CHAPTER LII: COMMOTION

   Two years passed. Winds of all colors swept the defenseless city and sometimes passengers were wounded by their breath. A furious hurricane took an afternoon Aurelién Protch. He was already very old and he could no longer repeat his dream of approaching the sea, but he walked every day to Rivers' Meet and a sharp dagger made him bleed with a pneumonia that took him two days later. Richard did not go to the bar for two weeks but phoned Luke and Nike, who immediately knew the news, gave condolences to their head waiter and his entire family; came to his home and later to the funeral. The eight beggars were present, but Paul and Kirsten stayed with their uncle James and their aunt Rosa, who could not go, but friends already, comforted him in private. Gerald was not for not meeting there his sister. But they were Anne-Marie and Samuel, the now friend and neighbour Nigel Matts and of course his cousin Herbert with his wife. Armand and Crystelle were taciturn, impressively solemn, crying to the grandfather that they would not see again.

─ "Richard – Nike said-, Sarah and you do not stop crying. Your wife and children also need us. This month, out of work, we will go every day to St Stephen, to be close to your home. It has been years that we are friends and your heart now needs us."

  His cousin Herbert surrounded him in a long embrace, affectionate and heartwarming.

─ "Now we will carry your children to play some time with Paul and Kirsten at James’. These days we expect you all more often in Deanforest and if you want to cry, you have the shoulders of my wife and mine."

  The funeral ended with a solemn mass and everyone walked away crying among constant hugs to Richard and his wife, who had loved his father-in-law so much, and was shattered. For a month they came almost every day to their house and distributed kisses to the children and all finally were quieting.

   Meanwhile merciless winds vented their rage on the city almost every day. They were two years of wind, two years of wheat ears. The west wind, lord and master of the west, reigned over all and rarely, for Olivia’s peace of mind, it became south-west wind. And as a result of the wind the five children matured, who spent there great part of their lives.

   Peter Matts had been slow in learning to talk but now chatted a lot with all about the many discoveries he made, because for a child the world is revealing in the remarkable pages of the book of life. He spoke especially with his beloved Kirsten for hours. He told her everything. With no one was he shy and very soon he learned to become a good athlete. With three years already his father, Nigel, gave him a bike and he learned to ride it right away. It was frequent his walks through the Torn Hand and the Outcasts, at first always near where his father could see him. Then he went farther and came up to the mountains, but slowly because his father accompanied him walking.

   Armand Protch was always a generous child. He already spoke less and less about aliens and more and more of those in need. Soon he became a close friend of the Prancitt, mostly of James, and was interested in everything they told him about El Salvador and the difficulties of Salvadorans. Rosa and James saw him immediately, rather than a child, a true friend. As long as he was in the outskirt, he did not eat anything while everyone else had not done so, including for example Nigel or Anne-Marie. Everyone soon imitated a gesture that he thought had no value because he knew that sooner or later he would eat a lot at home.

   From her early age, Crystelle Protch was all sweetness. She spent her days with Kirsten looking for jewels in trees and loved the tales of pirates with hidden treasures. But she was very daring and soon repented. She climbed up with her friend the branches of the ash trees, always in the sight of others, but one day the two of them fell down. Nothing happened to Kirsten but Crystelle had to be taken to hospital. She had no damage in her legs, but she had in her right foot, which never healed. With her limp she never again climbed trees, but she remained sweet and happy.

   Paul was always an imaginative child. He had inherited from his father Luke the pleasure of fantasizing with heights and saw himself flying and frequently said that Crystelle would never have fallen from the ash now because he with his flight would have rescued her in her fall. Anyone who asked him what his name was he answered he had at least three names: Paul, Regulus and little king, just as his sister was Kirsten, Elased or empress. In the months in which his star was visible, he delighted in watching it, as well as all those of his family, and just when he saw them, but not before, he allowed his parents to take him and his sister to the palace of his grandparents Protch. At that age he was not still sure that other children didn’t have three parents, but he sensed that he should say he had just two when he was not in the outskirt. And the moon of his eyes was never more waning. He only suffered a medical examination a year and doctors reassured him. To this day, Paul always has enjoyed good vision and he has been able to take care of his eyes.

