Jack's wings

Jack decided to grow wings. It was a Sunday afternoon in early April and, as on most Sunday afternoons, he was doing very little. In the park where he lay the butterflies were battling their way round an ascending spiral of air. They fought each other for space to soak up the warm sun in, and as Jack saw them he wanted to fly too.

More than anything else at that moment Jack just wanted to move himself closer to the sun that he had longed for these past winter months. He had other reasons for wanting to fly away, lots of them, but he chose this one as his motivation. It was a whim born of sunlight and space. From then on, this would be what he would say if anyone asked him why he wanted wings. "To be nearer the sun," he would say.

Not that he told anybody, of course: not at first. He couldn't tell his friends. He was scared they would laugh at him. The ones that knew him best might say: "we don't believe you, Jack. Why do you really want to grow wings? What is in your heart?" And he couldn't tell anyone he barely knew either. Jack was an amicable chap, and because he saw a potential friend in every stranger he did not want such people to think he was crazy. The smile in their eyes would switch off if they considered Jack to be wrong in the head. Jack would not be able to bear that.

For many days Jack strained his muscles against each other until they ached. Over and over he thought to himself: "I want my wings." He concentrated on his back until his shoulder blades itched. But, stretching round to look in the mirror every morning, he saw no change.

On his way home one evening Jack was on an empty street, walking past abandoned shops. He looked at the blank, dark socket of a shop window opposite and reckoned it would be just like a mirror, if the light was right.

As he was turning this over in his mind, his shoulders began to itch like crazy. Luckily there were no cars on the road, because he sprinted across to the shop that had caught his eye and pulled the back of his shirt up to examine the wings that he was sure were there.

"What're you doing?"

Jack spun round, startled. It was William. William sniffed a lot and stared, rather than looked, at people and things.

"Nothing," Jack blurted out.

"Didn't look like it," said William, staring at Jack. Then he sniffed, and shrugged, and started to walk away.

Catching up with him, Jack began to talk to William. He liked William a lot, although he could be very strange. William's eyes fixed on everything, and he was ungainly and clumsy.

He had got sick once, had William, suddenly and seriously, and had gone to hospital for a long time. When he had come out again he wasn't quite the same as he had been. But something in his wide, blue eyes had come out of the hospital more content than it went in. It was like William had been secretly ill for years, and had only realised it recently. Realising it had been more of a relief than recovering from it.

Now he was less sick, but still not what Jack's mum would call "one hundred percent." Jack did not care. He thought that William was one hundred percent William, and that was what he ought to be as far as Jack could see. But Jack was only fifty percent Jack. Twenty-five percent was in each of the wings that he could not grow.

They talked until they reached the end of the street. What they talked about - Jack didn't pay much attention to that. He just wanted to talk. Just as they were coming to a stop at the junction William spoke, as if the idea was just innocently crossing his mind, although there was nothing innocent about it:

"I had a friend once who wanted to fly."

Jack tried not to let his surprise show. "What happened?" he asked as naturally as he could.

William shook his head. "He wanted to grow wings, but he wanted to grow roots too. In the end his wings grew out as leaves and branches, and he turned into a willow tree." Pausing to look down at his feet, as if they might take root themselves, he continued. "This was in the hospital. They planted him in the gardens there. He's happy, for a willow." William shrugged. "It's what he wanted to be all along, secretly, and there are more important things than just concentrating on being as happy as possible, aren't there?"

Jack could only nod in agreement.

"Do you want to grow roots, Jack?" William asked plainly, and sniffed.

"No," answered Jack. "I have roots. I am fed up with my roots and want to get rid of them." Jack clumsily lifted up each foot in turn, to show William they were only temporarily stuck to the ground.

William grinned. "You'll do all right, Jack," he said. "You'll be happy, for a whatever-you-are." Then, with a sniff, he turned away from Jack and walked in the opposite direction from Jack's home. He scuffed his feet, Jack noticed - keeping them as close to the ground as he could.

