Blue Wings

by Jef Aerts

  I thought of my room. The two mattresses next to each other. How good it felt to lie with my head on Jadran’s warm tummy.

  “You really don’t want to go, do you?” I said.

  Jadran gazed across to the other side of the river again. As if Spain was waiting for us out there in the grass somewhere.

  For a few minutes, nothing happened. A bunch of ducks put their heads under the water, so that only their fluffy butts were visible. The market people screamed themselves hoarse.

  “There!” Jadran suddenly shouted.

  Far above the city, a group of wild geese flew over. They chattered loudly with every beat of their wings and flew away over the residential neighborhoods across the river. Jadran hurried back to the tractor and turned on the engine.

  “We have to follow them,” he said, petting Sprig. “They’re flying south too.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Giant!” I shouted above the din. “There’s no way we’re driving all that way!”

  But I couldn’t stop him. And I didn’t really want to stop him now. Everything Jadran had said to me back at the apartment was still echoing around inside my head: We’re brothers. Brothers always stay together. I want to be with you, Josh. Mika was planning to split us up. And Mom agreed. I couldn’t let it happen—we had to get away! This was our chance to escape.

  The tractor rumbled and spluttered. A grey cloud of smoke drifted toward the market stalls.

  “Wait for us!” whooped Jadran, looking up at the sky.

  And he juddered off down the street again, following the geese.

  THE SOUTH IS ALWAYS THERE. Sometimes it’s on your left, sometimes on the right or straight ahead. But whichever way you go, it’s only a step away. You just have to be able to see it.

  For Jadran, the south was beyond the wind turbines. That’s where the geese had disappeared from sight. So that’s where we were heading on the tractor, as quickly as we could.

  It was a ridiculous plan, a plan that only Jadran could have come up with. But the more I thought about it, the more exciting it seemed! We were going on the tractor to take Sprig to the cranes’ winter resting place. Without parents, he’d never be able to find the way.

  We weren’t just any old brothers. We were crane brothers. And we were taking Sprig to the only place he belonged: with his family.

  Beyond the river, residential neighborhoods gave way to a patchwork of meadows and fields. The wind turbines towered high above them. Their blades seemed to turn to the rhythm of the tractor wheels.

  Jadran drove along the bike path. Obviously that wasn’t allowed, but it was safer because the trucks were racing past at breakneck speed. The cyclists weren’t too happy about it though. And it didn’t help that Jadran squeezed his eyes shut every time a bike came too close.

  “Out of the way, Giant!” I yelled.

  The cyclist rang his bell. Jadran almost drove into the roadside.

  At a roundabout, we turned onto a narrow farm road that led to the wind turbines in the distance.

  “We need a compass,” I said.

  “What’s a compass?” asked Jadran.

  “One of those round things with a needle that lets you work out the wind direction.”

  Jadran nodded like he understood. “Those wind turbines are turning in the direction of the wind.”

  “That’s true. But a compass always shows which way is north and south, even if the wind is blowing from the other direction. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with the wind. It’s magnetism or something, I think.”

  Jadran grinned. “Mika’s a magnet.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what Mom said. I always stick to Mika. That’s because she’s a magnet.”

  The road became bumpier. My butt cheeks were sore.

  “We don’t need a compass,” said Jadran. “The south is in Spain. Even when the wind’s not blowing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “For us it is. But it doesn’t stop after Spain, because that’s where North Africa is.”

  Jadran tapped his forehead, like I’d just said something really dumb. “South Africa, you mean!”

  “And then if you keep on going, you end up at the penguins,” I said.

  “Penguins are cool.” Jadran flapped his hands like two stumpy little wings.

  “Hold the steering wheel, Giant!”

  The bells in a far-off church tower rang four times. In half an hour, Mom would go fetch Jadran from the Space and find that he was missing. And that me and my broken leg were gone too. I didn’t dare to think about what a shock she’d have this time.

