Page 109 - Herzlia HS Magazine 2021

“Satisfied?” I ask my brother, somewhat tightly.

Will nods once, shutting the notebook between his fingers. “She’ll fly
this time.”

I swallow hard, looking up. The pale blue expanse of sky seems to
bulge and grow, beckoning as I tilt my head to meet it. Always

beckoning. This afternoon sees it crisp as a frozen lake, void of fluffy
companions to soften the harshness of the unending blue.

Will’s hand is on my shoulder, but I think the affection is more for his

sake than mine.
“History turns a page today,” he murmurs with a soft smile.

I ascend the ladder.

It is not doubt, exactly, that dries my throat and dampens my
clenched palms. Will and I built her together, a silver beast of a bird
with arms wide and hollow to keep me aloft. I know, this time, she

will not fall.

Perhaps it is a human fear of the unnatural. Of my father’s warnings,
bellowing that man was not made to fly as I had whirled from the

house of mourning like a hurricane.

You taught us to dream of flying, I had yelled, but by then we had lost
one brother to my father’s lifelong ambition and it no longer
mattered that he had taught us everything we knew, that he had

awakened this desire in us to exist above gravity and what mankind
believed possible. It had been ruled a fool’s mission. He had

forbidden thoughts of aeroplanes in his household for the terror of
one of his two surviving children becoming the next victim of his

impossible dream.