Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: John Parr – St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)

A lone climber scales a sheer wall of rock in an alien place. His only goal, to reach the peak, and step off of it.

======

Altair wedged his fingertips into an almost invisible crack running across the face of the cliff. Fresh blood leached into the rock. Sinews and muscles burned like molten lead as he hauled himself upright. Chalk grated under the hoary flesh of his palms.

Pain was meaningless, some said. That wasn’t the case. Pain was the way a body communicated. Pain was also an achievement, a goal, a measure. He knew pain, it was an old friend, a teacher, and a constant companion.

Altair was under no illusions. If he slipped, he would die. His wings were too unwieldy to climb with unsecured so they had to be tied down. A narrow chasm plunged away behind him and if he fell he’d be too busy twisting and turning and scraping against the rockface to untie them. The wings protruded out of his coat but loops of leather straps wound around their joints to hold them in place.

Grunting, Altair wedged the toe of one boot against another crease in the rock and launched himself upward. Some of the surfaces he’d traversed were almost vertical. Climbing was a contest. Man pitted against nature, man against mountain, requiring not just strength but quick and agile brains. As his chest hugged the rock he could feel his heart rebounding against his ribs. He snaked his way up another column of rock. His pack and equipment weighed him down. Light as they were, his wings felt like dead weight.

Lesser peaks rolled away behind Altair. In the west, the sky churned with dark clouds. Rain hazed the horizon. He had to get somewhere safe before the storm hit. Already the temperature was plunging. The mountain was a maze of chasms and sheer faces that funneled toward its peak. Dead ends forced him to double back constantly. A wrong turn now could mean death.

Sheltered between several jagged spires of rock, Altair pulled himself onto a relatively level patch. His arms and legs sang with relief but the burn settled into a feeling of satisfaction. Sitting, he scooted backward until his wings pressed against another wall of rock.

Wind whipped through the canyons as the storm moved in. To try to preserve heat, Altair wrapped his coat tight around his body. He pulled a compass out of his pack but had a hard time orientating himself. The surrounding spines must have been riddled with magnetic metal as they were throwing off the compass’ needle. Stuffing it back in his pack, he removed his tent as well as some food and water instead.

The air became thick with potential as clouds hemmed the sky. Altair peered from the mouth of the tent as rain started to hammer like an army of blacksmiths. Shadows closed in, hungry, and swallowed his surroundings. It was only when lightning fractured the sky that he could see again. Moments later, he had to brace as thunder shattered against the peaks, bouncing between shelves of rock and down the length of valleys. The storm reached down and choked the mountain, and Altair slipped back into his tent to escape its grasping fingers.

The loops holding Altair’s wings in place chafed. Reaching around his sides, he managed to unbuckle the straps and set them free. There wasn’t a lot of room in the tent but he stretched them as best he could, lying flat on his stomach. Joints popped and hollow but incredibly strong bones creaked. His wings resembled those of an enormous hawk. Oaken brown, decorated with rings akin to eyespots and speckled with darker patches. They moved almost with a mind of their own, exactly why he couldn’t risk climbing with them unsecured. As best he could manage, he massaged the cramped muscles in the wings themselves and those that attached to their roots. Long and thick and knotted, bizarrely overdeveloped, they shifted along his spine to either side. The skin where the wings had been attached, the transitory zone between human skin and feathered flesh, never stopped feeling tender. It was prone to cracks and bleeding, best treated with balms of rendered fat. The exertion and thin mountain air tested it. After a couple of minutes free of their harness, the wings felt fine though. It was the muscles of his arms and legs and fingers that cramped, sending splinters of pain through the tendons. His fingertips and palms were raw and abraded. A couple of fingernails peeled free from their roots, others already bandaged, leaving bruised, purple beds exposed.

Wind whipped fistfuls of rain like iron nails through the mouth of the tent. Altair went to cinch it closed but something caught his attention. Bluish light glittered even between cracks of lightning. Coronas of pale blue-purple phosphorescence simmered around the needle tips of the nearest pillars. They grew like flames, shifting between two of the peaks, although it wasn’t obvious to him what had ignited them and what they fed off.

