Grounded

by Narrelle M. Harris

  ‘The sunflowers collect solar energy,’ said Clementine. ‘Which keep the charge topped up for the interactive video. The cameras feed in the current view of the sky and the program uses the elements in the video to make Napp’s imaginary sky.’

  ‘Is it a metaphor for something?’

  ‘Maybe. For me, the sky’s a bit … mythic. Ever since I grew too big for my parents to take me up with them, I’ve only ever been in it on mechanical transport. It’s an exotic place to me, in a way. I suppose it’ll mean something different to you. That’s the point of art, though. It can mean something different to everyone who looks at it. What does this speak of to you?’

  ‘Delight,’ he said, without hesitation.

  Clementine felt a pang as his lifting wings drooped again. ‘There are delights in other things,’ she said gently.

  ‘Are there?’ He didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘This artwork sky is hidden,’ said Clementine. ‘What we see here is only for those who walk underneath, and almost nobody does. Helena Napp made this delightful, mythic sky for anyone who takes the time to see it.’

  Benedick’s habitual sad lines shifted again, lifted again into something more optimistic.

  ‘She did, didn’t she?’

  Then Clementine’s watch pinged an alarm.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I have to go. Dell and I have a lot to clean up, after yesterday, before the exhibition opens.’

  ‘Of course. Thanks for letting me tag along.’

  ‘My pleasure. It’s always a treat to reveal the secrets of the SunField to new neighbours.’

  Clementine decided not to tell Benedick that he was the handsomest neighbour she’d shown it to.

  Chapter Four

  Fog. Cold on his face. Damp on his cheeks.

  Visor down, helmet strap firm, he flies. His wings are heavy with the moisture gathering on his wings, beginning to soak the hairs of his wings, bound together and arranged in their human mimicry of avian feathers.

  He flaps hard into the downbeat; the power drives him up, above the fog. Above the cloud.

  The sky is blue, blue, blue. Shining with light from a hidden sun. A dragon glides by, slips into a sudden fold in the sky. Shimmy, wriggle, sliding out of daylight into the velvet black night glittering with stars.

  He wants to follow. He wants to slip into the sky behind the sky and fill his eyes with those stars.

  He beats hard on the downstroke, shaking free from the clinging fog, from the cloud that changes shape. That reaches for him.

  He’s free. He’s almost free.

  The cloud curls, shifts, surges. It forms a soft paw, a grey and misty fist of iron. Cloudy fingers around his ankles, and he flaps and fights to break loose.

  The fist of vapour warps around his body and throws him down.

  Down

  Down

  Down

  Benedick woke choking on a cry, wings flapping, uselessly tangled, in his sweat-soaked sheets. Still muddled in sleep, he wrestled with the bedding, gasps of horror escaping him—uh, uh, uh!—until he flung himself onto the floor, sheets and all. The jar of landing woke him properly.

  Sprawled between bed and wall, Benedick took deep breaths, trying to quiet the shuddering in his body, toe to wingtip.

  Afterwards he wiped his face on the sheet, dragged himself to the shower and, without once looking through his window, made ready for his day.

  ***

  ‘Good to see you, Benedick. How are you doing?’

  ‘Fine, Liam. You?’

  ‘Sunshiney and loads of lift, thanks. Are you settling in to Avalon all right?’ Benedick’s therapist placed two cups of tea on the table between them and took the seat opposite.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Met the neighbours?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Well, it’s only been a few days. The courtyard there is lovely, and there’s an exercise stand which …’

  ‘It’s good. Yeah.’

  ‘Has Peri been by? Or your cousin?’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘You or them?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  ‘I see.’

  Benedick sipped his tea.

  ‘You’re having dreams again,’ Liam said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll see your no and raise you a hell yes.’

  Benedick sighed. ‘And my poker face used to be so good.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Not especially. The same old thing, but with dragons this time.’

  ‘Dragons?’

  ‘Don’t go all dream interpretation on me. Clementine took me to see under the SunField yesterday. Have you seen it?’

