Disclaimer: Melody and all characters copyright to Hemdale and Goodtimes Enterprises and written by Andrew Birkin and Alan Parker.
Author's Notes: There was no capacity to mention it in the story, but in the mini-universe of this fic, Ornshaw's condition is on the medical books as osteopterophytosis. It's rare, but recognized, and known to be genetic. Thought you might like to know that.
Ornshaw noticed them first around his last birthday. They were just bumps to start off with, as if his shoulder blades were getting a bit more prominent or something. Achy, and sort of tender. He'd keep feeling like there was a crick there all the time that he couldn't pop out or get comfortable. Then they got bigger, and ached more, and it's lucky he sleeps on his stomach anyway, because he couldn't lie on his back. He got Grandad to take him to the doctor's. Benign bone tumours, they reckoned, at first.
It was about that time that the skin at the top of his back, where the bumps were, dried up. Then it started peeling, big tracing paper leaves tearing away under your fingers. The flakes in his shirts blocked up the hose on the washing machine twice. One morning, he woke up to find blood on the sheets, and his pyjamas looking like he'd walked out of a Hammer horror. After he pulled or washed off all the amazing gore and crusts and membranes, Ornshaw spent about an hour just turning from side to side in front of the mirror, gawping, because they were half bald and had that ready-for-the-oven look like Grandad's pigeon chicks do when they hatch, but they were there, and they were so completely part of him.
Nowadays, he'd flipping kill for them to be like that again. That small; just lumps under his shirt. He used to be able to get shirts on without getting stuck in with a pair of scissors first.
There's those in this world who end up behind the counter at the off-license, and those who get to be special. Some people are First Division footballers or go on Top of the Pops. What does he get? Wings.
He used to wonder about the two bloody great scars on Grandad's back. Whenever he'd asked him, Grandad had said they were war wounds. The lying old sod. He had wings, that's why Ornshaw's got wings. Big, flappy wings, except that instead of being slate grey and smoke grey and smoke pink, most of the large feathers are brown, which sort of makes some sense. And he can't have them off 'til he's finished growing. It's something about it making his spine and shoulders not develop properly if they go hacking out chunks of bone and muscle now, but it all adds up to the same thing: he's got another seven or eight years of carting these around to look forward to.
Fan-bloody-tastic.
They don't half itch, as well. When he's got new feathers coming through, he spends most of the day either doing contortions trying to reach behind himself, or using every door frame he goes past as a scratching post. And for the two months before that, he's moulting all over the place. You could stuff a couple of pillows with what he leaves behind every day. Clouds of soft, dusty feathers; dark, stiff quills from the outside edges of his wings, and the small, downier ones that tickle the backs of his armpits. Melody had some for a cushion she's making in sewing, they make Stacey sneeze, and Fensham just calls him 'Budgie' these days, or did before Ornshaw did a half-Nelson on him. When they all had nits in the spring, he really did think he was going to go barmy. Most people were in and out of the nit lady's office in five minutes. It took Nora the bug explorer an hour and a half to go over Ornshaw. In the end, he just went home, ran a bath, dumped the whole bottle of nit shampoo in the water, and stayed there until Grandad banged on the door for the toilet.
Apart from the nits, it's not so bad this time of year when it's warm, but when it gets colder and rainier, he can't make all of his wings fold under his coat for love or money, and they get soggy on the way to and from school where they stick and bunch out and pong something horrible. He used to think Chambers's feet in PE were bad. When he gets home in the winter, he has to sit with his back to the gas fire for ages trying to dry them out. Playing football leaves him knackered because he gets so much drag, he doesn't even want to think about going down the baths, and it's touch and go every time he tries having a fag because of what a stray bit of hot ash might set off. It's put a right damper on Ornshaw's weekends.
He's really fed up. His wings droop. He bunks off school for a couple of days, just because he can't face it.
On the third day, Danny and Melody turn up at the front door at half-past nine. "We're all playing truant," Danny explains, as if you wouldn't have to be a berk not to guess. But it's still a nice thought.
"D'you want to go down to the park?" Melody asks.
"Give us a scratch first, will you?" Ornshaw says. She takes the left. Danny takes the right.
They find a quiet place under the trees and away from the path so people won't take the mick and lob stale bread at him. Danny's brought comics and his sketchbook. They lie on the grass and read Smash and Valiant and have a laugh at the problem pages in Melody's Jackies, then Danny draws while Melody picks burrs out of Ornshaw's feathers. He didn't think he'd ever like anybody messing around with his wings for too long at a time, but it's sort of relaxing, and anyway, he hasn't got a hope of reaching them himself. "I've never seen you move them yet," she says to him.
"I don't know if they do move," Danny says. "Do they?"
Ornshaw rolls his eyes. "What d'you think?" he says, "Grew them, didn't I? I didn't build them out of bloody Meccano," and he rolls his shoulders like he's found out how to do and stretches his wings; lets the feathers unfurl and open out. Danny acquires a massive smile. He's mad like that; goes for anything with a bit of drama. Probably why he wanted to run off and get married.
Melody tilts her head. "I really like them." She's mad too.
"I look like a blinking pigeon," Ornshaw says. When he pinches Danny's sketchbook to have a look at the drawing he's done of him and Melody, though, he doesn't look like a pigeon in it. He looks like an angel or something.
Melody goes off somewhere, and when she comes back, she's got double 99 cones for them all with her pocket money. They sit and eat them and drop bits of flake.
To be honest, things could be a lot worse, couldn't they?
When the sun moves round a bit, Ornshaw's folded wings make a nice umbrella. They nap underneath them, all tangled up in his wings and each other, while some of the comics blow away and the breeze ruffles his feathers, lifting them a few at a time, like the leaves when summer's still green.