Where the Pigeons Appear

one

"You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you."
Isadora Duncan

Wisconsin, 1865

The woman who was once a bird opened her eyes and, immediately, was distressed. She was in a strange enclosed space, and she was pinned to the ground under a heavy covering. It was soft and warm but still a trap.

She frantically flailed her body and easily broke free. However, her escape was foiled by her own distraction. For she looked down at her body and did not recognize it. All of it was foreign, but she was fixated on where her wings should be.

Her beautiful wings were gone. Instead, she had skinny, pale featherless limbs. She tried flapping them. Useless. And her attempt knocked her off balance.

She flopped to her side and rolled, falling from a very small height. So, she had not been on the ground earlier. She looked back where she had just fallen from. It appeared to be a nest of sorts—a rectangular one and raised off the ground.

Just then, she heard a commotion, and two men entered the space. Their appearances were strikingly similar. Both had mismatched dark hair and pale eyes, and it would have been difficult to distinguish between the two if one was not missing a leg.

The one-legged man was using some sort of sticks to aid in standing and walking. The whole process of his movement looked painful, but, if it was, it didn't show on his face.

Both the men stood still for a moment, watching her, but then the one legged man advanced toward her. Fear spiked in her breast. Flight reflexes engaged, she whipped her head around, wildly searching for an escape route. Not finding one but needing to do something, she attempted to get up off the ground.

But her bottom limbs were longer than she remembered. Standing was difficult and walking proved impossible. She tottled and crumpled back to the floor after one unsteady step. The realization that she was truly trapped only increased her anxiety.

Through her panic, she vaguely registered strange sounds coming from the two men. They appeared to be communicating, but the sounds registered no meaning for her. What did register was the fact that the two legged man had left the room, and the other man had stopped his advancement toward her.

The rapid beating of her heart calmed considerably, but she still eyed the man warily. As some of her panic receded, a disturbing realization came to her.

Her form matched the man. She had arms and legs and no feathers. And the man was larger than her, but not giant as he usually would appear to her. As dread settled in her gut, she hesitantly touched her face. It was smooth and soft.

As she rubbed at the space where her beak should be, she noticed the one-legged man watching her. When he saw he had caught her eye, he too touched his face in the same location. And she knew then they were the same. She was now one of them—a human tethered to the ground.

The realization both calmed and numbed her. It was conforming to finally make some sense of her current situation, but the knowledge that everything had changed was crushing. Maybe that's why she finally allowed the one-legged man to walk closer to her.

He was now near enough to touch her, but he didn't. For that, she was grateful. He simply held out his hand. A gesture that she didn't quite understand, but that she knew was a choice—her choice.

So, with a shaky breath, she met his eyes and grasped his hand. Using the sticks as a brace for himself, he helped her to stand. She was unsteady on her newly discovered long legs, but his support never waivered. And after a long moment, she tried her second attempt at a step.

She braced for the fall, but it never came. She stayed upright—the man held her upright. She glanced up at him, and he gave her a nod, which she took as encouragement to take one more step. And then another. They were shaky and uncertain, but, together, they walked the length of the space.

Once, twice, three times—she didn't know how many times they crossed the same space. But, eventually, her confidence grew, and she dropped the man's hand. Her unaided step was sure and steady, but she heard a noise behind her and turned to see the man falter. With her sudden lack of support, he was left off balance, grasping to steady himself with the sticks under his arms.

She should probably have felt bad. Regular walking looked painful for him. Having to support her had probably been quite difficult. But all she could think about was she now had the means to escape, and he was very unlikely to be able to stop her. Their eyes met, and she could tell he had come to the same conclusion.

He made a noise that, again, she still couldn't understand, but it did still send a spike of guilt through her breast. Pushing it aside and breaking his stare, she moved toward the large hole the two men had used to enter the space. She was by no means speedy but still faster than the one legged man, and she would have made her escape if the other man hadn't reappeared and blocked her exit.

He was carrying something long and flowing draped over one arm, and, though he was large, did not fill the entire exit space. So, she took a chance, feigning a bolt in one direction and then the other. But his body matched her movement, stymying her efforts. She couldn't easily get past him, and, in all honesty, didn't really want to get near enough to him to try.

In her distraction, the one-legged man came up close behind her. Startled by his proximity, she whirled around, now caught between the two men. They spoke garbled sounds to each other over her head. A decision must have been made because they both advanced on her at the same time.

It was good the one-legged man was the one to touch her. He hadn't let her fall earlier, so she trusted him—not much but certainly more than his companion. She would have been violent toward the two legged man had he been the one to attempt it. As it was, she shouldn't have trusted either. The one-legged man held her arms in a brace while the other man jerked the long flowing thing over her head.

Enraged, she let out a shrieking caw, but her voice was not her own. Startled, the cry caught and quieted in her throat. Her distraction allowed the two men to force her arms through holes in the material that was now surrounding her.

It was terrible. It touched her everywhere. Every little move she made, it followed her. Constricting, it felt tighter and tighter the longer it was on her. Her rage gave her strength, and she pushed passed the man blocking the exit. And, finally, she was free.

She rejoiced at the familiar sights that met her—the sky above and trees in the distance. But she acutely missed her feathers as the cold bled in. How did humans weather this?

Hearing noise of pursuit behind her, she pressed on faster. But the billowing white constraint they had forced her in caught around her legs and made her stumble. She'd never lose them on the ground—on their territory. She needed to get up in the sky, to take flight.

So she sped up for momentum and then jumped into the air, flapping her useless arms. They were certainly not wings, but they were all she had. Instead of catching the wind, she promptly fell down. The ground was hard and cold, but she got up and tried again. Only to have the same result.

She suddenly remembered she was being followed. She turned to find both men standing a short distance behind, watching her. They didn't approach, so she continued her futile attempts, desperately trying to accomplish what had once been so easy.

Again and again she jumped only to fall. Each fall hurt more than the last, and her useless featherless limbs had started to bleed. Frustrated and sore and tired, she finally collapsed on the ground. Something began to leak from her eyes, and she let out a mournful wail. Respecting her grief, the men still stayed away.

Then she heard a familiar sound come from above. She looked up and saw her brothers and sisters crossing in the sky. They were swift and beautiful and familiar, and she could not join them.

The great noise from their wings sounded like a beating heart—a connection she no longer shared. So she was left below, listening to that beat grow softer and farther away. As she strained to hear the last reverb of the dying heart, her desperation tasted like sour hope. Escape would never come.