It felt cool to be flying again. The rain that struck my face was cold but refreshing, as if waking me up. I hadn’t flown since The Hollows. For pretty much my whole life, I had resented being different from those girls who had called me ‘stickleback’ at boarding school. But I had learnt that my wings were just another part of me, like my arms and legs. Those girls back at school would never know the freedom my wings gave me.
Isidor flew beside me, his arms outstretched on either side of him, his wings rippling beneath them. He glanced at me and winked, and I knew that he was enjoying the freedom again as much as I was. The wind roared past us, and the sound of it was wonderful, it deafened the other noises — my soundtrack.
The clouds broke beneath us, and I could see the town of Wood Hill, the one that we had been visiting daily for Kiera. We swooped over it, circled, and spying a small wooded area on its outskirts, we raced towards them. We landed, and rolling back my shoulders, I put on the sweatshirt that I’d tied about my waist, covering my back and the crop-top that I was wearing. Unlike me, Isidor couldn’t fold his wings away, he had to hide them, and so he zipped up the front of his jacket.
“Ready?” he asked me.
` “You bet,” I nodded and followed him out of the small wooded area and up the hill to the town. As we walked together, I wondered if we stood out. Did we look freaky? We were definitely very pale, looking like we had been ill or something. Maybe it was my imagination, but as we headed into town and passed some of the people on the road, they seemed to look away from us, casting their heads down, and some even crossed the road as if to avoid us.
I wondered why I hadn’t noticed this before on our trips to Wood Hill, but we had always come by car. I had waited inside, parked at the curb, while Isidor had taken the papers from the newspaper stand outside the store and left the money for them in the honesty tin outside. We had never actually spoken to anyone in the town. Driving through a place was always different than walking through it. You saw more when you walked, noticed things that you wouldn’t have while in a car.
Well, I was definitely noticing stuff now. Like how the streets didn’t seem that busy at all, and those people who were on them seemed to be in a hurry. It was as if they were all late for a meeting or something. But what was freaking me out more than that, was it wasn’t just me and Isidor that they were ignoring, they were ignoring each other. For such a small town, not one of them looked at each other as they passed by. There were no ‘good mornings’, or ‘Hey, how you doing today?’ It was like they didn’t really see each other — but they did. It was weird to watch how they almost seemed to shy away from one another. I stared in amazement as they crisscrossed back and forth in an almost desperate attempt not to come in contact. One guy, elderly with a stick, stepped off the curb to avoid a scrawny-looking woman who was coming down the street towards him. But then another guy, mid-forties with a belly that hung over the top of his trousers, stepped into the road from the other side of the street as he tried to avoid someone else. On seeing this, the old guy turned, then turned again as if trapped. He shuffled around in a full circle as if trying to figure out which way to go — how to escape.
The thin, homemade cigarette that hung from the corner of his wrinkled old mouth fell out and he swore. Then looking up, he saw me watching him and he cried out. He turned away and covered his face with his arm, as if he didn’t want us to see him — or was it that he didn’t want to see us? The old guy saw a gap and shuffled away, flinching as someone else came too close to him.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I whispered, as we made our way through the town. “This place is fucked up.”
“What day is it today?” Isidor asked, not looking at me, but watching the crazy people on the street all around us.
“Saturday, I think,” I said back. “Why?”
“So it’s not a school day then,” he whispered, as one of the people toppled from the edge of the curb in a desperate attempt to avoid us.
“I guess,” I breathed. “Why?”
“Where are all the kids?” he said, and this time he did look at me. “Shouldn’t they be hanging about on street corners with their mates, out shopping, stuff like that?”
“It is cold and it’s raining,” I reminded him.
“Didn’t bother that old guy,” Isidor said, his voice still low, just above a whisper.
Then looking across the street, I said, “Over there! That woman, see her? She’s pushing a pram and there’s a baby in it.”
We watched her hurry down the street, her head down as she tried to avoid everyone else. But a man with an umbrella was heading towards her, and she crossed the street to avoid him.
Isidor yanked me by the arm into a nearby shop doorway, and said, “Let’s hide in here — keep out of her way.”
“Why?” I hushed.
“Because you know that smell that babies always have?”
“No, not really,” I told him, watching from the shadows of the shop doorway as the woman with the pram headed towards us.
“Believe me, babies do have a certain odour,” he said, “And I can’t smell it.”
“So?” I asked.
“So look!” he whispered as the woman passed us as we hid in the shop doorway.
I followed Isidor’s stare and looked into the pram and gasped.
Clamping his hand over my mouth, he put his lips to my ear and very quietly said, “Shhh, Kayla.”