Feather by Frank Vasquez

I know I shouldn’t, but I just can’t help this feeling any more! Sitting way up here, my head touching the clouds and fingers smearing dirt on the clean blue canvas of sky, I feel so ready to end my life. I look down and see that nice patch of grass I can lie upon. Aside from my own thoughts, all I can hear is the wind and the whispers of intangible Heaven’s invisible angels.
“What are you doing here, small one? All the way up here! You’ll fall,” a female-voiced angel hisses softly into my ear.

Below my feet, there is a tiny cloud. I do not answer the angel. The roof of an impossibly tall tower of a magnificent and forgotten castle in the high mountains north of Nowhere is where I sit. I dare not answer her for fear of damning myself. After all, this castle had heard and seen all of it. One slip of my tongue, and I’d surely be held in contempt and thereby jeopardize any currently unforeseen chances for salvation.

So, I dangle my feet over the edge and kick gently so as not to disturb the little cloud. I can hear the tower blinking, its many eyes slamming their shutters open and closed. I can see the walls of the tower shrinking behind me, trying to get closer – hoping to somehow get a better listen. I can smell the swiftly decaying corpse of the hours-dead princess from here. She’s been dead for forty-one hours.

“What use is a knight that fails in his chivalrous duty?” I mutter.

My hands are still sticky and dirty with blood. I’d slain the dragon! Yet, I had failed to save her. I am a terrible hero. No comforting words for me, though. Oh, no, that’s not what I deserve at all! Not all of this blood belonged to the dragon, after all. That girl had put up quite a ferocious fight for herself. Neither of my naked weapons tasted her delight. Instead, there had been only blood and tears, and then she was dead.

I’m not much of a knight. The angels up here know it. They know me.

“You should fall now. Do it,” an angel whispers sweetly. “If you’re too heavy with sin, then we shan’t catch you. If you’re light as a feather, then you’ll go to Heaven.”

Something warm and yellow waters the top of my head. I hear the anything-but-damned things snickering behind me, and all around me. They say angels are in God’s favor. They are what you become when you are taken to Heaven. The truth is, angels, despite their enlightened wisdom and invisible ways of infinity, are actually quite stupid. Angels say and do things without realizing. They aren’t necessarily sinful, so much as they… well, their heads are up in the clouds – always on high.

I would not believe this to be true, were it not for the fact that I am witnessing the validity of this heresy for myself. These angels are urging me to kill myself, and this causes me to smile. Ending my life intentionally will send me to Hell. Having raped that princess will send me there, anyway. My fate is completely in their hands. I can hardly keep my eyes from tearing with joy.

“Light as a feather, eh? Try and catch me, then!” I exclaim as I push myself off the roof.

“Wait, Sir Knight! What is your name? We must have a name for your grave!” an angel cries out.

I laugh as I fall ever so slowly from very up high, and answer, “I am Sir Feather! Sir Feather of the Castle Bird.”

The angels catch me and bring me to Heaven’s Gates.

“You are disgusting,” one of them says, and he spits on me.

I grin, and lick my lips. There, I can still taste the yolk of the dragon’s eggs. My one regret in all of this, as my feet dangle in the air below me, is that I never got to scramble one of those delectable dragon delights! The mommy had woken to my coughing as I had choked on a bit of shell. It had scraped my throat all the way down until it reached my belly. Before I could open my eyes from wincing through the pain, the big ole Mama Lizard pinned me beneath a great scaly paw and bellowed in my face:

“You are going to taste disgusting!”

Her breath singed my hair a dirty dirty blonde.

I was then swallowed whole, but not before calling out, “Oh, I know it.”

Dragons don’t have hearts. Well, I mean, they do, but they don’t. This is difficult to explain to anyone who has never encountered a dragon. This, as I am sure is obvious, speaks for the vast majority of the human population. You see, dragons breathe fire- a magical fire. Before they are of age to roast you on a stake, dragons have hearts that pump blood. Upon reaching that certain age, their blood boils and, by some property of providence bestowed by God upon this otherwise insignificant-in-all-things-but-its-size lizard, turns to flame. This flame fills the lungs of the great beast (hence the smoke that emanates from its nostrils) and can be ejected in much the same way as a burp, though not necessarily the same concept… I hope you’re following me, as this is difficult to explain. I am doing my best.

