Theory of Flight
an excerpt

Alexis stared back, a glass of water with lemon in front of him. It was too early for him to be back…

“How come-” Serge started, but Alexis lifted his left hand in response to the unasked question. It was bandaged, along with the wrist.

“A tense rope broke off. I’m lucky it was my hand and not my face. They sent me back, I’m useless to them for the moment.”

Serge just nodded, and went for the basket of blankets sitting on a chair far from Alexis.

“Hey,” Alexis called after a while. Serge was standing on a chair, hanging a blanket near the window “I was rude the other day, I’m sorry about that.” he waited for Serge to say something, but he didn’t, so Alexis continued “you offered me your help; is that offer still standing?” he had tried to understand the book with what Serge had told him, but he had failed.

“Yes, yes it is.” Serge answered matter-of-factly
.

“Great,” Alexis said, standing up “ we’re starting right away,” and he went to grab Serge by the collar and pull him away, to the attic.

“W-wait! I have to finish doing this!” He half-yelled, pulling the blanket at the last moment.

“No, don’t worry. I already figured out how you’ll pay for your stay, and if you help me with the book, the room is yours without debt.” Alexis said as he pushed Serge up the stairs.

“How does that work?” Serge looked back at Alexis as they walked.

“I’ll explain later.”

“But wait…!”

“What?!” Alexis stopped walking in the middle of the second floor stairs.

“what about what I told you? You do remember, right?” Serge asked exasperatedly, but he used the opportunity of standing still to accommodate the blanket around his neck and shoulders, for warmth.

“Well, yes, why do you think I apologized?” Alexis made to grab Serge’s shoulder, but the other boy grabbed his wrist in mid air first. He wasn’t strong, which made his attempt at pressure rather pathetic, but it was the motion that surprised Alexis.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?” He said slowly. It was a matter of pride for him; that had been the first time he ever told anybody what he had been through. He thought he was mentally prepared for the fact that people would just laugh when, or if, he told them, but now, in his mind, there was a desire to prove himself.

With a yank, Alexis broke free of the boy’s grasp “I wish there was a way to prove what you said was true, just for the sake of knowing I’m not going to be working with a madman, but I can’t think of anything. I just thought I’d live with it until something concrete happened.”

“First of, I don’t care who or what you live with. Secondly, I do have proof.”

Alexis was taken aback by this statement. He just stared at Serge with a quizzical look on his face.

“Look, you said the formula that’s in the book is a way to validate the story, and I say the story is real. If we could verify that formula, then it’d prove I’m telling the truth. A theorem, you said, is something that proves truth, and I don’t know mathematics, but going by that, then they can tell the truth.”

Alexis reflected the explanation for a moment before saying “the problem is…I don’t know that kind of mathematics,” and his shoulders hung down in defeat “I would like to; I’m good at general mathematics, but I don’t.”

“All those papers your mother left,” Serge started to move up the stairs again, motioning Alex to do the same “none of them have anything relating to the formula?”

“I told you, only a few,” He said, following Serge “The others are directions and theories and chronologies. One was a grocery list.”

They passed Yolanda’s room and stopped by to let her know what had happened to Alex, then they continued up to the attic. It was a small room, the only one in the house that had wooden walls. In a corner there were Alexis’ mattress and drawer cabinet, on the other, the boxes and broken things pilled away. In the wall opposite to the mattress was the only window; it was wide, but partially covered by the adjacent building.
Alex walked over to the drawer and picked the book and note book, while Serge dragged a big box to use as a stool.

“Pull the small table with the missing leg too,” Alex asked, pointing to the spot the table would go to. Serge did him the favor, and as an extra measure, pulled another big box for Alex. The table was still able to stand on its own, but it would topple over if things were put on the wrong side.