   Kirsten took delight in inventing stories, sure to always have an audience well prepared to listen to them. She blushed when she saw that everybody said she was intelligent and smart, and although less mischievous, perhaps, than other children, she was always her parents’ pride. She got along well with Nigel, who told her things from the day of her birth, and soon she learned to be confidant of his son, who spoke to her constantly of the mother he had never known, to which she always answered with a kiss

   With that insolence of children, Peter approached his beloved Kirsten one day and asked her suddenly:

─ "You know? I'd like to be your boyfriend. What do you think?"

─ "Yes, Peter, I want to be. Shall we kiss in the mouth?"

  They tried to be adults and kissed, being four years old. Later they spent the day telling everyone. Nigel was all night laughing with them and even listened frequently Kirsten calling him father-in-law. All the others called them openly a couple and asked Peter, for example, if he was alone: "where is your girlfriend?"

   But that was not the only engagement that emerged in the winter of the year 34. Luke and Nike came from dinner at The Silversmith, where they went a couple of times a year, not more because they preferred to save for their children, when they arrived to the "camp" on a night in which winds were playing to give somersaults in the skins of all and in the bonfire, difficult to maintain under these conditions but that with troubles glowed and heated up. They met Nigel and his brother-in-law Brandon, at the time when Anne-Marie Beaulière’s Plymouth was coming up the slope.

─ "Goodnight everybody." – She greeted them.

─ "Goodnight, Anne-Marie –Nigel said-. Look, this is my brother-in-law Brandon Jones, who I have already told you about."

─ "Good evening, Miss Beaulière"-he greeted her.

─ "Only Anne-Marie, please, unless you want me to call you Mr. Jones – she sat - what do you do, Brandon?"

─ "I am a taxi driver, but before that I worked at a car dealership, and the truth is that about cars I know almost everything. So I will tell you that you have a cool car."

─ "They sold me the car as a cool car, but they didn’t tell me that it was extremely complicated driving a Plymouth on the city. I'm thinking about buying another car already."

─ "I guess you have no limit in terms of money."

─ "I don’t."

─ "Do you know Lilac Street?"

─ "Yes, in Evendale. Almost next to my house."

─ "Then you must know the Mercedes car dealership. I would recommend you a Mercedes Benz."

  They were a good time talking about cars and Brandon agreed with Anne-Marie in going to Lilac Street the next day when she left work. They got along so well that the conversation flowed between the two with naturalness and warmth. Suddenly, she asked:

─ "I suppose that you like women and only women, isn't it?"

─ "Yes, why?"

─ "Nothing, just curiosity." - It was evident what was she thinking. In only a quarter of an hour she already knew that Brandon was not married or had a girlfriend at the time. She also soon understood that he had no desire to become a beggar. He met the basic requirements so he could comfortably be installed in her heart, where he was already bursting in. She reflected and knew with certainty that she would not have any problem in living, if that was the case, with a taxi driver.

  The next day they went to the car dealership and immediately she tested a Mercedes she liked and which according to Brandon’s advice could be driven with ease and she immediately purchased it. She soon put the Plymouth for sale and did not hesitate to sell it to a young fan of motor racing.

   They had a drink and started knowing each other. It was obvious that Brandon had liked her too. They went to the movies and had dinner together later and hearts open, winter was melting in their eyes and lips were soon a wish for a bonfire, their hands flames and aerialists, their bodies discovery and rough water and finally the sheets were an oasis of the skin and the heartbeats.

   The following breakfast, he was clearly afraid and hesitant, but finally he dared to tell her what he felt, surprising her:

─ "Anne-Marie, I don't know how you can accept what I'm going to say, but I have to tell you: I'm in love with you."

