Grounded

By Narrelle M. Harris

In a world where flight is life, will two grounded people find other ways to fly?

When Benedick Sasaki's wings are wounded in the line of duty, the former policeman doesn't know if he has a place in a world where he can no longer fly.

Then he meets Clementine Torres, an artist born without wings and a vocal advocate for the flightless who has been subjected to recent hate mail and vandalism ahead of her new exhibition. As Clementine starts to teach Benedick new ways to appreciate the world on the ground, the threats against her art and possibly her life begin to escalate.

To survive, they will need to teach each other that not all beauty is in the air, and that both of them can soar without wings...

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781489276834

Book preview

Chapter One

‘Ten minutes.’ Security Chief Abrahm looked up from his watch. ‘All set, Captain Sasaki?’

Benedick Sasaki, Captain of the 54th Airborne Police Corps, nodded once, sharply, without needing to complete another physical check. The strap of his helmet sat snugly yet comfortably under his chin; his pristine uniform was fastened neatly at the waist ties and his firearm was secure in its holster against this thigh. He flexed his fingers, then stretched his brown-flecked black wings wide before settling them.

Captain Sasaki’s gaze swept over his team, as crisply turned out as he, in their bronzed leather and Brunswick green uniforms, peaked helmets fastened, weapons at the ready. All being equal, the threats against Cabinet Minister David Bennelong would come to nothing, as these threats so often did.

Cabinet Minister Bennelong was the architect of the Terra Australis treaty with the Lua Pele Islands. The treaty would shortly see the end of four years of martial friction along sea borders and settlement of territorial oil reserve disputes that had triggered the enmity. Reparations for the historical blackbirding of Lua Pelens—the virtual slave labour used to advance Australis agriculture—were part of the package, along with significant development loans for the islands, which would be a start in making up for the pillaging of their human and natural resources.

Opponents of the treaty were like cockatoos—a lot of squawk and flap—but they didn’t have a lot of lift. It being the final day of the conference and the highly publicised scheduled signing of the noteworthy treaty, the police and security services figured on more squawk than usual, but nothing more.

‘Five minutes, Captain.’

‘All set,’ Captain Sasaki confirmed. ‘The Minister?’

‘Set.’

Bennelong appeared, flanked by his personal escort. Captain Sasaki’s team took position around them. Together they marched to the lip of the hotel’s launch platform. On Sasaki’s mark, the Minister and the ten men and women assigned to protect him bent their knees, extended their wings and launched.

Cirrus clouds like fine lace across the blue sky, and the sun behind them, the escort flew in tight formation over and across Kambera’s artificial lake to the parliament building on Capital Hill. From up here, Benedick could see sunlight glittering on the surface of Lake Griffin where the Captain Cook Fountain sprayed plumes of water in a high arc. A rainbow refracted through the droplets pattering back down, leaving dimpled ripples on the water.

Close by, a flock of crimson rosellas rose up, circled, and arrowed back down, no doubt seeking wattleseeds among the bushes growing down to the lake’s edge at the Jerrabomberra Wetlands reserve. As Captain Sasaki’s keen eyes sought signs of trouble within windows and above rooftops on their route, he only saw the flash of blue on the wings of a sacred kingfisher.

Benedick Sasaki felt the might of his own wings as they stretched, held, then beat into a powerful fold that pushed him across the sky.

Most people flew without a thought for what it meant, but he’d spent the previous day with his younger cousin, Octavia, whose wings had never properly grown. She seemed to manage fine with her enforced grounding, but how she did so was a mystery to Benedick. He couldn’t imagine his life without this—the strength in his wings, the wind beneath them; the invigorating air in his lungs and sun on his skin, the taste of clouds that formed above the mountain ranges and the lakes and rivers. Flying, he’d always felt, was a feast for the senses.

He tilted his head to shield his eyes from a flare of sunlight caught in a high window. The peak of his helmet shaded his dark eyes briefly.

‘Visual check, two o’clock, Grain Research and Development Building,’ he said into his helmet microphone.

‘Visual check,’ said Abrahm. ‘Team Kestrel to Lyrebird One: any movement in Grain R&D?’

‘Lyrebird One to Team Kestrel,’ came the immediate reply. ‘No activity at Grain R&D. Escort cleared to continue.’

Satisfied, Captain Sasaki adjusted his position in the formation, taking his turn in the slipstream. This, too, was his life. Not merely the enforcement of the law, but the dedication of his whole self, mind and body, to upholding justice. A naïve view of law enforcement, perhaps, and Benedick Sasaki was no fledgling just fallen from the nest. Nevertheless, that conviction was the wind beneath his spirit: that he could attend his whole self to the life he’d chosen, and make a difference.

Another flap of collective wings banked the escort past the government offices flanking parliament. He could hear the creak of wing joints, and felt the rush of air over the covert feathers on his wings’ leading edges, which also grabbed at his uniform.

‘Parliament ETA three minutes,’ reported Security Chief Abrahm through his headset.

