We all just waited there in our gym clothes, official school shorts and tank top. It had been almost ten minutes since the bell for last period had gone off, and our teacher Mrs. Cherub had yet to show up. Usually by now someone would have brought up that inane myth, about being able to bail on class if the teacher didn’t come early enough. I say usually because for once, no one wanted to miss gym class. It was kinda drafty in the gym, and the uniform wasn’t helping, so I folded my wings over my chest.
I didn’t normally hang out with other harpies in school, so I didn’t know many people in the class, but I knew Belanie. I didn’t really have an opinion about her, but she had a high opinion of herself, and she had enough “friends” that shared her views that it was impossible not to be aware of her presence within the school. Oh and what a presence she had. You know that cliché about how guys want to be with her, and girls wanted to be her? She was that, to a tee. Anyways she was in this class too chattering away with a handful of girls listening intently, and a few guys looking at her intently and pretending to listen. I was off to the side, far enough to not be in the group but close enough to overhear her.
“I don’t even know why we have to take this class, every one already knows how to do it already, am I right?” babbled Belanie. Then all the girls nodded in agreement, and a momentum passed where the guys realized they were asked a question, and they agreed with extra vigor to compensate for their delay. I wanted to contradict her, to tell her that she was full of shit and trying to impress people. I mean that has to be the case, right? I know I don’t know anything on the subject. I wanted to say all this, but instead I just walked away. I tried to do so quietly. I didn’t want them to notice me move. This took some effort, as I was walking with talons on a wooden gym floor. What if she was right though, and everyone already knew what they were doing except me? I’m sure you’re thinking “so what? Then you’d fail gym.” The only problem with that is failing could get me killed, if not seriously injured.
I was the first one to hear the footsteps, the clicking of talons against the linoleum outside the gym. Finally, Mrs. Cherub, now we can just get started. But the person who walked in was not Mrs. Cherub. Instead we all saw a tall, fit middle-aged man. His grey hair shaved down to his scalp, and his grey wings folded behind his back. He had very broad shoulders. What were most striking were his legs, for two reasons. The first being that we could see them. I had never seen a teacher in shorts. Mrs. Cherub always wore a track suit, which wasn’t even necessary as she would barely move during class. The second reason was how lean and muscular they were. This might not sound very impressive, but for a harpy it’s astounding. Having “chicken legs” was kind of the norm for us. He surveyed the room for several minutes, eying each and every one of us before finally introducing himself.
“Hello class! I’ll be subbing for Mrs. Cherub this to give you your flight lessons. My name is Mr. Eeh. I know that my name might inspire some of you to crack a joke, but I assure you that I am far, far older than you realize and that I have heard them all on several occasions. I sincerely doubt any of you are clever enough to prove this wrong. This is not the time to be joking. This class is extremely serious, and I intend to conduct it as such, understood?” Awhile passed before we realized this wasn’t asked rhetorically, and then nodded in acknowledgment.
“Good. Now I realize some of you might have had some practice before hand” Here Belanie made a confident and annoying cough. “But that’s basic shit! We won’t be limiting ourselves to easy take-offs, flapping techniques, or hovering. Here you will learn real flight, which includes real danger. To prove this point we are gonna start today with gliding.” There was the hiss of many sighs of relief when he said this. Everything leading up to the last word sounded terrifying, but how hard could gliding be I thought.
“None of that. This is important. Gliding is what keeps you from falling. Therefore it keeps you from dying. It is the only crucial skill to flying. So to learn this, you first have to be falling. Normally I would just carry you each up high enough and drop you, but since there’s so many and this school has a real budget, we are gonna take a plane.” Honestly I froze up after “drop you.” I knew this class was going to be tough, and important, but it would have been a lot more helpful if someone had described it as intense, or insane. I shook my head a little and looked back to Mr. Eeh. I couldn’t miss a single word. It was a matter of life and death, apparently.
“Now for safety reasons you’ll be required to wear a back-up parachute. It has a computer inside that will calculate your rate of failing, and deploy if it’s too high. So if you freeze up or get a cramp or something you’ll still be safe. Don’t worry if this happens to you, it happens to a few people in every class.” Even if that was the case, it’s not gonna stop that person from being ridiculed forever after the fact. At least with dying, there was nothing to worry about afterwards, but this new fear would last a lot longer.
“Now I’m going to call attendance. When I call your name, come up here and I’ll help you put on your harness and back-up shoot. Anna?” I got up and walked over. I had long ago become accustomed to be the first on attendance, but I still got a bit of a shock out of my panicked day dreaming. I picked up one of the harness from the pile next to Mr Eeh and attempted to put it on myself. This was a stupid attempt at being self-reliant, which did not work. You try putting on a harness with your feet. Like I said, stupid. Mr. Eeh grumbled and undid the mess I started, and got my harness cinched up properly, then went back to his list. Eventually everyone was properly set up.
