The Wings of Freedom

“STOP! Thief!” A voice crackled in the distance. 

He did not. 

Heart pounding, and throat aflame from the frozen air, the boy leapt over a log, digging his wrapped heels into a divot in the solid dirt and into a snowy clearing. The 90 degree turn into a downhill sprint felt easy, as his legs had long since stopped talking to his mind. After all, the only response they seemed to get from upstairs was one word: “Run.” 

And run he did. Charging through the near-permafrost land he called home, the boy refused to stop sprinting until the sound of ocean waves overcame the rushing of blood and wind in his ears. 

The boy looked down, his tiny hands sparsely wrapped with linen had turned white as ocean foam. They gripped a glowing pair of metal wings, which were a throbbing bright scarlet as he felt the sweat from his fingertips freezing to its surface. To say that moments of fear did not attempt to overtake his heart would be a lie, for certain. However, each and every time he began to doubt his ambition, the words of his father washed them away with a gentle ease. 

If yer heart be pure, and yer hands be grasping the wings of freedom, ye can do anything ye want, even fly with the ravens.

Although in that moment, he could have sworn his father’s warm, dry fingers had brushed along his cheek, a brief inspection of his face proved it to be colder than stone itself. 

“You are resisting arrest, and every moment you spend running is another year of your life gone, you hear?!” The hoarse voice boomed, closer now than before. 

The boy was frightened. His adrenaline, already causing his stiffened hands to shake, spiked to new heights when he could practically feel the vibrations of the man’s voice permeating through his chest.

Moments before his fear overwhelmed him, simple words of encouragement flooded his mind once more. 

If yer heart be pure, and yer hands be grasping the wings of freedom, ye can do anything ye want, even fly with the ravens.

This memory, sparking new hope and energy within the boy, gave him the extra spring he needed to cross a field of scree, the ground growing brighter and snowier as the trees thinned. 

“We don’t want to hurt you!” came that same voice again. “Just give us the wings and we’ll ensure a humane end to this!”

Whether or not what the boy felt on his neck was breath or his own heat was irrelevant. Out of the scree and sequentially the woods, the sound and scent of the sea filled his nose and kissed his eardrums with a firm embrace. Relaxing into the flatness of the ground, he sprinted with reckless abandon towards the edge of the cliff, fighting any sense of fear in his heart with all his remaining strength. 

As if he had hit a wall, every muscle in the boy’s body froze solid. Fear, like a creeping sickness, had seized and ceased his motion. The boy flung his arms back, his legs stuttering as they attempted to get traction on the menacing tundra. After much resistance, he came to a standing halt only an arm’s length from the immeasurably high drop into the water-coated crags. 

It was mere heartbeats before the pursuers had caught up to the boy. He turned around with a gentle hesitation. His numbed feet shuffled their way around as he held the statue tighter than ever, his fear flowing into something new. 

“Come on, boy.” said the voice, but the boy could now see it came from the thin lips of a kind, bearded face. For a fleeting moment, he could feel himself coming under it’s kind spell. 

“Just give it over.”

The guards edged closer to the boy, spears at the ready. Their copper tips glowed in the flat overcast sunlight, as the boy closed his eyes. 

If yer heart be pure, and yer hands be grasping the wings of freedom, ye can do anything ye want, even fly with the ravens.

In what was barely a twitch, the boy felt his feet free themselves of the earth, and a rush of air through his matted hair. 

He was free.