‘ETA three minutes,’ confirmed Captain Sasaki. ‘Banking in two.’

The entire formation shifted, wings spreading and tilting, and as one, the men and women of the 54th Airborne and the Terra Australis Parliamentary Security team swooped towards their destination, and safety.

***

A flock of crimson rosellas whooshed past in a flurry of musical notes and vivid red-and-blue plumage. Their passage left the reeds by the lake momentarily silent, as the insects and water birds recovered from the intrusion. Then the low, summery hum of dragonflies and midges with the occasional plash of webbed waterbird feet breaking the surface returned.

Clementine Torres paused before dabbing her paintbrush back into the palette of greens and blues she’d prepared. A feather, shed by one of the rosella flock, had drifted onto the board, the black-limned blue of a wing feather, sitting at an angle in a thick blob of emerald green paint. Clementine lifted the feather, wiped the quill clean against her paint-stained shirt and then stuck it behind her ear.

Another dab at the palette, and then she found the short, fluffy curl of another lost feather, this one red-tipped, had stuck to the corner of the painting. Clementine licked her thumb and finger so she could remove it without smudging the work. The tiny feather was clinging to a streak of creamy white, a distant cirrus cloud caught mid-motion on canvas.

Clementine pinched the feather out of the way and continued working, until the sensation of the tiny feather stuck in the paint on her skin prompted her to absent-mindedly comb her fingers through her hair, unwittingly lodging it alongside its blue cousin behind her ear.

She was feeling the work today—the green of the reeds in her supple bones, the rush of the rippling water in her veins. The hum of the dragonflies abuzz at the back of her tongue. Painting was like this some days. The things she captured in colour becoming life that breathed in her body and back out onto the canvas once more.

Born wingless, she’d never known what it was to fly, but on days like this Clementine knew exactly what it would feel like. It was a rush in the blood, the flavour of air and sound, the uplift of beauty beyond the ordinary, the luminescent spark of life in commonplace things. And okay, maybe that’s not what flying really was, but Clementine didn’t care. This was her wingspan, the way she spread her metaphorical wings and soared through the world, capturing a part of it rarely seen by the winged: the jewel-bright insects and luscious buds of undergrowth, the blink-and-miss-it speed of dragonflies, the bright-backed, black-feet tickle of ladybirds, the secret lives of candy moths.

In the distance she saw another flock—the green-and-bronze of an Airborne Police unit, working with a government team to escort that minister to the treaty talks. Humans naturally tended towards smaller groups, like dragonflies, but that formation of men and women filling the sky in an elegant arc reminded her of the rosellas.

Inspired, she nabbed the blue wing feather from her hair. The fluffy down feather adhered to her nail as well. She took it as a sign, and worked both objects into the painting, the long feather pressed into a thick oblong of green paint so that it stood in among the reeds. She mixed a tiny portion of Brunswick green and dabbed the curling down feather into the painting below the cloud. She gave the curl legs, arms, wings, transforming it into one of the guardians way up there in the sky.

Happy with the result, Clementine hummed a song more melodic than that of dragonflies and the flat honk of waterbirds, and continued to create a vivid, hyper-real replica of the beauty of her world down here on the ground.

Chapter Two

One year later, Benedick Sasaki stood on the path outside his new apartment block, wings drooping. Forlorn didn’t begin to cover it.

Forsaken, maybe, he thought.

His left wing, though wilted with dejection, was tucked neatly and formally into place, held firmly from scapula to the sweep of the wingtip behind his knee. That posture was as natural to him as breathing. It was the right that was lopsided, sagging unnaturally low, the mid-wing ulnare and metacarpus joint unable to properly bear the weight of his primaries anymore.

Above and around him, the rest of the world flew, people banking and wheeling with their beautiful, broad wingspans onto the upper level entryways of homes, offices, theatres, shopping complexes. And here he was on the ground, walking—walking—through a doorway.

Benedick grit his teeth, hefted his case in his perfectly healthy, perfectly tedious, arms and walked into his new home. Avalon Towers. Crawlers Hill, it was called by some.

He didn’t call it that, of course. The nickname spoke of ableism and discrimination, and Benedick Sasaki wasn’t that kind of man. He knew how that name had been used to hurt his cousin Octavia, and Benedick hadn’t used crawler since he’d learned better at age seven. But he certainly knew the term.

And never mind that he’d lost his flight doing his duty. He was a crawler, now, too, and he’d have to learn how to live without the sky.

The dread snaked up his spine again as he entered the building. He’d seen too many places that were meant to be ‘accessible’. It usually meant that those who couldn’t fly were bundled into goods lifts: dirty, scuffed spaces that smelled of machine oil and dust, with trolleys and half-packed boxes in the corner. He recoiled at yet again being shunted about like a delivery of furniture.

It was a relief to step inside the tower foyer to find a properly appointed lift for actual people, with soft lighting, a pleasant floral scent and room enough for wings as well as mobility aids.

