The Boy with the Broken Wing

It was by the grace of bootleg absinthe that Pa slept soundly through the storm that night, never the wiser as to what its turbulent winds had swept into his barn.

The loud crash that jolted Henri out of bed didn’t so much as stir his father, who’d passed out several hours earlier, right in the middle of his nightly rant about his runt of a son’s general uselessness.

Useless, never mind the fact that Henri as good as ran the farm those days. He woke before dawn each morning to feed what few animals hadn’t been sold off yet, and spent the rest of his hours tending his late grand-père’s sparsely seeded fields, hauling what little harvest they yielded into town toward evening. That was the part of his day he hated most––trying to barter and trade with such meager offerings always made his face burn with shame. He suspected the transactions he managed were made more out of pity than anything else, and his neighbors did little to convince him otherwise. He’d heard the words, “poor boy,” whispered so often behind his retreating back that they were starting to feel like part of his name.

While most children Henri’s age spent their free time playing bandits in the woods, or maybe pirates in the stream if it got too hot, Henri was obligated to patch up the old farmhouse and barn whenever their beams cracked or their rooves started leaking, which was almost every day now. He’d become familiar enough with the creaks and groans of the dilapidated property that he could sense when something was about to give way, which might be why the storm set his heart racing so furiously that night.

There’d been thumping and howling for hours as wind-bowed trees beat against the house, but the noise that woke Henri had the distinct timbre of something heavy crashing through rotted wood.

“The barn!” he gasped, leaping to his feet. He pulled on his dressing gown and slippers without giving his snoring father so much as a backward glance, knowing he wouldn’t be of any help in this situation. If anything, Pa would probably just box him about the ears for not storm-proofing the barn in the first place.

The wind outside was unforgiving, tossing Henri around like one of the dolls other children received as toys. He clung to the rickety porch, eyes stinging as he edged his way toward the barn, praying the damage wasn’t as bad as it’d sounded. The large double doors he’d carefully boarded shut only hours before swung wildly in their rusted frame, clacking and banging as they threatened to fly off into the night. Henri held his breath and dashed between them, his wiry frame just narrowly avoiding being crushed as they slammed together, then flew apart again.

He fumbled around with numb fingers in the dark, seizing the matches he kept hidden so Pa couldn’t accidentally start a fire. He struck one against his lantern and shielded its soft glow with his shivering body as he ran to check the support beams, telling himself that if they survived, most anything else was fixable. In the lantern’s faint light, he could just make out his latest patch-job still holding true, keeping the beams upright even as they wobbled from the storm outside.

Uhhhghh.

The sigh of relief Henri had been about to exhale caught in his throat as something groaned loudly above him. He froze, and held his lantern aloft.

“H-hello?”

………..

“Must’ve been the wind,” he muttered, taking a step back.

Uhhhghhh.

A chill ran down Henri’s spine. He whipped around, certain the noise he’d heard was coming from a person. Neither wild animals nor wind groaned like that. He crept toward the far corner of the barn, his light falling upon a jagged, gaping hole in the roof.

Merde!

Henri cursed under his breath, momentarily forgetting his hunt for the intruder as he thought of what Pa would do when he saw the damage. But then the groaning came again, and he nearly dropped his lantern.

“Wh-who are you?” he demanded. “You c-can’t stay–”

He halted, his eyes flicking up to the loft as something shiny flashed in his periphery. There, sticking out from behind a mound of hay was…

A wing?

Or at least, something that looked like one. It was huge, as long as Henri’s whole body, and silver to boot. He scurried over to the ladder and climbed a few rungs, fear abated by curiosity as he peeked over the railing. He felt his throat catch for the second time that night as he spotted what the wing was attached to.

It was part of a pair––two glittering, silver wings sprouting from the back of a boy not much bigger than Henri, though size was where their similarity ended. Where Henri’s skin was rough and tan from farm work, this boy’s was smooth, iridescent even, and as pale as lily-of-the-valley in spring. His thick, silver lashes rested against his cheeks, and his long, matching hair pooled around his head, creating a sort of nest on the loft’s dirty floorboards.

He was beautiful. Too beautiful to be real, as far as Henri was concerned, which meant that Pa must’ve hit him a bit too hard earlier and he was hallucinating all this.

