She was remarkably small, an early baby, so delicate and light that whenever a Sister lifted her from the cradle, a flicker of surprise would pass over stern features, and murmurs would pass to the effect that even foundlings ought to be adequately fed. Another remarkable thing about the infant was the size and lustre of her eyes, which were outlined with very long, dark lashes in contrast to the pale wisps of baby hair. They were clear, curious, hazel eyes,that seemed to watch things in the empty corners of rooms.

One last thing that went unremarked upon, because at the time it was unnoticeable, was the slight swelling between the infant's shoulder blades. It must have been no more than a ridge of raised flesh then, undetectable even when she was bathed. But as the child grew, it soon became obvious that she was destined to bear a hump on her back.

Deformed though the child was, she grew into a lovely, sweet natured girl, whose grace developed without passing through the usual awkward or ungainly stages of childhood. Her spirit shone in her large, gentle eyes, and she was a great pet among the Sisters of the Convent. But the other children stared unerringly past the golden hair and smooth skinned face, directly at what mattered: the ugly, enlarging hump that bowed her body forward at an angle that increased with every passing year.

In time, the arc of her posture forced her head down, so that she was forced to stare at the ground unless she twisted her neck to gaze up at other faces. Her walk became strange, crablike; she moved through the days like a ship listing with the currents, moving as much sideways as ahead, so that her line of march seemed to involve some intuitive geometry known only to her.

For a long time the Sisters thought that her sweetness was of that special nature of "slow" children, those blessed by God with a loving heart in compensation for a lack of wits. By the time they realized that she was almost totally deaf, it was too late to even try to teach her to speak properly. And yet even that had its own sort of charm, for she would recite her prayers in a soft, musical murmur that was more like singing than speaking, and somehow sounded more pious than speech anyway.

This deafness proved a blessing in disguise, too, because it kept her from hearing the comments of the other children, cruel remarks made over her head, which, since it was bent to the ground, spared her the looks of horror and contempt on their faces.

Around the age of eleven or twelve, with the advent of womanhood, the child began to have "spells." Now with the rising of each moon, the hump began to swell and burn and ache, spreading a fever through her as if her whole body was infected wtih some disease. After each such periodic episode, the Sisters were saddened to see that the hump had grown a little larger, a little more ponderous, a little more difficult to overlook by even the most loving eye.

The earth turned steadily from month to month, year to year, without mercy. The agonizing intervals became more intense, and left the girl increasingly deformed, a creature somehow all the more grotesque for the terrible contrast of the fine slender limbs, those rarely glimpsed luminous eyes, and the unwholesome shape which finally reached such proportions that she was required to stay out of sight of the younger children. Not only did they mock and point and call her a monster, but now even when the Sisters passed her room, they crossed themselves against the ire of a God that would do this to a child. And when the girl saw this, it was more painful to her than any monthly torment.

One night, when she was about fifteen, she woke with a pain like fire between her shoulders, and knew with sure and sickening certainty that the time of the moon had come. Unwilling to solicit the pity of the Sisters, unable to stifle her cries, she knew she could no longer live with the curse of such terrible and constant pain. She slipped out of her room, out of the courtyard, and went her crablike way through the convent's orchard and into the woods beyond. For hours she wandered aimlessly, until at last she stumbled and fell to the ground and lay motionless under a copse of wild fig trees.

Very slowly, the moon faded from the night sky, drawing a curtain over the strange, nightmarish scene below. Consciousness came and went in violent streaks of light behind her clenched eyelids as she twisted and contorted under the feverishly swaying shapes of the trees. In the end the pain rose like a blazing fire in the blood, exploding behind her eyes with a roar that seemed to herald the end of the world. She cried out, a long high pitched scream that made the bats dip and stutter on their nightly rounds, and drove the sniffing wolves back deep into the woods.

When she woke a long time later, it was full daylight. Smelling the cool inviting scent of water, she crawled weakly in its direction. The river, which she knew to be miles from the Convent, spilled over low banks on its way through the forest, and in a still shallow inlet she placed her lips to her own image and tasted the cold sweet water. She drank deeply, with a small moan of relief, her eyes closed with pleasure as she swallowed again and again, cooling her blood, restoring her strength.

When she opened her eyes again and looked down at her own reflection, she realized that there was blood caked in rusty patches on her neck. On her breasts. On her arms. She was covered in blood, drenched in it. And yet, miraculously, two things became suddenly, shockingly, apparent. First, that the pain she had suffered for so many years was completely gone, and second, that the hump...the hump was gone. Sometime during the night, it had split open, exposing delicately pink new flesh beneath it, and two raw wet appendages that folded down the entire length of her body into...

