Mark decided to take his shot at dawn. He always was the dramatic one, every time.
It was the same as always, except for the differences. Out came Mark from his tent, stripped nude for maximum aerodynamic speed, all the most offensive crevices of his body exposed to the sky, leaving it blushing in horror. Here came all the others (there’s me in there, somewhere), trying not to look directly at him.
He didn’t pay it any mind, of course. His eyes were firm on the sun ahead, his strides sure, his walk firm. Then it was a jog – and we all kept up – and then a sprint – and we all kept up – and then a full pell-mell head-over-heels gallop of a run, a speed that you only see when someone’s being chased by something toothy or late for dinner.
We couldn’t keep up, try as we might. We never could, even when it was Padma’s turn, short-legged as she was. So we were about fifty feet behind when Mark went over the cliff, arms spread and elbows bent, legs angled just so, just so, face a fierce wind-streaked grimace of calculation and fatigue.
Out, out, out he flew – ten metres, twenty maybe, could’ve been thirty even – and then he smacked into the water full force like a pancake, bounced off a rock, and sank.
“Damnit,” said Abraham. “We were so sure that the kneecap twist would do the trick.”
“Good distance anyways,” observed Padma. “Cleared your record from last time. Cheer up, you’ll have a while yet to get it tested out before it’s your turn.”
“Mmph,” said Abraham grumpily. But from the look on his face, he was already thinking through the angles.
“Oh shut it,” said Sherry. “In the meantime, someone’d better go tell that one kid that he’s Mark now.”
No one moved, everyone looked at me. I sighed. “Fine.”
It was always my job. Always Tom’s job to go deliver the news, because Tom could be pushed around. No one was ever glad to see Tom, because it was his duty to tell you that things weren’t comfortable anymore.
That one kid lived in a little tent down the hill from ours, like all the other kids. If you weren’t Mark or Tom or Abraham or Padma or Sherry, you were a kid. And because one of the defining traits of being a kid was being dumber than paste – as sure as surliness was Abraham and bossing around was Sherry – you wanted to be Mark or Tom or Abraham or Padma or Sherry so bad it hurt, because to you, a name was everything. Which was why a lot of kids waited a long, long time to be Mark, Tom, Abe, or Sherry – I think the record was something like thirty years. To be any of us, you had to either not want it or not give a shit. Except for Padma.
Too many angry faces every time, though. And more each trip than before. If glances were knives, I’d have bled out the second I started walking down the hill.
That one kid’s tent was different from the others. It had twice as many legs and looked like it was trying to eat itself half the time. That was the sort of thing that made a good Mark: the willingness to think up crazy stupid stuff.
“Hey, kid,” I said to the closed flap. “You’re Mark now.”
“No I’m not. Go away.”
“Knock it off, Mark. Get out of that kid’s tent and come on up the hill. Abe’s already going to be driving the others nuts if you don’t drive him there first.”
“I’m too busy to go jump off a cliff, so cut it out. And stop calling me Mark.”
“Damnit, why do you always pull this crap, Mark? Every time, bitch bitch bitch. Look, everything you need is up there in the tent. Get your ass out of here before all the dumbass kids start throwing rocks at you out of jealousy.”
Mark grumbled his way out of the tent. He was shorter this time – not that it was hard, he’d been the tallest of us last time by four inches, a scarecrow with the world’s worst shave – and even more wiry. He was carrying a big bundle of stuff in his arms, all wrapped up tighter than a baby.
“What’s that?”
“None of your goddamned business.”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, you’re Mark all right. C’mon.”
He swore at my back until I was nearly out of ear-range, then started following.
There was a small obstacle: a crowd of the kids had appeared around us while we talked, and they didn’t seem to want to move off the path.
“Push off,” I said. They stared at me. No one listened to Tom.
“Get out,” he told them. “We won’t be back again for a while anyways.”
They got out.
“How did you do that?”
“They don’t think I’m Mark yet. Give it a week and they’ll hate my guts too.” He scratched the inside of his nose with surprising care and delicacy. “Just like I hate yours.”
I smiled as I started walking again. Mark never changed, even less than the rest of us, right down to the words he always spoke when he saw his tent.
“What the hell is this shitheap?’
“Your tent.” It was an honest assessment. It looked like the result of a tragic and violent mating between three sets of carpet rugs after it had been hunted down and impaled with poles, then rolled in a garbage heap.
“Great. Just great. Hey, I could use that part.” He snapped off a dangling thing that might have been a windchime, a weathervane, or a birdcage, and found out it was a support. I left him cursing. The day had already been too long, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
I ate my early lunch at the cliff, legs dangling over its edge, flicking the fishbones down one by one into the angry surf at its base. I wasn’t afraid of heights. None of the kids that were afraid of heights ever got ahold of one of our names; it would’ve been as senseless as picking a puffin.
Sherry turned up behind me, in that quiet way of hers that was nevertheless totally broadcast. She didn’t sneak. She was just…stealthy.
“Just talked with Mark,” she said by way of introduction. “He thinks you’re a total asshole already. Good job.”
