Listen to the Quetzal Feather Soundtrack at playlist. com/node/23937898

Prologue

"You know, you don’t have to climb all the way to the top,” my mother reminded me as she checked my arms and legs for any new scratches. She brushed my black hair from my eyes and inspected me with a slight smile. “Hit your head?”

“Nope!” I grinned at her. She released a sigh laced with a laugh as she started to dust the sand off my clothes.

“Sometimes, I think I gave birth to a monkey instead of a little boy!”

“I’m not a monkey!”

“I think you are!” she swatted my butt after brushing the sand off. “See, your tail agrees with me.”

“I don’t have a tail!” I protested, even as I turned to see for myself.

She laughed and kissed the top of my head. “Come on Tarzan, it’s time for lunch.”

“Did you see how high I got?” I asked as we started back for the house.

“Yes, high enough to give your poor mother a heart attack.”

“I wasn’t scared.” I watched some poor, wispy clouds drag themselves across the sky overhead. I could see some birds up there too, and tried to squish them between my finger and thumb.

“Tobias!” I heard my mother cry, and she quickly grabbed me and pulled me out of the road. A rusty pick-up rattled past, coughing out smoke. “Watch where you’re going, honey!” I looked at the road as we walked on the dirt path next to it. There were no sidewalks, just gravel that gave away to some dirt before a large mass of weeds pretending to be a lawn took over. There was nothing interesting about the ground.

“What kind of birds are those?” I asked, looking back up.

My mother only spared a glance up before looking down again. “Crows.”

“It’s a pack of crows?”

“No, a group of crows is called a ‘murder’.”

I looked at her funny. “Why is it called that?”

“It just is. Sometimes things are called names that doesn't mean what it's supposed to. That’s a pigeon, though.”

I looked down at the ground, and saw what she was pointing at. A bird hopped along on the grass, one wing desperately flapping, and the other twitching once in a while.

“Why isn’t it flying?” I asked, confused, and looking back up at the birds in the sky.

“It probably got hit by a car.” Mother pulled me to her other side as she said that, so I walked on the side closer to the houses.

“If I were a bird, I wouldn’t live anywhere near people,” I said, watching the crows in the air. “I’d live up as high as I could.”

“And what about me?” she asked, pretending to sound sad.

“I could come down and see you whenever I wanted to,” I replied easily. “Because my wings would take me anywhere, even up to heaven.”

We started up the dirt walk to our little house. “But if you went to heaven, the Father would tell you that you weren’t supposed to be a bird,” my mother teased lightly. She let go of my hand to open the door. “And he’d send you back to mother earth as the boy you’re supposed to be.”

“But if I were a bird,” I replied, still watching the crows, “I could go as high as I wanted to, and you could look up and see me, and I could look down and see you. I could always see you.”

She shook her head with a smile. “Come on, Tobias, let’s get some lunch.”

I didn’t come immediately, still watching the birds. They started to drop from the sky behind some houses in the distance, and I wondered where they went. She’s calling for me, but her voice turns to a strange buzzing.

My hand hits the snooze button on my alarm clock before I groan, and roll over onto my back. I rub at my face, feeling the sweat gathering there, trapping some of my long hair against my neck and cheeks.

I can still see her. She’s standing there in the doorway to that little house that needs a paintjob at the edge of the dirt and gravel road, still calling.

Funny, I can’t remember her face now.