Fledgling by Cassandra Burgdorf (August 2007)   Craving. That was all she ever felt. Never happiness, never anger. Always just that desperate longing. There was nothing she wanted more. There never had been. Always she had been denied. They didn't want to let her satisfy the desire, they feared what might happen if she did, and she couldn't understand why. It was the only thing in the world to her, the biggest freedom.   "What is she?" "An experiment," he replied automatically. Strict rules governed what would and wouldn't be said about the children. "One of many." The other man leaned closer, putting his palm against the one-way window, through which was room resembling a regular nursery. There was a bed that was never used, shelves of toys that had never been touched. A few downy feathers lay on the floor beside the young girl. "Go on." "Most information concerning these experiments is highly classified." "No need to worry about that." Without tearing his eyes from the girl, the visitor pulled out a card from an inside pocket. The scientist examined it closely, then handed it back to the visiting official. "In a very basic sense, these experiments are attempts at enhancing the human race. Each child was given a different trait. This one hasn't been very successful." "How's that?" "She won't respond to anything." There was silence, as for a moment he felt pity for the child. "What trait were you trying to give her?" "She was one of the more extensive projects. Not many of us believed it would work. We wanted to see if it would be possible to give a human wings. We'd already had some children end up with tails or claws as well as the intended traits: increased strength, agility and flexibility, speed, sharper vision and hearing, etc." "You've been using animal DNA for this?" "Yes." Another moment of silence as they both stared at the failed project. The girl was very small. Though she'd never been outside in her short life, her skin was tan, flecked with white and cream. Her hair and eyes were dark brown. Hanging limply at her sides were the small, weak arms she never used. Bare feet revealed long, talon-like toes. From her shoulder blades sprouted two large wings, the feathers brown and tan, creamy down on the undersides accenting the color. Small feathers grew along her spine, ending in a short birdlike tail. Her wings were clipped. "Why hasn't this been successful? She has wings. Does she lack the chest muscles required for flight?" "No, she does not. Were her wings not clipped she likely would be able to support herself in the air for at least short periods of time." The visitor turned to stare at him with a questioning look. "She is not successful because she is not human enough. She was raised as a human and has been constantly encouraged to act as one, but it seems her mind is more of a bird's. It's a strange combination; we know she's sentient and intelligent, but nothing else other than her appearance suggests she is part human. "She's never shown any signs of normal human development. She has never picked up any of the toys or books. She doesn't respond to other humans, but becomes hyperactive and uncontrollable when we play recorded bird song over the speakers in her room. Rather then use the bed, she prefers to curl up in her wings on the floor, and no one has heard her speak though we have tried to educate her appropriately for one of her age." He had not meant to say so much. Once he had begun he found he could not stop. There was something about this child in particular that touched him, something the other projects lacked. "How old is she?" the official asked, his eyes once again locked on the motionless girl. "She was born seven years ago. Her legal name is Alexandra, but she responds no more to that than to anything else we've tried." Silence once again. The visitor eventually looked away, brushing imaginary dust off his suit jacket. "This way. The next one has been much more successful. He is older than Alexandra and was given the balance and reflexes of certain breeds of cat."   A whistled shriek flew from her mouth at the intruder. Her wings opened defensively, but the man was gone within moments, the door, the opening to freedom, shut once again with a click. For a moment she did nothing, wishing for that freedom they would never give her, feeling the craving rise in her again. A scent caught her attention. She hopped lightly across the room, her wings folded against her back, and sniffed at stuff that the man had left behind for her. Tentatively she bit away a piece of the loaf, uninterested in the meat and cheese beside it. It tasted very good, and she was hungry, but she did not eat any more. Sitting against the wall, she wrapped herself in her soft wings, taken yet again by the longing she'd always felt, the longing they would never let her satisfy. There was nothing she wanted more than to finally fly.   "If she continues not to eat we may have to use enteral feeding, but that could seriously interfere with the project. Not that there's been any success with her anyway," the woman added in an undertone. "How long has it been since she last ate?" "Um... About 32 hours," she answered, flipping through the papers on a clipboard. "And that was only a piece of bread." The scientist nodded. The girl was asleep now, hidden beneath the brown feathers of her wings, turned orangy by the night light illuminating the dim room. His expression softened. "What is it we did wrong?" he asked quietly. "There's more human in her than her appearance would suggest. What mistake did we make to hide it beyond retrieval?" "We didn't make any mistakes. We did everything we could to reveal any humanity in her. There isn't any." "I think there is," he said, his voice yet softer. "She's not a bird or a human; she's somewhere in between. Maybe if we hadn't been so nearsighted, so stupid as to think that these children would just be humans with advantages, then we could have helped her." He didn't say it aloud, but there was a small, insistent thought: maybe they should never have tried to tamper with human nature. Maybe they should have realized it wouldn't be as easy sticking a pair of wings on a normal human. None of these children were normal, but none were so strange as Alexandra. "We can always try for wings again. There are plenty of people willing to have their unborn babes enhanced so long as they don't have to keep the kid. You know as well as I how irresponsible teenagers are getting." "It doesn't matter how many times we can try again. We could have helped her." There was something about her in particular that reached out to him. In a way they shared a childhood, he realized. Denied the thing they wanted most. "Hey," her voice was gentle, "they're only experiments."   