He was lost to the fire, in the dance above the embers. Lost in that glow -- pulsing red tinged with black and white -- feeding ascent, always to the stars, force always dissipating.
A snapping sound, pulled from the trance, and he watches sparks lift in the twilight, climbing towards fronds leaning from the trades. He saw them then. The girl -- no, a woman now -- and the dog. He met both so long ago. Impossible, he knew, the fragments of him that remained.
His eyes followed a floating ember until it disappeared high among the early stars.
"What was it like then, King?"
"Hmm? Oh, our mother was a much smaller place in those days. People from the far side came to swim in the sea for a few days, then they flew home in vast machines. We could not sail so far in a lifetime."
"So? Is that important?"
"Mother is large again, as she must be. That is what's important."
"As she must be?"
"It is a question of balance. Nothing is as it should be when life is out of balance." He turned and looked at the girl and the dog sitting on the point above the rocks, watching the same place in the sea.
"Are they out of balance, Grandfather?"
He turned and looked at his children's children, and he could see that they had followed his eyes. They too were staring at the girl and the dog.
"I did not see the signs -- until it was too late. But in the beginning all was as it should be. We were so far apart, and yet so close. He studied ways to move around the mother, and so did I. That is how we became friends." He turned his face to the dome of the night and listened to a star for the longest time. "Yes," he sighed a moment later, "I should have listened to you. But, you see, I had forgotten how."
+++++
On another night years before he turned to face the night sky and studied patterns caught within the fabric of time; some time later he turned and studied the surface of the sea for signs he had memorized when he was very young. Signs that were echoes of stories his father had told him, stories of currents and wind patterns, stories of what had been, and, sometimes, stories about the music of things to come -- about the music of the stars. What seemed like hours later, at least to the men rowing that night, he turned his face ever so slightly and closed his eyes, and with his face just into the wind he saw the scent of blooming flowers and fresh rain borne on a darkening breeze.
He pointed to a star low on the horizon and one of the men adjusted their course; moments later the great sailing canoe turned ever-so-slightly, tracking true on the new course. He looked at the star once again, listened to the music that had crossed the gulf of memory and he nodded, acknowledging the blessing.
His name was King -- because his name reflected his place among the people, and King was sailing now, visiting his many islands before the season of storms. He looked at the star until the point of light was lost behind the line that divided the earth from the sky, then he looked down at his wife -- still lost in the fever sleep. There was nothing he could do now but wait for the music, so he turned his face to the ringed one and opened his arms, waiting at the edge of the world for the first chord...
+++++
"American two-two-tango, turn right to one-three-three degrees, descend and maintain one-nine-hundred and report passing NITER; expect a straight-in one-three left, contact Love tower one-two-three-decimal-seven and good-night."
"Center, two-two tango to one-three-three and nineteen hundred, one-two-three-seven."
He turned and looked at the FO candidate in the right seat and tried not to shake his head. An FAA examiner was sitting behind the rookie -- writing down every mistake the kid made -- and he knew, just by listening to the pen grating across the paper, this would be a report for the record books.
The kid's father was a board member and had somehow gotten this boy into a transition class, and yet already the word was the kid had blown every sim-check but one. He shouldn't even be on this ride, he thought as he shook his head. Had things really grown so warped? Could money indeed buy anything?
Lining up for runway 13L at Dallas Love Field, all the kid had to do was hold 133º and nineteen hundred feet and he'd be golden. The examiner would check to see if the kid could hold their altitude at plus-or-minus fifty feet and a heading within two degrees, yet already to kid had blown the limits and was three hundred feet below their assigned altitude.
"Captain?" the examiner asked.
He sighed. "My airplane," Captain Denton King said, taking the yoke in his left hand and putting his right on the throttles.
"No," the kid said, contradicting his captain and breaking one of the biggest safety rules in a commercial cockpit, "I've got it."
"Stewart --?" King said, his voice now sudden, deep growl. "Get off my flight deck. Right -- now."
The kid seemed to shake when he caught the tone behind this captain's words, and he nervously shook off his harness and scrambled out of cockpit door.
Without saying a word, the FAA examiner slipped into the first officer's seat and buckled in. "Your airplane, Captain. I'll handle the checklist."
"Thanks, Ben."
"That pecker-head is even worse than the scuttlebutt. He's got no business being in an airplane."
"Yeah, and he'll be right back up here next month -- at least until someone passes him, anyway. You wanna call us in?"
"Got it," the examiner said, putting on his headset. "Love tower, two-two-tango passing NITER."