Wings!

Stunned, she hunched her shoulders, arched her back, craned her neck to look back at the marvelous things. They were damp and scraggly and crusted with dried blood, but already the sunlight had begun to dry them into the promise of great beauty. They sprang from wide curved muscles high up on her shoulder blades, and were made of thousands of tiny feathers that grew longer towards the outer edges until they ran the full length of her body, and were a shade of gold exactly between her pale hair and her hazel eyes.

An awkward twitch made them fold behind her, up over her head, overbalancing her so that she tumbled, arms flailing, forward, into the inlet. After a few minutes of splashing in the shallow water with six uncoordinated limbs, she managed to drag herself up onto the bank, laughing at her own clumsiness.

When she rose on the grassy bank, she looked down at herself and saw that she was naked. There was some dim memory of tearing cloth during the wild hot delerium of the night, but she could not remember where she had torn off her clothes. Now, blushing, she made an instinctive gesture of modesty, and her wings came around her to cover her. But in the forest there were no eyes to give her shame, and gradually she relaxed and looked around; her nakedness seemed more natural than the gown she had shed with her old life. It was more important to consider her immediate future than to worry over the past.

The river ran south and east, down towards the sea. She spent the rest of the afternoon following it, pausing now and again to satisfy her hunger with figs or muscat grapes, which grew wild all through the region, and the small nuts from the trees which she separated from their cones as she walked. By dusk she had reached the mouth of the river, and saw on either side of it long narrow shingles of beach. Further north, the coastline was made up of steep hills and rocky, barren cliffs. To the south and west were wide rolling plains that rose gradually away from the sandy shore into the low foothills of the mountains. She knew vaguely that the convent was somewhere in the opposite direction of her travel, but she also knew that she could never return there now.

It was early spring, and the forest was rich with food, with wild roots the Sisters had cultivated and grown in the garden, and small crunchy bittersweet acorns, and blackberries and wild onions. For most of her life she had lived apart from others, so that the loneliness of the countryside only gave her a sense of relief that she would no longer be an offense to society. Moving freely in the open, unencumbered by shame or by the hump, she felt a sweet new pleasure no words could ever express.

As the first evening fell, however, she realized that she was not quite as alone as she first thought. From the branches of a sprawling oak, where she had climbed to seek shelter for the night, she saw a twinkling of lights on a distant hill, the fires of some faraway village. At first the proximity frightened her, but she reminded herself that between the village and her coastline lay many deep rollling hills, and her side of the river there were enough trees in the forest to hide one small girl forever. This was an enormous comfort, for in the space of a single day she had come to feel as safe and natural in the woods as any wild creature born there. It was as if she had come home at last.

In the morning, when the sun had dried the last of the dew from her wings, she climbed down from the tree and stretched them full length. They were light and flexible, and she was so delighted with them that she worked them constantly as she went about gathering food. She stretched them, folded them, made the tips flutter up and down, flapped them over her head as if waving. But when the sea wind gusted in, it blew her feathers in all directions, and she had to move with her side to the breeze, resuming her old crablike walk, until she reached the windbrake of the trees. Even so, she loved the wind, the sound of it in her ears; it seemed to sing to her like the crooning of a mother.

Days passed, quiet and calm. But by the end of the week a storm off the coast whipped the surf into white foam and swelled the headwaters of the river. It was no use trying to outwait the fierce wind; she had to go into the open to gather her hreakfast. Moving through the stiff gusts, trying to hug her wings against her sides to present as small a target as possible, she found herself blown again and again to her knees. The wind was like a mischievous sprite, letting her get up just long enough to tumble her again into the grass.

Finally she gave up the struggle. If the wind wanted to play with her, why not? She raced it through the fields, using her wings like a sail, ran up and down the low ground swells towards the foothills. When she reached the crest of a high mound without being knocked over, she stopped and turned to see her invisible playmate chasing her, rolling the long green grass into waves, scattering dandelions in all directions. She felt its power sweeping towards her and threw out her arms with a shout of laughter. The action expanded her shoulder muscles and the swift draft caught her outspread wings; suddenly the ground fell away from her and she was gliding along down the shallow hillside ten feet above the grass.

She was flying!

Like a wild bird let out of a cage, she abandoned everything but the sudden sensation of freedom. With great, wild, energetic flaps she propelled herself up into the high cooling air. She flew higher and higher, wild, reckless, maddened with the sensation, up over the hills, over the trees, over the canopy of the forest itself, over a farmhouse where her shadow scattered the chickens and set the dogs to howling. She flew east, over the meander of the river, east, over the thick green tangle of treetops, east, until finally she outflew the wind.

