Image by Fleur Hudson Photography

Illustration by Peter Easterby

Once

We’d been practising flying for weeks before it happened. Every day after school, Elise called round for me and we’d race through the lonely spinney behind our houses and on up the steep hillside with our wings – old sheets stitched to half a hula hoop each.

That session started the same as all the others. As always we took off together, launching skyward, thinking of faraway places. And as always, the air stayed thin and down I crashed, but this time, Elise just… didn’t. For three incredible seconds, she actually flew.

‘You flew!’

We stood gaping at each other. Elise’s wings were droopy and shaky. My heart hammered fast – I think I’d forgotten to breathe. Then I grabbed both her arms and shrieked, ‘Elise – you did it! You really did it!’

She nodded, still too shocked to speak. I let go of her and started jumping up and down and she copied me, and we jumped there together, laughing and whooping.

‘Hey,’ Elise said. ‘When we get it totally perfect, we can go exploring—’

‘Yeah, we’d have to be quick, though, and really careful so nobody sees us.’

‘Whoa – maybe we could even get camouflaged up!’ she said. ‘Then we could absolutely and totally travel.’

I pictured us up there. Not too high, but high enough to use the wind, to ride it like we’d always dreamed we would. ‘Never believed we’d actually do it,’ I said, and another shudder of shock went through me. ‘You should try it again. Exactly the same.’

She nodded and kept her eyes on mine while she raised her arms and tried to focus, breathing like she was blowing up a balloon……

© Clare Weze © Knights Of

Illustration by Camilla Ru