A childhood of a boy lighter then air.

There once was a boy who was lighter than air.

Mind you, he wasn’t always, but he did begin his life floating up to the ceiling with his mother, his father, and all the nurses in attendance staring up at him in astonishment. Thankfully one of them had the sense to shut the window before the breeze could blow him through it, and they quickly fetched him down.

Now you might imagine that it was hard to raise a baby who was in danger of floating away, but there was a very easy solution. His mother and father simply tied a length of cord around one of his legs and the other end around their own wrist. They always held him tightly to them back in those days, but if for any reason the baby were to slip free he would simply bob up to the end of the line and bounce around like a balloon. The baby actually found his quite funny when it happened.

But his parents were terribly careful to keep their baby boy inside their house as much as they could. They were nervous about the cord snapping or slipping off him, and on the few occasions they had no choice but to take boy with them to the store others would stare at him and the cord around his leg. His parents felt so self-conscious about it they would keep their heads down and hurry home.

It wasn’t long after one of these times that the father thought of another idea to keep his son from floating away.

“Wife, one day our boy will want learn to walk like other children. He can’t do that up in the air, and besides, we would feel much better if he could just stay on the ground like normal boys. I will make a pair of shoes for him with lead beads in the heels. The wight will keep him earthbound.”

“But we’d be trusting his safety to a pair of laces!” said the boy’s mother. “He’ll slip out of his shoes and rise up into the sky and then we’ll never see him again.”

“It won’t only be shoes that keep him aground,” said the father. “I will make for him a jacket, and shirts, and pants all with wights sewn into every hem! Why, we’ll weigh him down so much he won’t be able to jump!”

Now the boy’s parents were determined to do this for their son, but it took a long time before they could manage it. For one thing their baby boy, who was always smiling and giggling as if he hadn’t a care in the world, detested wearing cloths of any kind. Socks were a particular annoyance of his, and the baby boots his father forced him on him were torturous. A child that young couldn’t understand why his parents did what they did. He just knew he didn’t like it, and that the only way he could be made to understand, was to cry.

It was at this point in the boy’s life that the weather took a strange turn for the worse. Loving mother’s notice things about their children, but even the most uninvolved parent would have noticed storms blew in whenever the boy cried. Up to that point the skies had been abnormally clear and beautiful, and after dark and wet. The mother decided to test if her son was the reason for the change or not.

On Monday she left her boy mostly undressed and babbling happily and free on the ceiling of their house. Together they enjoyed the sunshine, but the next day she took her son down and dressed him in his weighted clothes, and sure enough the baby cried all morning and for the rest of the day a storm thundered and boomed and bellowed.

The day after the mother let her son float around freely and again the skies were returned to being calm. But on Thursday he was dressed, and his parents were forced to shelter inside as a storm and their son raged. His mother was afraid and no longer sure what to do.

“This changes nothing,” said her husband. “All children throw tantrums, and all children must learn. If we do not keep him safe and teach him how we will lose him forever when he learns how to open the door or window! Will we keep him locked up home all his life because he cries? No. I will not do that to my son.”

And so the father forced his son to wear the weighted cloths, despite the never-ending storm that raged around the house as the boy learned to walk on his own two feet. The boy was not at all happy during that time, but all children grow tired of being upset, and the boy eventually got over it and gave walking upright some real effort until he learned the trick of it. As soon as he could walk he ran, and his parents had a hard time keeping up with him. When the boy ran he smiled, and when he smiled the storm outside lifted.

So years pasted and Sky, since that was what the baby boy’s parents named him, grew to be a child of ten. By that time Sky had learned how to walk, and run, and act in all other ways like any other child might; but if ever Sky took off his weighted clothes he would lift off from the ground and float around happily until one of his parents could pull him back down again.

Now despite his parent’s warnings and their worry to never float around outside, Sky could not help himself but be wonder about what he could do. He could not answer why he could float anymore then his parents could, but he was determined to learn how. He was not foolish enough to attempt anything outside, but for an hour each day after school he would run home and experiment before his mother returned from the market.

Sky began cautiously, taking off one of his shoes and hopping around on one foot. He could not fly or float, but he was close to weightlessness and found himself able to glide down the hallway without touching the ground. Then he took off his other shoe and found himself standing against the roof.

Day after day he did things like this, sometimes discarding his jacket, or socks, or belt. He tried every possible combination and learned how much wight were sewn into his cloths, and how much he needed to wear to keep him on the ground. He secretly watched his father make his new clothes when he grew too big for his old ones, and Sky thought he could adjust the wight in them himself later when no one was looking.

Sky wanted to wear just enough wight to keep him from flying away, but just little enough so that he could kick around and float like the men on the moon. Sky thought it would be enormous fun, as long as he didn’t fly up to the moon himself. His parents didn’t have enough money to send a rocket up to bring him back down, and he thought he’d be terribly lonely if no astronauts were up there to talk to.

Experimenting and working in secret this way took longer than Sky would have liked, he was generally impatient as most children are, but he knew the importance of what he did. His parents would have never allowed it if they had known, but one day when they were both busy doing something or other Sky crept out of the house wearing the weighted cloths he had made himself. He could hardly feel the ground beneath him. With a smile on his face, and one powerful kick to the ground, he ascended into the air.

It was many days before Sky came back down.