Excerpts from
The Boy with the Silver Helmet
By Hanne Kvist
Jon's little sister had wings when she was
born.
Jon saw them himself.
Tiny bony wings with thin skin between
folded together and wrinkled like a bat's wings. They were black. Brownish
black and nubbly like the skin on chicken's feet.
His mother and father also saw the wings. They
didn't say anything. Jon's father stared at the wall with its shiny green
tiles. Jon's mother picked up his little sister and held her as though she were
a cat that might bite.
Then straight away she put her down in the
transparent box again.
Later, when Jon thought back on that day in the
hospital, it was the silence he remembered most.
He could remember his little sister's tiny
eyes, black as buttons, looking at him, and Mummy and Daddy who said not a
word.
It was no more than five months later that they
sold her.
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