  ‘I have. It’s lovely.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who’s Clementine?’

  ‘My one neighbour I’ve met. Clementine Torres. The artist, you know?’

  ‘Not personally, but I’m familiar with her work.’ Liam set his empty cup on the table and leaned forward, knees on elbows, his auburn wings motionless behind him.

  He always keeps his wings still, thought Benedick. A therapeutic sleight-of-mind, perhaps, trying to make his disabled clients less aware of their differences. Benedick didn’t know if he found the ploy thoughtful and kind or thoroughly bloody annoying.

  ‘And how are those other thoughts, Ben?’

  Benedick gritted his teeth. Should he admit to still, sometimes, wanting to melt through a window and let gravity take him on one more flight? Liam was meant to help him work through thoughts like that.

  But Benedick knew he had no intention of doing any such thing. In the months after he’d finally believed the doctors that he’d never fly again, it had felt momentarily tempting, but the more days he lived without flying, the more days he wanted to keep living. He missed flying. He imagined stepping into the air and staying aloft. He dreamed about it.

  The crashing part of those imaginings and dreams were a petrifying memory of real terror returning to him. He wanted to fly. He didn’t want to crash again. Not in dreams, and certainly not for real.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I miss the air, but I don’t plan to try walking it in.’

  Liam appeared satisfied with this. ‘All right. You have my number, though. Use it if you need me. Even if you don’t think you do and just want to talk.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Are you seeing Keira after this? She might have some new exercise routines for you that would make best use of that courtyard equipment.’

  Keira was Benedick’s occupational therapist. ‘I saw her this morning. My wing’s been cramping, so she’s given me a new liniment. Peppermint oils and stuff.’

  ‘Peppermint and witch hazel,’ nodded Liam. ‘She’s swearing by it at the moment.’

  Benedick laughed. ‘Sounds like a warlock’s potion.’

  ‘As long as it helps.’

  ‘It smells better than the other stuff, anyway, so I’m fit for company.’

  ‘Great. So you’ll be spending time in company, then?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Benedick prevaricated, thinking of Clementine.

  ***

  Clementine pushed her hair behind her ears and strode across the plaza towards the streetcars. Two people in deep conversation crossed her path and, all unaware of her presence, spread and snapped shut their wings in emphasis over a point of contention. Clementine spluttered to a halt and let them past—one murmured an embarrassed apology—before trying again.

  She was normally more aware of the people coming and going from the ground—she had to be, since so few ever noticed the small amount of space she occupied—but she was tired. Exhausted. And she smelled of turps and oil paint, no matter how thoroughly she’d washed in the gallery’s bathroom.

  Another wing flapped in her face and she skipped sideways into a gap. The oblivious flier launched into the sky with a gusty flap and Clementine watched her go. Four metres up a notepad fell from the overstuffed bag strapped across the flier’s body, and the flier swoope
d to retrieve it before it could brain any pedestrians.

  ‘We could use an umbrella,’ said someone behind her. ‘Do they make them out of steel?’

  Clementine found a smile for Benedick as he joined her. ‘Inverted brollies would be better. We could catch and keep the spoils. Sell them online on Magpie.’

  ‘Our fortunes will be made.’ Benedick fell into step beside her. ‘How’s the clean-up going?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Have the assigned officers found any leads?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know this trick, you know.’

  ‘What trick?’

  ‘The non-answer answers when you don’t want to go into it. I have a black belt in evasion myself.’

  ‘Do you now?’

  ‘Do you want coffee?’

  ‘Touché. And coffee would save my life, but I smell like an explosion in an art studio.’

  ‘You smell fine to me.’

  Clementine grinned up at his wince. ‘Do I, now?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I meant that my fine ex-copper senses detect nothing of the exploded studio about your person, and I submit, your honour, that no-one would be alarmed by your appearance at The Spyglass. It’s full of disreputable people anyway.’

  ‘Isn’t that where all the lawyers go?’

  ‘That’s the place. Ground floor so they don’t tire their delicate selves out by flying twenty-four kilos of law books, precedents and affidavits past the first floor.’

