Anisoptera's Escape

The plains are black tonight beyond the edge of town. Sitting on the flat roof of the tower block Anis watches the last embers of the cloud bars fading, as day rolls over the horizon. He unfolds his legs and rises to his haunches, gibbous as the waxing moon.

Anis likes spending his days up here, observing the scything gulls and crows, the aircraft taking off and landing. The glistening of the reservoir. It is the only place where he can feel peace and joy. He looks over the edge and, sixteen floors down, a man backed against the railings bends steel wire into insect shapes for children under the streetlamp. It is his cue. Anis gets to his feet, checks the clasps on his dungarees and picks up a battered leather holdall. Time to take a walk.

First he must negotiate the stairwell, the walkways, the recesses, slipping by unnoticed. He is not good at this - a man of such ungainly bulk is prone to being seen. Before he’s taken three steps he’s barged to the wall by a young man hurtling to the roof before the fire-door swings to again. Perhaps he hasn’t seen him. Or perhaps he’s rushing up there to shout a warning: ‘Anis – look out, he’s on his way!’

Anis waits, presses his back into the wall and breathes in time with the warm air gusting through a vent in the bricks. Steam as a bathroom window creaks ajar. A girl twangs on the floss she’s pulling through her teeth.

He moves on, descending past the flat where the seamstresses work, plucking stray threads from their cloth; past the dancers lined up at their bar. He wishes he could watch and linger to absorb their grace, but he knows that is not possible. Water drips from a concrete beam, misses the neck of a green glass bottle and puddles on the floor.

Out in the street, Anis hurries from the estate, cocooned in his coat and careful to keep close to the buildings. Paving soon gives way to open ground and he can push his shoulders back and lift his face up to the night. The walk is not a long one, but he appreciates each pace of it: the scented drifts of mayflower, the scuttling life among the hedgerows, spits of evening rain upon his brow.

Anis’ preference is for freedom, not enforced seclusion – he has tried so many methods of escape. Once, he crossed the metal bridge above the ring-road and stood among the shattered hub caps and the dirty piles of snow with thumb outstretched. He waited there all day, until the light vanished into the grey of the verge and he could be seen no more. Not a single person stopped, slowed down, or even bibbed their horn.

Then there was the time he rowed a boat down the canal. He made the coracle himself, bending willow for the laths of the hull and hazel-wood for the weave. He even learnt to steer the craft in clear, straight lines. But soon he ran aground on a dam of soft drink cans, a traffic cone and matted clumps of straw blown from the park-keeper’s cuttings.

Still, undeterred, he had no choice but to make a bid for airborne freedom.

Anis reaches the door of the lock-up, takes out his key and rolls up the shuttered entrance, taking in a draught of grit and grease. He puts his holdall on the table and flicks the light-switch on. Overhead, brightly coloured stalactites hang from the curve of the roof. Anis takes down a blue china cup from the dresser and fixes himself some tea before setting to work on the finishing touches to his project. It has been a very long day.

Tomorrow has been chosen as the day of his escape. Well before the local residents start shovelling cornflakes in their mouths or spreading marmalade on toast, Anis will be gone from here.
His desire – no, his need – to flee had started with the hissing. Twins in matching sundresses swinging from the railings: they faced outwards, arms locked behind them, heels braced on the low wall. Convex grotesques.
‘Pssssstttt, hisssssssssssssss,’ said one.
‘Here comes the adder’s servant!’ said another.
‘Pssssstttt, hisssssssssssssss.’
‘Get him, get him, get him!’ they chanted.

He cannot recall a single daylight outing since that has not been soured by hisses.

His favourite part to work on is the cockpit – the thorax - weaving bright cavities that house the heart and hold the legs and wings together. It is delicate work, but Anis possesses a dexterity and patience that is startling. He has built a loom in the lock-up, strung with a sturdy warp and wefted with fine threads. The silks he has chosen are jewel coloured: emerald, garnet, sapphire, roseate pearl. Dazzling patterns emerge as he works the treadles in the quiet of the night and likes to imagine how life would be if things were different, can almost think about this place as home. Almost.

But then the mothers with their wagging fists and tongues flock back into his mind. They have accused him of poking and snatching the eyes of their daughters, of sewing their mouths and noses shut while they slept. It was even said he’d weigh your soul and sell it on for scrap. He never understood their taunts and leers, why they chose him as the object of their bile. He guessed the twins’ gibes got so out of hand they’d turned a rumour into fact. That people looked at him and didn’t feel surprise, with his bulbous, florid nose, his giant’s span. But Anis didn’t have the courage to fight back or to ask questions, and let himself be bullied into silence.

It is true that Anis didn’t always know success. There have been many failures in the way of his creations: legs that got up and walked off by themselves, eyes that shrank and failed at the light, wings that folded when they were meant to propel. His attempts to revise the blueprints were protracted, agonised over by the glare of a head-torch. Again and again he ran his diagnostics on the lift and drag, assessed dynamic pressure, accelerated all six degrees of freedom, but always time trials ground to a halt, test flights turned to wreckage. He looked to birds in flight for the answers to his problems, queried the fall of sycamore seeds for clues.

Anis almost gave up, but then the fathers began to take their turn, attaching rocks to each end of a rope and flinging it at his ankles as he passed. They dragged him to the ground, then set him free again. Afterwards, they allowed their sons their sport – chasing Anis with hooked poles, made sticky with birdlime. There was nothing he could do but press on with his escape, watch as hatred sunk its roots and flourished, firm as weeds in stones.

‘Pssssstttt, hisssssssssssssss.’

At last, one Tuesday afternoon, Anis found hope circling beneath the skylight on its own and saw that it was possible: the gold flashes of the wings, the majesty of flight. Even with his heft, he felt the lightness of these inventions and flung the shutters wide to celebrate. Then, a pass of grief as he watched them go their own way, darning air above the children on the path, who turned and squealed with glee.

Would that they weren’t blind to the humanity of their maker, to his gifts, to his capacity for wonder.

But they were. They are. And he must leave. Tonight’s no time for sentiment.

He readies the new fleet, one last frantic assembly of legs, wings, antennae, bodies, heads. Fixing, adjusting, finishing.

When he is done, he surveys his work then takes his battered holdall and packs the dragonflies in careful, tissued layers.

Sunrise and Anis sets off for the roof. He can afford to be less cautious in the mornings, deserted and still as the benches and the courtyards are at this time of day. He makes his way back up the stairwell, pushes through the fire-door and sets his bag down gently on the ground.

One by one, Anis plucks the hairs from his own head and lays them out. When he is ready he unclasps the holdall, reaches in and takes out a single dragonfly. He takes a hair, wraps it round, fastens it like a rein, then repeats the action until a thousand Skimmers, Hawkers, Chasers, Darters, Thorntails and Dropwings are harnessed, ready to take flight.

The distance is unusually clear today notes Anis as he takes a needless run-up to the edge. Still no sign of any souls below, only the electric thrum of a milk-cart on its rounds. His final checks completed, Anis wastes not a single minute more. Eagerly he flicks the reins, watches his fleet rise and takes one final leap of faith.