"Two-two-tango, roger, wind now out of the north at one-seven, gusts to two-three knots. Thunderstorm now three miles north of the airport."
"Two-two, we have the lights."
"Understood. Clear to land one-three left."
A bolt of lightning arced across the sky, seemingly between their 757 and the threshold, and then the bottom fell out. "Uh, a little wind-shear," the examiner said, his voice steely calm.
"Got it," King said. They'd lost another three hundred feet in a heartbeat and now the old Boeing 757 was just a few hundred feet above some apartments buildings. He watched the rate of climb indicator register positive and he eased off the throttle a little, at least until he was back on track to intercept the glide-slope, then he shrugged his shoulders, eased the tension in the small of his back. More lightning, one arc hitting Bachman Lake, and the runway lights flickered once -- then lights all over the airport blinked out.
"Uh, two-two-tango, I think we're going around now."
"Two-two, missed approach approved, turn right to one-eight-zero passing one thousand, contact Center one-two-five-two."
"One-eighty at one and one-two-five-two," King said as one of the other instructors came into the cockpit.
"Real vomit-comet back there, Cap. What's up?"
"Just lost power at Love."
"Was that wind shear, or what? How much did we lose?"
"Three hundred and a little bit."
"Ouch. Glad Stewart was off the stick."
King thought about that for a moment then got his ass back in the cockpit and worked the new approach into KDFW that they picked-up from Dallas Center. Still, the thought was out there waiting for him, and driving home on LBJ an hour later it was all he could do to get the kid's mistakes out of his mind -- and the inrushing memory of all those apartment buildings just below. Stewart had already lost almost 300 feet when ordered off the flight deck, but what if he'd let the kid figure it out for another few seconds? What if the examiner hadn't chimed-in when he had? At the very least they'd have burned some shingles off those apartments, but he couldn't bring himself to think about the other likely outcome.
He turned south on Central and got off on Mockingbird -- and made it home in time to see Sharon and Jennifer load-up and head off to school. After he kissed them both he watched them drive away, and after he closed the door to the house he peeled off his uniform and went straight to the shower, tried to wash all the lingering uncertainties out of his mind -- yet in the hot mist the vision returned. All those rooftops down there in the night, all the people sleeping, dreaming, every one of those souls oblivious to the little drama playing out just over their heads.
The line between life and death was often razor thin, but this night had been a little too tricky. How many times, he wondered, had he cheated death. How many more times could he get away with it? When would the bill come due?
He let the hot spray beat down on his neck and shoulders long enough for the water to cool a little, then he turned off the tap and toweled himself dry, put on his pajamas and went to his office to check email before grabbing the officially mandated eight hours. Nothing, not even the usual junk mail -- then he realized this was Saturday and even the spammers took weekends off. But no, Sharon and Jenn had just left for school -- so it was Friday...? He shook his head but knew he was too tired to think about anything else. Bed was calling now...
He had just slipped under the sheets when he felt sleep running through the dark, then a giant hand pushing the 757 down towards inrushing rooftops just below...he looked to his right, to the FOs seat, saw Stewart sitting there -- grinning maniacally as the rooftops reached up for them...like the very earth was reaching up to swat them out of the sky -- like an impudent fly.
Then he heard warning bells and distant impacts, noises that did not belong in his cockpit and his eyes opened. He still heard the bells -- no, the doorbell -- and it was ringing insistently. His eyes felt like burning gravel as he sat up and reached for his bathrobe, then he staggered for the entryway. By the time he got to the double-doors he could see two cops out on the walkway, one with an aluminum clipboard in hand. He rubbed his eyes as he opened the door...
"Yes...?"
"Sorry, sir," one of the cops said. She had her clipboard in hand now, a pen poised to write. "May we come inside?"
He shook the cobwebs from his mind as he looked at the girl, then he stepped aside and opened the door. "Please. Could I get you some coffee?"
The policewoman was older, and he thought the other cop with her looked impossibly young, almost a teenager.
"Thanks, no," the girl said.
"You'll excuse me," he said, "but I didn't get in from work until almost eight this morning and I'm still a little beat. I'll be right back. There's bottled water in the fridge," he added, pointing somewhere towards the kitchen. "Please, help yourself."
He walked to the head and relieved himself, threw on some cargo shorts and sneakers, then a clean t-shirt before heading back to the living room. Both of the cops were still standing at the door, waiting stoically, if a little impatiently...
"Sorry 'bout that," King said.
