than any wrought metal, and the chirping of birds more melodious than any human minstrel. She sighed, how this was perfection in every way.

Sitting down on a pad of moss she heard an unusual bird call out, beautiful, like liquid silver, but like nothing she had ever heard in her entire life before. It sounded again, this time right over her head. She glanced up, heart palpitating and breath coming in short spats. What she saw turned her brain inside out, and made her raise her wings instinctively to fly.

It was a shining ball of light, but one perceived this with much more than just the eyes. A strange tinkling was to be heard, a smell like rain on earth and flowers, a taste like honeysuckle, and a tingling on the skin that felt like silk. It was overwhelming, she couldn’t begin to comprehend it, and yet somehow she felt she could. Somewhere in the back of her brain came ideas and notions she had never even dreamed of having, and memories that swelled up from the depths of her brain that she had never before dreamed of possessing.

She saw volumes conveyed to her, cities of light, meadows of stars, and a feeling of a great presence over all of it. She suddenly realized these weren’t her memories, no, the creature was telling her its story. Unexpectedly she felt connected to this being, though she had never seen nor felt anything like it before.

“What are you? Who are you?” her voice rose as she became slightly frantic.

Suddenly Hope’s mind filled with the cities again, and the overriding presence, and suddenly an absence of that presence, and a terrible anger and loneliness. Also there was a hopelessness that could not be abided. But suddenly she felt other emotions, lust, jealousy, and even love. She also felt the confusion, it was obvious these feeling were new at a time in the past to the being before her. She saw a face, blond, young, and beautiful, and felt suddenly overwhelmed. The creature skipped what happened next, but she felt love growing inside as if it was her own. Finally she felt the jealousy rising up, and it being let go as the cause dropped miles to the ground.

“Oh in the name of Jesus,” Hope said, gaining an inkling now, knowing the story of her father’s (well her mother’s husband’s) demise.

A weeping entered her head, more profound than any sadness she had ever felt.

“Oh please tell me it isn’t true, please,” she begged, knowing that this was worse than being the daughter of a harpy. This was so much deeper, so much more cosmic that there was no way out.

She saw the full picture in her mind now of her mother, and the light-being now, except the being was much more corporeal, and very handsome with dark hair and full grey wings. Her mother fell to the ground and wept as the angel flew away, to repent of sins that he could never escape from anyhow.

“Come away with me,” the being spoke into her head.

“But I can’t,” Hope protested, “I can’t leave Auntie, it’s just not right!”

The angel answered “Though I cannot show you things I once could have, I wouldn’t have been able to make you if I were able to.” The feeling of love washed over her like a tidal wave again, and regret, for leaving her mother with a fatal seed in her womb.

“Hope,” he began again, voice rich like dark chocolate, even though it was in her head, “part of having hope in life is knowing that you will fulfill your destiny. My destiny is a part of yours, just as yours is a part of mine. You must help me, you must come with me. Part of Hope is Destiny, and part of Destiny is Purpose. Come with me and fulfill yours.”

She couldn’t deny this, it flowed through her now like blood, like the music she had first heard him chirp. She shook off her cape and expanded her white wings fully, knowing the being stared at her and was impressed by her magnificence.

“Shall we father?” she asked, extending a hand.

He just reached out and took it, and as they flew together in perfect harmony she glanced at Auntie's house, and knew her Hope had lain outside the village, but one’s Destiny is a composite of past and future, and Purpose is made up of things old and new.


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