That night Jack spent a whole hour peering into the mirror. There was no doubt: the bottom points of his shoulders were that bit sharper. Most would not notice, but Jack had studied his back so much these past few weeks that he was sure of it.

Now that his wings had started to grow Jack doubled his concentration on them. He was also more sure than ever that he wanted them, and so felt brave enough to tell a few of his friends about them. Mostly they just smiled politely and waited for the punchline, or thought it was just something you said to fill a pause in the conversation. They didn't take it literally.

Except Rebecca, who said she didn't believe that he was growing wings. "I want to see them," she said. Jack was a bit frightened of Rebecca, but he liked her as well, very much. So he lifted his T-shirt to show her the wing buds that were now quite obvious on his back.

But Rebecca hardly glanced at them, and instead waved him away, laughing. "I can't see any wings, Jack!" she cried. "You're so funny sometimes!" And she wrinkled her nose in a way that made Jack's nose fall - splash - through his stomach and the floor. Only this time when that happened it just made him wish for his wings all the more, and his whole back itched.

In a few days Jack began to develop a hump on his back, and he was glad for a sudden cold spell that allowed him to wear a baggy jacket to hide his wings.

Underneath hard, calloused skin he could feel new bones knitting and moving, and nerves threading through membranes, and muscles that stretched and spasmed as if somebody else was causing them to move. It hurt terribly, and Jack did not get much sleep. Sometimes he had an urge to stretch and yawn, and when he did so there were twitches in his back he didn't recognise. It made him excited and queasy at the same time.

He cut a hole in the back of his jacket, which was now beginning to tighten over his hump. Then he removed a panel of toughened cloth from his rucksack and fitted it over the hole, taping and stapling it in place. There was a feeling inside him, as if he was going to give birth, or be terribly ill with the flu, and he just knew in his heart that he would have wings soon.

He decided to play truant for a few days to see what happened. During the day he sat and sweated in the sun by the river and the duck pond. At night he snuck in late enough that he wasn't noticed. He would take off his jacket, and his rucksack, and a huge baggy T-shirt that stopped the jacket lining from making him sore. Then Jack would flex and bend like a body-builder testing his strength.

It was on the third day that he was truant, that Jack's feeling of expectation suddenly exploded like a flare inside him. He was lying on Port Meadow, and the sun was high in the sky, and it bounced off the grass and the buildings in the distance. Jack was warmed to the core. Without thinking about what he was doing he removed his disguise down to his red T-shirt. In the middle of the field he stood up and cried out, stretching every tendon he had as tight as he possibly could.

With the crackle of old newspapers the dead skin on Jack's back was sloughed aside. The suddenness of it made Jack cry out, and his T-shirt tore up the back to reveal new, pink skin and two heavy, feathery wings. Grunting, Jack shifted them open. They spread reluctantly. They were a little sticky. He stood in the sun for a few minutes to let them dry.

A few hundred yards off, an elderly couple walking their dog were the only people who saw Jack open his wings for the first time. They were sure that he hadn't just grown wings. The old man thought that Jack might be struggling with a kite, whereas his wife saw someone airing a cream-white blanket in the wind before putting it down to lie on. The dog, in the stupid way that dogs have, was amazed at how much, even at this distance, Jack looked like a beautiful angel.

Jack was resolved now. He bounced a few dozen strides across the grass. The wind tugged at his back. He ran towards the river bank and started downhill, approaching the water. Then he pulled his wings in and suddenly he was airborne - just. He cut a spiral in the sky, getting higher and higher.

Very quickly he was many miles up and heading away from what was once his home. All around him the sky was blue, as blue as William's eyes. It occurred to him that he hadn't looked back yet. "Do I want to?" he thought, then carried on heading towards the sun. Jack wondered about Icarus, but Icarus had been a faker. Jack's wings were made of himself. And he knew, as the sun got bigger, that he wasn't so stupid that he wouldn't turn away if he started getting too hot.