Jasper Jaquin's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Jasper stood at the platform's edge with his wings loose at his sides. The stone was warm under his paws. Below, the jungle looked very far. He had watched birds fly all his life. He had watched the blue macaw student fumble through the air the day before. None of it told him what his own body should do now. He knew how a wing looked from the ground. He did not know how one felt from the inside. The sky serpent uncoiled behind him. Scales caught the early light, red and jade and gold moving in one smooth line. "You are trying to remember something you never learned," the serpent said. "Stop. Watch me instead. Then copy." The serpent slid off the platform without a sound and opened his wings in the open air. He did not flap hard. He tilted. He caught the rising warmth off the pyramid's south face and rode it in a slow curl. His tail plumage trailed behind like a banner. He came back around and hovered level with Jasper's eyes. "Shoulders first," the serpent said. "Not the wingtips. The wingtips only follow." He rolled his shoulders forward, and the whole wing sheet moved with them. "Now you. On the stone. Do not jump yet." Jasper tried it. He pushed his shoulders down and forward. The wings opened wider than he expected. Air pressed under them at once, alive, lifting. "Again," the serpent said. "Feel where the air pushes back. That is your floor." Jasper did it again. He felt the floor. It was not stone. It was the push under each feather. The blue macaw watched from the far side of the platform, head tipped. "Your right wing drops," the macaw called. "On the down stroke. It drops." Jasper corrected it. The serpent gave the small nod again. "Now the edge," the serpent said. "Walk. Do not leap. Step off and let the floor catch you." Jasper walked to the edge. He set one paw past the stone. He rolled his shoulders down and forward the way the serpent had shown him and stepped. He fell. Then the air caught under his wings and he did not fall. He was gliding. Wobbling, tilting, but gliding. The pyramid slid past beside him. His right wing dropped. He fixed it. He fixed it too hard and swung the other way. A moss-heavy vine curled up from the terrace below and he crashed through it, feathers full of leaves, and skidded onto the second step of the pyramid in a hard, ugly landing. He stood. Nothing was broken. He had flown, if only for a breath. Above him, the serpent circled once. "That was the floor," the serpent called down. "Now find the stairs. Climb back up. We go higher." Jasper started climbing. His shoulders already burned.