Then she was sailing down in a breathless spiral while the blur of the trees became menacingly clear and the bright slash of water glittered hard as glass with the changing angle of the sun. She raised a hand to shadow her eyes against the glare. The motion tilted a wing and she went into an abrupt banking turn, narrowly missing a tall stand of beeches. As she regained control, she saw that she could create wind from her own motion. Feeling her way by instinct, she turned in a wide, graceful arc, back into the rising draft, and made a violent, convulsive effort to thrust herself up above it.

Although she was successful, and could sail down on the draft, the last burst of effort exhausted her. She glided down until the tips of her bare toes dragged along the tops of the high grass. Flapping awkwardly to check her speed, she fell into the meadow, sommersaulted several times, and came lurching and rolling to a fluttering ungainly tangle onto the springy earth.

For a long time she lay in the deep soft fragrant grass staring up into the massive cloudbanks overhead, her heart still pounding, the blood singing in her ears, while wave after wave of rapture coursed through her body.

The old man shook his son's arm anxiously.

"What was it, boy?" he demanded. "Was it a bear? A lion? What did you see?"

It seemed unlikely that any lesser predator could have left the tall young man in this white, shaken condition, with his fingers trembling at his lips and his eyes wide and staring.

"A bird," the boy mumbled at last. "It was an eagle, after the lambs.""

The old man narrowed his eyes up at the sky, seeing nothing. "Well, it's gone now," he said, laying a comforting arm around his son's shoulders. "Come on. Help me bring in the flock."

Nodding blindly, the boy all but tripped over his own feet as he followed his father out to the pasture. The secret was like something he had swallowed, safe inside him and rapidly becoming a part of his very identity.

An angel had tumbled somewhere to earth; now it must be his life's work to find her. She had appeared to him, a simple farm boy who had had no previous sense of destiny, and by doing so she had somehow made him part of a miracle. How or why this was so, what it might mean, was too much for him to deal with. He only knew that somehow his fate was intertwined now with the fate of the woman with wings.

It had become her habit to go up to the cliffs each morning when the weather was fair so she could catch the sea breeze and fly inland, high up along the cliffs to rob the terns of their eggs for her breakfast. She never flew over the sea if she could avoid it, because she had seen dark frightening shapes moving beneath the surface of the water; anyway, her wings were a great impediment to swimming. Also, she took pains to avoid flying over any farmyards again, or in the general direction of the village, unless she was so high up that everything below looked like a brightly colored quilt. But then it was hard to breathe.

Generally she soared inland, using the woods so that the branches could give her cover from the ground. Cautious as she was, she never even suspected she was being watched, not even when she found the first gift.

It was a necklace, primitive but made with great care, fashioned from bits of shell and coral. She had found it in the hollow at the base of the tree where she slept most nights. The sun had glittered on the polished shells, drawing her notice to it. No telling how long it had been there; still, she felt a vague uneasiness at the unexpected evidence of people who had been in the forest she had come to think of as her own.

The next evening when she returned to the tree she found a dress of the type the village women wore, folded neatly and left in the hollow like an offering. Then she knew.

She moved from the tree, leaving the gifts untouched, and started sleeping in a thick growth of rowen oaks, closer to the cliffs, higher up in the branches. But her curiosity was that of any young woman, and from time to time she returned to the hollow, where every few days a new gift would appear. The gradual accumulation of treasure even gave her a kind of pleasure. But the pretty, homely toys linked her uncomfortably to another presence in the forest, and reminded her of the constant need to be vigilent.

She came one day at dusk, when the light was dying out of the sky, and saw a doll made of goose feathers and carved wood. Because she could not hear the rustle of the leaves, she stood unmoving with her back to him as the boy crept slowly closer and closer.

He had only meant to look at her, as he had looked before. But this was the closest he had ever dared come, and still she did not move, and he was breathless at her beauty. His eyes burned in the twilight like the eyes of a leopard, hot and aching. He had to grind his teeth together to keep from moaning when she knelt, naked, her wings arching out on either side of her, to examine the little doll.

She heard nothing, but suddenly lifted her head like a rabbit startled from the grass, and looked directly into those blazing eyes. Then with a cry of pure anguish he was upon her.

She fought with silent fury, beating her wings against his arms and pummelling him with her small fists, but he was strong and solid-boned, and he held her pinned against the tree until she threw her head back against the hard trunk and knocked herself unconscious.

Much later, she sat up abruptly, dazed, and looked around in confusion. The tall boy was crouched close by, staring at her over the flames of a small fire he had built to ward off the night.

