The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,92

in the bright, super-stratospheric sun, the grey-blond Marcel water-waves were fire to the eyes. It was the hawk-woman.

“Ah, Margaret!” it screeched, in a megaphone-loud, bird-like voice. “You remember me, don’t you? I’m Magda! How delightful we should meet!” There was a whistling sound all around, and these pronunciations, for all their volume, were almost lost to the wind. Margaret didn’t say anything, but her foot, which was looking vainly for the rung beneath her, was making the sad-futile gesture of a blind inchworm at the edge of a leaf, casting feelers into nothing.

The woman had trapped her. Margaret had no choice: she gave a nod.

“Going down so soon?” screamed the figure. “But if you don’t like it here, you could continue up!”

Margaret was prompted, then, to look up the rope ladder, which, stunningly, did in fact continue into the ether. “What’s up there?” Margaret asked doubtfully.

“Wouldn’t you know it! All the people you have lost,” was the gleeful response. Margaret stared up into the bright, endless blue, with the rope ladder tracing into it like a fishing line. “Perhaps you would like to see the one you left behind, Margaret?”

Margaret thought about this. Perhaps she would like to see—but the screeching voice of her interlocutor interrupted her thoughts. “And also there,” said the woman, “are all the people I have lost.”

“The people you have lost?” asked Margaret, dazed. “I’m going down.” And again her feet began to jab at the air, looking for a rung down.

“Stay awhile,” said the hawk-woman. “We can have a little chat.”

“That’s all right,” said Margaret, and again focused on her footing.

The rope ladder, however, seemed to have shortened in the meantime. Below her it did not extend much more than four or five feet toward the earth, which was far, far away. Margaret’s back prickled with electricity, her skin cold. For a brief instant, she thought she would jump. Assuming this was a dream, she’d only have to suffer the suffusion with fear, and then she’d be awake. But she couldn’t be sure. And if she was wrong? So she stayed.

“Ah, I see you’ve decided to have a little chat with me after all!” screeched the bird-woman. “We have so much in common, you and I. I’ve been meaning to make your acquaintance simply for ages.”

And Margaret was warmed by this, despite herself. “Really?”

“Oh, yes!” the bird-woman said in a quieter, more human-like voice.

“Well—” Margaret paused. “That’s nice.”

“I think so too! What a lovely little setup you’ve got there in the Grunewaldstrasse. You and I are going to be the best of friends, I know it already.”

Margaret would have shuddered at this, but she found that with the rope ladder gone and her imprisonment in the clouds, the woman’s friendly overtures were more winning. She said, “You know, my ladder here, it’s shorter than it was. I have no idea how to get down.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that for a second! I’ll take you!”

“You?”

“Gladly, my dear. Just hop on my back. I’ll fly you.” And with that, downy feathers began to sprout from the woman’s face and hands, her clothes fell away to reveal the buttressed chest of her bird-self. Her face extended and her nose lengthened and latched into a beak. She fluffed her wings tentatively, and they spread wider and wider, telescoping from some inner resource. The woman’s wingspan was as broad as a city street. It seemed safe enough to ride on such a massive bird. As the wings were folded in again, Margaret inclined herself toward the back of the predator, and put out her hand. But with a great screech, the bird hopped away from her and swooped up into the sky. The sparrow hawk flew so high she disappeared from view in the clouds. Margaret craned her neck. But then the bird was plummeting back down toward her, Stuka-fashion, and without even realizing what was happening, Margaret was scooped up onto her back and borne away, traveling at high speed.

They jetted across the mist, they broke through, they swooped and dove, and then they were back below cloud level in bracing Berlin. There was the city laid out below, like a veined butterfly pinned down on the earth. The arteries, capillaries, bundles, clots, and junctures of the city streets interlocked and weaved. It all happened so quickly the eye couldn’t keep abreast. Margaret got used to the overstimulation, but by then the hawk had begun to fly lower still. They flew east along the line of Strasse des Siebzehnten