What Wings Are For

The air in the Great Glade was thick with the scent of moonpetal incense and the collective, polite murmur of the Fae. Lanterns, glowing with captured sunlight, hung from the silver branches of the elder trees, casting a gentle, uniform glow that left no room for shadows. Ellette stood near the edge of the crowd, the silk of her ceremonial dress feeling too tight across her shoulders. She shifted her weight, and the delicate frame of her wings, bound and pinned in the formal style, dug into her back.

She watched her sister, Lyra, navigate the throng. Lyra moved with an effortless grace, her own wings, iridescent and perfectly groomed, folded as if they were nothing more than a decorative accessory. She paused to speak with a cousin, her head tilted at just the right angle, a small, practiced laugh escaping her lips. People made way for her. They smiled when she approached. Ellette felt a familiar, dull ache in her own joints, a phantom clumsiness, as if her limbs were too long, her movements too sudden. She tried to mimic Lyra’s serene posture, straightening her spine, but the effort only made her more aware of her own stiffness.

A low, resonant chime silenced the glade. The Elder Council ascended the speaking dais, their pale robes seeming to absorb the light around them. They were ancient, their faces like carved wood, their expressions unchanging. Ellette had seen them give this speech at every Lumina festival since she could remember.

Elder Maeve stepped forward, her voice a dry rustle of leaves. "We gather this night, under the watch of the twin moons, to reaffirm our sacred pact."

Ellette’s gaze drifted. She focused on the intricate pattern of moss on the dais, the way it spiraled out in a perfect, unbroken line. She wondered if someone had cultivated it to grow that way. Probably. Everything in the heart of the Woodlands was cultivated.

"Our world," Maeve continued, her voice rising slightly, "is a sanctuary. A perfect and fragile ecosystem, blessed by the First Light, and entrusted to our care. We are its guardians, and it is our lifeblood."

A wave of assenting murmurs went through the crowd. Lyra, Ellette noted, was watching the Council with rapt attention, her expression one of pious reverence. She probably believed every word. Ellette believed them, too, in a factual sense. The Woodlands were beautiful. The magic was real. But the word ‘sanctuary’ felt wrong. It sounded too much like ‘enclosure.’

"But beyond the Veil," another Elder, Ronan, spoke, his voice deeper, harder. "Beyond our protection, lies the Tainted World. A world of iron and decay, of crude ambitions and short, brutal lives. It is a world that has forgotten magic, and in its ignorance, it seeks to corrupt. To consume."

He paused, letting the weight of his words settle. Ellette felt a Fae near her shiver, drawing his cloak tighter. The fear was a tangible thing, another part of the ritual. She felt the pressure of it, the expectation that she should be afraid, too. Instead, she just felt tired. She had heard of the dangers her whole life. The stories were of monsters, of soulless men, of a world that would poison a Fae on contact. But they were only stories, repeated so often they had lost their power, becoming just another set of rules.

"The Veil is our shield," Maeve concluded. "Our traditions are our armor. To stray from them is to invite the taint. To question them is to weaken the whole. Remember this. Remember your place. Remember your duty."

Another chime sounded, and the ceremony was over. The polite murmuring resumed as families began to cluster, exchanging pleasantries. The performance continued. Ellette’s own family would expect her to join them, to smile and nod and pretend she felt the same unifying surge of purpose as everyone else. She felt the edges of the glade beckoning, the real, untamed woods that began where the manicured paths ended. The air there would be different. It would smell only of dirt and leaves, not of incense and obligation.

Ellette tried to detach herself from the dispersing crowd, to blend into the periphery and slip away, but a cool hand settled on her arm. Her mother.

"Ellette." The name was an instruction.

Ellette turned. Her mother, Alara, stood beside Lyra, the two of them a seamless unit of grace and composure. Alara’s eyes, the same pale green as Ellette’s, did a quick, efficient scan, from the hem of her daughter's dress to the tightly bound wings. Her lips thinned.

"You were fidgeting through the entire Rite," Alara said. Her voice was quiet, meant only for Ellette, but it carried the weight of a public pronouncement. "And you missed a feather. Left side."

Instinctively, Ellette’s shoulder twitched, a motion she immediately regretted as it pulled at the bindings. Her mother’s gaze sharpened.

"Don't," Alara said. "You'll only make it worse. Lyra, show her."

Lyra stepped forward, her expression one of detached pity. She reached behind Ellette, her fingers light and practiced as they located the offending feather, a tiny downy plume that had escaped its formal arrangement. With a flick of her finger, she tucked it back into place. The touch was impersonal, corrective. It felt colder than the night air.

"You have to be more careful," Alara said, her eyes already scanning the glade for the families she needed to speak with. "It looks like you don't care. It reflects on all of us."