─ "Holy heaven, Brandon. I'd like to reciprocate you, and from what I know of you, I would like to share my life with you. If you remember what I told you, I think that my heart is now more careful and does not easily fall in love."

─ "I know what you fear, but look, with the age I have I don’t believe that one day I will discover I like men, but suppose I do. I would then be like Nike, Anne-Marie, I would like both women and men, but unlike him, I do love you."

─ "We have to know each other more. We could discover things we don't like in the other. But you have the ingredients to be the man that I need and I am willing to try it with you, Brandon. Stay with me and live here."

  They found in each other more things in common than defects and soon they began a life together and always were Nigel’s brother and sister-in-law, although Shirley was not alive. Brandon often spoke to her about her sister and how with her he had learned so many things, without ever being so symbolic. To the outskirt they went as a couple and everyone supported them in their few crises.

   One night, already summer, Lucy came back from her work to be awhile at the bonfire and take her children to the palace.

─ "It seems that the Protch have installed a new mirror in their room on the ground floor. This evening I will go and see it. They say that it is in the place of the old closet where you had your books of laws, Nike."

─ "I had four offices - he explained to Nigel, who that night was there-. One on the west, next to the front door and three offices now I know that in the north. I chose one or other depending on what I wanted to see. I entered the northwestern one if I had any doubts about economy, the central one to consult something related to steel, and the northeastern one, which was less frequently, if I wanted to know something about this city, because I was not born here."

   But the conversation had changed. Peter Matts was also there and he had been worried for several days about the disappearance of Telemachus and Achilles, which always, now, especially in the presence of his girlfriend Kirsten, he called Theseus.

─ "We don't know if anything has happened, Peter. Perhaps they have met a couple of pussycats and they are starting a family and come back when we least expect it." - But he noticed his son was uneasy.

   A week later, in one of the last September bonfires, Nigel told them something else. He sometimes joked with Lucy, Luke and Nike saying that now Peter and Kirsten had made them relatives. But that night he was not joking. He told them how his son was crying at home.

─ "Today I have accompanied Peter to the mountains, to the southern part, almost as the crow flies from the lake, and in the mountains we have seen some rocks in the middle of a precipice, but we have not stopped to look at them. There in the ground we could distinguish well the mortal remains of Theseus. God knows how he managed to climb them, but I think that it has had to be so. It doesn’t seem it was a bite. It is more likely it has been a fall. Peter was crying all the way back. I didn't know how to comfort him. And perhaps Theseus has not been the only one. Scanning the area, I realized that there were signs that betrayed that there had recently gone two cats. It was very fond of Telemachus. Perhaps they both dared to climb them and have had the same fate. But, if so, we have not found Telemachus."

   They did not see him again, but they never found the body of Telemachus. Meanwhile Peter was consoled by playing with the survivor Ted, really long-lived. The surly night owl was not anyone’s but Peter and he were becoming friends.

   Winter came with lighter winds that evoke other breezes, from other times. In the bonfires, it was already usual to see Nigel every night a while. After a few years without being able to do so, now he spoke often of his wife and something he was telling of a walk with her to the mountains, when Luke interrupted him:

─ "You have never told us how you met Shirley, Nigel. We only know it was in Crownridge."

─ "I used to go to the mountains once a year to stroll along its paths and I went one day to celebrate they had just hired me at University. I don't ski and one afternoon I was soon tired of wandering and went to drink in a restaurant called Moonshine. Today I know that the table where I sat was on the northeast. The place was full. There were no free places and then a woman came to ask me if she could sit next to me. She introduced herself as Shirley Jones, and told me that she worked at the University, that year giving French classes. I told her that they had just hired me and that maybe we would be coworkers. She used to go there when it got dark, because she knew a place fairly close where you can easily see the stars. Something she was telling me of her hobby, and with her I learned many unknown things. Her clean and serene look then fascinated me. I lied to her and told her that I didn't know a word of French, and asked her how I love you was said."

