Evening Song

This is my second submission to the Literary Taxidermy competition. The first and last lines are taken from Edgar Allen Poe's story, "MS. Found in a Bottle". 

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EVENING SONG

Of my country and of my family I have little to say. Neither of my two former homes sparks even the tiniest flame of longing or love. I have no memory of my origins before the Winged Ones came in the night and whisked me off to live with them. My parents must have presumed me dead, but they neither prayed for me nor prayed to me, and they did not pursue finding me – or so the Winged Ones said. 

I had, they told me, the Voice of the Sky; even as a little one they heard my small voice singing in the wind, and they came for me, scooping me up in their arms and soaring off into the endless dark of the early morning sky before the tip of dawn could witness their flight.

The human child with the Voice of the Sky was now theirs.

There would be nothing to go back to in the human realm now, down below, with people who wouldn’t know how to harness the Voice and who would no longer recognize their long-lost little girl, long since transformed into a Winged One herself – but a dark one, with wings handcrafted from Phoenix feathers, not the natural silken blues and mauves of a true Winged One.

The searing pain as they singed the wings to my flesh still haunts me. And the smell … that ghastly, sickly smell. But, like the Phoenix whose feathers these belonged to first, I rose from the embers and flew … until I flew far, far away from there.

There is nothing for me to return to among the Winged Ones now, either. I haven’t anything to say about any semblance of home or family among them, unless my words be steeped in bitter ash. As much as they craved the use of my Voice, no one wanted to be around a Winged One who was born human.

A mutant. An impure-blooded one. Unworthy. 

I don’t listen to them call me these things anymore. The Elder Winged Ones who trained me, they got what they wanted and gave me what I needed. The younger ones, my fellow trainees – they drove me out.

Out; but not down. I could never go back down to the human realm. I have tried getting close, and every time, their warriors begin shooting me the moment I come into sight, shouting “demon!” and “dragon!” before I have a chance to introduce myself.

Even if I am singing. 

Especially if I am singing.

In fact, the mythical Singing Dragon of the Leilar Mountains is based on some reality, though no one but me, the stolen human child, the black-winged mutant, and the Voice of the Sky, resides in these mountains.

The storms here are severe and the bitterness within me even stormier, but when singing the songs to coax Revelation from my fire, I have begun to see beyond the now, and I have perceived a Dawn approaching. A Dawn somehow linked to me, to my past, to my future. 

For now, I sit in the darkness and wait.

“What have you come to seek from Us now?”

“We ask – we beg – for a child.”

"We gave you a child."

“She was taken. Stolen right from her crib by thieves in the night. We long for another child. That child was our Evening Song, and we have mourned through a long, dark night. Now we want a New Morning.”

“I do not think I have to tell you … these things come at a price.”

“We can pay you anything in our kingdom. Name your price.”

“We shall come for our payment in sixteen years. Meanwhile, you shall have your morning. Twelve of our kind will attend your child’s christening to bestow upon her the gifts worthy of a girl granted by the generosity of the Winged Ones.”

“Yes, of course. We shall welcome you there.”

“You shall enjoy your morning, then … while it lasts.”

I heard the whispers echoing over the valleys and hills as the dark blue turned to orange on the horizon and the Phoenix woke for their morning chorus. The Winged Ones had granted a wish to an aging human king and queen who desperately wanted a child, and the infant princess would be kissed by twelve Winged Ones. 

Princess Aurora, the Morning Dawn.

At last, here was a chance to undermine the Winged Ones who had driven me out. 

They would create another Voice of the Sky, and I would be her only hope of protection. They would take this king and queen’s morning of joy and turn it into a midday of mourning, plunging them into another long and sorrowful sleep, and I would be their only hope of deliverance.

I, the dark one, the fabled dragon; the castaway, the mutant.

I, the uninvited, unexpected thirteenth Winged One.

I, Lyra: the Evening Song.

My time has come to return. I will fight with tooth and claw, with fire and song, to make my appearance at the christening, riddled with arrows in my belly and back, so I can stand once again before my forgotten home and family of origin and rescue the princess from the brink of falling into the same nightmare as me.

I am going down!