// I'll fly away //


//



He's been driving for close to six hours now, the miles he's traveled marked only by the soft clicks of the CD player shuffling another disk into place. Songs, so many songs, about love and redemption, about faith and hope, about a thousand different journeys on a thousand different roads. JC sings along to all of them, somehow knowing the words barely a split-second before they fall from his lips. All I did was kill a little time, my friend, he sings, letting the sound of his voice slip away and fade into the colours of the world outside.

At first he thinks it's a mirage, a trick of the light, something the road has conjured up out of the heat that rises from the blacktop to curl around metal in shimmering waves. A figure- a woman, he thinks as he draws nearer, just on the shoulder of the highway, the late-afternoon sun seeming to catch her hair alight as she turns toward the sound of the car. Not a mirage then, and she's raising her arm to wave, to flag him down, and when the car slows, it's almost a shock to realise it's his foot on the brake, his hands turning the wheel to guide it safely to the side of the road.

Thank you, she says, as she opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. I know you weren't really ready to stop.

JC opens his mouth to protest, and when she reaches up to touch his lips with gentle fingers, the words slip silently from his head, falling into nothing at all. After a moment, she lowers her hand and smiles, settling back into the seat and closing her eyes.

I can't tell you my name, she says, but I can tell you a story while you drive.

So he drives. The rise and fall of her voice is more hypnotic than any of the songs he's been listening to, her words shining brilliant and new, like nothing he's ever heard before. He's used to finding patterns in the familiar, seeking out the things he knows and understands, and now she's turning his world upside down, weaving threads of something pale and unknown to wrap around him. She speaks and he listens, and sometimes it feels like he's no longer behind the wheel, but outside -not just the confines of the car, but beyond himself, somehow. There's an overwhelming sense of outside, and he's following her words, the twist and sway of her language, letting it take him where he needs to go. Sometimes he can hear another voice just underneath, an echo of hers, the same yet different-- richer, deeper. Further, he thinks, not knowing where it came from but knowing it's right. Much, much further.

You must be tired, she says, we should stop here, and with her words there's a sense of being pulled away, of coming back from somewhere else, and JC blinks to clear his head. The road ahead is starting to blur a little, and suddenly he realises he is tired, bone-weary, nothing left to see outside but faded-blue sky already scattered with a handful of stars. He pulls over, letting the car glide to a slow stop by the side of the deserted stretch of road. He turns to her, and this time, he lets himself see.

She sits quietly, and he knows she's aware of his eyes on her, knows she'll wait for as long as it takes. Knows there's more to her tale, and that he needs to hear it.

Take your time, she says softly, I'm not going anywhere. She smiles, and unbuttons her dress, slipping it off her shoulders, sliding it over her hips and down her legs to where it pools in soft folds of fabric at her ankles.

Gold and burnt ochre are painted into skin the colour of cinnamon, and the tattoo trails across her shoulder, spilling onto her back and along the length of her spine. It spreads blood-red at the flare of her hip, snaking round on itself, twisting bold and bright in the small of her back, gradually vanishing back into the lines of her body. JC follows the colours with his eyes, trying to make sense of the pattern, but there's something missing. A sense of-- touch, he thinks, and that seems right, so he does, reaching out to fit his hand to the slope of her shoulder, to the curve of her breast, the arch of her back.

And this, he says finally, tracing the intricate spirals and swirls with a careful finger, feeling them sink into his own skin, does this have a story, too?

It's a map, she says, of the place I came from. She smiles, then takes his hand in her own, placing it on her belly. Her skin is warm and soft beneath JC's fingers, and he can feel the slow, sure push-pull of each and every breath she takes. A map, she says again, her voice low and secret, and you are here. She slides his hand lower, then lower still, until there's nothing but wet heat, her mouth at his throat and the slick-fierce curl of her nails against his wrist. He matches the rhythm she's asking from him, and when she comes, it's with a sigh against his lips. She lifts his hand to her mouth so she can suck on his fingers, and a sense of wanting prickles over his skin, fierce and sudden. Shh, she murmurs, when he's rocking against her, shuddering, spilling into the curled heat of her palm, shhh. Kissing it into his skin, holding him until the shaking subsides, until the colours slowly fade from behind his eyes.

Will you take me there? he asks, when he can speak again. It seems like hours later, even though he knows it's only been minutes, but time has taken on a strange slip-slide feel, and he can't keep his eyes open anymore. Will you take me to where you're from?

Oh JC, she says, and he can feel a gentle kiss on each eyelid, a barely-there warmth with the soft touch of her lips, you're here already.

He sleeps, and when he dreams, it's of the map she's painting on his skin in ink and blood and tears.

*

He wakes to the sound of the CD player clicking softly, another disk slotting into place. Silence for a moment, and then music fills the car, and even half-asleep, the words come to JC from somewhere deep inside, some sense memory that runs endlessly beneath his skin, marked out in brilliant patterns, in lines that swoop and curve in bright, glittering red and scarlet.

I went out and adopted a highway, he sings, opening his door and climbing out, tipping his head back toward the sky. And then he smiles, because for the first time in a long time, the words bring no sense of fear at all. You should let your family know, he begins, daring the fates, and there's laughter there, just below the surface, we may be gone awhile. Just the sound of the words is intoxicating, and finally understanding exactly what they mean makes him dizzy. We'll fly away. Spinning around, shouting the words into brand-new blue, over and over again. We'll fly away.

And then she's there with him, pressed close, skin to skin, her laughter the only thing guiding him as the road shimmers in the heat and he slowly fades away.

//

lyrics by Joe Firstman

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