Jasper Jaquin had followed the trail for three days, and the trail did not exist. No paw prints pressed the moss. No scent clung to the bark. Only a shimmer in the high leaves marked where the sky serpent had passed. Jasper was a jaguar with gold fur and black spots, and folded on his back were two black feather wings he had never opened. He wanted to open them beside Quetzalcoatl. First he had to find where Quetzalcoatl landed. He pushed through the mangroves at dusk. His nose worked the air and found nothing useful. He knew how to track a tapir through mud. He did not know how to track a thing that flew without weight. High in the twisted roots above him, a lantern flickered on. A wooden house sat wedged in the branches, its shingles patched, its porch strung with rope. A red-feathered parrot in a green robe leaned over the railing. "You've circled this grove four times," the parrot said. "You're wearing a path where there wasn't one." Jasper sat back on his haunches. "I'm looking for the temple. The one Quetzalcoatl uses." He kept his wings folded tight. Saying it out loud felt like admitting he could not do it alone. "I can track anything on the ground. I can't track him." The parrot climbed down a rope ladder and dropped onto a root beside him. Up close Jasper saw a gold pendant at the bird's throat and a wooden charm at the belt. "I'm Swiftflight," the parrot said. "I've seen the temple. You won't find it by nose. You'll find it by light." Swiftflight pointed a wing at a clump of tall grass where fireflies pulsed in slow waves. "They drift toward it at full dark. Follow the drift, not the bugs. The drift." Jasper watched the fireflies. At first they scattered. Then, as the sun dropped, the glow leaned. The whole cluster tilted east, like grass under a slow current. Jasper rose and followed. Swiftflight walked at his shoulder. They passed an old stone shrine choked in vines, its doorway dark, its carvings worn smooth. "Not that one," Swiftflight said. "That one's empty. Keep going." They walked until the trees thinned. Beyond the last mangrove, a stepped pyramid rose out of the jungle floor. Painted bands ran along its terraces. A stairway climbed to a platform at the top, and on the platform a long shape coiled. Silver scales. Red crest. Wings half-open, catching the last light. Jasper's chest tightened. He had found the landing place. His wings were still folded on his back, and he had never used them, and the creature he wanted to fly beside was waiting three hundred steps above him.

Jasper climbed the pyramid one step at a time. His claws found each worn edge. The sky serpent watched him from the platform, silver coils bright against the stone. When Jasper reached the top, his wings were still folded flat against his back. He had never opened them. He did not know how. "So you're ready to learn to fly," the serpent said. Jasper nodded slowly. "I've taught all the flying animals in the bayou." He said it before he thought about it. It was true. He had shown a winged green snake how to catch a thermal above the mangroves. He had watched dragonflies lift off his paw. He knew what flight looked like from the ground. The serpent's yellow eyes did not move. "You have watched flight. That is not the same." A shadow crossed the platform. A blue macaw landed on the far edge, small and alone, sandals scuffing stone. Behind him came the red macaw in the green robe, wings tucked, pendant swinging. "Azure has come to learn as well," the serpent said. "You will learn together." Azure looked at Jasper's folded wings. "You've never opened them." It was not a question. "No," Jasper said. "Then start there." Azure spread his own wings, blue against the sky. "Feel the joint. Push out. Don't think about lifting yet." Jasper tried. The wings on his back twitched. He pushed. Black feathers cracked open behind him for the first time. They were heavier than he expected. They pulled at muscles he had never used. He staggered sideways on the stone. The red macaw stepped closer and steadied him with one wing. "Being sure you know a thing is not the same as knowing it," the macaw said. "I mistake the two often. Watch for it in yourself." Quetzalcoatl lifted from the platform, slow, and hung in the air above them. "Today you open them. That is all. Tomorrow you jump." He looked at Jasper. "You came here believing you already understood. You do not. That is your first lesson, and you have learned it. Come back at dawn." The serpent turned in the air and slid away over the trees, leaving no mark on the sky. Jasper stood on the platform with his wings half-open and shaking. Azure folded his own wings neatly and sat down beside him. The red macaw watched the horizon where the serpent had gone. Jasper's shoulders burned. He could not fold the wings back. He did not know how to close them either.

The sun dropped behind the trees. Jasper's wings still hung half-open, shaking. The red macaw folded them for him with careful hands, one joint at a time, and showed him how the feathers locked back against his spine. Jasper's shoulders ached down to the bone. He could not have climbed back down the pyramid if he tried. The sky serpent slid back over the platform without warning. "You sleep inside tonight," he said. "Both of you. Dawn comes early." He nodded toward the dark doorway at the top of the pyramid. A cool draft came out of it, smelling of old stone. Azure walked in first. Jasper followed, wings tight against his back. Inside, the room was small and square, the floor swept clean. A shallow bowl of water sat by the wall. Jasper lay down on the stone and closed his eyes. Azure settled across from him, beak tucked, sandals off. Before Jasper drifted, he heard the serpent speak again outside. "Sora. Watch the door until dawn. No one comes in. They do not come out until I call." Another voice answered, low and even. Jasper opened one eye. A second winged jaguar stood at the doorway. Gold fur, blue spots, gold wings folded high on his shoulders. He was bigger than Jasper. He sat down across the entrance like a gate and looked in. His eyes passed over Jasper's black feathers and stopped. "You have wings like mine," Sora said. His voice was flat, not unkind. "You do not know how to use them." "No," Jasper said. "I did not either." Sora looked out at the dark trees. "He taught me. He will teach you. Sleep. You will need it." He did not turn his head again. Jasper watched him a while, the shape of another cat with wings, sitting still on stone. The red macaw walked past Sora with a nod and stepped out onto the platform to keep his own watch. Jasper heard him settle at the edge, plain and quiet. Jasper closed his eyes. His shoulders burned. Tomorrow he would jump. He did not know if the wings would open on their own, or catch air, or fold wrong and drop him. But another jaguar with wings sat at the door, awake, and had once been where Jasper was now. Jasper slept.