  Sprig was getting more and more restless. He kept trying to stand up. Toenails were poking through my pants and scratching the cast. He raised his wings and sharpened his beak on the back of the passenger seat.

  “Stop a second,” I said. “I can’t hold onto Sprig.”

  Even before the tractor stopped, Sprig flew down to the ground.

  We looked south. Jadran was looking at the south with the wind turbines. And I was looking at the south beyond.

  “It could be, like, more than a thousand miles,” I said. “To the cranes.”

  “Wow,” said Jadran, even though he had no idea how far that actually was.

  “The tractor goes a maximum of only fifteen miles an hour. So if we drive for ten hours a day, when will we get there?” It was like a math problem at school. “Ten times fifteen. That makes one hundred fifty.”

  Jadran nodded.

  “So how many days do we have to drive?” I asked.

  His brain was creaking. I held up my fingers to help him.

  “… five, six, seven?” he counted.

  “Almost a week then, if we don’t get lost.” I tried to smile, but my mouth had seized up. It was Sunday tomorrow. And Monday I had to go to school.

  Jadran beamed like he’d come up with the answer himself.

  “A week’s over in no time!” he shouted.

  “I CAN DO SOMETHING,” SAID JADRAN.

  “What’s that?”

  “Whistle on my elbow.” He bent his arm and pressed his mouth to the inside of his elbow. A shrill, high-pitched note sounded, like a singing kettle.

  “Cool,” I said.

  Jadran whistled as loud as he could. The kettle was about to boil over.

  “You see!” he said with a red face. “I can do something, huh? Something no one else can do!”

  “We have to keep going, Giant,” I said. “If someone sees us here, we can forget about it. They’ll pick us up and send us straight back.”

  “Sprig!” shouted Jadran, spreading his arms like a big bird net. “Come on!”

  But Sprig didn’t want to sit on my lap. Not for a fresh worm. And not for a bit of waffle. He scrabbled around with his feet among the fall flowers until the earth beneath them was bare, pecking wildly at anything that moved. He seemed to have completely forgotten about Jadran and me.

  There was nothing I could do. Dumb leg. If I leaned forward too far, I’d slide off the tractor.

  So I said, “Start the engine.”

  “We’re not going to leave him behind, are we?”

  “We’ll see if he follows us.”

  Jadran stomped my way again. His eyes were shining.

  “Just like that plane, huh?” he said. “Like that hang glider. And I’m the pilot!”

  Sprig pretended not to hear the roar of the engine. He didn’t look up until Jadran drove the tractor back onto the road. He rubbed the sand off his beak one last time and sprinted after us.

  Ie! Ieuw! That was probably crane language for “Stop! Stop!”

  But Jadran didn’t stop. He looked back at the running bird and kept stepping harder on the gas.

  “A bit faster, pilot!”

  Sprig was almost stumbling over his long stilts. He dashed and leaped. Then he opened up his wings and took off. Low above the ground, he flapped after the tractor. With a few steady beats of his wings, he was over our heads. And he just kept floating there, with his enormo
us shadow on the asphalt.

  Jadran cheered. “He’s doing it! That’s what I said, didn’t I? I always say everything, don’t I?”

  Iee! Iee! went Sprig.

  “Yes, Giant,” I said with a smile. “You always say everything.”

  We drove until our butts were blue from all the bumping. Sprig would fly above us for a while and then disappear from sight. But he always came back to the tractor.

  After the wind turbines, we zigzagged across the landscape, heading in the direction we thought was south. We didn’t have a route worked out, and maybe that was why no one was on our heels yet. Sometimes we went off the road for a bit and drove across a field. Or we chose a track through the woods where you couldn’t go with an ordinary car.

  We stopped near a grove of trees on the edge of a small creek. Jadran opened up the wheelchair and helped me into it. Then he disappeared into the blackberry bushes with a packet of tissues.

  I ate a waffle cookie and Jadran gobbled down the rest of the packet. The water bottle was almost empty too.