“Hey, can I see the papers first?” Serge asked as he sat down. Alexis put the notebook on the table rather carelessly as he passed to the other side of the room. Serge had to rebalance the table and pick up the notebook to place it in his lap. He had barely started reading when a loud stomp besides him surprised him; Alexis had placed on the table an old, rusted cuckoo clock opposite to the side without the leg, to help keep balance. Serge got distracted with it, and leaned over to examine it; it was one of those clocks made by the Cuckoos in the far north-east. This one was sturdy, un-stylish, and incomplete, but it had the distinctive shape of a house, and a door on the top from where a wooden animal was supposed to come out every hour.
It wasn’t until Alexis cleared his throat rather loudly that Serge went back to the papers. They were, as Alexis had said, directions and chronologies that Serge supposed where supposed to lead to his father. There were some newspaper cutouts about history of events in certain cities. Serge could only recognize one place, and that was Ai Tojon, said to be the biggest city in the world. The cutouts that regarded that city mostly concerned ‘The Book Society’ and an organization that Serge had only heard about, ‘The Advent’. He merely separated the pieces of news for the moment, and went back to looking through the others.
Fifteen minutes later, he and Alexis had organized the papers by subject, and were left with an incredible number of three papers relevant to the formula, fact that left Alexis holding his head and gripping his hair in frustration.

“this can’t be all,” he said in disbelieve. There was obviously a substantial lack of information, and by the looks of it, it had been removed purposely, and there was only one person who could have done it “it’s like she wanted me to continue this, but did everything she could to stop me!” he was in the verge of banging his head against the table.

“I can’t see how she wanted you to continue,” Serge said, still staring at the papers.

“Well, there’s this too,” Alexis left his stupor slightly aside and stood up, went back to the drawer and withdrew the two big sheets of papers he had found in the box.

Serge looked up, and mildly annoyed he said “You know, it’d be a good idea if you kept your things in order and didn’t keep throwing new material in the table every now and then.”

“I’m sorry, I just remembered this two. This one,” he put the piece of paper with ‘and explanation of mathematics’ on the pile of papers that regarded the formula “now that I think about it, may help me understand the formula,” he said as he paced in front of the table, while Serge stared at him with a murderous intent. How could he had not mentioned it before? And the boy was still holding the other piece of paper which he hadn’t shown him. What would that be about.

“But I’m not sure how much I can understand alone.” Alexis continued “I’m gonna go over those three little pieces of …, but later. This one,” he finally held up the remaining sheet of paper “this one is about my father.”

Serge could have strangled him. He completely disregarded the second paper when he said “You know what? What those three- no, four pieces of paper tell me is that your mother didn’t see anything in the written part of the book, but in the numerical part.”

Alexis lowered the rolled up paper “Why would that be?”

“Because nobody can really understand the written part. You couldn’t, and I’m more than sure your mother couldn’t either. There were three references to the formula part, but there‘s nothing in this papers that refers to the written part.”

“Then how come you can?”

“I already told you, you just chose to not believe me.” Serge felt like he had won something. He was one step closer to proving he had said the truth. He stood up, leaning on the table “ The things I saw, the things I learned, the thing I met; thanks to them I-I can see that book with a different…with…in a way other people can’t. It is the only thing I’ve ever found that reminds me so much of that place. And it has to remind you of it for you to understand it.”

And then the table toppled over. Alexis quickly kneeled to pick up the book; Serge was slower in his reaction, but he also helped pick up papers. Neither of them said anything as they gathered their last half-hour work.

“So…how was that?” Alexis spoke first, when he stood up to lift the table.

“‘that’ what?” Serge picked up the clock; it had dented the floor.

“that place, where you, umm, lived?” He just stacked the unorganized papers and lay them on the table.

Serge sat on the box, still holding the clock. He stared absently at it and its broken details. The little door on top was open; the wooden animal had fallen off “It was… a big house, full of empty rooms, but some of them had things written on the walls, or had many clocks. The forest formed a perimeter around it, and,” he ran his fingers over the metallic frame, rust peeling off as he did “there was a small lake on the back of the house
“When I ran away, things were so much different from what I knew until then. The moon changed its shape, the trees lost their leaves…I had never seen rain before! It was the strangest thing to me. I was…I still feel like I am a stranger to this world.”

Alexis listened intently, still standing. He was doubtful, he had though that if he let Serge speak about his ‘experience’ with the Saint he’d sound like a madman that was just making things up. But this was genuine. For a young person, Serge had a constant tired and absent look on his face, specially noticeable now that he was telling his story.

