I Can't Hang

Our epic journey started with a bang. Kinda.

Well, it didn’t at first, since we started off by walking everywhere, but then after about five minutes, Brady threw his hands up in the air and yelled, “Why the heck are we walking?! Screw this, I’m flyin’!”

Before I could protest, he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the sky with him. I tried my best to keep up or at least take some weight off of him by trying to fly too, but my little training wings wouldn’t do the job right. I kept dipping and focusing too much energy on it, tiring myself fast. It was no use – they were so little that they wouldn’t support my weight.

Brady knew what I was trying to do. “Chill out. I’ll keep ya up.”

We weren’t high enough to be able to see the Antarctic continent as a whole, but we were pretty high. Over mountains of slush we flew, peering at tiny black dots below us – penguins – and every so often we reached a coastline of broken ice scattered across arctic waters. The view was beautiful, even if the weather stung my face like a million little bees were being sprayed right at me.

The sun nearly blinded me, but when I squinted to ease my vision, things got clearer. Brady was grinning from ear to ear as we glided, his giant wings keeping us airborne.

“Ain’t it beautiful?” he chuckled. He swept his free hand across the horizon as if to guide me. “It’s so pretty.”

“Yeah,” I nonchalantly agreed. Really, I was focusing more on the ground and looking for something resembling a human.

A mound of ice passed under us, and almost immediately after it, there was a huge crowd of animals right ahead. I had to pause for a moment to fully take it in – this had to have been the largest population of penguins I’d ever seen.

“Holy crap,” Brady uttered, coasting slowly over the mass. “Um…”

“Should…should we look here…?” I asked sheepishly.

“Yeah…God said ol’ Jimmy was gettin’ a few animals, so…”

Brady swept his wings forward to stop us and we floated down to the snowy ice. As we landed, we hardly attracted any attention, but I just couldn’t stop staring at the beasts that stood in front of me. Some of them actually came up to my shoulders in height. That was crazy.

…Are penguins naturally friendly? I never bothered to research it.

Brady grabbed me by the hood of my sweatshirt and kept a tight rein on me as we clambered through the herd of penguins. They were chirping and along the coastline some of them were getting fish, and some of them looked at us and squawked.

“How’s it feel not to fly?” Brady laughed, making a face at one of them. Idiot.

“Don’t ask ‘em anything they can’t answer to,” I rolled my eyes. “That’s just –”

A penguin walked up to Brady and took a bite out of his arm.

“OW! Son of a…” he growled, grabbing his forearm and acting like it’d just been cut in two, despite penguins not having teeth. “Dumb animal.”

The penguin chirped in protest.

Brady sneered at it.

“I hate penguins,” he declared under his breath. “Let’s go. Gotta find that freakin’ kid before he dies again.”

That’s the spirit.

We trudged through dense crowds of the flightless birds and I couldn’t help but to wonder if any of them knew how to dance or surf. Unpleasant memories of seventh grade life science flashed into my brain, reminding me of things I’d learned back then that I didn’t care to know about now. Everywhere I turned, they were staring at me with those hollow, piercing, soulless eyes, creeping me out beyond belief.

Brady and I reached a break in the crowd and peered ahead to a coastline where the ice met the ocean.

The water was raging violently in one spot and about four or five penguins had leapt in and thrashed around the area. We stopped in our tracks and wondered if we’d need to send for another angel to pick up something else – it sure as crap didn’t look like whatever was causing it was going to get out alive.

Twittering and other penguin noises filled the air, along with strangled gasps for oxygen coming from the spot in the water that couldn’t keep still. Brady and I quickly shuffled to the front of the crowd, staying back from the commotion but still keeping an eye on things.

Screams. They didn’t even sound like animal screams. They’re so clear in my mind, too. I can remember almost exactly what they sounded like…and it was no penguin those birds were trying to rescue.

“Help!” someone shouted.

Instinctively, Brady and I shared a terrified expression. In less than a second we were over by the water to inspect and see just who was flailing.

We hardly even cared about being seen, anyways. We were in the middle of a mission, and we didn’t wanna be sent back to Heaven for something bogus like this. It was probably a National Geographic person or something, and they’d probably just document us as some sort of weird species of penguin anyway.

As we got closer we saw dark messy curls of hair weighed down by water and a young face bobbing above and below sea level. His arms thrashed against the water, causing the struggle for the penguins attempting to free him up.