  ‘All right. I’m game. Though if any of the off-duty beaks wrinkles a nose at me, you’re paying.’

  ***

  Benedick watched Clementine stir a half teaspoon of sugar into her café latte and applied a decade of experience trying to read witnesses and suspects to her expression.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said, gesturing towards the three-piece serving of almond biscotti he’d ordered with the coffee.

  Clementine picked up the smallest piece and nibbled the edge of it, then sipped her coffee and sighed.

  ‘Life: saved?’ he asked.

  ‘So far, so good,’ she conceded. ‘The biscotti is great.’

  ‘The best.’ Benedick bit the end off a piece himself and continued to assess Clementine without looking like he was staring. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, her demeanour vaguely puzzled and distracted. Her gaze kept shifting though not fixing on anything.

  ‘What were you painting today?’ he asked.

  ‘I finished cleaning the red paint from all the pictures. Mostly it got frames and glass, but it went across the corners of some big, important pieces. I’ll have to retouch those over the next few days. They’ll probably still be wet when the exhibition opens. Assuming this crack-shelled flap-brained gull doesn’t have a second swipe at my work.’ As she spoke, her eyes went bright and sharp, her brows gathered in a scowl. Benedick thought she didn’t know whether to cry or bite.

  ‘Sorry for the language,’ she said, not sounding it.

  ‘I’ve heard worse, and less deserved,’ Benedick said.

  ‘Dell’s brought in some security.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘No. It’s not,’ he agreed carefully. ‘You shouldn’t have to have security.’

  Clementine sighed and put down the remains of the biscotti. She clutched her coffee mug in both hands.

  ‘I wouldn’t normally worry,’ she said into the cup. ‘But this whole thing is weird.’

  ‘Weird?’ prompted Benedick.

  ‘I’ve had people suggest my art sells so fliers can feel good about themselves, supporting the disabled, which maybe is true for some. I’m tough enough to weather idiots saying my success is a kind of pity vote. But this is nothing like that. It isn’t what ableism feels like.’

  ‘What does that normally feel like?’

  She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘You don’t know?’

  He knew. It was people saying they had lift access and then putting him in a cramped elevator with the goods deliveries. It was people in the plaza spreading their wings in Clementine’s face because they just didn’t see her. Normally, it was not being taken into account, not being noticed or considered.

  The vandalism and the threats were much more pointed and vicious than that.

  ‘Have you told the case officer?’

  ‘I don’t think Lieutenant Sifakis really got it.’

  ‘Marca Sifakis? I served with her for a while. Maybe I could have a word with her.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Clementine picked up her biscotti again and used it to stir her coffee. ‘You know,’ she said with determined cheerfulness, very definitely changing the subject. ‘I’ve found a new colony of candy moths down by the river, underneath the drooping pines. There’s a whole ecosystem in there I’d like to paint.’

  ‘Candy moths?’

  ‘You’ve seen candy moths,’ she asserted. ‘You watch nature documentaries don’t you?’

  ‘I never used to have much time for television.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’re definitely a fan of wall-ball, and I will eat this actual ceramic cup if you don’t have all eight seasons of Hawk Squad to watch on weekends.’

  He grinned at being caught out. ‘Sixth season’s the best.’

  ‘Lieutenant Callea finally confesses he loves the cat burglar Miranda …’

  ‘And she sacrifices her freedom to save him from Rock Burdon’s hitman.’

  ‘Classic.’

  ‘But no nature documentaries,’ said Benedick. ‘So tell me about these candy moths by the river.’

  Clementine smiled. ‘Better to show you.’

  ‘Under the drooping pines, you said?’ His wings shivered slightly, betraying his scepticism.

  ‘You’d fit,’ she said, casting an eye over him from head to wingtip. ‘They’re worth seeing.’

  ‘Moths.’

  ‘Candy moths.’

  ‘If you say so. When do you want to take me?’

