"James Lovegrove - Wings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lovegrove James)

Wings
a short story by James Lovegrove

The bell rang, and suddenly the corridors and shafts of the school were
filled with moving bodies, and the classrooms, libraries, laboratories and
gymnasia were left empty and echoing to the slamming of desk lids and
doors. Dust and loose leaves of paper settled even as the teachers began
to shape their lips around the words "Class dismissed".
Through the building the children flew with a great racketing roar,
celebrating with their screams and whoops and yells the death of another
school day. A dozen disparate streams of them converged in the main
hallway, and when the hallway could no longer contain all these young
bodies, all this enthusiasm made flesh, the main doors swung wide and
spilled them out into the yard.
There the children blinked and stood dazed for a moment in the sunshine
like prisoners released from long sentences in lightless dungeons; but
then, quickly adjusting to their new-found freedom, they fell to clasping
hands and exchanging grins and sharing jokes and promising to meet up
later that day, or tomorrow, or whenever; and dividing into pairs and
knots of three or four and the odd solemn single, up from the yard they
rose on single down-thrusts of their wings and off they flew along the
windy streets of Cloudcap City, satchels in hand, shirt-tails and
skirt-hems fluttering, blowing like dandelion seeds to all six corners of
the compass.
Amid all this fever to escape Az plodded along in his usual ungainly
fashion. A few classmates patted him on the shoulder and said "See you" as
they flew past, but Az's excruciatingly slow progress meant that no one
was going to stay beside him for long. It just wasn't possible. It took Az
over a minute to traverse a corridor or clamber up or down a shaft, using
the metal rungs fitted into the walls especially for him, whereas it took
the rest of them a handful of seconds. The other children swooped around
him like swifts, like swallows, while Az was a beetle, struggling,
bumbling, lumbering.
The last few children were taking off from the yard when Az finally
emerged into the daylight. He watched them rise into the sky, wave to one
another and flit off in different directions. He waved too, on the
off-chance that one of them might happen to look back and see him and
return the gesture, but it was useless; their eyes were fixed on the
horizon and home. Alone, and sunk deep in his own thoughts, Az traipsed
across the yard.
Normally he would have caught the airbus and travelled home with the
elders and the fledglings and all the other clipped-wings, but when he
came through the school gates he found his brother Michael waiting for him
on the landing platform in his Corbeau. Michael was returning the admiring
glances of a pair of girls who were wafting by on the other side of the
street, but catching sight of Az, he forgot about them and raised a hand
and cried, "Hey, little brother! Hop aboard!"
Az climbed into the passenger seat beside Michael, dumping his satchel
between his feet. Michael hit a switch on the dashboard of the Corbeau,
and the blades began to rotate above their heads.