Chapter 14

Blood pounded through Béla’s head. She woke up, gasping for air.

‘What’s a ‘three’?’ she thought, disoriented. ‘I definitely remember someone saying ‘Three’!’

She couldn’t seem to get her balance. She opened her eyes. The ground and the sky were playfully circling around her. She smiled and reached out. The ground was very far away.

‘I’m dreaming, ‘ she thought, ‘Look. The ground is getting easier to see.’

She smiled again, dreamily, and looked around.

‘I’m falling!’ the thought suddenly pounded through her brain, waking her completely.

All her senses were suddenly working. She felt herself spinning around. Air was rushing, screaming past her ears. She could scarcely breathe; it was whooshing by so fast. Automatically, she spread her arms and legs. Almost immediately, she stopped spinning, but continued plummeting toward the ground.

‘Aren’t skydivers supposed to have parachutes?’ she asked herself, still in anxious disbelief that she was falling but raking her mind for some kind of solution to this ... illusion?

Doing a quick inventory, she realized she was completely naked. She watched the skin on her arms ripple as the air whipped past.

‘Oh, shit! I’m really FALLING!’ she realized as a wave of pure terror surged through her.

‘Maybe I can guide myself to a soft place to land, ‘ she thought, suddenly hopeful.

Squinting her eyes against the onrushing wind, she looked down at the ground rushing up. There were only rocks below her, which only reinforced her terror. Becoming more and more terrified, she spread her arms and legs out as far as she could, desperately trying to slow herself down. She closed her eyes, suppressing a scream of hysteria.

Incredulously, she felt the air catch in her arms. She pressed down and felt herself slow down.

Her eyes flew open wide! She was no longer falling straight down. She was also moving forward, soaring downward at a very steep angle.

‘I can fly!’ she suddenly realized, still not wanting to believe any of this was happening. She looked at her widespread arms. She had wings! How was this possible? ‘This is definitely some wild impossible dream!’

The ground rushed up to meet her and she flapped her arms (my wings!) frantically. She got her feet beneath her and hit the ground, hard. Her knees slammed into her chest, breaking several ribs. She bounced and rolled rapidly, feeling her wings tear and fragile bones break. Both her ankles and one leg also broke as she hit the ground.

She lay naked, sprawled in the dirt, breathing rapidly, her heart pounding.

‘My heart?’

‘I’m alive!’

She reached up and touched her breast. There were only fresh scrapes from the rough landing. The memory of an evil, pasty-faced man pounding a stake into her heart flooded into her consciousness.

‘Was it a nightmare?’ she thought to herself. ‘Was I really dead? How did I get here? Where is here, anyway?’

Thoughts jangled crazily through her mind. After trying to move once, she did decide not to do anything for at least the while it would take for her broken body to heal.

While she waited, she took a quick inventory: ‘No food, no water, no clothes. All my body parts are attached, and I’m surrounded by a lot of rocks.

‘But where did the wings come from? And where did they go?’

She looked at her arms, turning them around to look at them from different angles. They were only arms.

‘Was I dreaming? If not, how am I still alive?’

She decided she didn’t have the answers to any of these questions, including the most important question: ‘How do I get out of here?’

The practical part of her mind took over. She was going to have to climb out. And, she was going to have to do it soon, before she became weak from thirst or hunger. She was already half starved, having used some of her body mass to repair the injuries from her fall.

Forcing herself up, she twisted and moved around, testing her bones and joints to make sure everything still worked. She looked around the narrow gorge she was in, not really knowing what to look for. She saw a crevice in the side of the cliff that went up a considerable way.

‘I’ve never climbed before, but I can go up that way, I think... ‘

She began to climb, doing her best to ignore the fresh scraps and cuts the rocks made in her soft flesh. Four hundred feet up, she ran out of handholds. She dared to stretch her head away from the rock face to peer up. Off to one side, it looked like the crevice continued, but she would have to back down a ways to get over to it.

As she tried to back down to the crossover, her bare foot slipped off and was dangling in space. Gasping in new terror, she slammed her hands against the side of the mountain, digging her fingers in against the rock, frantically trying to find a handhold. She could feel the raw rock tearing at her fingers, her nails breaking. Her bare breasts and face scraped against the rock as she slid backward. Then she was airborne, falling head over heels down the cliff face.

Screaming, she instinctively spread her arms wide...

And glided down to the ground!

Her second landing was much gentler than her first.

She stood at the bottom of the gorge, gazing in awe at her magnificent wings. Her arms extended out at least ten feet. The skin stretched along her arms all the way down to her waist. She couldn’t decide if she looked more like a butterfly or a pterodactyl.