Skyward

• A poetic tale of childhood dreams colliding with a world of manipulation and fanaticism.

From a young age, Aron was captivated by the skies. He would often lie atop the hill, gazing as herons circled overhead. He envied their wings, their freedom—so light, so boundless, so unburdened by the earth below. Like other children in his village, he was eventually initiated into the art of flying kites. Yet, while the others’ kites blazed with riotous colors, his was pure white—a choice he made unconsciously, as if in reverence to the majestic clouds above. Each glance upward reminded him of his own smallness, and just as a single grain of sand is to a vast desert, Aron longed to be nothing more than a speck of dust carried on the wind.

The act of flying kites, however, offered him little satisfaction. If anything, it underscored his yearning for true flight. The taut string in his hands tethered the kite to the earth, a constant reminder of its limitations. Though Aron’s kite soared higher and steadier than any other in the region, one day he simply let go of the string. The wind carried his white kite over the mountain and far beyond, to places unseen. Aron never saw it fall, and that filled him with quiet joy.

On the sun-scorched peak of the hill, in the hours when the searing rays had drained the world of its vivid hues, he dreamed of learning to fly himself. Yet as the years passed, reason tightened its grip on him, whispering ever more insistently that such a thing could never be. The war that loomed on the horizon further muddied his thoughts, and the dreams of his childhood faded beneath the heavy dust of fear and uncertainty.

One day, Aron was visited by a childhood friend he hadn’t seen in years. The man, once dear to him, knew Aron’s dreams well. He spoke to Aron at length about the skies, about purpose, about destiny. By the end of his monologue, he fastened a belt of dynamite around Aron’s waist. “With this,” he assured him, “you will soar straight to the heavens. Surely, a place among the stars awaits you. Your life will have meaning.”

Aron wasn’t convinced, but his trust in his friend—this man who had long since left their hilltop home for the cities, who must surely know more of the world than Aron could ever grasp—won out. He strapped on the belt and followed the path laid out for him.

When he exploded, it was as though a bag of confetti had burst open—only instead of glittering paper fragments, the air was filled with shards of words. They were fragments of sermons, of phrases laden with meaning. In the final, fleeting moment of consciousness before he was scattered to the winds, Aron realized the enormity of his mistake. One does not reach the heavens strapped to a rocket or bound by the force of some infernal propulsion—this much is known.

Yet before he disintegrated completely, he managed to conjure the image of his white kite. He imagined it never fell, that it still danced on unseen currents, soaring forever. It was with that vision in his mind that Aron departed.