“Thanks mom,” I said around the last mouthful of salted fish. I sent the tail-fin skimming out into the air and watched it flutter down. “Look at that. Lighter than a fingernail and it still can’t make it more than an eddy’s –spittle offshore. You know, sometimes I think we’re just never going to do it.”
“Sure we can. You get good enough at anything and it becomes possible. Did you see how far Mark went? You know damned well he’s barely better than Padma at this, and he almost doubled his last record. Every time we make it a little farther. And we’ve got loads of time.”
“I guess.” I stared out over the ocean’s smugness. “But is it worth it?”
Sherry sighed. “Tom, we’re sitting on a puffin-infested, storm-blighted, rocky cliff on the ass end of the planet’s ass-end. Whatever’s on the other side is definitely worth it, and if you keep on whining this much I’ll just chuck you over the cliff myself. I bet that’d cheer you up a bit.”
“Fine, fine.”
There was candlelight coming from Mark’s tent as I went to bed. And loud noises, some of which weren’t swearing. I gave it a week before we saw whatever was in the bundle completed. It turned out to be four days, during each of which a little more of Mark’s tent vanished, along with a bit more of his patience. On the morning of the fifth, the tent was gone entirely, consumed into a webbed mess of spines and flaps.
“Not your usual work,” commented Sherry.
“Looks like shit,” said Abe.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like more time to work on….whatever it is?” asked Padma.
“First of all: fuck you. Secondly, it’s a…sort of wing set. See, I was watching the gulls – not the puffins, the little pudgy buggers are too stubby-winged for the job – and I noticed that…”
The conversation that followed was long and one-way. I woke up enough at the end to notice Mark had unzipped the wings and was wearing them as a sort of backpack, with his arms slotted into handles. At a yank, the whole thing bucked and quivered, tipping one way and then the other. He tottered in the light morning breeze.
“That’s very nice, Mark,” said Padma. “Does it work?’
“It’s damned well unnatural,” said Abraham. “Go back to ankle angles. I’ve been working on the hips all month, checking wind resistance on bits of whittled driftwood, and I need someone to check the hips and you’ve got all the notes in your tent.” He squinted suspiciously at the left wing. “I think you’ve got them there, actually – did you really use the whole thing? You’re not sleeping in my tent, that’s for sure.”
“Not if you were a threesome with twins,” snapped Mark. “And I’m not spending another night here, waiting for all the little SOBs down the slope to get tired of us once and for all and come up here with torches and pitchforks. I’m taking this thing oversea.” He tore a crude lump of marked tent fabric out of his back pocket and smushed it into Abe’s mitt. “Here’s the design specs if you want to copy it. I’m heading out now. You can stay here and keep trying to dive solo from now ‘till the end of time if you want, but I’m not standing for it.”
Abe stared at him. “You’re what…you’re wait. You’re going to fly across with those? Not in a million years. Wings are for puffins, not people.”
Mark laughed. It sounded like a fish gasping for air. “We’ll all still BE here in a million years if we try it your way. We need new ideas – I’ve seen this happen too many times. We need to switch to machined flight.”
“We’ll run out of parts for flyers inside a week. How’re the kids supposed to follow us?”
Mark shrugged. “Screw ‘em – they’ve been getting nastier and nastier the last few years anyways. They can take over diving for it. Or just stay here. Their own fault for not thinking of it first.”
“That’s nasty even for you,” I said.
He gave me a remarkably evil grin. I could count the food particles on each tooth. “You knew the risks when you picked me out. Now get out of my way. I’ve got a run-up to do.”
Another day, another dawn. The same as always, except a lot slower – Mark’s fast, but he’s weighed down pretty nicely with all the gear. He pants and swears and hisses like a cockroach, not running, just tottering as fast as he can.
We all reached the cliff before he did. That was a first. None of us knew what to do; just stood there for a moment, not knowing where to look. Then up he came running, arms spread, swearing and wheezing, and tip-flip-toppled over the edge, with a kick and a scream.
We watched him fall for a moment, then we watched him rise, and then we had to jump back for a moment as the wind heaved him into the air, spinning and pinwheeling like mad. He made eye contact with me for a moment. His eyes were bulging and very brown, and I couldn’t help but feel how wrong that was. Mark’s eyes were blue. I remembered that very clearly.
Then he was down again, like a rock. The splash sounded before any of us could make it to the ledge, and by the time we peeked over he was an odd shape bobbing in the waves.
“Well, that was interesting, but scarcely helpful,” said Sherry. “I hope we’ll all remember this. Hell, a new Mark after less than a week – that’s nearly a record, isn’t it, Padma?”
Padma shut her eyes and moved her lips for a moment, counting. “Still held by Tom with five minutes,” she said. “He called you some rude names, you got into a shoving match, and then he lost it. Barely made a meter – bounced off the cliff, I believe.”
Abe was standing at the edge of the cliff, clenching and unclenching his hands.
“You okay?” I asked. I carefully measured the distance between us, guessing it as just a bit more than grabbing reach.
