Dreams of Flight

This morning the clouds were dark pillars in the sky, keeping a gloomy watch over their cousin, the sea. A sight which brought to mind an adventure that I’d once shared with my younger brother, when we’d taken a balloon ride with the local magistrate. We were considered two of the more intelligent of our stock, and so we’d gone up with the magistrate, and the scientist, Davis, to experience the new discovery of flight.

A minor crowd had turned out that day, a girl, Rachel, with whom both my brother and I were in love. She wore a white hat and lovely white sandals and looked for all the world as excited and forlorn as you’d want a woman to be when you were thinking of touching the heel of heaven. Our mother was there, hair tried back in a bun, beaming proudly at the both of us, while shading her eyes from the mid-summer sun.

“Are you ready?” Davis asked us.

Tom and I shook our heads in unison, ready to fly as the birds have flown for centuries.  Davis stoked the fires of the balloon and we took rise almost immediately, the jolt shaking us slightly, and leaving us jostling one another in the balloon. I saw Rachel bring a white handkerchief to her mouth in dismay, and I secretly hoped that it was for me and not for Tom that she worried, though, knowing her it was good and gentle and included all four of us and not a one in particular.

As we ascended, clearing the tree tops, a stand of elms at the edge of the green that I’d climbed halfway as a child, and never dreamed that I’d be higher, I looked down again to catch sight of Rachel, her pale face staring up at me, and I prayed that the two of us might one day be together. Tom had opened his sketch book, and was making a hurried drawing of the clouds above us, like purple and gauzelike, so that they looked as though they must be parted. When my gaze lifted from the village green I saw that the magistrate had turned white as a sheet, and was kneeling at the edge of the basket, causing it to list slightly as we bounced merrily through the sky.