There was once a man on Cherry Street who grew wings.

At least, this is what Lyra Williams told everyone who asked, and later anyone who could listen. Until the day she died, small and white-haired in the sun-washed Victorian house on the corner of Cherry and 22nd, she told his story. Of the neighborhood children, she was the only one who had stayed, amongst the crime and the old biddies, and the smog that rolled over the single-peaked rooftops from the paint factories downtown; she was the last of the neighborhood when the eldest had gone, and the young couples and immigrant families and the smell of new paint and sawdust began to move in. There was something that bound Lyra to that street, that tilted her head expectantly (now perhaps entirely out of habit), to the west at the stroke of six o’clock every evening.

Some said she was waiting for her wings, too.

* * *

It was the same old story, Gen knew, as he sat by her that night. The same story Lyra had told him and his siblings when they were young, their friends and schoolmates and girlfriends and wives and children when they had all come to the house over the years. But there was something lugubrious about the dimming shadows that night, something in the waning sunlight streaming through her bedroom window; it caught the contours of her face, tracing the creases, and made Gen start at how tired she looked.

“You remember the story, Gen,” she whispered. The years had whittled her voice down to a soft rasp.

“Of course, Mom.”

“I want you to . . . I want you to remember it, Gen. So when I’m gone, you’ll know where I’ve went.”

“Mom, what are you talking about?”

She brought a small, steady hand to the edge of the bed sheets and grasped his fingers in hers.

“There was once, a man with wings,” she began.

* * *

When Lyra was six, her father suddenly left. It was strange, she could not remember how she’d known it: when she came home from school, her mother was crying uncontrollably at the kitchen table and her father’s hat, usually hung on the coat rack on the inside of the front door, was not there, and for some reason Lyra turned around and left. She mounted her bike and, not quite sure what she would do, decided to ride until the strange numb feeling inside her had worn away. She made it to the end of the block before hitting a rock that sent her flying onto the pavement. It was only half the pain of the skin scraped from her bare knee and elbow that made her cry, loud and without abandon on the sidewalk, where she had fallen, until the man who lived in the house behind her came out. He was tall, thin, solemn; he was relatively new to the block and kept mostly to himself, and yet unlike the new family that had moved in across the street from Lyra’s house, no one seemed to bother him. A long, curious looking scar ran from his temple to his chin. Lyra blinked, looking up at him through bleary eyes, and he offered to clean her cuts.

“You live down the street, don’t you?” His voice was like the yellowed pages of library books, dusty and subdued.

She nodded once.

“Maybe I should just take you home to your mama, I’m sure she’ll fix you up just fine. Is your mama home?”

At the mention of her mother, Lyra thought she would burst hysterically into tears again and instead lied, shaking her head no.

The scarred man scratched his head, straightened his back.

“Well you’re hurt and I can’t have a poor girl bleeding all over the street. Go ahead and come in, I’ll patch you up.”

And he turned into the gate and began to walk back up the steps into his house. Lyra sniffled and, slinking through the open gate, scrambled right up behind him.

The house was newly built, the wooden floors kept clean and polished, the cupboards and broad bookcases dust-free – but it was strangely and mostly empty. In the good-as-new cupboards and bookcases there was no silverware, no cups and pans, no thick-bound rustic novels or skinny paperbacks. Besides those, the rooms were nearly void of furniture, with the exception of one large armchair, a single, lonely looking bed, and a small, similarly empty desk. The man told Lyra to “go on and take a seat” in the armchair and he disappeared into another room. Lyra was too young to be scared of strangers and the man, scar and all, was not threatening.