Kirsten Vangsness

Don't tell anyone, he would instruct her each time he taught her something new.

I won't, she always promised, savoring their secrets like gifts.

And, he cautioned over and over, don't ever try to fly without me.

You get hurt.

He told her then about Prometheus, who stole the god's fire and gave it to man, and how Prometheus was punished for his betrayal, his liver cruelly worked over by the beak of an eagle.

Understand, he said.

For a long time, Allie thought Mac meant that she would be punished.

But later, as she grew into a young woman, she realized he feared for himself.

The memory of flying simmered inside her for years after, and often on her way home from school, she gazed enviously up at the sky, her mind expanding to accommodate the lack of limits.

Suddenly, the sheer muscle of consequence, if she disobeyed, wrenched her back to earth.

Methodically, she planted her feet, one in front of the other, following the linear way home.

Allie always believed Mac and never tried to fly again.

As the years wore on, she sometimes imagined it was only a dream.

By the time she was old enough to be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, she still had her doubts about the memory of flying with Mac.

Now she wants to write him and ask, but he is busy with work and a family, and she hasn't seen him in ages.

Allie thinks often about flying.

She flies in her dreams, soaring away from her earthly body, returning just in time to hear the alarm, to feel her husband reaching for her to answer the cries of her children.

She knows better than to mention flying to anyone.

When normal people fly, they buy tickets and sit in airplanes.

Allie has done that too.