Branches of upside down lightning sparked and flew skyward. The glow reflected off of Altair’s face. He’d heard of this phenomenon before but had believed it only afflicted ships at sea. Burning light that climbed masts and flagpoles during storms. The metal in the surrounding peaks must have been enough to attract it. It was an alien thing, in an alien place. Perhaps such things happened here, in the mountains, all the time, but there was never anyone around to see it. Face upturned, he watched the radiance shift and leap.

A bolt of searing light speared out of the black sky. It erased the bramble of stuttering sparks and exploded against one of the jagged spines. Altair fell backward, blinded. The clap of thunder slammed his eardrums. His wings shot out and hit the sides of the tent, threatening to dislodge it before he got them back under control. Echoes drummed across the mountaintops. When the lightning faded away it left a glowing scar across his eyes and a stink of burnt ozone in the air.

Blinking furiously, Altair settled onto his blanket. He pulled the flap of the tent closed and tried to control his heart. The blue-purple haze had disintegrated from around the iron peaks although the top of one spire glowed white-hot from the lightning strike. With the way rain was sleeting down, there was nowhere he could move so he had to hope the plateau he’d decided to camp on was safe. Often, whether climbing or at rest, it felt like the mountain wanted to cast him out, recognising that he didn’t belong, and this was certainly one of those times.

Luckily, the storm moved on. Thunder retreated, harmlessly, across the mountaintops. Rain thrashed the walls of Altair’s tent then slipped off and slid away. In spite of his fears, he slept. Ever since his wings were attached, he’d slept on his stomach. Exhausted as he was, in the thin air he fell into a deep and dreamless stupor.

xXx

Sunlight pierced the walls of the tent. Altair clawed his way back to consciousness to find his muscles stiff and cramped. He ate his breakfast and drank most of the rest of his water. Leaving the shelter, he stretched and limbered up as best he could. Strips of bandages wound around his battered fingertips and palms.

Leaving some of his garbage and unneeded gear behind, Altair climbed onward. His wings were strapped back into place. His hands heavy with chalk and climbing axe close at hand. If all went to plan, he was certain he could make the peak before midday.

Altair continued on from the balcony of rock through a vertical crack, easy climbing. Coming to the top, he saw the peak ahead. The storm had washed the sky blue but the top of the mountain was hidden behind early clouds. He was still confident he was on track. Hand over hand, he hauled himself up another vertical face.

Movement surprised Altair as his head emerged over another lip. An eagle flared its wings, flapping and opening its curved beak. As high as they were, he didn’t expect to find any signs of life. The bird let out a shrill cry. It launched itself and gained air, circling, and flew off past Altair’s shoulder. He pulled himself over the edge of the cliff and sat. The wings belted to his back would never allow him to take to the air with such ease. No matter what he did, he’d never fly like a bird. He and the men and women like him, who’d gone through the transformation, practised and exercised day after day but taking off from the ground was beyond them. Even from a running start, their wings couldn’t lift off, they could only glide. By and large, they climbed and launched themselves from towers and hills to scrape out a little bit of flying time. It was dangerous, hard work, and it hurt, even now, after years of practice, it still hurt. But when it worked, it was exhilarating. There was no greater feeling. It was impossible to resist the call to go a little bit higher, to glide a little bit longer, to push a little bit harder.

As Altair climbed, he felt his muscles warm and harden. He scaled broken faces, digging fingers into impossible gaps. The bandages covering his hands became ragged and stained with fresh blood. Behind him, his wings swayed to the limits of their straps. He rested by wedging his knees against the sides of a vertical gap. As deep as he pulled the thin air into his lungs, he never felt satisfied. That exhaustion, more than any other factor, was what slowed him down as he neared the top of the mountain. It teased him with its closeness. Like a woman, it seemed to press close to him, all he wanted just the stretch of a hand away, and then it would flit away to leave him desperate with longing.

