Tide of Shadows and Other Stories by Aidan Moher Read Free Book Online Page A

before me, ripe for taking. I thought of the kind woman. Where would I find her? I must find her.
    The small community and its scientists and families dwindled. Soon, they were like little toys, the white buildings like dollhouses. Scattered throughout were pockets of green like the garden I’d grown to love. Glistening streams twisted through the community—so carefully laid that they looked nearly random—feeding into an enormous lake. I pushed higher, and angled toward the lake. The clouds above were enormous now, wandering across the sky, curving towards the horizon.
    But there was no wind. And clouds do not curve to the horizon.
    The sky shattered as I slammed into it, my body crumpling against the phantom clouds, and a spider-webbing distortion spread out from the point of impact—like the glass screen of a cracked datapad. I noticed the oddness of the sky. It didn't stretch out infinitely before me, but curved, dome-shaped, to the horizons. No clouds floated midair; instead they were flat and depthless against the surface of the dome, displayed there to hide the vastness of space beyond. How had I not noticed such trickery from the ground? Falling, I could see stars beyond the outside surface of the dome as the projected sky reassembled itself into a façade of daylight. A small island, floating in space. The digital webbing righted itself almost instantly and the clouds knitted back into perfection.
    My wings were useless, crushed by the impact. I felt like one of the loose dolls inside my grandmama’s old snow globe.
    The lake was dotted with people in paddle boats, like a pattern on a dark quilt. One or two pointed at me, others drew hands to their mouths in shock, many didn't even notice. I crashed into the placid water, hard, like it was solid stone. I blacked out.
    It might be that I died.

    I awoke in the arms of an old man. He shuffled along, unaware that I watched him through slitted eyes. I closed my eyes again but did not fall back to darkness. Instead, I listened. Birdsong drifted on the breeze, in counterpoint to the slow lap of water on a nearby shore. My hair and clothes were wet and my body ached fiercely. I shifted in the man's arms and knew that my wings were broken.
    His hands were papery soft.
    'Don’t worry, child," he said, his voice whispery, like silk slippers over a dusty floor. “You’re safe now.”

“The Girl with Wings of Iron and Down” (2011)
    Story Notes

    If you pay attention to these story notes, you’ll likely notice that a lot of the short fiction I write begins with a writing prompt or a challenging idea that excites me as a writer. Maybe an illustration I stumble across online with a story begging to be told, an attempt to write a story that would fit in a themed anthology that I particularly enjoyed, or, as in this case, a direct prompt from another writer to conceptualize a story within a specific set of parameters.
    To find the beginnings of “The Girl with Wings of Iron and Down,” one need look no further than the Writing Excuses podcast. Every episode, Mary, Brandon, and the rest of the crew prompt writers with a fun or challenging idea. The prompt 3 that started me down the path that ended with “The Girl with Wings of Iron and Down” was to take two films—preferably ones that don’t intersect naturally or obviously—and combine their concepts into one story.
    I chose The Truman Show (to which I have no particular attachment) and Astro Boy (a childhood favourite).
    As a child watching Astro Boy , I remember being incredibly emotional when young Toby is killed and his father, a brilliant and heartbroken scientist, replaces him with a robot replica: Astro Boy. The idea that someone would be so deep in despair that they would attempt to recreate a synthetic version of their child is tragic. The idea that they would attempt to improve upon that child by using technology to give them wings or rocket feet is heartbreaking.
    Even as a child, I wondered: what does