Milestones
We left the silent road and cut across the plain, the farms ghostly quiet, only a gentle humming from the solar fields. We moved towards the hills, through the grass towards the trees, the dark mountains looming behind them, the ground uneven, your sister tripping and having to be carried. She had insisted on bringing the doll, much too big for her, and I hid my embarrassment as I carried it for her, for you, as you hoisted her onto your hip. ‘It suits you,’ you said and laughed. I felt my cheeks flush. Your grandma had insisted we bring Annie along, your parents had left her behind, too big to carry and too far for her to walk all the way to the Ceremony.
Your grandma had been out in the yard, fiddling with the water tank, when I had arrived that morning. She was cursing and struggling with the valve. ‘She’s not playing out today,’ she’d said, making me feel younger than I was. She rose stiffly, wiping oil from her hands. ‘She’s not well.’ I had tried to hide my disappointment, but the door had swung open and you were already pulling on wellies. ‘I’m better now,’ you said, and your grandma had rolled her eyes. The sun was heavy behind the cloud that morning and there were rumours it had broken through again on the other side of the valley, just briefly, but a breakthrough all the same. A sign. We wanted to see if it was true. And someone in our class had claimed there were tadpoles at Abergwesyn but had been laughed at. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ you’d said, ‘the government would have got to them by now.’ And the teacher had agreed, took it as an opportunity to remind us that ‘any trapping of wildlife, whether it be frogspawn or butterflies, even spiders, was still strictly forbidden,’ and ‘not to be drawn in by talk of rewards.’ But we wanted to see for ourselves.
Your grandma had put up a pantomime of resistance, checking your temperature and pulse but I think she secretly liked it when you broke the rules, showed spirit as she said, unlike the others. ‘Just don’t eat any blackberries,’ she warned. A girl in the next village had died the summer before, eating berries. It was the first time they had returned and nobody had had a chance to warn her. Everybody left them rotting on the brambles now, ‘even the birds won’t eat them,’ your Grandma said, though no one here has seen real birds for years, except in the national zoo. ‘And take Annie,’ she added, ‘she needs to get out of the house.’ You had complained but it was useless, your grandma was already back at the water tank, twisting at the valve again and cursing as the grey water spilled out.
At the end of fields, you put your sister down and we stepped into a wood, it was dry and silent, but cool at least. The temperature had been climbing all morning but the sky was grey as slate, tinged with the sulphur yellow that we had grown used to. It sparked a little, the way it does from time to time, little flickers in the cloud like fireflies. I thought about my parents suddenly and pushed the thought away. Yours would be at the Ceremony by now, I thought. They had taken the track across the mountain, before dawn, had set off with their lanterns towards the town, your youngest sister tied to your Mum’s back. You had pretended to be sick and managed to get out of it. The water, your grandma said, and blamed the new filter, though I think she knew you were acting.
Annie followed us that morning like a familiar, dragging her feet and complaining. She had come in her costume, the plastic suit of armour your grandma had found in a charity shop in the town. In the cool of the wood, Annie pulled at it, irritated. ‘Come here,’ you tutted and pulled her to you, she squirmed as you pulled aside the silver shoulder panel and exposed the burned skin. You stretched the elastic and pulled the plastic frame off over her head, rubbing at her shoulder blades where the cream hadn’t quite sunk in. The blistered skin shone with sweat and she must have been happier without the costume because she twisted away from you without asking for it back and skipped ahead through the grass, grabbing the doll and dragging it once more behind her. The armour lay in the grass like a shed skin.
When it rained, it used to burn and you would have to take cover, but now it only tingled. There were spots in the air, padding quickly down between the trees, and your sister giggled as it splashed on her bare, blistered back. We moved through the cool of the trees and she stopped to pull at a lone bluebell. ‘Don’t,’ you said, ‘you know you’re not allowed.’ And you suddenly seemed older, parental, pulling the hair back from your face the way your Mum does, and I pictured your parents, marching to the Ceremony, joining the road with the others, lanterns lit in the early morning gloom; they would be arriving now, finding their place in the square. Apples grew near here once and you took some home but when your Gran cut into them, they were laced with a black rot, like ash. We rested on an embankment by the thin stream and you offered me a drink from your canister. I was embarrassed, my lips touching the plastic where yours had been and I held my breath when your leg rested against mine. ‘My back hurts,’ your sister said, and you got up to rub more ointment in.