Now, the heart of a dragon can be likened to a furnace, of sorts. What I did was cut my way to Mama Dragon’s heart and, well, follow me here, I smothered the flame. I tossed my cape over it and stomped it out. The heart, I mean, I extinguished the furnace that was the heart. The dragon’s flame died out and changed back into blood. I, needless to say, not willing to stay where I was, hacked my way out of the dead dragon. Heading for the stairs, I had a feeling I knew what was next. I mean, this was for the girl – for me!

Now again, as I am dumped on my face before Heaven’s Gates, I have a feeling I know what I’m in for. Picking myself up off the cloudy floor, I take care not to look around. My eyes remain shut as I brush myself off. In doing so, I realize very suddenly that I have left my pants behind. Muttering a profanity, I lift my shirt over my head and cast it down to Earth. After all, it’s only going to get in the way of my wings. Shaking the hair out of my face, and putting on a big smile, I finally look up and ahead at the Gates.

There’s a girl in the way.

I crane my neck leftwards, to look past her. She takes a step to the right, impeding my view. I lean to the right, and she shifts accordingly.

“God damn… Never mind,” I growl. I shove the girl aside. The skin on my palms smolders and melts the instant I touch her. I cry out sharply, and give her a look. That’s when I recognize her.
“Hello.” She picks herself up as I glare at her. “Why do you look at me like that? What have I done to you? Hmm?”

She carefully stands upright, her golden curly locks bouncing at the every tilt of her chin. She must be naked, but one can never know with these angels. Some, present company included, seem to enjoy casting that awful bright light about their bodies. So bright is their glow, their body seems to become the light itself.

“You,” I say flatly.

“Yes, me. Happy to see me? I’m saved!” It’s fairly obvious she is being ironic, especially as she spreads her angel wings to show off her newly established sanctity. The light about her dims to a mere halo over her head. She is naked, but never mind that. There’s eternity for it, later.

“Yes, well, I must be on my way. I get my wings next.” I move to walk around her.

The girl admonishes me, once again stepping in my way as she does so, “You bastard, Feather. You raped me! Killed me!”

That’s when I remember. Call it Enlightenment, because there’s no other way I could have realized. I flash back to my stepfather’s court and the shiny crown on his thick skull. He is not favoring me with a smile. The castle is empty, or so it would seem in this vision. I guess you could say only the most significant aspects of the moment were being revealed to me. Still, as I grit my teeth in pain of this memory, I can’t help but wish my little cloud friend were here to distract me. The King of Castle Bird and the Nestlands of Nowhere, my stepfather, is charging me with my mission. My mother, the Queen, sits in the lesser throne before him. The vile, treacherous woman! I didn’t need a ghost to tell me just how little the current monarchy deserved my trust and respect.

“Feather! Do you hear me?” my stepfather bellows.

“Mhmm…” I murmur.

“You are to bring her back here to her father!” he repeats.

“And my mother returned to her son,” I glare at them both as I say this. In retrospect, so to speak, this was not so significant a thing to say as I had intended it to be.

The King rolls his eyes accordingly, “Okay, Hamlet.”

“You -”

“- Are not in a Shakespearean play. Your father died of natural cause. Your mother married me to keep her power, and so I am king. Now, go -”

“- Rescue,” and I say this as I return to the present eternal, “my daughter. God damn me.”

“You are disgusting.” My half-sister, the princess I’d raped and killed, spits at my feet.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you angels are, too?” I remark airily. I take a step off the edge of the clouds and begin to fall slowly. That little patch of grass is down there somewhere. Perhaps I’ll at least pass through it on my way down. I know I’ll see my little cloud, and this, at least, makes me smile.

“Go to Hell, Feather!” she calls down from above.

“I’m going, I’m going.” I mutter.