─ "Je t'aime. Do you know someone to tell?"

─ "I don’t. It is in case one day I need it."

─ "French was an excellent excuse to keep seeing each other. We were coworkers and after classes, she invited me to her home with the idea that I could continue learning it. I would not let her see that I spoke it pretty well and under that pretext I went every evening to her house. When we were finally a married couple, I told her that I pretended not to know it to see her every day, she laughed a lot. She had not suspected it. And she often spoke to me that she had found a warm darkish place where she used to watch the starry sky. And a weekend we took the cable car north of Arcade and did not take long to find that guarded tunnel, close to the current flying club of Skyridge."

─ "It was a day at the end of August. From above the lights of the city are not perceived and do not hide the luminosity of the beautiful summer needles. She wanted that my first bite, the first constellation I met, was the Scorpion. And the Oxherd and the Northern Crown; Ophiuchus, up to the recognizable Sagittarius and the confusing Capricorn and the three constellations of the summer triangle and the stupor of Cygnus, the Swan, the sky was a widespread fan of light bulbs."

   He was awhile talking about constellations of summer, but he saw that Lucy was absent a few seconds and wanted to talk to her.

─ "I wanted to talk to one of the three in private, Lucy. Look, since Shirley died I have not found myself strong enough to return to Crownridge, but I'd like to return one day to remember her in Moonshine. I would just go with you and your husbands and watch the beautiful winter stars there. If tomorrow is clear as today, we could climb. Talk to Luke and Nike. “

  And the next day, finishing the year 34, they came up in the cable car, in a glacial night of frost and cold, but the three were accustomed to the frigid winter stained glass windows. Nike did not know Crownridge yet. He could not see too high peaks, but it was a frequently snowy area and now, in the ski season, constant and alive. The white hills were dotted with huts or shelters for climbers who got lost. The old witch Crownridge was a brunette lady that in those months changed her skin and turned pale, the ski furrows creating her some lips who could welcome inexperienced competitors just as it could give them the kiss of death, since the mountain range was not an ideal blanket to go through, with too many rocks and unforeseen cliffs where the bravest people fell off. The area was known as Elm Lot. A large L-shaped building was perceived in its icy heart. Northward was the Skyridge flying club, where you could frequently see small planes flying over as a grey bird. Bending toward the birth of the moon one could find the hotel, for a hotel it was, Moonshine, with its large, almost always crowded restaurant. And very close was that dark corridor among the mountains where Shirley and Nigel had glimpsed the face of the universe. There he led them, cold in that night already Christmas and then they lit a fire that could not compete with the seven large fires of Orion; never had they enjoyed such a clear vision of the hunter, his belt, his mallet. In those heights there could be no doubt that Taurus would fall defeated. The giant had the help of Castor and Pollux and all the stars of Gemini. In the hunt two dogs helped, Canis Maior with the watchful eye of Sirius and Canis Minor, with the tireless breath of Procyon. And you could see a small goat gamboling, the star Capella, in the pastures of the pentagon of Auriga, a headband in the zenith, hair of Orion and the twins, the show of the winter lights smiling in the cold skin of those who watched them. But soon they entered Moonshine to talk about them better sheltered. The wind had its knives sheathed and rarely unsheathed them, but cold cut their blood and they needed the warmth of the hotel.

   Once they were served, in that confident heat that comes after watching the show of the universe, Nigel recalled other scenes.

