Under a War-Torn Sky by L.M. Elliott

rolled over and pushed the blanket around in an attempt to make it a better buffer between him and the wooden floor. “I will make it, you old buzzard. I’ll show you.”
    Henry longed for his uncomfortable cot back in England, even the stench of wet socks. His bunkmates would be checking his footlocker now. They’d be divvying up his long johns and extra T-shirts. He hoped someone would mail the letter he’d almost finished to Patsy. Maybe Sarge would. He should have left a note somewhere in his trunk asking that Patsy’s letters be sent back to her to keep, just in case, in case he didn’t…well, just in case it took him a while to get back.
    He saw Billy’s face, Paul’s, Jimmy’s. He had no idea how many of his crew had made it out of the plane. He’d seen Fred’s lifeless body as he and Dan struggled to the bomb bay, but no one else. “Please, Lord, let some of them have made it to the ground alive.”
    He couldn’t bear to think of Dan and pretty baby Colleen. How would Rose raise her alone?
    Henry’s leg was aquiver with pain. But the morphine was taking effect. He couldn’t hold his eyes open. Henry slid into sleep, seeing pilots who had made it back from their mission, gathered around the piano in the officers’ club, singing: “‘We are poor little lambs, who have lost our way.’”

Chapter Six
    Henry awoke to the sound of fluttering wings. He squinted against the brilliant morning light that flooded the bell tower. Hovering over him in the window directly above his head was a pair of huge, creamy white wings. They stretched out six feet from tip to tip, and were backlit by a halo of golden light.
    â€œAm I dead?” Henry rubbed his eyes.
    The wings fluttered once more, making a soft rustling sound. Henry propped himself up on his elbows to gaze at what had to be an angel. It had a long downy neck and great, black, soulful eyes. “If God will give me wings like that I won’t mind dying so much,” Henry whispered.
    â€œ Clack, ” the angel squawked at him.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    The angel swung his head all the way round to face Henry. “ Clack, click, click, clack .”
    Henry stared. The angel had a strange, long, orange nose. Henry rubbed his eyes again, then shaded them against the blinding shafts of light that spilled around the angel.
    The nose was a beak. The angel was a bird, a huge white bird.
    Laughing, Henry fell back onto his blanket. His laughter tripped into a sob and then into a strange, anxious wrenching.
    The trap door of the bell tower swung open. “Shhhh,” hissed the schoolteacher. “Are you delirious?”
    Henry shook his head and pointed to the window. But the bird had jumped off the sill to the roof immediately below.
    The teacher rushed to the window. “She is back! My stork. Bienvenue, ma belle! ” He turned to Henry. “This is a very good omen. Always this stork has migrated from Africa to nest on my school’s chimney. But for two years she and her mate have not come. I feared soldiers shot them or that they stayed away because they knew France had gone mad. Perhaps her coming foretells the beginning of the end for Hitler.”
    He eased himself down to the floor beside Henry. “We must take courage from her. Birds know when the season is turning.” He looked at Henry’s ankle. “We have a long way to travel. Do you have the strength?”
    Henry sat up. His leg throbbed. He was sick to his stomach and sweaty. He felt like crying. Did he have the strength? Not really. But Henry knew that wasn’t the right answer. He thought back to the time he’d been ploughing the fields by the creek and a water moccasin had bitten him, right above his high-top boot. If he hadn’t fought his fear and nausea and ridden the mule up to the farmhouse for help, he’d have died at fourteen from a snakebite. It’d been the one