"I do care," Ellette said. The words felt flimsy, untrue even to her own ears.

Her mother’s gaze returned to her, unimpressed. "Your sister manages. It isn't a difficult thing, to present oneself with respect. For the Council. For our family." She did not wait for a response. She gave Ellette a final, dismissive look and turned, placing a hand on Lyra’s back and guiding her toward the center of the glade, back into the light.

Ellette stood alone for a moment, the spot where Lyra had touched her wing tingling with a phantom chill. She could still feel the pressure of her mother's disappointment, a familiar weight settling in her chest. It wasn't anger, not anymore. It was a quiet, hollow ache that spread through her ribs, making it feel difficult to take a full breath.

She didn't try to say her goodbyes. No one would notice. She walked away from the light of the lanterns, her feet finding the less-traveled paths that led back toward the family dwellings. The polite sounds of the festival faded behind her, replaced by the chirping of night insects and the rustle of unseen things in the undergrowth.

Her room was small and spare, its window looking out not on the cultivated gardens but on the dense, dark woods of the borderlands. She shut the door, the latch clicking with a soft finality. For a moment, she just stood in the center of the room, letting the silence wash over her. She unpinned her wings, the relief so immediate and intense it was almost painful. She flexed them, rolling her shoulders as feeling returned, the movement broad and clumsy in the confined space. A few loose petals from the festival fell from her hair onto the floor.

She knelt, her knees pressing into the cool wood of the floorboards. She ran her fingers along the seams until she found the one with the slight give. Using her fingernail, she pried up the edge of the board, lifting it carefully and setting it aside.

There, in the shallow space beneath, lay her secret. The underside of the plank was covered in a sprawling, amateur map, drawn in charcoal and berry juice. It was a composite of overheard whispers, fragmented stories from traders, and pure, hopeful invention. Continents sprawled in impossible shapes, connected by dotted lines over vast, unlabeled oceans. A crude drawing of a mountain range was labeled ‘The Spine of the World.’ A coastal city was just a circle with the word ‘Ironport’ written beside it, a name she'd heard a sentinel mutter once with disgust. Much of it was blank, filled only with the faint grain of the wood.

She took the compass from its hiding place beside the map. It was small, made of brass and glass, stolen from a visiting cartographer's bag months ago. She held it now, the metal cool against her palm. It didn't work here, not properly. The magic of the Woodlands confused it, the needle trembling and spinning in a frantic, useless circle. But she liked the feel of it, the idea of it. An object with a single, unwavering purpose: to point the way.

She rested her hand on the floorboard, her finger tracing the imagined coastline of a land she’d never see. She followed the ink line down, across a sea, to another continent marked only with a question mark. She thought of Elder Ronan’s words—a world of decay, of crude ambitions. It probably was. But it was also a world that was vast, a world where you could get lost. A world without the Great Glade, without the suffocating scent of moonpetal incense, without the cold, corrective touch of her family. The hollow ache in her chest eased, replaced by a low, insistent hum. It was the call of all that blank space, waiting to be filled.

The hum in her chest did not fade. She sat there on the floor, the cool wood a solid reality against her legs, and stared at the question mark she had drawn on the map. Her mother’s voice was still present, not the words themselves but the clinical assessment. The disappointment that was no longer sharp but worn smooth with use, like a river stone.

It isn't a difficult thing, her mother had said.

Ellette closed her eyes. The hollow space in her chest felt vast tonight. She thought of the air outside the manicured paths, the unpruned trees, the damp earth that no one had arranged for effect. She wanted to stand in it. She wanted to breathe it in until the scent of moonpetal incense was gone from her lungs.

The decision did not arrive with a crash. It settled quietly, a simple, physical need. She had to go. Not forever. Just for a few hours. Just far enough to feel the difference.

She carefully replaced the floorboard, pressing it down until it was flush with the others, her secret hidden once more. She stood and moved through the small room with a new purpose. From the back of her wardrobe, she pulled out a small leather satchel, one she sometimes used for collecting botanical samples. The leather was soft and worn. She opened it. The inside smelled faintly of crushed leaves and soil.

She went to the small pantry shelf where she kept personal stores. She took a linen pouch of dried elderberries, sweet and sharp, and another of hard, dried apples. It was not much, but it was something. She put them inside the satchel. Then she retrieved the compass, placing it carefully between the two pouches so the glass would not break. She cinched the bag shut. It was light, barely a weight at all.

She sat on the edge of her bed and began the tedious process of re-binding her wings. The task she hated most, the one that always made her feel clumsy and ill-formed. She pulled the silk ribbons tight, flattening the delicate membranes, securing each joint until her wings were a neat, immobile pack against her back. The pressure was a familiar discomfort. Tonight, it felt like armor. It would make her quieter, less conspicuous. A Fae with unbound wings was a statement. A Fae with bound wings could, with luck, be overlooked.

