Photo by Sue Vincent

This is the 31st and final chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

Note – I posted three chapters that did not follow one of Sue’s prompts.  Here is a brief overview in case you don’t have time or inclination to read them (or you can skip to today’s chapter at the **):

Chapter 28 – The Book Again – Ed finally reads his great uncle’s book which included the four “lost” chapters.  His understanding is influenced by his talk with the Other and he sees it in a different light and understands that his great uncle was not making predictions or talking about destiny, but talking about his own reality.

Chapter 29 – The Answer and More Answers – When Ed arrives at Mr. Brown’s house, The Grubb announces that he has found the answer to alpha, the fine-structure constant.  He walks through a seemingly simplistic arithmetic formula which Liza points out joins old numerology with modern quantum physics.  Mr. Brown’s son, Philip shows up, as does Lauren.  There are more answers.

Chapter 30 – Dreams – All of the dream sequences from earlier chapters are brought together into one and are finally resolved, with Ed finally figuring out his life.

**

They left the house when the sky was just beginning to lighten in the east, not speaking as Lauren drove out into the deeper moor.  After about 10 minutes she pulled off to the side of the road.  It wasn’t a very good parking space, but they would make do.  She and Ed climbed to the top of a small hill and stood, hand in hand, not saying a word, just watching as the sky turned pink and then orange and then burst into full color as the sun rose.  They both felt it, the renewal, as if it wasn’t just a new solar day, but a new day in their lives and the start of a new era of the world. Continue reading →

This is now the 30th chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

Ed walked through the arch and glanced around.

“Pillars,” he said out loud.

He was in a giant room, seeming to stretch to infinity in every direction.  The unseen ceiling was support by row after row of Doric columns.  Periodically a free standing arch was placed in the middle of the avenues created by the columns.

Ed took a few steps deeper into the room and took his bearings.  The room was very dimly lit, a perpetual twilight.  Uniformity that disappeared in the misty distance.  But what was that?  A faint light from one direction?

He stopped.  He had been here many times before, lost in this forest of stone.  Hadn’t he recently solved the puzzle?  The faint light seemed to be sunlight, but he knew it wasn’t right.  He slowly turned and saw it, a very faint green, much dimmer than the sunlight that he knew was a mirage.  That was it.  That was the way he must go.

As had happened before, the longer he walked towards the green the more the columns grew less evenly spaced and less uniform in size, rougher and more organic.  Soon he was in a forest at the way sign. Continue reading →

This is now the 29th chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

“Hi, Mr. Ed!”  The Grubb was sitting at a table at Mr. Brown’s house with his ever-present notebook in front of him.  “Guess what?  I figured it out!”

“Hi Grubb,” Ed said.  “How are you feeling?  You look better.”  The Grubb just smiled.  “OK, what did you figure out?”

“You know…”  The Grubb looked around the room, but all that was in it were his parents, Liza and Mr. Brown.  He lowered his voice.  “The ultimate answer…  You know, Alpha.”

Ed turned to Mr. Brown for help.

“If you remember, The Grubb has been trying to figure out the fine-structure constant,” Mr. Brown said.  “It’s about interactions in quantum physics.  I’ve never been too strong in the field myself, if you take my meaning, and don’t totally get this talk about the strength of electromagnetic forces, particle interactions or some such; it all seems to be electro-magic to me.  The Grubb has been saying that he figured out the significance of it seen he arrived, but that he had to wait until you were here before he could tell me.” Continue reading →

Photo by Sue Vincent

This is now the 27th chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

A breeze whipped through the trees and stung Ed’s face.  He looked up at the sun shining through the clouds and then back down at the ground in front of him.  He was sitting on a rock by the side of a small stream out in the middle of the moors.

“You be missing The Grubb, then?”

Ed jumped up and turned at the sound of the strange voice that seemed to arrive on the wind.

The man from the day before was standing there, smiling.

“Yes, actually, I was.”

The man nodded and pointed to the rocks.  Ed sat down again and the man sat next to him.  They just sat there for a few minutes in silence, but the questions just kept piling up in Ed’s mind, so he had to let them out before he burst.

“Was he dead, then?  When you found him, that is?” Continue reading →

Photo by Sue Vincent

This is now the 26th chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

Note – I posted two chapters that did not follow one of Sue’s prompts.  Here is a brief overview in case you don’t have time or inclination to read them (or you can skip to today’s chapter):

Chapter 24, To the Other Place – The Grubb and Ed are climbing on a steep ledge to find an entrance to the land of The Others.  Ed discovers it is more of a different Universe than a place.  The Grubb gets distracted and falls.  Ed feels that the fall must be fatal, but before he can get to the boy, a strange man tells him that The Grubb will be OK, that Ed needs to leave immediately and get help.

Chapter 25, The Hospital – Ed and Liza rush to the hospital.  Ed discovers that Mrs. Grubb, Martha, is Mr. Brown, Winston’s, sister making The Grubb Mr. Brown’s nephew.  The doctors come out and are baffled. The Grubb is in a very deep sleep, a coma, but has no major injuries.  As Eda nd Liza go home, Ed remembers his own deep sleep after he fell and wonders how badly he was truly injured.

***
Onto the story!
***

“Come on, let’s go.”

They had only been at Liza’s house for a half of an hour or so when she stuck her head into Ed’s room.

“Here, take this.”

“This” was a large basket.

They drove for a while.  At first Ed wasn’t paying attention, but after a while he realized they were going to the more mountainous area where he and The Grubb had explored the day before.  Before getting to the mountains proper, Liza took a slightly different road and so ended up near the mountains instead of in the middle.  “Sometimes it is easier to see a mountain from a valley than from the top.”  For some reason that silly thought crossed Ed’s mind.

Liza pulled over and Ed grabbed the basket.  They walked for a short distance before finding the perfect setting for a picnic.  The ground was soft yet dry.  There was a perfect view of the mountains just to the west. Continue reading →

This is now the 25th chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

The drive to the hospital took over two hours, which was made longer as Liza, who was driving, barely said a word the entire time, letting Ed’s imagination run wild.

When Ed, Dr. Smyth and the four men arrived on the hillside, the strange man was nowhere to be seen.  The Grubb was still as Ed had left him, bent the wrong way.  It was if Ed had just run out without checking on the man-boys condition.  Of course he didn’t know what he could have done.

“He is breathing,” the doctor said on arriving.

They slowly moved The Grubb onto the stretcher as the doctor examine the man-child.  He used his hands to feel all over the body, Ed guessed looking for protruding bones.

“Odd,” Dr. Smyth said.  “He fell from there?”  he pointed to the top of the little cliff.

Ed nodded, “Yes, we had climbed up from the other side.”  The drop seemed even bigger as Ed looked back up it than it did before, huge. Continue reading →