The drowning person looked up at us, made eye contact, and his face just completely went blank. It was like the water made him freeze and he sank for a moment before the penguins squawked and tried to lift him out of the water again – this time, without resisting.

Brady reached his hand out and tried to get to the kid without falling in himself, and I just stood back, bracing myself and expecting the worst. I was ready for him to splash in when one of the penguins went underwater and suddenly the boy jerked loose of whatever was keeping him bound to the sea.

He was yanked up onto the ice by Brady and tumbled forward, clambering up the snow to get traction. And that’s when I noticed the boy’s wings – these big, glossy, crooked things that were even huger than Brady’s. As he shivered, the wings shook as well, and they retracted as if he were a dog with his tail between his legs.

Helping him stand up, Brady looked as though he’d just seen the Seven Wonders of the World revealed before him. His mouth dropped to the floor when the boy’s wings expanded and immediately curled up again. Failing to stand up completely, he’d stumbled further and crashed into Brady before falling to the ground, whimpering and dripping wet.

“Oh my God,” I gasped to myself. At the moment I was thankful that he’d died once already and couldn’t possibly do it again, or else we’d be making an emergency trip back to Heaven.

Brady got on his knees and came to eye level with the boy. “Are…are you…St. James…?” he asked.

Without a word, the boy simply nodded and crossed his arms across his chest as a feeble attempt to create warmth. His wings shimmered in the daylight as if they’d been dipped in glitter; his clothes were soaking with freezing water and clung to his small frame.

Brady stood up and motioned for me to come over. Hesitantly, I stepped forward and for a brief second St. James and I met eyes, his bright blue irises meeting my weird green ones, but it was only for a moment and it was over too fast for it to really mean anything. Brady had been staring at his wings, crooked and worn thin from who knows what.

“Man…” Brady trailed off, gently running a hand along the top of St. James’s right wing.

He immediately recoiled and yelped in pain, curling them in so that they scrunched up on his back. “Don’t!” he’d whimpered.

“I’m sorry!” he apologized, eyes wide open and hands in the air. “Do they…are they…”

“The water…” St. James trailed off.

“They’re sensitive,” I observed out loud, looking them over more carefully. St. James was staring at me as if he were paranoid that I’d chop them off. “The water must’ve been really cold.”

Brady cocked his brow at me. “We’re in the south pole. Of course it’s cold.”

Meanwhile, the penguins who’d been attempting to aid St. James had leapt back up onto the ice and made their way over to him, looking him over and inspecting as if he was one of their own. It was so intrinsic the way they’d studied him – just how long had he been down here?

The boy gave a weak smile to the animals and said, “Thanks,” to them.

Brady and I looked at each other funny.

St. James turned back to us with that same sad smile he’d had on and acted like he was about to say something. He stopped himself, though, before going off into thought and actually saying it. “Um…can we go back now?”

“You can’t fly,” Brady deadpanned. “And I ain’t carryin’ two kids up to Heaven.”

St. James looked hurt. “But…we have to get back…”

“Not today,” he smirked, “we can find a place. There’s gotta be some kinda cave ‘round here.” Brady looked around and searched the distance for any hint of shelter.

“But it’s cold,” I protested.

“But it’s cold! Wah. Suck it up, Kyle. We’ll make a fire,” Brady mocked. Leaning down, he took St. James by the hand again and once more tried to help him up, but as always he’d stand up slightly, wobble in the knees, grimace, and fall over.

“I…I c-can’t,” St. James whimpered.

Brady groaned and got on his knees in front of him, looking him over yet again. “Did ya sprain somethin’? Or are you just numb, or what?”

“I c-can’t feel m-my legs,” he coughed, blushing. “Or my fingers…or my arms…”

Brady kinda looked like he wanted to shoot himself. “Then c’mon. I guess I’m gonna have to carry you then, ‘cause we ain’t staying here waitin’ for you to warm up. We gotta find a cave or somethin’.”

I wrinkled my nose. Since when did Brady have a maternal instinct?

St. James looked uneasy as Brady took him, scooping him up in his arms like he was a five-year-old. Granted, he was a hell of a lot smaller than him, but he looked to still be older than me, anyway.

And we were off, looking for some place to stay just for a moment, with Brady looking like a reluctant daddy and St. James looking like a baby who’d just been found in a Mal-Wart.

That was easy.