Maricela had bird bones.
Her father said, “Look at her go. She landed on the Johnson’s roof, up there by the wind sock.”
And she was only three. Maricela’s mother had to make Maricela’s clothes by hand. She stepped out of all her shoes. On the up side, no one had to worry about kites getting stuck in trees, and so, Maricela was invited to all the parties.
Upon graduation, she was recruited by the Army to fly into enemy territory for reconnaissance. She flew deep into the desert, recorded enemy positions. She returned with detailed reports, after which whole hosts of the enemy were annihilated.
“You’re indispensable,” the General told her. “Here’s yet another medal. Without you we’d have lost hundreds of men.”
“I refuse to follow your orders any longer,” Maricela said and flew out the window.
She hid in a truck-load of straw. She slipped through search lights, which striped the sky in vain for news of Maricela. She painted herself green and blended into the new cut grass.
“Such a weapon can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands,” the General told the President, who agreed. “Unfortunately,” the President said, “Maricela must be found. Or she must be assassinated, for I can’t think of a prison that will be able to hold her.”
“She’s my only child,” Maricela’s father told the General.
“I’m sorry,” said the General, “but this is a matter of national concern.”
“Fuck you,” the father said.
Maricela weighed in at 40 pounds yet had grown to a height of six feet five inches. In a land across the ocean, she lit on a stone and stood and the people there came and bowed to her, thinking her an angel, for at certain times of the day, when the light was at its thinnest margins, Maricela would disappear then reappear then disappear again, appearing again at the edge of a bed of dying embers in the islanders’ village with tears in her eyes. They called her the weeping bird.
“She’s really the devil,” said the Storyteller. He was a thin man also, stubborn and jealous. The Chief told him to watch his words.
“She an angel,” the Chief said.
“We shall see,” the Storyteller hissed, hatching plots, and as a plot hatcher he could thinking months ahead of the Chief, who had to contend with the day to day of his peoples’ lives. His people depended on cash crops, soy and beans.
One evening on a day Maricela guided hunters to hidden prey, the Storyteller burned all the soy and bean plants. The villagers brought water but to suppress such flames would have required several fire trucks, which the villagers had yet to invent.
“Our beans have never burned,” the Storyteller told the Chief. “This is what your angel has brought, starvation to the lot of us.”
“Bring her,” the Chief said.
The hunters returned with enough game to feed an army. The villagers cheered them; they cheered Maricela; the children sucked in their stomachs to pretend thinness and danced.
Maricela was called before the Chief but when the Chief saw the amount of meat Maricela and the hunters had brought, he began his own dance and hailed Maricela not just as an angel but as the queen of the angels.
The Storyteller had had enough. He found Marcela’s cell phone, which she’d forgotten about, and pressed speed dial. He didn’t know what he was doing. Her father answered the phone. “Maricela, ¿Dónde estás?”
“We have her,” said the General amidst his listening apparatus and his lieutenants.
Meanwhile, across the ocean: “Our crops are burned, the Storyteller hates you, but you’re a godsend. Look at all this meat,” the Chief said, breaking open a jug of wine.
“Do you have a son or a daughter I could marry?” Maricela asked the Chief.
“A son and a daughter,” the Chief said. “You can marry them both.”
The General spoke to an assembly of officers. He said, “We’ve traced Maricela to an island of primatives. We’re going to blow that island to hell. It’s a matter of security, gentlemen. I’ve dispatched a good portion of the fleet across the ocean.”
Tune in next week for another episode of Weeping Bird: Will Maricela escape? Will the General’s plan succeed? Will the Storyteller find his revenge? Will the enemy, who might also have been listening in, destroy the fleet and kidnap Maricela for their own dubious ends? Will the Chief’s son and daughter accept Marcela’s hand in marriage? Will an advanced race of aliens swoop down from the sky or materialize out of the aether and pronounce themselves kings of the universe?
