E R I C A   

As told by the dancebeast Lylle's Brightwing

to a Lylle Company Surgical Machine

The first time I saw her was a year ago, in the fall, when the wetlands were dried, the reeds burnt dead by the summer's sun. She came on the monorail from the city.

There was a high concrete platform rising to meet the elevated track, bleached by sun and weather to blend with the dust of the earth and the grains of the fields. Nobody ever got on or off there; the next stop was the village, half a day's flight for me but not long for the train.

I'd hear the sound of its coming, a gentle whisper far off, and race to meet it. Each time the windows would fill with a clot of bodies and the colors of faces eager to see a living dancebeast. Sometimes the train would slow a little, and I would be able to perform tricks. Sometimes, the rarest of times, the train would stop a little while, and I would truly dance for the people, tumbling through the air with all the skill of a dancer just off a tour and all the strength and desire to perform a summer of rest had given me.

The first time I saw her was at such a time - the train was stopped, and I was performing, and a tiny little girl shape stepped out onto that platform and stared up at me with wide eyes and open mouth. A moment later, a man pulled her back out of sight between the closing doors.

When the monorail had hissed away I turned from it, spiraling and spiraling over the rolling hills of my master's lands. I had no idea I'd see her again.

Ah, Erica. The second time was in the spring, when I'd been in retirement a full year. I had lost performing condition completely by then, and had come to realize there would never be another tour.

They still seemed near-endless to me then, these lands. I spent all my days in the sky or out in the fields and forests, playing and sleeping and returning to the House only when summoned. In most ways I was content. But no matter how beautiful the fields or how vast the skies, I longed for the attention of an audience and the giving of joy. I suppose it really is no excuse, but I think that is what kept me from avoiding the girl as I should have. Training, once obeyed instinctively, can be forgotten, and the heart is infinitely more powerful than the mind.

That second time we met she came upon me as I slept; it was a windy day, and hot. The sun lulled me into unconsciousness and the wind through strong red-green spring grasses muted the monorail's slowing and stopping and I did not hear it.

My waking was to her delicate child's touch, her careful little hand brushing my forelock back from my face.

"You're very beautiful," she said admiringly. And then, point-blank, "Are you a boy or a girl?"

I jumped up suddenly, stared about to see what Humans had brought this child to see me - but nobody else was there.

Of course I could not speak to her, not by Law, even if there were an answer to the question she'd asked me. And though I dearly wanted to ask her how she had gotten here, that answer was easy enough to guess; she had come by monorail, apparently without the permission of her parent.

She had not been frightened at all by my sudden movement, and now that I was still she hugged me around my middle, staring up with a child's trusting smile. "Angel, will you be my friend?" she asked.

I did not understand the name she called me. I thought it was a shortening of another word sometimes used for dancebeasts: pseudoAngel.

"Will you take me to Heaven?"

My lack of understanding must have been evident, for she pointed up into the dizzying blue vault of the sky, as if showing me something. I threw my head back and stared up into it, wings twitching instinctively and heart racing at the sight.

"People get to go there if they are good all their lives," she said gravely.

My eyes searched the blue heights, but I saw nothing. I was sure I'd have seen it already if there were such a place.

She frowned with a child's charming concentration. "It's sort of like a city," she continued. "And it's too far away for anyone to see from here." And then she added significantly, "But you probably already know where it is since you came from there."

I did not know whether this was true or not.

And then she said, ever so matter of factly, "I want to go there because I never want to see my daddy again. He's bad, and bad people aren't allowed in Heaven."

I tried to decipher 'bad' from her puzzled little frown.

"He touches me," she said. "And hits me. He's very bad."

I remember thinking with surprise that she had twisted the world with childish logic into a distorted shape - surely it is a bad thing to be beaten by your owner, but does that make your owner bad?

But she said nothing more of that. She told me many other things, things that children like to talk about; she chattered away as if I were a Human myself, mistaking me, perhaps, because of my nearly Human appearance, for a non-animal. Eventually I crouched down and let her pat my sun-warmed skin with her little wide-spread hands, and let her play with my long white mane as if it were the hair of a real playmate.