“Yes. No. Damnit. He was an insufferable little shithead who wouldn’t know common sense if it bit him.” He sighed and scrubbed away something from his face. “Almost irreplaceable. Tom, go get him replaced.”
I sighed. ‘He wasn’t making up that about the kids. They tried to hem us in last time we left. Could’ve gotten ugly.”
Sherry scowled. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“He said it’d wait ‘till next time. They’d have time to forget.”
“Well, obviously not. Hell, Tom, why do you go along with this sort of bull all the time?”
Because that’s what Tom does, you high-handed bunch of space cases, I didn’t say.
“Right,” I said.
The hill looked bigger than usual as I went down it. All those kids looked so small, so small you couldn’t see their faces. All looking up at me, staring up at me with those blank faces. But then I was at the bottom, and their faces were still empty. Very empty.
They were standing in front of the tents, all of them, all on display. One of them must be the kid I was looking for, but I couldn’t see him. They all looked the same – how were they doing that?
I walked along the line. Their eyes followed me.
I should’ve waited.
I should’ve thought it through.
I should’ve toughed it out.
But Tom’s not supposed to do any of that, so I broke and ran and picked a kid at random and said “you’re Mark.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Cut it out, Mark. C’mon.”
The girl next to him stepped forwards. She was blank. Not Sherry-stern, not Padma-mellow, not kid-mulish, just calm and flat and smooth as a bay with an undercurrent that’d rip your legs out to sea. “He isn’t.”
“Yeah he is. Look at him.”
She cocked her head to the side, as if she was listening to birds squabble.
Then all of them took a step forwards.
And another.
“No we aren’t,” she said. They all said it. Very disturbing.
So I ran for it. For real this time, not just in my head. And they all ran after me.
Funny. I’d never actually run the cliff run before, yet here I was, matching it, without even a moment’s thought. Turns out it’s all instinct.
I may have been yelling something, because the other three had come over to the hilltop to look. Wow, it must’ve looked bad. Abe was too open-mouthed to scowl, and that was a pretty pale look on Padma. Was Sherry yelling something? My ears were too clogged with wind and adrenaline to tell, but she’d just run off so she must’ve been upset.
Woop, over the hilltop. Everyone else was running too, but I was the fastest of all, ahead of even Abe’s gangly legs. I looked back and oh, he’d stopped at a tent to pull a metal stick out of his tent. Big one too, with lots of knobby bits, and a funny handle. But a rock hit his forehead, and hey, down he went, flailing like an upended spider being swarmed by ants.
Padma screamed something, so that must’ve been her too. And who knew where Sherry had gone to, because by the time I turned my head forwards to look for her I’d gone off the cliff.
Now, Abe and Mark were always the enthusiasts, you might say. The rest of us implemented their ideas about heel curvature and the proper stance of the arms for maximum glide as best as we could, but I’m not sure we ever really put our hearts into it the way they did, not as a science. For us it was “give it a shot and maybe it’ll work this time.” Seemed a bit silly in retrospect.
What I’m saying is that I’d forgotten all the instructions on gliding. So I pretty much dropped straight down, arms flailing a little above head, feet above. Not an inch of altitude gain or distance made.
But down below were those rocks, and up above me was sky, and then SPLASH I went into the water, ice cold, and without a single broken – well, wait, my foot hurt a lot – without a single major broken bone.
Hmm, never mind, felt like half of my right foot and all its toes. Ow.
Why wasn’t I sinking farther? Here I was, caught right under the surface, drowning very slowly.
I twisted myself around and took a look: Oh. I was looking right into the submerged, very alarmed face of Mark, with his wings bobbing on the water’s surface just above. A foot to the side, and I’d have landed headfirst on them.
It was strange to see him – Mark wasn’t supposed to be dead. Now he was dead and there was…no Mark. A strange world, one with no Mark in it. Holy shit, what if the kids didn’t pick an Abe, Padma, and Sherry? Hell, they’d need a Tom too, because I wasn’t coming back up those cliffs. But you can’t have two Toms, so that would be…
I realized that while my brain dithered, my body had taken matters into its own hands and hauled me on top of the little platform made out of Mark’s gliding wings. A rock plunked into the water near me, then another. Splish, splash. Probably best to get moving before the kids got much more accurate.
I ripped loose a piece of wing and began to paddle sloppily. The whole thing was remarkably stable, thanks to its Mark ballast. I wondered if he’d planned on this – well, maybe without the bit where he got stuck under it and drowned – and decided he probably had. He’d been smart. Hell, he’d been smarter than our… last Mark. The other one that we’d called Mark. That Mark had spent most of his time bickering with Abe and trying to talk Sherry into things that made her hit him. Never really had thought about it before, as to how we changed. I wondered what the kids thought about it.
It was amazing how much easier all this thinking made the paddling. I resisted the urge to check over my shoulder: it’d just make the distance stretch longer.
One of the kids was yelling something down at me, but I couldn’t hear it.
I guessed it was time to see what we’d been diving to. Maybe it’d be nice.
“Cliff Diving,” copyright 2011, Jamie Proctor.