In Which Icarus and Chang’e Meet Briefly in the Middle
by Andy Parker
It is a cool, dark night, and Chang’e is drifting toward the Moon.
The trip feels slow. So excruciatingly slow. The pale disc of the Moon growing ever larger and larger, the dark pinpricks of her hometown below ever smaller and smaller. She still can’t wrap her head around it all—the break-in and the yelling and the moment of panic when she had uncorked the vial and poured its contents down her throat, both her share and Hou Yi’s. She’d taken it quickly, like a shot, half out of urgency and half out of fear that the elixir would burn going down. To her surprise, it had tasted only smooth and fresh, like cool water.
It had all felt like so much mere hours ago, but now, from where she drifts hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet in the air, she can feel nothing but the cold. The night air numbs her fingers, fills her veins with ice, dries the tears trailing down her face until nothing but salt remains.
That’s when she spots him. The boy with wings.
The flaps of his wings are indeliberate, unpracticed, but every beat of the huge feathered things screams pure, unblemished joy. They flash brilliant gold and blue in the moonlight—kingfisher colors. He reminds her of him, strangely. Though the boy’s face is streaked with mud and his hair falls in careless tangles over his forehead, he has that same bright, burning quality that Chang’e can only associate with Hou Yi. That same spark that made the neighborhood kids look up at her husband with shiny eyes and speak his name in a hushed, reverent whisper. That’s the archer who shot down the suns. A myth incarnate.
Chang’e’s chest aches.
The boy, catching sight of her, begins to wing his way over. He speaks words she cannot understand, smiling the whole time. Chang’e tries to reply, but it’s obvious he can’t understand her either. It makes no difference to the winged boy, it seems. He takes her hand all the same, twirling her across the night sky simply, Chang’e thinks, because he wants to.
She is freezing, but where the winged boy’s hands touch her—one clasping her own hand, the other placed not on her waist, as Hou Yi’s would have been, but on her shoulder—she feels burning warm. He leads her in a clumsy waltz, the two of them rising among the stars all the while. The winged boy has to flap every so often to keep up with Chang’e’s ascent, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but soon enough she feels the ice in her veins beginning to thaw. The winged boy keeps up a stream of idle chatter, not seeming to care that she can’t understand a word of it. It’s soothing, in a way. His voice, though unintelligible, sounds to her like birdsong: bright and animated and alive.
Eventually, she starts to speak too. She tells him about herself—how she drank the elixir, how she can feel the Moon’s pull, how she’s so, so afraid. And though she knows he can’t recognize her confession for what it is, the fact that his expression doesn’t waver is still a comfort. She wonders what her voice sounds like to him.
His joyful demeanor falters only once. When Chang’e tries to card gentle fingers through his feathers, he freezes. It’s only a second before his posture slackens again, his easy smile returning quickly as it left, but she notices it all the same. She doesn’t try to touch a second time.
The first rays of sunlight are just breaking over the horizon when Chang’e finally looks down. They’re hovering over the sea somehow, no land to be seen for miles. Everything looks so small from here, so simple. She stares up at the Moon. Perhaps she could get used to seeing everything from up so high. Perhaps she could learn to find it beautiful.
Dawn breaks when the winged boy mutters something soft and regretful sounding, looking somewhere past Chang’e to the rest of the world beyond. He extricates his hand from hers, but after a moment’s hesitation, pulls her into a quick, tight embrace.
It feels like touching the sun for just a second. Only light. Only warmth.
With one last apologetic phrase, the winged boy takes off in the direction of the sunrise. Chang’e is reminded suddenly of her mother telling her a story once, about a guardian spirit and a magical night and a cloak made of kingfisher feathers.
The winged boy had shed one of his, Chang’e realizes—a feather the same vibrant blue of the sea below—onto her sleeve. She plucks it from her arm, surprised to find it not downy-soft as she expected, but tacky with…
It’s only then that she notices. With his back to her, his silhouette receding into the light, she can see them clearly now; tiny rivulets of wax carving a path down the winged boy’s spine. He’s leaving behind a trail of feathers, flecks of blue and gold cascading toward the sea. There’s still no urgency in his flight, no signs of panic. She wonders if he even realizes his wings are melting, wonders if it would be more cruel to try and tell him or stay silent. It doesn’t matter now; there’s no safe place for him to land.
It’s a terrible symmetry, she thinks.
She condemned to rise.
He condemned to fall.
Unsure of what else to do, Chang’e closes her eyes and prays silently for Hou Yi to notch another arrow.
Andy Parker (he/they) is a recent graduate of English literature at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. He enjoys writing and reading at the intersections of queerness and Asian identity, stress baking, and overusing em dashes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gasher Journal, Beyond the Veil Press, and the Greyrock Review. You can find them at @_andy.parker_.