─ "But love between us arose in a different way. I soon discovered that she went up to Crownridge for another reason. I have sometimes told Luke, who has told me that in the army he was a parachutist. But I asked him not to tell you that I've also been. Shirley told me she came to Crownridge frequently because she was a member of the Skyridge flying club, since a long time ago some friends of her made her feel the passion for air sports, for her only parachuting. When she told me I felt a cold sweat, since I suspected that she wanted me to jump often with her. I guess that it was love which caused me to become a member of the flying club. It was nothing to me that they had told me it was a very safe sport, only one out of a million jumpers died. I spent nights without sleep imagining all kinds of accidents, not saying anything to Shirley. But when the time comes an instructor tells you "jump" and when it is your turn you jump, that’s all. Then, it is an indescribable feeling. The first time I was the last one to jump, and I felt that everyone was almost on the ground while you followed floating and you think that you are not falling. In the long run, you feel the owner of some wings, but at the beginning you feel there are never-ending seconds when you feel that you've been trapped in that air spider web and you're not going to fall. Then, even if you have a second parachute on your chest and you feel tempted to open it, the air is already turned into a vertical tunnel and you become a bird and if you still have some fear, it is changing into an increasingly stronger desire to build a nest in the very grooves of the wind and hang your house there and return again and again to feel you are breeze and a bird. Then you land near the cable car and first they have taught you how to fall. One must bend their knees to the left and fall on your right. If you learn this, you will avoid hurting your legs. Shirley and I, already living in Millers' Lane, used to rehearse the fall often jumping on the eastern side of Menhir Bridge. We went there every afternoon and then we took a snack next to the river. Anyway, I was telling you the moment we had already reached the ground. Then you have to learn to pick up the parachute and come back on the cable car to return it at the flying club. Sometimes we jumped twice on the same day. The plane rises 800 metres for those of us who are in the apprentice level. I am still shuddered when I hear those flights and remembering those days. I remember her in the air smiling at me if she was close to me while we were falling. She reminded me then of an eagle and me, her male eagle, wooed her in the palace of clouds. But since I lost her I haven’t believed I was able to land in the halls of the throne of the wind. I don't want to jump alone, but I have an idea. I guess that Luke would dare to jump with me and maybe you, Lucy and Nike, feel like jumping too."

─ "I would be glad to jump, Nigel -said Luke - but you know that we don't have dains enough for that."

─ "First I want to see what Lucy and Nike tell me."

─ "My husband has told me many times – Lucy spoke - about his experiences as a bird and more than once I have thought that with no army I'd like to fly on his side. I have always believed that I am able."

─ "Why not? -Said Nike - for years I have gone one challenge after another and maybe with my husband and my wife I want to form a family of eagles and be a flock seeking other nests. But still the same problem, Nigel, we cannot afford that luxury. The money we can save is for our children."

─ "I have 30 jumps already paid. We were going to jump when we saw that Shirley was pregnant. We were waiting for the birth and her recovery later. Well, you already know that that was not possible -he added downcast-. But if you now wanted to join me, we would all have seven jumps and still I have two more paid jumps. The case is that alone I will not be a bird. But together with you... Why don't you do it? There must still be 30 paid jumps with the name of Nigel Matts. I can come tomorrow to check it out and if so... well, at Skyridge you would have to take lessons, but anyway we could try first jumping Menhir Bridge."

   Everything was well organized. Nigel found that he still had 30 jumps paid and the three ended up traveling to the flying club and adding their names to the list of new jumpers. All their fellow mates ended up knowing, maybe because they saw them jumping the bridge and practicing the right way to fall. Nigel invited everyone else. Mistress Oakes and Olivia declined. Bruce said that he had already suffered a heart attack and he didn't want to put his life to test again. Miguel had also been a parachutist in the army and wanted to jump again but he had to convince John. At the beginning he said he wouldn’t, but later he had the fatalistic thought, which he only told Nike, that thus there was a possibility that he could go before Castor, the mortal twin. The two jumps Nigel still had were then for Miguel and John.

