Short Story (Paris)

[This is a story that I apparently wrote in 11th grade, and was published as the featured story in the school's literary magazine, The Mountain Mirror. It's always interesting looking back several years and seeing how your writing has evolved and improved. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past.]

The trouble all began when Jean-Michel's daughter began sprouting wings. They were at first a bony little protrusion out of the back of her shoulders, and it was her mother who first noticed them. The stubs had gone unnoticed for a few days, until the morning that the mother decided to purchase bread. As she embraced her daughter before leaving (Gaëlle had not wanted to come along), she discovered the two sharp, distinct humps, much more distinct than shoulder-blades ought to be, she thought. The bread forgotten, she took her daughter to the washroom, demanding to examine her back; and it was then that she saw the beginnings of what was to bring the whole of Montmartre to awe and wonder.

Gaëlle had been a very pretty child, with slender limbs, long flowing blonde hair, and large eyes that seemed filled with tiny fluttering fairies. Now she was on the threshold of adolescence, and, while she retained her childlike beauty, she became more reserved and prone to nervous fits. She no longer walked naked around the house as she used to - at least not when her father was around; now she often sat on a stool by an aquarium watching colorful fish dart behind the glass and hide among stones, her large eyes following their rapid movements. The sounds of Mahler no longer pleased her. As a child, her favorite record had been Mahler's fourth symphony, and she would stand by the turntable, rapt with attention, sometimes dancing to the sleigh-bell rhythms of the first movement, and humming along with the soprano solo in the finale - her favorite part. Now, whenever her mother played the disc, she would cover her ears and scream wordlessly until it was turned off. She preferred now, paradoxically it seemed, the music of Mozart, Weber, and the Beatles: "Porgi amour," string quartets, and the White Album (none of which she really understood) were frequently heard in their small flat in Paris' Montmartre district.

The reaction of Jean-Michel to his daughter's growing wings was like that of a mother who, thinking she was giving birth to a son, rather bore a pig: such was his surprise upon finding his daughter was not of a nature to which he had been accustomed. In his eyes, Gaëlle was no longer a girl - nor was she anything else anymore. He could no longer think of his daughter in concrete terms, but instead thought of her as one remembers a face from two score years past, with foggy pieces swirling around without really arranging themselves into a definite, recognizable visage. He no longer spoke to Gaëlle, and that made her situation with him all the more awkward since she hardly spoke anything to anyone anymore (and when she did speak, it was in broken, nervous phrases, and it took minutes for her parents to discern what she was trying to get across). Jean-Michel would spend more time at the café he frequented (La Grenouille Bleue), drinking cognac, looking neither his servers nor his fellow patrons in the eye.

Gaëlle, for her part, rarely went out with her parents anymore. It was difficult to tell whether this was due to her incipient adolescence, or whether some change was taking place within her as a result of her supernatural transformation. She would occasionally accompany her mother on errands to the fromagerie or the supermarché, wearing a heavy coat better suited to the winds of February than the warm breezes of April. They would stop for lunches at cafés, her mother sipping espresso shots, and sit silently watching American tourists flow past. Gaëlle's mother had shown a somewhat complacent, even blithe at times, attitude towards her transformation. She still referred to her as "mon ange" whenever she brought herself to speak of her; for of course her friends asked about her now and again, thinking of her bright eyes, which always seemed to prompt people's memory of her, though none had seen her (to her mother's knowledge) since she had begun to grow wings.

It was when the wings began to actually take wing-like form that things took a turn for the worse. The stubs had given way to small feathery limbs, and Gaëlle's mother was forced to cut holes in all of her shirts. Her father plunged into a state of even deeper depression that left him sitting at the kitchen table all night long with his head in his hands, agonizing over the meaning of this cruel joke (it seemed) from heaven. He forbade his daughter to leave the house altogether anymore. The neighbors had already begun wondering if something was going on, if perhaps the beautiful girl had suddenly fallen ill, or even if she was being abused. Gaëlle, for her own part, shut herself up, never leaving her room, staring at corners, not even coming out to the sounds of the Mozart Requiem or to watch the fish. She could be heard weeping now and again, to what, no one was sure. Perhaps it was her father's seeming refusal to accept this reality that had sprung itself upon him; or perhaps it was from her own sudden isolation from the ordinary world; or maybe it was some other force commanding her sense of loss and solitude. She stopped reacting even to her mother, who would come into her room to try and quell her daughter's tears with soft words, to no avail. She considered taking her to a doctor for an examination - but this idea seemed ridiculous to her. Besides, it was impossible to get Gaëlle out of the house at all anymore, so any effort would be wasted. Gaëlle and her mother would suffer in peace until a turning point would come out of nowhere.

As things stood, the whole family seemed trapped within something. Gaëlle, trapped in her own indiscernible emotions, was unwilling to leave the house; her mother was unwilling to leave her; and her father, who had lost his job at the locksmith's for failing to show up several days in a row, spent his time at the kitchen table, leaving only for his daily cognac at La Grenouille Bleue. He ceased even looking at his daughter.

As the wings grew, Gaëlle seemed to grow even more taciturn; weeping was rarely heard anymore coming from her small room. She seemed to have settled some dispute within the depths of her psyche, for she now sat on her bed in a dark silence, still saying nothing, her face set, showing nothing except in her eyes, which had regained some of their former brightness. Her mother took this as a positive sign: perhaps the wings had been a blessing after all, and were simply an extra step into maturity that her daughter had to make. Jean-Michel, however, had seen in Gaëlle's weeping what he considered the last remnant of the daughter he'd known, and the silence left him with a sense of loss that caused him to weep himself. He now alternately paced the flat and sat in the kitchen, where he could not see the door to his daughter's room. Gaëlle's wings had grown such that she had abandonded shirts altogether, and sat in her room in undergarments, unvisited by her father, who took no notice of this indecency.

Then, one day, Gaëlle suddenly became gay. Her laughter was the first thing that her mother heard one morning, and she walked into her room to find that each of Gaëlle's wings now spanned at least the length of her body. Gaëlle laughed, her blonde hair bouncing slightly, her eyes now full of not just stars, but various celestial bodies; her eyes seemed to be something celestial in themselves. She had thrown off her remaining clothes, and her mother noticed that her skin gave off an soft, golden, iridescent glow, not as though she were giving off light, but as if she were being shone upon by another, unseen source of light. She fluttered her wings joyously and sang Mahler again, this time forming the German words effortlessly in her mouth. She laughed again and ran out of her room for the first time since her wings had taken definite shape. Her large wings seemed no hindrance as she ran through the flat to the door, touching nothing on the tables or walls. Her father lifted his head from his hands on the kitchen table, looking upon Gaëlle for the first time in the weeks since he had decided she was no human child. He was not shocked by what he saw, but watched with quiet complicity as she fled the apartment.

She found her way upon the roof of the building, though not before being followed by some of the fellow residents, who thought they had seen a miracle dashing past them. She stood at the edge of the roof, and people below marvelled to see a naked, winged young figure spread her wings and ascend into the sky - up and up and up, until she disappeared from sight, and was not seen by the mortal citydwellers again. Her mother declared that she was a Godsend, but her father, his depression never lifting, went into mourning and insisted that a funeral be held for his lost child.