Swan Ascendant
by Jens Rushing
By the time his ankle betrayed him, Cam had already lost the race. The first runners were crossing the finish line almost a full lap ahead of him. A little under four hundred yards left to go, and he could do nothing but trot on and come in last. Cam wanted nothing more than to veer away from the track, shoot off on a tangent, and not look back, but there in the bleachers, grim and silent – his mother, his father, his girlfriend. And his coach on the sidelines, with lips tight in a mirthless smile. Cam kept his head down.
Just cross the line.
He rounded the final bend, arms and legs pumping in smooth machine motion. The cool morning air burned in his lungs. A hundred more yards , he was thinking, and a flashbulb of agony popped in his ankle. Falling – hands out, palms scraped bloody on the track, chin grinding the pebbly path, breath gone.
Cam rolled over and faced the bright morning sky. Breath eluded him and he panicked that it would never return; his lung muscles locked in a wracked spasm, he fought them, and finally sucked in air. It escaped in staccato. He could not move. The pain in his ankle overwhelmed him and he thought he would vomit. At length he raised his head. His foot was not at the proper angle.
A face blocked his vision of the sky, and he tried at first to move his head so he could see past the face. Then he saw that it was his coach. “Division titles four years running, Cam,” and he walked away. Someone moved his foot, and Cam screamed at the flaring pain. It was the medic. The medic glanced at him but said nothing. Another face.
His father. He said nothing, only looked, and Cam could read a litany in his brow, in the skin around his eyes. This furrow spoke disappointment; this wrinkling spoke scorn . He looked to the sky; a cotton-gauze cloud fanned ethereally across the blue.
His mother came. She gripped his father's elbow. “It's okay, Cam,” she said, “You don't have to do this. Not everyone is good at everything.” Her words were comfort, but Cam read her face just as thoroughly as his father's. The content was identical.
No one else came.
“The bone's broken,” the medic said. “He'll need to go to the hospital.”
“He'll be okay, right?” his father asked.
“Almost definitely.” Cam felt the raw splinters of bone, fractured and disconnected. This meat. This corpse he inhabited. Better the sky.
Cam was heavy when he wanted lightness. He was clumsy when he wanted grace. He shook his blonde hair, and the light locks thinned to feathers; he stretched his hands, the thick fingers stretching and spanning, the arms becoming wings. His outside flesh diffused; they can have it. The burden of form left him, and he leapt into the bright morning sky. The air was clear. He cried for joy.