She stood, testing the bindings. They felt secure. She slung the satchel over her shoulder, the strap settling into the groove between her neck and shoulder. She looked around the room. It was just a room. A bed, a wardrobe, a window. There was nothing here she felt a particular attachment to, nothing that felt like it belonged to her in a way that mattered. The only thing that was truly hers was hidden under the floor.

She thought of Lyra, asleep in her own, larger room down the hall. Lyra would wake in the morning and not notice she was gone, not at first. Her mother would notice her absence at the morning meal and her lips would thin, another demerit added to a long list. The thought did not stop her. It was, in a strange way, part of the reason she was going. To be somewhere where she was not being measured and found lacking.

Her goal was simple. To get past the last of the glowing sentry-stones, past the edge of the tended forest, and into the wilder borderlands. She would find a place to sit, and she would wait for the sun to rise. She would watch it happen in a place that was not owned by anyone. Then she would come back. It was a small rebellion. It was barely a rebellion at all. But it felt necessary, like drinking water when you are thirsty.

She walked to the door, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor. She placed her hand on the cool, smooth surface of the wooden latch. She paused, listening. The house was still. The only sound was the faint, rhythmic thrum of her own blood in her ears. She took a breath. It felt like the last clean breath of indoor air she would have for a while. Then, she pressed the latch and pulled the door open, slipping into the dark, silent hallway.

The path away from the cluster of family dwellings was paved with smooth, pale stones that seemed to gather what little moonlight broke through the canopy. Ellette kept to the soft earth at the edge of the path, her bare feet making no sound. The air was cool and carried the scent of night-blooming jasmine from the cultivated gardens, a smell so familiar it was almost oppressive.

She could see the faint, rhythmic glow of the sentry-stones ahead, marking the official edge of the settlement. There were three sentinels stationed there, always. She slowed her pace, her body tensing. She slipped behind the thick trunk of a silver birch, its bark like cool paper against her cheek, and peered around it.

The stones pulsed with a soft, blue-white light, illuminating the clearing. Two of the sentinels were slumped on a stone bench, their ornate helmets tipped forward, chins resting on their chests. The third stood watch, but his posture was loose, his head tilted back as he looked up at the moon. He was humming a low, tuneless melody. Ellette’s heart beat a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She waited, her breath held tight in her lungs. She watched the standing sentinel for what felt like an hour, though it was likely only minutes. He stretched, his wings rustling softly, and then he, too, sat down, leaning his back against one of the glowing stones. His eyes closed.

Now.

She moved, a shadow detaching itself from other shadows. She did not run. She walked with a deliberate, even pace across the open ground, her eyes fixed on the sleeping figures. The pulsing light of the stones washed over her, making the fine hairs on her arms stand up. She felt exposed, a single moving thing in a still-life painting. With every step, she expected a shout, the scrape of a boot on stone, the sharp command to halt.

Nothing came. She passed the last stone, its light receding at her back, and plunged into true darkness.

The manicured path ended abruptly. The ground beneath her feet changed from soft loam to a tangle of roots and damp, fallen leaves. She stumbled, her hand flying out to brace herself against the rough bark of a tree. She was past the boundary. She was out.

She moved deeper into the woods for several minutes, pushing through low-hanging branches that snagged at her clothes and hair, until the glow of the sentry-stones was completely gone. Here, the air was different. It smelled of damp earth, of decay and green, living things all at once. It was thicker, heavier. She stopped, leaning against a tree and listening. The woods were not silent. There was the frantic chirping of insects, the distant hoot of an owl, the rustle of some small creature in the undergrowth. But it was a silence of people. Of expectations.

Her fingers went to the silk ribbons binding her wings. They were knotted tightly, and her fingers felt clumsy and cold, but she worked at them with a desperate patience. When the last knot finally came loose, the ribbons fell away. She took a deep, shuddering breath as she unfurled her wings, the sensation a mix of relief and pain as blood rushed back into the delicate membranes. She stretched them to their full span, the tips brushing against the leaves on either side of her. They felt enormous in the enclosed space.

Taking off was not the graceful, silent lift she was used to in the open glades. It was a panicked scramble. She pushed off the ground, her wings beating a powerful, loud rhythm that seemed to shatter the night's quiet. A branch, unseen in the dark, scraped hard against her right wing, and she cried out, a small, sharp sound. She faltered, dropping a few feet before finding her rhythm again, her flight pattern uneven.

This was nothing like flying at home. There were no clearings, no designated flight paths. She had to stay low, just above the grasping underbrush but below the thickest parts of the canopy, navigating a treacherous middle-ground. The darkness was absolute in places, and she was flying half-blind, relying on instinct and the faint starlight that filtered through the leaves.