Everything was planned for Friday, February 8 of their year 35. Lucy and Nike were perhaps nervous but fearless they entered the plane. Miguel and John would jump in April. When the plane rose the four of them looked at one another with hope. His fellow mates were all there, the children in Deanforest, and they decided to have something to drink all together later at Moonshine. The wind that month was quiet, docile, and not dangerous at all. They looked at the few clouds as if they were the carpets of the new palace they lived in. Nigel, Lucy, Luke and Nike were placed last in the plane in this order. When they told him to "jump", Nigel jumped again confidently; Lucy did not think twice and within seconds she was dancing in the air; and Luke jumped immediately after her, so his canopy was parallel to that of his wife; his family was already in the air, and if Nike had any fear, now he only feared not being with them and having the same fate. And the voice of the instructor was less imperative than the order of his heart. The four of them were in the air and the 800 meters did not last more than two minutes. They felt like birds which flapped the mate wind and the four were flying animals changing their feathers to be dominating eagles from different nests, as their home, also without walls. And the ground at the end as an epilogue of this new book of the air newly read.

   That was the year of parachuting. The merciful wind slept its ferocity for a few months to resurrect cruel in an autumn they would not forget easily. But the weather continued its romance with the mountains and it did not engender new creatures of an infernal breath and not even fog prevented the aerial walkways to be distinguished. One jump a month, one coffee in the Moonshine with their fellow mates and the children who believed that mum, dad and dad went to Crownridge just to see the stars and wanted to be taken there with them.

   But the wind was not defeated. That year it murdered fog, which almost was not seen, but it returned as a knife thrower who missed his shots and shot his assistant’s heart in a September of deep red curtains furrowed by its macabre breath. That night Olivia would have left the bonfire soon for she was as usual tormented by her heartless north wind, but she was waiting for Lucy and Luke to return, for that day they had been married for six years, and as usual they were visiting Wrathfall Bridge and Knights Hill. Nike had just taken the kids to the palace because, as every day 16, he slept alone. At the bonfire everyone stayed most of the time in silence and Olivia, to break that silence, said:

─ "Too much blood this twilight has. Night is wounded and the north wind puts salt in the wounds. A bad omen."

  And just then Nigel came. He used to accompany them frequently in the bonfires, but in this occasion he resembled a scared child who dared not speak. Anyway, he ended up telling what had taken him there that night.

─ "Lucy has just phoned me. She is in hospital –But looking at Olivia, he reassured her-. It is not her. It seems that Luke had a beating. Well I don't know anything more. Miguel, once you told me that you could drive. Pick up the keys of my Chrysler and take the men there. I'll be going in my Ford with the women, and from the hospital we will phone Nike."

   All the way Nigel did not know what to say to Mistress Oakes, who was crying disconsolate for the second half of the prophecy seemed to have been fulfilled. They soon found Lucy, who told them that they had arrived by taxi and that doctors immediately examined him.

─ "We were on Knights Hill, looking again at the elm with our names, but we were not alone. It was then that the bald man Bart – she looked at her mother significantly and both understood each other-, yes, precisely him, whistled as if he were calling Luke. When my husband was going to greet him, without any words, he began to give him blows and kicks. Luke was so surprised that he had almost no reaction capability to defend himself. I wanted to help, but a kick in my face immobilized me just the time that rogue devoted himself to kick brutally Luke’s chest and back. They were not more than two minutes and there he was almost unconscious, losing blood shockingly as I went down the hill, I asked for a taxi and claimed the help of the driver, who thankfully understood the situation and helped me to bring Luke to the Philip Rage. They are now analyzing him. Cursed be that Bart."

   Perhaps he had a whip in his blood with which he always whipped with deep hatred, Bart still had his heart full of poisons and perhaps they never spilled. You could tell that he had never forgiven Luke for one day fighting with the beggars, for that carnivorous man an unforgivable offense, and the ill will was a tenant in his rooms for so many years that, not wanting to expel it, was in the dark room, with prepared sheets, of revenge.

   Within half an hour Nike came, he embraced Lucy strongly, looked tenderly at Mistress Oakes, who looked at him with fear and everyone embraced, and this time the eagles hesitated unbalanced, watered the corridors of intemperate tears.