She flexed her wings. How she wanted to fly! But she could not fly here, and this room, this room filled with foreign things they expected her to enjoy, was the only place she ever remembered being. She knew there was something beyond it, she knew that there was somewhere she would be able to fly at last, but she had never seen it. She had only dreamed of it, desired it. She chirped piteously, though she was alone. She called out a noise that she instinctively knew should bring her mother to her, but the whistle was weak, half-hearted. She had made it many times before, and never had a mother come to her, never had a mother cradled her in a nest, sung her to sleep with a soft lullaby. There had been others, yes; they had brought her food and water, they had given her the foreign things she didn't like, they had called her Alexandra and talked to her in their foreign tongue. But none had ever been the mother she wanted almost as much as she wanted to fly. They were not motherly, not comforting, not there for her as a mother should be, and a mother would have taught her flight, not denied her it. Her craving became desperate, as it so often did. She chirped again, wanting to tell them how she needed to fly, but they never listened to her. Even if they could understand this desire to soar, they would never grant it. The door opened. The glimpse of freedom beyond it too much to bear, she rushed to it, pushed past the man walking in with another loaf and a jug of water, and stared at what lay beyond the door. It was a long, square tunnel. Many doors like hers were along it. Would they all lead to freedom? She rushed to one, her wings spread in excitement and anticipation. It swung open, and within was a room almost exactly like hers, a man inside setting down food and water, a boy staring at her curiously. She shrieked in fear and ran back out the door. She did not want another room of things she did not understand! She wanted the openness, the freedom she'd never seen, where she could finally, finally, fly.... A man grabbed her, and then everything disappeared beneath a thick blackness.   "She tried to get out?" he repeated, stunned. "She pushed past the person bringing in food and burst into another room, then ran out, terrified. The hall was full of people bringing food for the other projects, so it wasn't hard to catch her. They used too strong a sedative, though. She's still out." "Will she be alright?" The other man looked at him strangely. "Does it matter? She's a failure anyway." Before he could reply, the other man had gone off down the hall. The scientist turned and looked through the one-way window at her. They had put her on the bed and carefully spread out her wings so she wouldn't roll on top of them. He knew she would not like waking up like that. He walked from the window of her room, stopping to stare out a real window at the end of the hall, through which he could see the edge of the cliffs and the ocean beyond. The building had been placed away from any cities, minimizing the chances of civilians discovering their experiments as well as simplifying security conditions. Why did he care so much about her? She was only one of many experiments. But there was something different about her, something deep. She wanted something, he'd decided long ago. But what? An escape? A memory came to the surface of his mind. A young boy, abused by his parents. He'd wanted one thing then: a proper family. And always his parents, drunken and violent, had stopped that. They'd been monsters to him, denying such an essential thing. What must he, what must all of them, be to her, denying her whatever it was she craved so?   That short glance of freedom had set her desire rampaging through her. She would do anything, anything, to fly, soar, glide through the freedom she ached for! She felt confined in this small room of things she didn't understand, she needed to escape. There had to be freedom. Not all of the doors could lead to these rooms. Once she had woken, she became restless. She chirped and stretched her wings, so eager to feel the wind through her feathers. She called for a mother that had never come, for a freedom she had always been denied by these people. The next time a man came in with food, he was careful not to open the door wider than necessary, and to shut it while he put down the dish, watching her cautiously. She chirped, she tried to ask him to help her, but he didn't understand, they never did. Then, long after he had left, the door opened again. A man walked in, a different man. "You want to escape, don't you?" She did not understand the sounds, but she did understand the door he'd left wide open and the expression on his face. He was helping her. She stared at him, surprised that her call had finally been answered, the desire to fly burning within her stronger than ever before. Maybe he was different -- maybe he could be motherly, would have taught her to fly. He did not shut the door, and she ran out of the room. He hurried through the tunnel, and she followed him, her wings spreading with an all-consuming excitement. He led her down strange bends in the floor, and through another square tunnel to another door. Then he stopped. She chirped desperately, knowing they were close to the openness. He opened the door. Beyond was the freedom she'd always wanted. She ran into it, the floor dusty to her bare feet. Sounds came from all around, water and wind and.... She screeched in delight, for there were others like her here, others who chirped and whistled and spread their wings. The ground dropped and disappeared ahead of her, but that didn't matter. She flapped her wings properly for the first time, she felt the wind in her feathers and her hair, felt the world vanish from under her. "Alexandra!" She did not look back at the man who was now calling for her the same way they all had. A strange sound escaped her lips, one she'd never made before and that the birds who had gathered to fly around her could not imitate. She thought it was beautiful, thought it was the perfect sound to describe this miracle, that she could finally, finally, fly!   She flew for a full fifteen seconds. But no more. Her wings were clipped and had never truly been used before. All the muscles required for flight had never been used because she'd never been allowed. She plummeted to her death in the ocean below, but as she fell she was still laughing, happy to be in the air at all, not realizing what had gone wrong. She had never laughed before. All the while, the scientist stared. He had been a monster to her, and then he had tried to make up for it by sending her to her death. All she'd ever wanted was to fly, and they'd never let her, because they thought she might fly away and not return, and they couldn't risk discovery. Someone burst outside through the same back entrance he had used. "What the hell just happened?" the man yelled, running up to him. He shook his head, unable to speak, unable to look away from where it was that Alexandra had supported herself in the air so briefly. No... not Alexandra. She'd never accepted that as a name. Her true name would be a sound of the birds, expressing the joy she'd felt in flight. A tear slipped down his cheek. The man ran past him, to the edge of the cliff, and stared down. "Oh, great -- she's dead. Government's not going to be happy about this. That's a lot of money spent and gone." "Yes," he said, not caring if anyone knew what he'd done. Others began flocking out, confused, shocked to see one of their valuable projects lost to the forces of desire and gravity. There was one thing of which he was certain: if it was ever possible, he would do it again, for another child -- yes, another child, not another experiment -- like her.