Homing

     The morning was still very young. Stars still hung in the sky, casting their pale, mild light over the roof of the house. The grey wires of the birdcages gleamed dully. Daris knew it was far too early to be awake, but sleep had only briefly touched down on his consciousness during the night, leaving him with only two or three hours’ rest.

     Daris, peering carefully into the cages, found that all of his sister’s homing pigeons were still asleep, their motionless bodies huddled together in peaceful slumber. Deciding against his better judgment, he strode quickly down the row of wire cages, flipping each latch as he passed, though he knew that his sister would not have released her birds before sunrise. Glancing to the side as he flipped the last latch, he saw that a dim, grey light had just barely begun to erase the stars along the eastern horizon. “Close enough,” he murmured to himself.

     The metallic clanking of each latch awoke the pigeons, and with sleepy confusion, they took off from the cages with clumsy fluttering. The flow of pigeons from the roof was at first sparse and stuttering, but the stream gradually grew into a swift, thick cloud of white and grey feathers. The urgent beating of small, strong wings surrounded Daris on all sides, bring forth a rush of energy and memories.

     Daris’s sister, Estella, holding his hand, leads him up the stairs to the roof of the house: “Go ahead, open the cages,” she giggles, amused by his awkward nervousness.  “They’ll always come home.”

     Estella laughs as a flock of pigeons swarms Daris’s skinny arms, which are covered in sunflower seeds.

     Estella presses a small slingshot into Daris’s hand after closing her cages for the evening: “Happy tenth birthday. Use this to scare off those mean kids. Don’t tell Mom, okay?”

     Estella hugs Daris tight before getting on the train, going off on another trip. Father hits him and says, “Stop crying. She always comes home.”

     Within a split second, with startling suddenness, the beating stopped, stemming the flow of memories. Daris blinked as the flock swooped low into the western sky, its fluttering, ever-changing form silhouetted by the sinking moon.

     Daris reached into his pocket and pulled out the slingshot, running his fingers over the wooden handle, worn smooth by over four years of use. Deftly fitting a stone into the sling, he pulled and aimed straight up. Father had said yesterday, “Estella is in the stars now. She always did like looking at the sky.” Closing his right eye, Daris positioned the prongs of the slingshot directly on either side of the brightest star he could see. He fingers released the rock and it sped like a bullet into the navy-blue night.

     The slingshot clattered to the ground as Daris held out his arms expectantly.
He expected his sister to fall from the sky into his arms, knocked loose by the stone. He expected her to glow like starlight and say, “Thanks, little bro’. It sure was lonely up there,” and he would say, “It’s lonely down here, too.” He didn’t only expect her to come back; he didn’t just want her to. He needed her here with him. He needed her to come back home. A soft, white form landed gracelessly in his hands.

     A smattering of tears dampened the delicate wing feathers of the pure-white pigeon in Daris’s palms. He knew Estella wasn’t coming back.