Virgin frost marked the uppermost fringes of the mountain. Slopes that had never been stepped on by man or beast. The last part of the approach was surprisingly smooth. Hands aching and hanging at his sides, he stumbled over windswept rock and clambered through narrow passages to the top.

The peak of the mountain was shockingly flat. A roughly oval plateau little more than twenty paces across, dusted in frost like crystallised bits of cloud. Unable to believe he’d finally made it, Altair paced the outskirts of the peak and breathed deeply. Below, the cloud cleared and he could appreciate the way the mountain fell away on all sides. A vast landscape of lesser peaks and gaping gullies stretched away toward every horizon. Stopping in the direction he’d come, he saw the mountains fall into rolling emerald fields. Joy pitched and rose in his chest. The view itself was awe inspiring. He hoped to be down there among the fields again soon, a great deal faster than he’d arrived. There would be friends waiting for him there, camping and watching for his approach, to witness what would truly be a historic flight.

Altair unbuckled his wings and stripped away his coat. Stretched, in the thin air they caught powerful breezes that whipped their way up and over the peak. Fully extended, his wingspan was three times as great as he was tall. Magnificent, rippling with innate power. They no longer looked like awkward extensions patched onto an unwieldy, ill suited frame but instead were purposeful and strong.

From within his pack, Altair withdrew an iron stake. Attached to the butt of the stake was a strip of tough material, his name and other details inscribed on it to prove that he had really been there. With his climbing axe, he hammered the spike into the shadow of one small boulder on the outskirts of the peak. Once it was deeply driven, he ran his fingers along the material. Proof that he, that someone, had made it to this cold and inhuman place. Once he was done, he tossed his axe back over the side of the mountain and watched with fascination as it spiralled to a jagged slope leagues below.

Altair divested himself of most of his gear. Things he wouldn’t be taking back with him. Clothing and climbing gear and his pack, he needed to be as light as possible. He ate the last of his supplies for energy and drained his waterskin. His compass he palmed for a moment and then flung over the side of the mountain like a skipping stone. It sailed far out into the open air, dwindling to almost nothing before it curved down and down and down toward the earth. He wore, in the end, only boots, thin pants, and a lightweight tunic. Cool as the air felt, goosebumps broke out across his exposed skin. He limbered up with stretches and exercises. A cramp at the wrong moment, a failure in his joints or muscles, he could drop from the sky and die. But if he succeeded, this would be the longest and greatest flight ever recorded. Stretching, he felt those muscles in his back and wings come alive.

Approaching the very lip of the peak, Altair stood with the ceiling of the world at his back. All of creation lay at his feet. He had conquered the mountain, now to conquer the air. Wings spread, they caught the wind. He leaned forward and took that final step.

======

Sean: I’ve tried to make sure that writing stories for Mixtape hasn’t totally screwed my relationship with music. But there is that inevitable thing of hearing a new song, or a song I haven’t thought of in a while, and going, “What if I wrote a story based off this one? What kind of story would this one be?”

So, of course, this song came on the radio when I was driving up the coast and I’m like, hell yeah, I should write something off of this one. “I’ll be where the eagle’s flying higher and higher / Gonna be your man in motion, all I need’s this pair of wheels”? It practically writes itself! But as I mentioned, I’m so very literal that it needed to actually have some St. Elmo’s Fire in it. I’m well aware it’s a film by the way, I’ve never actually seen it but I’m going to assume it’s less literal.

No dialogue at all in this one! I have a tendency to use dialogue for exposition or putting the character’s feelings out there even if it means they’re talking to themselves so it’s always a bit of a challenge doing something like this but I thought it fitted the story better. Do They Know It’s Christmas, another story that shares its name with a song but from well before Mixtape, has only a single line of dialogue which was a lot of fun.

If you’d like a taste of what’s coming up, I’ve just added a few more tracks to the Mixtape mixtape and for other updates you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

Next Track: Jay & The Americans – Come a Little Bit Closer