I'll Be Anywhere But Somewhere [short story]
 

I’LL BE ANYWHERE BUT SOMEWHERE

Tell me a story mommy, said little Sophie as she climbed up her lacy bed covers, tell me a story about fairies and princesses. Her eyes glistened in the light of her bedside table lamp and six-year-old innocence.
You really want it about fairies and princesses?, her mother looked at her through a scattering of golden blonde curls over her daughters precious face, Well I think it’s about time we had something a little different, hmm? She gave a motherly smile, her own eyes wet and glistening in the bedside light.

There was once a race of bird people who lived on an island between the borders of Nowhere and Somewhere where no one ever died. They only left and couldn’t come back. Their island floated above the sea and looked just like a cloud to anyone other than someone, but never vanished. It was the cloud that always remained and never rained.
The Bird People lived there for thousands upon thousands of years folding so far back that they had lost track of the records, only being able to guess at the dates from a series of primitive scratches on the undersides of the island. The markings on the bottom of the island were said to have been the insides of tunnels and caves that had fallen away over time. However, no one really knew.
The trees that grew over the island were all of them different; not one tree had another to call kin. Whenever one died of old age it was the saddest thing in the world. If a tree was dying a song equally unique as the tree it came from, bubbled and frothed from the roots, folded up through its veins, and dripped out the little, delicate pores in all the leaves like golden honey. It broke the Bird People’s hearts, and so, for that reason, only one tree would die until all the broken hearted had left.
It was what every person on the island had to do. They would feel it inside, an itchy pull to finally use their wings, fly up into a rainy sky, and never come back. No one knew what happened after they had gone through or where they went, but they knew it was Somewhere and that they didn’t die. No one who lived between Nowhere and Somewhere ever died. Once they were gone two days and three nights a bright falling star would come to land at the foot of newest tree where it would slowly expand like vibrating milk into the shape of a new Bird Person. They were called Newly-Mades. All the Newly-Mades had supple, creamy-white feathers that softly glowed for another two days and three nights until, finally, they stopped glowing and slowly turned to a rich, golden yellow like all the others.
It was the sense of loss that kept them all together on the island because no one feels anywhere when they’ve lost something. They always just search and search until they feel a pull in the right direction; that’s when they know they’ve found it. The Bird People were unable to fly until they felt the tugging on their chest and the itches in their wings.

Sophie yawned, her little mouth droopy with fatigue, and fell asleep. Sophie’s mother looked down at her little bird with rosy cheeks and golden hair and felt a pull in her chest. She rubbed the crook of her elbow, fell into a trembling sigh, and got up to leave. Mother looked once more before flicking off the lamp and closing the white, wooden door.
She’ll see me Somewhere, she’ll see me Somewhere, Mother kept repeating as her hands, twisting in each other, finally rung themselves dry of dirty dish water and stair dust. Mother closed and locked the bathroom door then climbed the old, porcelain tub like a tree, fumbling amongst the plastic-curtain leaves and rusty faucet-&-drain roots.
She’ll see me Somewhere, Mother blubbered. She made her way to the top of the tree and looked down at the pale yellow floor rug, grimy linoleum tiles, and porcelain toilet; dandelion fields, an edging waste land, and snowy mountain ranges formed in her swelling eyes.
It began to rain warm salt water in the bathroom all over the rusty roots where her cold feet had froze and began to melt them apart. Her sweating hands turned sticky and golden sliding over the plastic leaves. Mother felt the itchy pull in the crooks of her elbows and hollow of her chest. It tugged gently at her bones, crumbed the marrow, and melted the joints until she fell limp from the tree to the base of its roots. A song trickled out her forehead, bubbling on the porcelain, red on white and full of dieing life, sliding into a hole under the tree. Slowly it began to drip on the plastic leaves, golden, glistening, just like honey.