“And why did you run away?” Alexis sat down at last.

“That…”but he stopped, as he remembered “no, that’s not something I like to remember.” He lifted his gaze from the clock, putting the object on the table to counter balance it.

About Saints there were as many legends and stories as fish in the sea, from as long as people could remember. These beings were painted as good or bad in equal measure; some were the center of horror stories, others were the makers of miracles. And it was said, if you set out to find one, and you did, they would grant any wish you desired, no matter the consequences.
Some stories of them were told as accounts of meeting, finding or living with them, but Alexis always thought those stories had been told by crazy old men around a campfire in the mountains, not in the middle of the day by a thirteen years old boy.

“How did it look? The Saint?” He asked without thinking, when the question suddenly popped up in his mind.

“Oh, they’re…the one I lived with was -or at least took on the form of- a little girl. She was beautiful, to tell you the truth…I could never stay mad at her for that reason. She was all white; her hair and her clothes. She didn’t resemble any species I know of. But I don’t really know that much,” he shrugged.

“Hey, you know enough to figure that out,” Alexis said, pointing to the book, which now lay in the middle of the table.

---

“This city,” Alexis held up one of the many newspaper cut-outs “was going to be the one we were going to go next.” Serge took the cut-out from Alexis and read it. It hadn’t been cut for the news in it, only for the large picture of a church-like building. Part of the headline read ‘Financial up-date on Depori’s new--’. From the surrounding of the building, Serge could see that city was far better off than the one they were now.

“Why did you stop here?” Serge asked, putting the paper on the ‘Cities’ pile. They had decided to organize the papers again, to have a clearer knowledge of what Moira had done and left undone, or what was incomplete. There were four main stacks: Cities, Man, Advent, and Misc., which was were the few things related to the book went.

“We had to stop here for a while, because we were running out of money. Depori is an expensive place, apparently. And very, very far away; it would have taken us two months to go there by foot! We were saving for the train tickets.”

“Oh, so you always traveled by foot?”

“Yeah,” Alexis was noting down the topics of the cut-outs as he spoke “sometimes we could afford a short train ride, but besides that, we walked or hitchhiked. When I was eleven, I wanted a car, which was just plain impossible for us to get; I even started saving up, but we ended using the money for train tickets.”

“You saved up? At age eleven?”

“Sure, with a face like this, who could resist giving me money?” he said sarcastically , but Serge’s ‘I don’t get it’ face made Alexis laugh instead “ But really, I’ve learning that if you look close enough, a lot of people need help, even from an eleven years old pigeon boy.”

Serge just nodded, thinking about it. He didn’t look close enough; he barely cared about people. “Hey,” he said, suddenly noticing something “You just laughed.” It wasn’t a comment, it was a statement, and he had just contradicted himself.

Alexis stopped writing “So?”

Serge shrugged, preferring not to mention it was the first time Alexis had laughed since he met him.

“And you? How did you end up in this city?” Alexis asked, stating to write once again.
“I said it already,” he paused, remembering that morning one month ago “Ah, no, you bolted when I did.
“I was traveling with a troupe of dancers; one day the show girl told me I should come see her uncle, that I’d be better here than in the group. Now I think they just wanted to get rid of me.” He sighed, putting a piece of paper in ‘The Advent’ pile.

“You probably had been sneaking around and they caught you.” Alexis said dryly. Serge decided to ignore him. “By the way, didn’t you want to go to the police about the guy’s house being robbed?”

“…I did. Yolanda accomp-”

“What, you’ve left this house?” Alexis was truly surprised about that. Serge had become like some kind of shadow in the house. Besides Yolanda and Millie -and now Alexis-, nobody really talked to him, and he didn’t talk to anybody.

“Yes. More than once, because lately I’ve been doing Yolanda’s shores.” he didn’t go very far away, and he almost didn’t take too much time; since he had no coat, or was lent more than two shirts at a time, he went and came as quickly as he could, and he always sat in front of the oven for a long while “Anyways, the police didn’t really seem too concerned about it.”

“Oh. Too bad.” Alexis wasn’t surprised; the nearest police station was bellow a living apartments compound anyways.