Fear was a cold knot in her stomach. Every snap of a twig below sounded like a pursuing footstep. But as she flew, something else began to bubble up alongside the fear. A wild, reckless joy. The wind was cold and real against her face. The sheer, untamed mess of the forest was exhilarating. Nothing here was placed for effect. It simply was. She was a part of its chaos, not an observer of its order.

She was completely, utterly alone. No one in the world knew where she was. The thought was terrifying. It was also the most freeing thought she had ever had. There were no eyes on her, no one to note her clumsy flight, the tear in her sleeve from a snagged branch, the wild disarray of her hair. Her existence, for this single moment, was not being measured or judged. She was just a body moving through the dark.

After a time, she saw a small, rocky outcrop where the trees thinned. She angled toward it, her landing clumsy. She half-flew, half-fell the last few feet, her legs jarring as she hit the uneven stone. She folded her wings, the movement feeling strange and new without the constraints of bindings. She was breathing hard, her body trembling with adrenaline and cold.

She sat down on the rock, pulling her satchel into her lap. She looked back in the direction she had come, but there was nothing to see but an impenetrable wall of black trees. She was unmoored. The hollow ache in her chest was gone, replaced by the thrumming of her own blood. She leaned back on her elbows, tilted her head to the sliver of open sky, and just breathed.

The peace was so complete it felt fragile, like a thin sheet of ice over deep water. She was about to reach into her satchel for the dried berries, to perform the mundane act of eating in this extraordinary place, when a sound cut through the quiet.

It was not the hoot of an owl or the rustle of a foraging animal. It was a cry of pain. Low and guttural, choked off before it could become a full-throated scream. It sounded humanoid.

Ellette froze, her hand hovering over her bag. The wild joy that had filled her chest moments before evaporated, replaced by a cold, prickling fear. The sentinels, the rules, the Lumina festival—they were all designed to protect against this. Against the unknown dangers that lurked in the untamed parts of the world. Her first instinct was to fly, to get back to the safety of the glowing stones and the manicured paths.

The sound came again, weaker this time. It was followed by a ragged, desperate gasp for air. It was the sound of something suffering. She stayed frozen on the rock, listening. The woods were silent again, but the memory of the sound lingered. It was a hook, catching on something inside her. She thought of the stories the Elders told, of cruel humans and tainted creatures that strayed too close to the Veil. She should run.

She stood up. Her wings felt heavy and clumsy. She told herself she would just look. From a distance.

She moved off the rock and back into the trees, her bare feet careful on the uneven ground. The darkness that had felt liberating now seemed to conceal threats in every shadow. She followed the direction of the sound, pushing through ferns that were cool and wet with dew. Her wings caught on low-hanging branches, and she had to fold them back tightly, mimicking the bindings she had so recently shed. The constraint felt awful.

She smelled it before she saw anything. Blood. The coppery scent was thick in the air, unmistakable. And beneath it, another smell, sharp and acrid. A metallic tang that made the back of her throat tighten and her skin feel tight. It was a smell she knew only from warnings, a scent that was anathema to her kind. Iron.

Her steps slowed. Her heart was a frantic, painful rhythm in her chest. She pushed aside a final, wide frond of a fern.

And saw him.

A young man was slumped against the base of a thick oak tree. His head was bowed, his dark hair stuck to his forehead and neck with sweat. His clothes were strange—dark trousers and a tunic made of some rough, unfamiliar fabric. One of his legs was stretched out at an unnatural angle. The fabric of his trousers was soaked through with blood, a dark, spreading stain that pooled on the ground around him.

Her eyes traced the line of his injured leg. Clamped around his calf, digging deep into the flesh, was a trap. Two semicircles of jagged metal teeth, connected by a spring mechanism. It was an iron poacher's trap. The sight of it made a wave of nausea roll through her. The proximity of so much raw iron was a physical assault, a low, sickening hum that vibrated from the ground up through the soles of her feet. It felt like poison in the air.

He must have heard the rustle of the fern. He moved, his whole body tensing, and a low groan escaped his lips. Slowly, he lifted his head.

His face was pale under a layer of dirt, his jaw tight with pain. He was young. Around her age, maybe a little older. He looked at her, his eyes clouded and unfocused at first. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. As his gaze landed on her, on the shape of her wings silhouetted against the faint starlight, his expression shifted. The pain was still there, but it was joined by a sharp, guarded awareness.

His eyes. They were dark, a deep brown. But for a single, breathtaking second, as they locked with hers, they weren't. For a flicker of a moment, they burned with a luminous, predatory gold. The light was not a reflection. It was a fire that lit from within, ancient and wild. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, leaving only the dark, pained brown of a human eye.

But she had seen it. She knew what it meant. The stories were not just stories.

He was a wolf.