  She looked surprised he’d accepted her offer, and he wondered if she’d made it in jest. Then she was all delighted smiles, all warmth and optimism. ‘I’ll have to work some more at the gallery tomorrow, but the day after?’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  Clementine finished her biscotti in a much more cheerful frame of mind, and Benedick wondered at himself for accepting an offer to somehow get under a pine tree to look at a moth.

  Clementine, he thought, was utterly at home with the idea of crawling under a tree. The ground that had tried to kill him was where she lived. Where she created her astonishing and detailed art. This unkind ground was Clementine Torres’s friend.

  Benedick sipped his coffee and wondered what it might take to make it his friend too. He decided he’d happily begin with having a friend in Clementine.

  Chapter Five

  Benedick spent most of the next day at court, waiting to be summoned to appear as a witness. And waiting. And waiting.

  Security Chief Zach Abrahm sat with him for a while, also waiting for the lawyers to bring him to the stand.

  ‘Sasaki,’ he nodded.

  ‘Chief.’

  ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘Doing well, sir.’ An unspoken ‘considering’ hovered between them. ‘Is Mrs Abrahm well?’

  ‘Very, thank you. She’s graduating in June.’

  ‘Pacific Literature, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s it. She had a poem accepted into Terrarium last week.’

  Benedick was more than politely impressed. Terrarium was highly regarded as an arts journal. His cousin Octavia had hopes of having one of her pieces being accepted to it one day. Their rejections to date had been relatively encouraging, she claimed.

  The chamber doors opened and a group of people bustled out, among them Adelphium Jones and his legal team. Benedick saw Jones flinch as he caught sight of Benedick and the Chief. Jones’s lawyers encircled him like ducks round a chick and concealed him from view.

  Benedick watched the little floc
k flutter away, deep in agitated conversation, until he felt his former boss’s eyes on him.

  ‘He’s not going to get away with it,’ Abrahm assured him. ‘It’ll be twenty years in the Cage before he even gets a look at parole.’

  Benedick had seen dead certainties slip away before and wouldn’t dare make such declarations himself. The Chief’s expression was grim, though. What had happened to Benedick was the secret dread of every serving officer. Most people spent their lives flying without mishap, using flatbed taxis, boats and air balloons when wings weren’t fast enough or strong enough for the distance. Only law enforcement and the military regularly put their wings on the line.

  To shoot a police officer out of the air was almost the worst crime a person could commit, whether or not the officer died. A long confinement in the Cage—the maximum security prison for the most dangerous offenders—was inevitable for those convicted.

  By the look on Jones’s face, though, he knew being acquitted would be a tough ask.

  ‘Isn’t his legal team funded by the backers of the Terra Australis Prima Party?’ asked Benedick.

  ‘That’s the rumour.’

  ‘Just a rumour?’

  ‘A very well-founded one,’ admitted the Chief. ‘It’s not illegal for them to do it, though.’

  ‘They’re keeping it pretty quiet.’

  ‘Between you and me,’ said Abrahm, ‘I believe Intelligence is investigating further rumours of far less legal donations directly to Jones’s offshore bank account.’

  ‘That would be a very stupid donation to have made.’

  ‘Especially if they predate his attempt on the Minister’s life. Still, TAPP isn’t known for its leading intellectual lights.’

  ‘A certain level of rat cunning though,’ said Benedick.

  ‘Rat cunning will only get you so far when your organisation is full of feather pluckers and backstabbers,’ said Abrahm. ‘And in any case, this is only a rumour. You didn’t hear it from me.’

  ‘Hear what, sir?’

  ‘That’s the spirit, Sasaki. Listen to all that ringing in your ears from the sound of how doomed Jones’s prosecution is.’

  Benedick decided to be quietly optimistic, whatever might evolve with those uglier rumours of national treachery. TAPP was strident and narrow in its views, but he would have laid odds on them not being actual traitors, even as they accused the government of betraying the nation with its reparation deal. It was more likely Jones was responsible for it all, or had been put up to it by an overly passionate individual. Why choose conspiracy when lack of foresight and unreasoning prejudice seemed so much more probable?