  “I’ll fill it in the creek,” said Jadran.

  “No, don’t do that!” I said. “Do you want to get poisoned?”

  But he was already charging off with the bottle in his hand. I hurried after him in the wheelchair.

  People often came here to picnic. There was a clearing on the banks of the creek, where you could easily get down to the water. Among the trees lay plastic bags, beer cans, and even more tissues.

  Someone had tied a rope and a car tire to the branch of a willow tree. Jadran stormed toward it. He took a running start, grabbed the rope, and pulled up his legs.

  “Yee-haaaw!” He swung wildly across the creek.

  The branch creaked with every swing, but Jadran just stuck out his legs even more, pushing himself higher and higher.

  “What about me?” I yelled from my wheelchair.

  “I’ll come get you, brother!” shouted Jadran. “We’ll stay together, huh? We’ll always stay together!”

  He whirled back my way and dropped onto the ground. I rolled the chair toward him and pulled myself up on the rope with all my might. Dr. Mbasa’s exercises came in handy now.

  Jadran stood behind me and in front of me and around me so that I couldn’t fall. He pushed my leg with the plaster cast onto the car tire. I clung on as tightly as I could. Everything hurt, and the stitches pulled tight when I tensed my muscles, but I did it anyway.

  Jadran took hold of the rope, with me between his arms. He pushed off again and pulled his feet up. We swung back and forth. The bottom of Jadran’s jacket dragged through the mud. The branch bent worryingly, and the dark water flowed past beneath us. It could have been the runoff from the sewer. But for Jadran, it was a stream in paradise. A laugh bubbled up inside him, a laugh I hadn’t heard for a long time. A real, wild, boy’s laugh.

  I said, “On three, we both let go.”

  We went back and forth again.

  “One, two, and …”

  Jadran went flying onto the ground, landing on his cheek with his arms folded behind his back. I flopped onto his belly, rolled, and lay there on my side to keep my plaster cast dry.

  For a second, we both held our breath together.

  “You okay, Giant?”

  Jadran burst out laughing. “Now I can never go to the Space! I have to stay here with you forever!”

  WE LAY AMONG THE TREES and pretended we were both invisible. Jadran was an expert at it.

  “Where are you?” I said. “You were lying there just a second ago and now you’re gone!”

  “Helloo!” he shouted.

  I turned my head in every direction, pretending not to see him.

  “At the top of the tree!” Jadran stood up to make himself look bigger.

  “How do you do that?” I lifted my chin and searched the branches. “Stop teasing me! Come on out and show yourself!”

  “Here,” he whispered, closer now. “Yoo-hoo!”

  I grabbed his foot and gave it a tug.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he shouted. “My foot’s stuck on something. Help!”

  Jadran fell onto his knees. I threw my arm around his neck and looked right at him.

  “Ah, so there you are!” I said with a laugh.

  But Jadran just went on playing and stayed invisible until it was time to leave.

  It was hard work getting me back across the creek, but we did it. I asked Jadran to look under the trees for the longest branch he could find. He stretched out with the branch to grab the rope. He staggered and almost fell into the water, but he managed to pull the car tire to our side. We scrubbed the dirt off our clothes with the towel that Jadran had stuffed in the gym bag before we left. Jadran put on dry socks. A chunk crumbled off the bottom of my cast.

  Soon it started to get dark and the tractor’s headlights cast a thin, yellowish glow ahead of us. Sprig was in his element. He flew low over the fields and whistled at the setting sun. I hoped he would trumpet as beautifully as the adult cranes, but he didn’t get more than that shrill squeaking out of his beak.

  “We have to find a place to sleep,” I said.

  “I’m not tired yet,” mumbled Jadran.

  “In the dark we can’t see which way south is.”

  We were standing in a hilly landscape, with small farms dotted among orchards. There were lights on in some of the buildings.

  “I’ll go ask,” said Jadran.

  “What?”

  “If they have a room. With two mattresses next to each other.”

