easily drown. It would be simple, really. It would just take a moment. And then it would be over.
Another step. I take another step and then another and another until I’m pushing through the river as fast as I can, the water spraying up all around me. The current is swift against my legs, trying to pull me back, telling me to stop running, to just stop, but then it lowers from my chest, to my stomach. From my crotch to my ankles. And then I’m on the other side, shivering, the warmth of the fallen light like a blanket. I take a shuddering breath. The knot in my chest releases.
I dress quickly and shove the feather into the waist of my jeans. There can’t be much time left.
Whatever it is, it has to be big. As I jog up the hill to look down into the clearing, I can see the trees that have been uprooted from the impact, having collapsed in an outward circular pattern as if blown out. My breath quickens. My heart races. I reach the crest of the hill. I close my eyes. The air smells of dusty earth. It’s overwhelming and it invades my senses, but all I want to do is inhale the scent until I’m intoxicated from it, till I’m high off of it. Another shudder rips through me. My head is pounding. I feel inside out. Sweat drips down my face. I open my eyes and look down.
The earth is scorched and smoldering, smoke rising out of a small crater in the center of the clearing. Black char radiates outward through the clearing, long streaks of black against the green and brown of the forest floor. Flecks of orange and red flash but don’t ignite. Toward the center of the crater, the scorch marks change, become less random, more defined. The lines across the crater are angled. Each line looks to serve a purpose, like it has meaning, a distinct reason for being. I view each line, moving my eyes faster, only to realize I’m looking at it too small. I’m focusing too closely. My gaze widens. And now I see the full picture.
Stretched out from the center of the crater, charred into the earth, are the imprints of wings, great wings that appear to be fifteen feet in length each. The tips are jagged and sharp, the width greatest at the end, spilling out from the crater, black lines slashed into green. I look down the length of them, toward the center of the crater.
And there lies a man.
Not. Fucking. Possible.
I almost fall down the hill, I’m leaning so far over. I catch myself before I roll head over heels to the bottom of the steep incline. I can’t process what I’m seeing as it’s so far fucking beyond the realm of possibility, so far fucking past the idea of probability, that my mind can’t fathom it. Without thinking about why, I reach back and pull the blue feather from my jeans and clutch it in my hand. It feels hot. It feels like it’s shaking, but that might just be me.
Do you believe in the impossible? my father’s voice whispers in my head again.
I don’t. I don’t believe in the impossible. It’s not real. A man did not just fall from the fucking sky and land in the middle of the forest in Roseland, Oregon. I did not just see this. This did not happen. And even if it did happen, there is a fucking logical explanation for this. The FBI agent. The government. Of course! They’re testing some weapon. Some kind of flying weapon thing and it just crashed and that is all. The pilot is probably hurt and needs my help.
That’s it, I tell myself. Also, ignore the feather in your hand that came from a dream. Plausible deniability.
I stumble down the hill, half running, half sliding on the grass. I reach the bottom and stutter to a stop, unsure what to do. That wild, earthy smell assaults me and I’m horrified as it makes me hard, going straight to my dick. And it is an assault, because I can’t stop it, and I don’t want it. So much is crashing through my head that I can’t focus, I can’t make sense of anything, and that smell is making it worse. I stop myself from opening my mouth and sucking in as much air as possible.
I walk to the edge of the crater. Even this close, I