The boy groaned again, twitching, and Henri saw that one of his wings was sticking out at an awkward angle.

“Oh no, are you hurt?” he gasped, crawling closer, reminded of the time he’d found a bird lying at the base of a tree. He grimaced as he remembered how Pa had snapped its neck when he discovered him trying to care for it, shouting that only girls played nursemaid.

Henri reached out a hand and felt the boy’s forehead. He was at once both warm and cool to the touch, his skin tingling like running water, or falling snow. The boy’s eyes fluttered open, revealing large, translucent orbs that caught the light of Henri’s lantern and reflected every color back at him. He glared, his perfect features distorting as he bared his teeth and hissed something in a language Henri couldn’t understand.

“D-don’t be afraid,” Henri said, offering a weak smile. “Let me help. I think you’re injured–”

The boy jerked away as he reached for his wing.

“Do not touch me with your filthy hand, human.”

Though the words themselves were harsh, the voice they were spoken with was too lyrical to frighten Henri away.

“Are you an angel?” he asked, eyes wide, moving closer even as the boy tried to scoot back. “I’ve been praying for help,” he murmured, “but I never imagined I’d actually–”

“I am not here for you,” the boy interrupted. “The Icari have no dealings with creatures as primitive as yourself. Being addressed by you at all is itself a great offense.”

He made as if to stand, but Henri pushed him down, ignoring his look of outrage.

“You shouldn’t go anywhere with your wing like that,” he insisted. “Let me help you.”

“How dare––who do you,” the boy spluttered, smacking him away. Again he tried to rise, stretching his wings, but he flinched and quickly sank back down, emitting another low groan of pain.

“Wait here,” Henri said, already sliding down the ladder. “I’ll find something to treat that.”

When he returned minutes later carrying bandages, wood for a splint, some blankets, and a canteen of water, Henri was fully expecting to find the boy gone, but much to his surprise, he was still sitting in the loft, arms folded huffily across his chest.

“I’m glad you decided to stay,” Henri said shyly, climbing up to join him.

“It would be foolish to fly in the same wind that brought me down,” the boy muttered, jutting out his chin. “And the Icari are no fools.”

Henri offered his canteen, which the boy eyed suspiciously.

“Go on, take it,” he smiled. “It’s just water. I thought you might be thirsty.”

The boy shot him a few more dirty looks, but eventually took a sip. He spat it out immediately.

“Foul human, do you drink the very water in which you bathe?!” he choked, wiping his mouth dry.

“Of, of course not!” Henri said, startled. “It’s clean, fresh water, I would never–”

“Miserable creature,” the boy shuddered. “I pity you if this is how you think water ought to taste.”

Cheeks hot with embarrassment, Henri ignored the boy’s comment and set about splinting his wing, wrapping it a bit more roughly than he’d intended. The silver feathers were impossibly soft around his fingers, though he could still feel the powerful muscles flexing underneath them.

He can really fly with these…he thought, dazed, again wondering whether he weren’t dealing with an angel. But surely an angel wouldn’t be this rude?

“Done,” he said, gently patting his handiwork. “Hopefully it heals within a few–”

“Icari heal much faster than humans,” the boy waved dismissively. “I will be gone by first light.”

“Huh,” Henri said, rocking back on his heels. “You keep calling yourself that. Icari. What’s it mean?”

The boy’s lips twitched in irritation.

“It does not mean anything, human. It is what I am. A lord of the sky. Far above what you could ever hope to understand. Now be gone. I require a focused mind before flight.”

The boy closed his eyes and began humming a strange tune, offering no further explanation as he dismissed Henri from his own barn. Knowing he still had a full day’s work ahead of him, Henri smiled again and quietly left, certain that his strange new acquaintance would be there when the sun came up, despite his claims about quick healing. And sure enough, when he returned at dawn with food, water, and some canvas to cover the hole in the roof, the winged boy was still fast asleep in the loft, tucked away in the pile of blankets Henri had pulled from his own bed.

It wasn’t difficult to convince Pa to stay out of the barn for the next few days––he never did any work anyway so he had no reason to go in there. And when Henri explained that storm damage had made the place unsafe, his predictable response was that it was Henri’s fault the barn hadn’t held out, so it was Henri who ought to risk his neck fixing it.