Jasper woke in the dark. His shoulders had gone hard as stone. He tried to shift on the swept floor and a cramp shot down his back, locking the muscle above his folded wing. He hissed through his teeth. Across the chamber, Azure lifted his head. "Bad?" the blue macaw asked. "I can't lift them," Jasper said. He tried. The wing twitched and seized. Pain ran to his tail. Dawn was coming. He would not be able to jump. Azure stood. "Stay flat." He walked over and pressed one small hand against the knot below Jasper's shoulder. "Here?" "Yes." "I can't fix that. My hands are wrong for it." Azure looked at the doorway. The winged jaguar sat there, gold and blue, wings high, watching the trees. "Sora. He has the same shoulders." Jasper did not want to ask. Sora had been posted to keep them inside. But the muscle would not release, and the sky was already softening at the doorframe. "Sora," Jasper said. The guard turned his head. "My wings won't move." Sora studied him a moment. Then he stood, stepped inside, and lay down beside Jasper on the stone. He did not call for the serpent. He did not call for the sage. "Roll onto your side," he said. "Wing out. Not all the way. Halfway." Jasper obeyed. The cramp burned. Sora set one heavy paw high on Jasper's back, found the locked cord of muscle, and pressed slow and hard. "Breathe out." Jasper breathed out. Sora pushed. Something in the shoulder gave with a hot, sick jolt, and then the muscle went soft. Sora moved to the next knot. Then the next. He worked both sides. It took a long time. Jasper's eyes watered. "I did this every morning for a year," Sora said. "New muscles do not know how to rest. They only know how to seize." When Sora sat back, Jasper opened the wing. It moved. Slow, sore, but it moved through the full arc. He folded it. He opened it again. The other one answered. A scarlet macaw stepped into the doorway then, robe brushing the stone. The old sage looked at the three of them on the floor and said nothing for a moment. "He called dawn," the sage said. "Both students on the platform." Azure went first. Jasper stood. His legs held. His wings held. He walked out past the sage onto the top of the pyramid. The sky serpent was already coiled at the platform's edge, tail plumage bright against the gray sky. He looked at Jasper's shoulders, at how the wings sat, and gave one small nod. "Good," the serpent said. "Now jump." Jasper walked to the edge. The jungle dropped away below him. Behind him, Sora sat down at the doorway again, watching. Jasper set his paws on the stone and looked out over the trees.

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.

Jasper climbed the pyramid's steep face one step at a time. His shoulders burned from the first flight. Bits of moss still clung to his feathers from the crash through the vine. He kept his eyes on the platform above, where the sky serpent circled in a slow, patient loop. Halfway up, the light changed. The sun went gray. Jasper stopped on a step and looked west. A wall of cloud pushed over the canopy, dragging rain behind it. Wind moved through the trees below in one long shove. Leaves flipped pale side up. A storm was coming fast, and the platform was the highest point for miles. Jasper reached the top with his tail plumage snapping sideways. The serpent hovered just off the edge, scales bright against the darkening sky. "Wind's turning," the serpent called. "You cannot jump into that. It will throw you off the stone before your wings open." Jasper looked over the edge. The air below the platform was no longer still. It shoved up the pyramid's face in hard gusts, then dropped away. He had felt the lifting floor yesterday. This was not that. This would flip him. "Inside," the serpent said. "Both of you. Now." Jasper turned. A second winged jaguar stood at the doorway of the sleeping chamber, gold fur and blue-spotted wings half open against the wind. It was the guard who had treated his cramped shoulders the morning before. The guard did not speak. He jerked his head at the dark opening and waited. Jasper ran for the door. The first fat drops hit the stone behind him. He ducked inside just as the wind hit the platform full force. Rain came sideways across the opening in a white sheet. The chamber was dim and dry. The guard sat down across the doorway, wings folded, blocking the wind with his body. "You wanted to jump," he said. Not a question. "Yes," Jasper said. "Good," the guard said. "The serpent grounded you. Not the storm. He decides when you go." He looked Jasper over. "Your right shoulder is dropping again. I can feel it in how you're sitting." Jasper shifted. The guard was right. The muscle on that side was tight and pulled low. "Lie down," the guard said. "I'll work it before it seizes. When the wind breaks, you'll want that shoulder loose. He'll send you off the platform the moment the sky clears." Jasper lay on the cool floor. The guard set a heavy paw against his shoulder and pressed. Pain flared, then eased. Outside, the storm hammered the pyramid. Jasper listened to it and felt the tight muscle give under the guard's steady work. He had not flown into the storm. He had not been thrown. He was grounded, treated, and waiting. The next jump would come from a higher step, into cleared air, with a shoulder that could hold.