And yes, finally, I let her climb upon my back, which I knew to be Illegal outside of the Arenas, although I did not fly more than halfmyheight above the ground and that only for short stretches.

Ah, if it could be said that that was the extent of my crimes - to take a child upon my back, to allow her to give me the attention and company I had been craving when the Legal thing to do, the proper thing, would have been to fly home the moment I saw her - if only that was the end of it.

So now it is fall again, a year and a half since my retirement, and a year since I first saw Erica. This third time she came it was much like that first day; windy, with the grains seared white and the platform jutting blindly up out of the lowlands.

This time I was aloft and quite far away when I saw the monorail stop and a tiny figure emerge and descend the steps. By the time I was overhead, a second, much larger figure had emerged also and the monorail pulled away.

Erica ran along the narrow game-path up the hill, and I could clearly hear both her piping cries and the deeper call of the man some distance behind her. She sounded as if she called for me, desperately, and he sounded as if he called her. Of course I should have immediately gone home, doubly so because now an adult Human was involved. I don't know why I descended, why I landed in the ocean of grasses on the side of the hill. But I did, and she quickly ran up to me.

"We have to go to Heaven right now!" she cried. She ran behind me and tried to scramble up my legs to mount me, but my attention was taken by the figure coming up the hill at a run.

Foolishly, all innocence and curiosity, I allowed the man to approach me, and recognized him as the one who'd pulled Erica back onto the train the first time I saw her.

His face was angry and frightened and I had no idea why. I had never been around people who weren't used to animals, so I didn't realize it was me he was frightened of. However, this is no excuse; I still should have known better than to remain anywhere around strange Humans who were frightened and upset. I cannot tell you why I did.

Then the man pulled something out of a pocket and pointed it at me. I didn't recognize it at the time but now I realize it was a gun. He pulled the trigger and to my surprise I was thrown violently backward to the ground, the whole front of my body gone strangely numb.

After a moment of shock, blind panic took me and training, thought forgotten, screamed that I return to the House and my place of refuge. I struggled to turn myself over and spread my wings as the man loomed over me. With an effort I got off the ground but the shock came again, this time numbing my legs and lower body and tail. Knocked off balance, I fell to earth again a short distance away.

Now Erica ran to me, and though I was both stunned and terrified, I heard her clear words cry,

"Fly angel! Fly!" and there were tears and terror in the child's scream. Her chubby little arms locked around my neck and her weight came down on my back and for a deranged instant I thought she was actually trying to hold me down but then I realized she wanted me to carry her.

With a supreme effort I lifted without the benefit of legs, leaving behind me a swath of red staining the flattened grass. The numb parts of my body had been pierced by hundreds of shards of metal.

"Fly to Heaven, angel!" cried Erica urgently, as her father's anguished wail rang out behind us. And unable to think beyond my own fear, and because it was after all a Human who ordered it, I simply obeyed, turning to the sun and straining to climb directly at it, wondering if I had the strength to fly to a place farther than the eye could see.

But almost immediately it seemed that my body grew cold, and my wingstrokes came slow as I was taken by a dreamy, dizzied state. The sun became all-encompassing, so nothing but brilliance filled my eyes. I felt the child's weight leave me as gently and silently as if hands had lifted her away.

Could I have reached Heaven so suddenly? Is Heaven a place close by, that only makes its presence known to those who are fated to be received?

My vision swung from brilliant to dark, and suddenly flight was easier than it had ever been before. I could no longer move my wings, but moved faster and faster, and the coldness in my body turned quickly to warmth.

I have no memory of hitting the ground.

I believe the child is dead. Whether she was taken by the gentle hands of angels or by the impact of the earth I cannot say. I have been told nothing.

Although there has been some delay - possibly the arguing of my master with the authorities - I know it is likely I will be put to death. In my condition - unable to move, unable to see - I almost wish it would come sooner.

I thank you, gentle Surgeon, for giving me what comfort you could. In return I give you this story, which you may use for your own, and ask only that you tell it exactly as I have told it to you.

Erica, © 1993 Kaas Baichtal

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See a picture of what Lylle's Brightwing might have looked like