  “Are you serious? They’ll call Mom.”

  Jadran turned onto a long lane. A sheepdog barked hoarsely when it saw the tractor. The lane led to a neglected-looking village. In the middle was a village square with a rickety kiosk and a line of pruned trees. Smoke curled from a chimney. And, along with the smoke, a strong scent of food came our way.

  Jadran abruptly parked the tractor on the roadside. He licked his lips.

  “If you want something, you have to ask for it. That’s what Mika says.”

  “Don’t do it, Jadran. Stay there.”

  But he jumped down and walked across the square to the house the delicious smell was coming from. In the light of the streetlamps, he didn’t look like a boy anymore, but a grown man. A hunched-up man who had come to beg for some food.

  The door opened a crack. A woman in a sweat suit put her head out. She was wearing dark glasses, and her grey hair was gleaming as if she’d just taken a shower.

  I couldn’t hear what Jadran said, but she didn’t close the door and she didn’t chase him away.

  Jadran was a born charmer, as I knew only too well. Rafaela, Mika the magnet, and Mom herself: with a simple smile, he won them all over.

  “It’s because he can see right through you,” said Mom when I asked her why that was. “Jadran doesn’t look at the outside. He makes people feel that he sees them as they really are.”

  The woman went back inside. Jadran turned and gave me a thumbs up.

  A little later, the woman returned with not one but two steaming plastic containers. Jadran must have thanked her a hundred times. She smiled awkwardly, as if she wasn’t entirely sure she’d done the right thing.

  Jadran hurried back to the tractor with the containers.

  They had roast potatoes in them. And thick, creamy gravy.

  “How did you manage that?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know,” he said, like he went out begging every day. “I just said her food smelled real good.”

  His eyes were twinkling.

  We ate every last bit of the food and then drove on into the darkness. It was a bright night with a clear sky. The stars and planets shone much more brightly here than above our apartment block in the city. Sprig landed on the tractor and even he sat staring up at the sky with an open beak.

  A little way past the village, we came to a railroad crossing. The barriers had been removed, and it was clear that no trains had passed this way for years. On the other side of th
e railroad tracks, there was a wooden construction trailer. The paint was peeling and one of the windows was broken. The rusty logo of the railroad company hung above the door.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Our hotel for tonight.”

  Jadran shook his head, but he still steered the tractor in that direction without a murmur. Beyond the crossing, he drove up the concrete track to a spot behind the trailer. So no one would really notice the tractor from the street.

  “Go check if the door’s locked,” I said.

  Jadran turned off the engine and slid down the fender. He climbed the steps, pressed down the door handle, and gave the door a thump.

  “Boom!” he shouted as the door grated open. “Boom! Boom!”

  Then I heard a beep. Startled, Sprig flapped off my lap. It was Yasmin’s phone, vibrating against my chest. I took it out of my inside pocket and tapped in the code. The screen lit up.

  Everything OK? They’re looking for you at the lake. X. Yaz.

  It wasn’t just the telephone trembling—it was my whole body.

  That was when I really realized what we were doing. Up until that point it had seemed more like a game: the crane, the tractor, running away to the south. It was exciting, and we were doing what we felt like doing.

  But Yasmin’s message wasn’t a game. We’d actually run away. Everyone was looking for us.

  I gave the telephone to Jadran. He studied the message carefully, letter by letter.

  “There’s an X too many,” he said.

  SLEEPING IS THE SHORTEST WAY through the night. At least it is if you don’t get lost.

  I dreamed about birds. Blue wings that had grown on my back. I stood on the balcony and heard the feathers rustling. A cloud of birds hung above the apartment block. They were all chirping at once.

  Go on, Josh, jump and let the wind take you!

  And then they flew in circles, skimming the building.

  Don’t be afraid, Josh! Flying’s the best thing in the world!

  They took hold of me, and thousands of beaks lifted me up. They carried me with them, higher and higher above the city.