Benedick summoned the elevator and made his way to the fourth floor.

I used to live on the eighteenth floor. Flying in to the eyrie with the sun behind me, wings spread. It was such an ordinary thing. How did I ever take it for granted?

At the ping, the door opened and Benedick stepped out onto the carpeted floor: a tasteful dove grey threaded with pale green. The walls were a delicate eggshell blue. The discreet light fittings cast a muted glow.

Benedick didn’t like the elegant décor. He missed the bright, boisterous colours of his old place, which he could no longer reach. It was not as though Avalon Towers was a slum. It was well appointed. His compensation from the State for his sacrifice, and the gift from the man whose life he had saved, had at least meant he didn’t have to get by in substandard housing on an insufficient pension. That was something, he supposed.

‘If you’re done?’

Benedick’s attention was brought abruptly to the person in front of him as the lift pinged and closed. She was small and olive skinned, with dark hair, large gold-flecked brown eyes, and an expression that could have cut stone.

The fact that she was wingless seemed to make her smaller and more delicate, and somehow intensified the irritation so evident in the curl of her lip.

‘Never mind,’ she said, as though she minded a great deal. ‘I’ll just wait for the next one.’

‘Sorry, I— I just— Sorry.’ Benedick tried to move aside, but she moved at the same time. He stepped the other way, just as she did.

A debacle.

He tried not to look at the empty space above her shoulders where the arch of folded wings should have been.

She noticed him not looking anyway. ‘Yep, wingless. I live in Crawlers Hill, what do you expect?’

‘I … ah…’

‘Don’t get many fliers here. Are you visiting Angela? She’s getting a lot of drop-ins today for her birthday. Might explain why you are lacking so many clues.’

Benedick swallowed hard and stopped avoiding her gaze. He glared instead. ‘Benedick Sasaki. The crawler moving into apartment four.’

Her eyes widened in mortification. ‘Oh. Right. Just … down to the left there.’

‘Thank you.’ He hefted up his bag and managed to step around her this time.

‘Um. Sorry. About the … I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘Yes you did.’

She didn’t correct him. ‘I guess I did. Bad day.’ The lift pinged its arrival. ‘Gotta fly.’ She grimaced slightly, self-deprecating and irritated as she entered it. ‘I’ll mend the fence later, if you’ll let me.’ Then she was gone.

Benedick caught his own distorted reflection staring back at him from the closed silver doors before he marched down the hall to his new front door.

The keypass fitted easily into the slot and the door retracted smoothly into the wall. The doorway was wide enough—flightless obviously didn’t always mean wingless—but he found himself holding his wings tight against his body. The feathers of his damaged wing drooped, brushing against the frame anyway. He snatched the limb back, trying to make it tuck neatly into place in the way it couldn’t anymore. All these months of therapy, and it still took him like that sometimes. He hated it.

Benedick dropped his bag in the main room and surveyed his new home. He was glad his brother, Peri, had arranged the transfer of his old furniture for him. He’d been too busy with the physio and wondering what the hell to do with his life now to take much interest. The living room was spacious and comfortable, with views over the park, the silver ribbon of the river in the near distance, and his bookshelves already lined with his library. The bathroom was clean and fresh, with all the usual wall-mounted jets, though he wasn’t sure why he’d expected that to be different.

The kitchen was spacious, and set up with his beloved espresso coffeemaker. The four-tier spice rack and array of chef-quality pans were Peri’s work, though the set of knives that stood in a block shaped like a murder victim was his. A birthday present in his long-ago rookie year from his fellow officers, which had seemed funny the first year and less so every year after that.

He stalked into the bedroom, next. It contained his old king bed, circular and deep, though he hadn’t much shared it with anyone for ages, even before the fall. He’d been too busy with his career. A few prints adorned the wall, and his bedside table had a selection of books on it. The wardrobe was full of his clothes—every thread of it apparently: including Benedick’s old uniforms, wrapped in their suit bags. Not much need for those anymore. He’d get rid of them. Later. Benedick shoved them to the furthest point of the wardrobe and closed the door firmly.

The new flat wasn’t much different to an ordinary home. He hadn’t needed much in the way of special equipment, after all. He couldn’t fly but he still had the wing and he had learned how to maintain his balance.

Why did he keep feeling that this place should be smaller? Did he think that he took up less space, just because he couldn’t fly?

His wings juddered and spread reflexively—the good wing stretching to its proper span, the other drooping and stiff.

Right.

Useless bloody thing.

I’m a useless bloody thing, now.

Benedick returned to the kitchen, wrenching open cupboards until he found the bottle of whisky Peri had shifted over from his old place and poured a generous measure. He gulped it down, poured another and took it with him to the windows where he could watch the park: watch other people flying.

He wondered briefly what it would be like to fall; to fly one last time before everything ended. Then he slammed the second whisky back and coughed as it burned all the way down his throat and into his belly.

His therapist, Liam, had told Benedick he