A Stairway of Clouds
A short story by Madeline C. Lanshe
Ever since she was a small girl, Angeliki had
wanted, more than beauty, more than strength, more than comfort or life itself, a pegasus. Though she’d never stopped to examine her obsession with the majestic sky horses, it could be suspected that it had something to do with the fact that her father was Icarus. Not only had she seen him soar high above, while both her feet were tethered unfairly to the ground, but he, too, had been possessed. Possessed by his ambition, a need to go further than any had before, and a blazing, awesome sun that would one day spell his doom. While living, Icarus was rarely there with Angeliki, too preoccupied with pushing his body to new heights. But the rare moments his feet stayed on the earth, he’d take her to a hidden valley, tucked between rising mountains that seemed to grow taller each year, and there they’d watch the pegasi frolic in the sky above them. “I want to ride on the back of a pegasus, just like Bellerophon,” Angeliki would say each time. “Of course, my daughter,” Icarus would respond. “If you can reach one, you may have a pegasus.” “But I have no wings,” Angeliki would complain. “And you never will,” Icarus would say. “When you want something badly enough, it is like 29
a fire burning you from the inside of your heart, out. Nothing will stop you from reaching it.” Angeliki never noticed how he gazed at the sun, not the pegasi, as he said this. Her own eyes were fixed on a black foal with the midnight-blue mane. Her favorite. Some dreams become smaller as you age, fading into the lost recesses of your mind, and some grow even faster than you, exploding forth, unable to be contained. The latter was the case for Angeliki. By the time she became a woman, her dream had outgrown her body. Sometimes, she did not even feel intact, and she released her desire into all she did. She read everything there was to read about pegasi, from legends and myths to books on anatomy and breeding, and when she had consumed the knowledge thrice over, she wrote her own stories. Songs she sang while bathing, walking, cooking, cleaning. The walls of the home Icarus had left for her were covered with paintings of the winged horses, as were the floors and ceilings. She was rarely there to see them. When she was not lying on her back in the hidden valley, she was traveling on her feet in search of bards and prophetesses, anyone who could provide her with a way to reach the creatures that lived in the clouds.