We moved along the embankment, eyeing the dark water, occasionally poking at it with twigs. The river had shrunk over the years, leaving a residue, an orange that stained the stones and the soil like rust. Your sister splashed her doll, bathing it in the slow current and you rolled your eyes but smiled as if we were parents remembering when we once played that way. Then we heard voices a little further off, where the river winds behind the old stone church. Of course, the others, they had beaten us to it. When we finally reached them, they were already busy in the reeds with jars and nets. We approached and a boy from our class looked up and smirked, singing some theme song from the TV about love. I felt my cheeks burn but you told him to shut up and shoved him and everyone laughed when he fell into the water, it darkened his jeans and he swore. There was little conversation, the seriousness of what we were doing cast a silence over everything. Your sister pulled the doll closer to her as we took the empty jars from the bag that you had sneaked from the recycling. The others moved quickly with the nets and the jars and your sister peered across to them from behind your legs. This was play but a different play, a serious play, something like work, like grownups and she clutched at the doll. The others gathered and surveyed, hands on hips, or brushing hair from eyes, occasionally shouting out in excitement or horror, as something stirred in the jars. At times they seemed sage almost, appreciative, gathering around like old men at work, like diggers at a roadside surveying their handiwork, like I imagined my Dad had. He worked on the new roads after the Fire, or so they said he did, before he got sick. Exposure, they said.
The heat intensified, a pressing weight that made the clouds glow. The trees were paralysed, a strange dust coating everything, even the blades of the yellow grass. And then, at last, the cloud thinned just enough to let the sun through. We all stopped. The thick grey sky had stretched into silver, then white and then a slice of sun finally pushed through, finding us, the heat sudden, almost liquid, the stream suddenly golden and shimmering. Your sister began to cry, shielding her eyes, saying that her back hurt, that she wanted to go home, and then you held up the jar for her to see. At first she screamed and made as if to cry again, but she dropped the doll and held the jar when she realised the tadpoles couldn’t get out. You held them up to the new sky for her, let the sunlight catch the glass and make silhouettes of the small wriggling mass, the foam busy with life. You let her see and a smile stretched across her face as she held the jar of teeming life in her hands, delicate, reverent. But suddenly she dropped the jar and she doubled over in pain. Everybody gathered round and you pushed them away, Annie moaning and curling into the shape of a pebble by the water’s edge. The jar rolled in the grass and the tadpoles dropped out, the grey water spilling into the earth, the tadpoles frantically twisting in the grass and glistening. She fell perfectly quiet though her red back was throbbing, moving, a shape beneath the surface pulsating, stretching the skin. ‘Look!’ one of the boys shouted, though the others were silent, watching, some standing in the water, others on the bank. You held her hand, on your knees, and Annie’s eyes were glassy. You stroked her wet hair. Her back throbbed in the sunlight, shining with sweat and the ointment you had rubbed. I stood back and watched with the others, I wanted to hold your hand suddenly but felt in the way, an outsider. Your sister groaned thinly as the skin split and fell away, the wing finally emerging, blossoming slowly, sticky and shimmering in the new sunlight. It unfolded, transparent and oily, and made a sound like the tadpoles spilling from the jar as the second wing stretched tentatively out. You were talking to her, telling her she was a brave girl and her tears were slow and mixed with a smile. It was over in minutes and you stroked her hair as the others splashed water at each other, wading into the shallow river, soon bored with your sister and the spectacle, though some of those that were shirtless stretched their fingers to their backs and felt their own wings that stirred in the heat, as if in a breeze.
The others left, pretending to be bored but afraid of being caught with tadpoles and they released them back into the shallow water; we sat on the embankment and watched them drop from the nets, splash into the silver river that seemed clearer in the sun. Our own tadpoles wriggled in the grass and we scooped them carefully, Annie helping, her wings twitching and stretching, as if unsure of themselves. My own wings, as if in sympathy, stretched against my t-shirt. We watched your sister picking at the tadpoles and you stroked her wings gently. ‘I think it’s true,’ you said and Annie craned her neck, frustrated not to see the small wings for herself. ‘They are stronger,’ you said, your fingers gently tracing the membrane. ‘Stronger than ours’. It was true, a scientist had claimed that each generation would have stronger wings and that one day they could carry the weight of a child, though ours are far too weak. Someday, though, the report said. Our own kids, perhaps, if we ever have them, or theirs. Your sister giggled beneath your fingers and stood up in the grass. She ran ahead as we made our way up the hillside in search of butterflies. She had forgotten the doll and I picked it up, unembarrassed.
The cloud had swallowed the sun again but thin slants came through at times and when they did they caught your sister’s wings, making them shine, and she leaped and stretched as if at any time she might take flight. You laughed and grabbed my hand, chasing after her, and it felt like I imagine birdsong will feel when we hear it again.
Flight of the dragonfly 