"Don't hate me," he begged, his voice wretched with self loathing. "Please don't hate me. I never meant to harm you."

She edged away from him, folding a wing down over her naked, bleeding body. He made a move as if to rise but when she flinched back he sank down slowly again.

"You have to forgive me," he said. "I love you."

She saw his lips form the words, saw the gentle urgency of his gestures. The firelight played on her face and made her wings dappled gold and red as she stared at him with her light, strange eyes, and for the fear and pain in those eyes, he hated himself more bitterly than he could ever have dreamed possible.

They sat like that for a long time, until the warmth of the fire stole through her exhausted, aching body, and her eyelids began to droop. The boy nodded, too, while the logs burned down to embers, and the embers blackened to coal.

She woke again in the pink and silver light of dawn. Moving carefully, she got to her feet and eased away from the sleeping boy. When she had distanced herself, she turned and ran for the cliffs as fast as she could. There was no wind yet and the sea was still. But she knew from experience that if she could launch herself from the face of the cliff and gain the air, she could sail from there on an updraft to a safe and distant place.

Glancing over her shoulder, she was horrified to see the young man crashing across the field behind her in his heavy boots, working his mouth and waving his arms. She ran faster, astonished at the space his long legs covered as he seemed to gain on her at every stride.

He reached her just as the edge of the cliff fell away from under her feet, and she made a great wild leap for freedom, spreading her wings into the vast, open sky. But there was a sudden, sickening lurch to her momentum; the boy had also leaped from the cliff's edge, and had caught her by the ankles. Together they plummetted down the sheer face of the cliff, his weight dragging them both towards certain death.

Beating her wings frantically against the still air, tearing at it, the girl screamed. Flocks of terns exploded from their niches in the stone, gulls veered off course overhead. Half a mile away, the treetops seemed to burst as thousands of birds rushed shrieking into the sky.

The boy howled in pain and let go, clapping his hands over his ears.

Wings, suddenly freed, caught the air like grasping hands, while the boy rolled over and over into endless space. She saw the brief bright flash of water when he entered the sea, but all she could think of at the moment was her own survival. It was impossible to gain altitude against the drag of gravity, and she was already exhausted from her vigorous struggles and sleepless night. All she could do was come down in a long streaking glide over the sea, holding her wings out wide. Her swoop was so close that for a moment she stood almost erect on the surface of the water before coming out of the dive to sail over the waves, to the quieter water of the inlet.

She came down with a huge splash and was washed back towards the sea like a broken bird swirling in the current. The hard low bottom of the shoreline caught her, and the waves pushed her back out of the water again, where she lay panting on the beach, her once splendid wings hanging grimy and useless in the wet sand.

For a long time all she wanted to do was sleep, rocking in the high branches through the long summer days, rising only to wander listlessly through the weary forest in the evenings, searching fo food. The last of the plums were falling, and the trees hummed with swarms of sleepy wasps that seemed to shimmer like heat waves around the rotting fruit. She wandered through the haze, healing; the bruises faded and the scratches vanished, and it was almost as if nothing had ever happened.

Almost.

As the hot summer nights grew shorter, she sometimes lay in the branches of her old tree, and saw his wild passionate eyes again, long after she had forgotten his face. Then she would look towards the distant lights of the village, and turn the crude necklace over and over in her hands, while her thoughts swam and glittered like a school of fish in sunlit water.

On a blood red autumn morning, she woke with an aching head and a deepening lassitude. Her lovely wings had grown pale and weak very rapidly, and every day more and more feathers had fallen out, leaving a dull brown trail like drops of old blood behind her. She was bending over, gathering acorns from the forest floor, when one wing broke off with a snap that seemed to echo inside her bones. There was no pain, hardly any bleeding. That night in her sleep she rolled over on the other wing and it broke off painlessly and drifted down through the leaves to the earth below.

She made a final pilgrimage to the secret hollow of her offerings, and found the dress left there so long ago. It was awkward work to put it on, and it felt uncomfortable against her naked skin, too loose on her shoulders and too tight in other places.

Barefoot, bareheaded, a very deaf, very pretty young girl walked through the fading yellow grass towards the village, her sad hazel eyes and swollen belly testament to the harm she had come to in the woods.

The village would take her in, and she would find what she needed there. But her firstborn child--a tiny, pretty, thing--would be taken by the village priest to be raised as a foundling in some convent further south. For she, they would later say with pity, was scarcely more than a child herself when she bore the infant, and slow-witted at that, and oddly deformed by a strange hump between her shoulders that seemed to be growing and swelling with the rising of each new moon.

end