“OK now we’re going to get on the plane. It’s already started out side. Once we get to the proper altitude, I’ll start tossing you out. We’ll have to space out each person’s turn so you don’t end up colliding with each other.” Did he really just say “tossing you out?” Talk about an unconventional teaching method. We all walked out to the plane, its twin propellers already spinning like he had said. We all lined up alphabetically and got onto the plane. I went to the first “seat,” and sat down. Now when I say seat, I mean a long crate bolted to the floor that went down the length of the plane. Not bolted very well I should add, as the crate tipped to the left when I would lean that way. The next person behind me took the seat. This continued until the plane had filled, Mr Eeh taking the co-pilot spot, and we took off. The plane rattled something fierce. I couldn’t help wondering if this was intentional, as jumping was seeming like a much safer option. I stared at my bony knees and took long deep breaths. I know from the seating that I was going to have the first turn to jump.
“You ready?” asked Mr Eeh, once we reached our desired height. He asked me a couple more times before I responded. When he got his confirmation he got out of his seat, and came back to the side door through which we had entered, and he opened it. The flood of wind instantly killed the chatter that was taking place behind me. He made a gesture out the opening with his wing, as no noise was able to survive in this whirlwind. I stood up and went over to the doorway. I propped both my wings on its perimeter for balance, and looked out at the vast openness outside the plane. Then there was the gentlest prod from behind me. I loosed my hold with my wings, leaned forward, and I was outside the plane.
A wall of crashed into me. I flipped through the air what felt like a hundred times, as if I got hit by a race car while on a stole. I didn’t see anything but white on blue blurring through my vision. You’d think with all those flips I would have caught a view of the plane, but no. I didn’t know what was going on, other than that I was spinning every way imaginable. Was this supposed to happen? It was never like this in movies. People just jumped out of planes and then they fell. Now I realize that this made perfect sense. The plane, and I, were moving at a crazy speed, and then suddenly I wasn’t. Of course I flipped. It would have been nice if someone were to warn me of this earlier. But at the time I could only think a long string of “What the fuck!?” over and over again.
Eventually I realized movies couldn’t have lied to me twice. So I spread my arms and legs to try to steady myself. Thankfully this worked. Instead of flipping, I was only falling. I tilted my wings this way and that for a second, then they caught the air. I felt a sharp jerk in my shoulders as my body suddenly decelerated in its fall. I let out my breath, which I hadn’t realized I had been holding this whole time. I blinked a couple of times and looked around. Replacing the blue blur from before, I could now see the large field that could be found just outside campus, only it looked completely different. From this height, all the blades of grass had melded together to form a shade of green that you just couldn’t recognize from up close on the ground level. I looked up and could see the mountain ranges, where my family, and most harpies are from. The school is in a valley, so you normally can’t see the mountains through the trees.
Once I absorbed every scene I could, I got bored with the slow meandering fall I was in. I decided to test my limits a little. I tilted my wings ever so slightly, and began to turn to the left. I made a large slow spiral around the entirety of the campus. Once I came full circle back to my original place but obviously at a lower height, I was hooked. I flipped my wings and started turning right. I rolled my shoulders back, and started to go faster. My hair was pulled taught back, out of my face. This made me come down just as fast, so I tried to angle my wings up. I kept moving forward, but I had stopped falling. I was… I was flying I guess. I don’t think there’s any other word for it. I was flying.
I had gotten too excited by my maneuvering that I didn’t realize how low I had gotten. I slid as my but hit the grass. There long brown smear in the wet grass that lead right to where I sat. I could tell the ass of my shorts was soaked through. I sat there for a few minutes, realizing that since I was first everyone else was still in the air, and had literally seen me fall on my ass.
“Ana!” I heard called from somewhere above me. I saw a winged shadow pass over me. Then the shadow grew as its own dipped to the ground. I saw when it circled back that it was Mr. Eeh. Why did he rush down to meet with me? Was he gonna hell at me for my shitty landing job? He flew head on at me. He dipped down then up again. He hovered in the air for a split second, relaxed, looking like a superhero. Then he dropped down and landed on his feet. He looked down at me. Then he held out his talon foot, and pulled me up.
“That had to have been the best I have ever seen for a first flight.” My jaw dropped. If this had been a cartoon, it would have been on the floor.
“Not only did you glide properly, but you were able to turn and have the basics for controlling your speed. Most of them are trying their best not to fall out of the sky.” I turned to see that he was right. Across the sky I could see my class mates, flapping around as if they were trying to grab a hold of anything that wasn’t thin air. And this continued till they reached the surface. And only a couple did so more gracefully than I, most still landing but first in the damp grass and mud.
Almost everyone was back when I heard a couple of boys talking. One, in a sad attempt at sounding aloof had asked the other where Belanie was. The boy, myself, and several others then looked up to see a shape dropping out of the sky, only to be saved by the large red tarp that was the back-up chute slowing it down. I would have married that moment if it were possible. Mr. Eeh Help the rest of the class land and get to the group (which took a while in Belanie’s case.) He started giving the class pointers for the next jump which we would do after a short break, when he caught my eye. It was like he just remembered that I was there, and not just part of the class. He asked me to hang back when everyone else went to get a drink or whatever.
“You know you can just head out if you want, and just come to class tomorrow. Its pretty obvious you don’t need the practice the material.” He said with a smirk, which I think was supposed to by a compassionate and warm smile.
I turned to him shrugged, and kind of stammered “Thanks, but I’d kind of like to go again anyways, if it’s all the same.”