You Needn’t Be a Bird to Fly
The rain tapped gently on the window – pit, pat, pit, pat. Outside, the sky was a shade of gray that soothed her and helped to quiet her mind for the journey. She laid on the bed and closed her eyes. Breathing deeply, she focused on a red doorway at the end of a long path shrouded in shadow. Like the times she’d done before, when she arrived at the end, she reached forward and pushed the handle, her eyes opening as the door released. Today, there was warm water, her body felt weightless. She floated in a spring that filled the air with thick clouds of steam.
~
The time before that, she’d awakened on the precipice of a mountain, just steps away from falling to the valley below. Startled, she fell backwards upon the hard, frozen ground. Though it was still fall, snow covered everything this high up, and the footprints of fawns speckled the earth here. She couldn’t help but picture the poor creatures slipping over the edge, and wondered. If she had fallen, would she land softly upon a blanket of autumn leaves or would they make a crunch just like her bones?
Though no sooner had this thought crossed her mind did she feel a tingling between her shoulder blades and the sudden rush of relief and of knowing. Somehow, she quickly became certain that she could not hurt in a place as beautiful as this.
~
The next time it was a meadow. She found herself sitting in the middle a family of grazing deer. They looked up now and again to meet her grassy green eyes, lingering for just a few moments or so. They were not unphased by her presence, but they were not unsettled either. And she too sensed that she belonged right there among them.
She’d enoyed mere minutes observing the gentle animals before she noticed movement in the the distance. A hunter steadied his rifle. Though she wanted desperately to stay, having never been close enough to count the spots on a doe, her need to protect them was greater. She looked at the mother and whispered, “Run.” The deer, somehow understanding, bowed her head in thanks and darted with her family toward the tree line.
She closed her eyes and brought herself home.
~
Today, as she swam to the edge of the spring, she felt hopeful. She raised herself onto the ground and lay down upon the moss, directing her gaze skyward at a canopy of trees. She marveled at how the sunlight shone in tiny beams all around her, guided through gaps between leaves. She was so enchanted that she hardly noticed the plant’s grip until she flexed her foot and felt a tug.
A vine from the spring had twisted around her ankle. She tried to untangle it, but the harder she fought, the tighter it became. Soon, she realized that this particular vine was not just a living plant, but a thinking one as well. And quickly, it began to pull her toward the water. She turned on her belly and clawed at the earth, grasping at weeds that let out tiny screams as she ripped them from the ground. Startled at the sound, she looked up, and there, she spotted mother deer along the edge of the forest.
“Fly,” mother yelled, but the girl did not understand.
“I cannot fly! I am no bird!”
Mother tilted her head just so. “Child, you are not of heaven nor of earth. You needn’t be a bird to fly!”
It was then that she felt the familiar twinge between her shoulder blades once more, the rush of memories flooding every crevice of her body. Gossamer wings sprung forth from her back, covered in a shimmering dew. They were the wings that had helped her fly from this world to the other, so many times before.
She closed her eyes tightly and flew high and away, breaking free of the vine that bound her. She’d been away too long and had almost forgotten herself. She’d been tested so she could remember.
As she danced among the clouds, she laughed and gave thanks for the magic of Irish rain. But most of all, she gave thanks to her ancestors before her, the Tuatha Dé Danann, the fairy folk born of Mother Nature herself.