the marigold field

You see, Santiago’s legs have been gone for many years. It all happened so long ago, really. Some days he remembers his legs, the surety of walking and running and feeling the sand of the mesa between his piggly-wigglies. But for the most part he is content with his legless-ness. Santiago can vividly remember his last day of having legs, and the incident lives fresh in his mind as a desert rose. 

Years ago, when the mesa was the color of copper and melted butter at sunset on one particular summer evening, Santiago was determined to be the first man to fly through the sky. But then the incident occurred – the one that would lead to him tragically losing his legs, you see. The incident had nothing at all to do with the design of his detachable eagle wings, which had been hand-welded and soldered in his mesa laboratory, and absolutely everything to do with the marigold field below the mesa. His artificial wings had impeccably passed every trial run and experiment over the last half year, and he was entirely confident in his engineering. Oh, how the wind tasted fragrant on his tongue, how the world below him seemed so insignificant compared to the vastness of sunset breaking across the endless desert sky. Flight suited Santiago, as he had always dreamed. Until, as he rhythmically flapped his wing-machinery in the air, he glanced down into the sea of orange and yellow flowers of the marigold field and saw a naked girl with peony-pink skin and long white hair standing among the blossoms. A set of grand, blue wings grew from her back. 

The girl waved at Santiago and Santiago quite forgot where he was at in the present moment, flying as Icarus and all. His wings stilled in the air as he stared at the winged-girl. Her long, graceful feathers grazed the heads of the marigolds. A beat passed that was too long for Santiago to maintain his momentum in the air. Warning alarms echoed from the audio chambers within his detachable eagle wings, and Santiago had only moments to unclip the wings from his arms and brace himself into a tuck-and-roll before he crashed into the marigold field, screaming.

His wings dropped into the earth and burst into a fray of sparks among the flowers. Santiago lay with his face in the dirt for several long moments, registering that, despite his well-timed tuck-and-roll, he had landed a bit too hard on his knees, and splitting pain radiated from both of his shins. He didn’t dare to look at how mangled his limbs had become.

“Fish candlestick how pencil do you?” came a voice above Santiago’s prostrate form in the marigolds. “Honeybee popsicle! And townhouse?” 

The voice was quite clear and melodic, endearingly so – but Santiago wondered at the string of nonsensical words spoken by the voice.

He lifted his head and saw the naked, winged-girl crouched in the flowers before him. Her long hair touched his eyelashes, and her pink hands reached out to fuss over him. The girl’s enormous blue wings were unfurled behind her, fanning cool air into Santiago’s face. Santiago realized his mouth was filled with marigold blossoms. He spit them out accordingly and the girl laughed at him musically as she declared, “Pumpernickel tophat my mother cried seashell!”

Pops and sizzles came from Santiago’s ruined eagle wings several feet away from him. The sun was setting fast, and a burning red sky stretched over the warmth of the marigold field. Without the functionality of his radio transmitter on the detachable eagle wings, Santiago was left entirely abandoned in the field with no way to reach his team back at his laboratory on the mesa.You see, Santiago was quite immobile, defenseless, and utterly without help – but his Papi had taught him long ago that if you were in a bind, and you still had the means to control your tongue, that there was no reason not to use speech to comfort yourself, so Santiago spoke every curse and admonition he knew as the hellfire pain in his legs blazed.

The winged-girl blinked at Santiago, her white lashes framing eyes as red as the mesa. You see, even though Santiago was in agonizing pain among the marigolds, he was entirely bewitched by the winged-girl and was beginning to think she was some type of desert angel.

“Damn chocolate shoelace my damn legs,” said the winged-girl, before she parroted every profanity Santiago had just spoken back at him. Santiago started to curse himself again for offering the vixen new vocabulary, but stopped himself before he could repeat his same mistake.

“Terribly sorry about all this,” said Santiago, “but it would seem both of my legs are broken, I am without a radio to contact help, and the nearest town is at least fifteen miles away from this marigold field. I seem to be in a pickle, mi amor.”

“Terribly broken, I am the nearest pickle, mi amor,” said the winged-girl. She pulled a marigold blossom out of his hair. “Fifteen marigold! I am a radio.”

“I have a sneaking suspicion that you are not a radio,” said Santiago. He glanced at her, remembered her nakedness, and averted his eyes, because Santiago was, if anything, a gentleman – but his gaze slid back to her velvet wings, helplessly drawn to the sight of them. “But you’re definitely something, aren’t you?”

The winged-girl vigorously nodded her head and held her arms out to Santiago, asking, “Fly?”

Santiago didn’t know what to say or think. Her speech up until this point had made no coherent sense. He tried in vain to move his legs, but the pain was whitening behind his eyelids. You see, Santiago had no other options as far as he could tell, so he let the winged-girl scoop him into his arms. She lifted him effortlessly off the ground. He wasn’t even that heavy, really. And how he smelled of pine soap and motor oil – I will never forget that smell as I held him. I leapt into the air with Santiago in my arms, my wings beating behind me. The carnelian petals of marigolds whirled around us as we ascended and took flight across the bleeding desert sky. One day I shall tell you how I came to be among the marigolds, and how I spent many years before Santiago watching the travelers cross the mesa as I flew through the sky, tasting their strange words on my tongue when I was lonely. But that is a story for another day. You see, mi hija, this is the story of how your papi Santiago lost his legs, yes, since you keep asking, but it is also the story of how the two of us met – your papi, the flying boy; and me, your mamá, Santiago’s desert angel. And our meeting had nothing to do with the silly metal wings your Papi had designed, but everything to do with the way the wind and the sun brought the two of us together to those swaying petals and the velvet warmth of the marigold field.