Each day passed in much the same way, with the winged boy pretending to be asleep whenever Henri came to check on him, and Henri pretending not to know he was really awake. Despite never receiving any response, he sat and talked each time he changed his dressing, telling him all about the farm and the surrounding land, wondering aloud where the Icari came from and why he’d never heard of them before.

“I wish…” he said quietly one evening, his fingers lingering longer than usual in the boy’s silver feathers. “I wish you’d at least tell me your name.”

He was nearly out the door when the boy’s whispered response came floating down from the loft.

“Enlil. That is what my people call me.”

The boy stopped avoiding Henri after that, and though he still forced him to participate in one-sided conversations, he at least showed that he was paying attention whenever he spoke, his large eyes tracking Henri’s every movement, his slender ears perking up with every change in Henri’s intonation.

It was on his seventh night in the barn that he surprised Henri by grabbing his arm, preventing him from applying a fresh bandage to his wing. “There is no need,” he said, fingers locked like steel around Henri’s thin wrist. “I will be gone in the morning.”

Henri didn’t move. He felt his heart squeezing, both from the pain of Enlil’s sudden announcement, and the fact that this was the first time he’d touched him without a look of disgust on his face.

“You’re…leaving?” he said, a tremor in his voice. “But your wing…”

“Is healed,” Enlil said calmly. “You’ve done enough. It is time I depart from this place.”

Henri looked away, fighting back tears he didn’t understand. He’d known all along that the silver-winged boy would leave as soon as he was able, so why was it suddenly so difficult to accept?

“It is…strange,” Enlil said, still holding Henri’s wrist. He pulled him closer, sliding his weight across the loft floor as though it was nothing. “You’ve tended my wounds without fail, and yet not once have you bothered to treat your own.” He lifted the hem of Henri’s shirt, revealing the ugly patchwork of bruises Pa added to nearly every night.

Henri’s ears turned a brilliant scarlet. He jerked backward, and Enlil released his arm as he hurried to cover himself.

“Th-that’s,” he stammered. “It’s nothing. I’m used to––it’s nothing,” he repeated, gathering the unused bandages. He slid quickly down the loft ladder, mindful of Enlil’s piercing gaze lingering on his back. “I’ll come see you off in the morning,” he said, pausing at the barn doors. “So please…wait for me.”

***

BANG.

The sharp noise that woke Henri that night was nowhere near as loud as the one that first signaled Enlil’s arrival, but it filled him with an even greater sense of dread.

Pa.

Henri scrambled out of bed, and saw that his father’s place by the hearth was empty.

No, no.

He stumbled down the stairs and ran outside, fear blooming in his chest as he thought of what Pa would do if he found Enlil. He’d shoot him, or maybe chain him up and sell him to some traveling cirque for drinking money.

“What the hell?!”

Henri burst through the barn doors just as Pa’s furious voice pierced the night. He leapt without thinking, knocking his father to the ground.

“No, Pa,” he sobbed, “let him go. Run, Enlil! Fly!”

“Why you little––get off me!” Pa shouted, kicking him away. “Good for nothing, attacking your own––and why the hell is there a damned hole in my roof?!”

Henri looked up from the floor, glancing around wildly. Where was Enlil? Surely Pa had spotted him by now?

But there was no sign of the winged boy anywhere. The loft was empty, the hay fluffed as though a body hadn’t slept there the past several nights.

“Answer me, you little shit,” Pa said, dragging Henri outside. “Thought you were supposed to be fixing the barn, what’ve you been doing this whole time, hmm?” he said, his hot, liquor-infused breath washing over Henri’s face.

“I have…” Henri gasped, clutching his ribs. “I have…I just haven’t finished–”

WHACK.

Pa smacked him hard against the side of his head.

“Talking back, always talking back,” he muttered, seizing his son’s collar. “You know what I think? I think you’re–”

WHOOSH.

There was a great flurrying of feathers and wind, and suddenly Henri was soaring through the sky, cool air drying his wet cheeks as his father’s shouts shrank into nothingness, and the farm became a tiny glowing speck in an otherwise silent night.

Henri closed his eyes, head tilting back into a familiar, sweet-smelling warmth. The arms that carried him were strong yet gentle, the wings that bore him beating a calm, steady rhythm. The last thing he heard as he drifted off to sleep was Enlil’s lyrical voice, telling him it was time to go home.