Falcon Storm Song
By A.C. Koch
1. A FALCON
A driven woman—city council member, single mother—who wears an eye mask to sleep. Her brain needs it, a hood of night to dampen the world to just the way it sounds in darkness, everything holding its breath.
Or a man who has climbed to the top of a mountain, heart fluttering like a hummingbird, sweaty in his North Face fleece as icy winds cut, and here he's arrived as far as his legs will take him—a rocky dome, 14,000 feet above sea level—and yet he wants to keep going. Wind as escape machinery. Extends his arms just to see what it feels like.
Or: another man in a grassy field, still forty meters from a stand of trees but aware of a prickling across his skin. His body knows it before he does: a drone, somewhere above. Fixed wing, remotely piloted. Crouching low, he makes double-time, quick-stepping through the grasses which part and sway at his passage. And even as the trees draw near, he feels the predator's eye fix on him. Mark him with a laser pinpoint. The mosquitoey buzz of it, ready to strike like lightning.
2. A STORM
A placid lover who never grows cross. Agreeable to all suggestions, a smile for every moment, even as the jaw tenses and the eyes gather darkness.
Or dirt dry roads, a river of sand, shadows etched on cracked ground beneath palm trees. A city of canyons, the burr of traffic, heat of engines, exhaust, low haze over rooftops, hot breath of evening rising from the river, and no relief coming, not a drop from the sky.
Or even: stockinged feet crossing carpet, shuffling-shuffling, with one outstretched finger reaching for the brass doorknob.
3. A GREAT SONG
A musician stranded on a desert island. A guitar washes ashore, without strings.
Or a couple dancing in an empty theatre, not a single velvet seat occupied as the pair moves through their pas de deux with internalized rhythm, hitting their marks with the ease of water flowing down a creek, not a sound but the sliding of their slippers, an exhale, a sigh. No one watching but the man in the rafters aiming the spotlight down. Steering the light's beam to track and follow their motions. His foot tapping on the catwalk to an unheard beat.
Or especially: a woman onstage, karaoke night, her friends have pushed her up here to "finally have some fun, for chrissakes!" And now the song is playing, something '80s and peppy, but that's a distant buzz in her ear because what she really hears is something else, a litany of things she should have said, should have done, should have known, and these things wash over her in synch with the throbbing beats, and she lets go. Mic to lips, she sings her own words, heedless of melody. They come out in a flow that overruns the tune. A midnight blue veil thrown over a glittering confection. Confession. Her friends astonished, faces falling. Even the unimpressible regulars at the bar, swiveling on their stools to watch.
A bolt of lightning that arrives, kinetic, and vanishes more quickly than a hummingbird's blink, its work done long before the thunder ever cracks.
About the Author
A.C. Koch is a teacher, writer and musician whose work has been published in Analog, Gulf Coast, Split/Lip, Five South and forthcoming in Fantasy & Science Fiction. After some years living and working overseas (France, South Korea, Mexico), Koch resides in Denver, Colorado, working with language learners and writing film reviews for Spectrum Culture. He recently completed the Regis Mile High MFA program and is querying a novel-in-stories, Ask the Moon.
