“I can fly but have no wings

I can cry, but I have no eyes 

Wherever I go, darkness follows me. 

What am I?”

I shut my eyes, breath coming fast before me as the air turned it white, making crystals of cold dance inside the puff of air.

What am I?

An impossible riddle.

Who was anyone?

“What am I?”

I opened my eyes to stare into the wooden eyes of a long discarded fortune telling machine. “I…”

The eyes didn’t blink. I felt the sudden urge to cover them with my hands.

“How many guesses do I get?” I whispered, the sudden stirring of my voice eliciting a sharp gust of wind.

No answer. Just a question, “What am I?”

Who was speaking? The rotting wooden mouth was shut.

I tried to turn, to look around, but I was stiff. Frozen in place. 

“I can fly but have no wings

I can cry, but I have no eyes 

Wherever I go, darkness follows me. 

What am I?”

“I don’t know.” I inhaled sharply, heart racing faster with each second I thought the riddle over. “I don’t understand.”

The fortune teller’s face, masked in red and gold from the broken bulbs of light, seemed to darken in disappointment.

I was losing the game. But what was the game?

My breath, already crystallized before me, seemed to freeze entirely. I choked on ice, trying to think, think, think. 

THINK!

But my vision was going black, my heart was slowing, the smile on the fortune teller’s face was dimming slowly.

Whatever game we were playing, I was losing.

“Wait!” I gasped, pressing a hand flat against the glass encasing him.

The wind seemed to still, and my breath finally returned. One more chance.

One last chance.

“I can fly but have no wings

I can cry, but I have no eyes 

Wherever I go, darkness follows me. 

What am I?”

No wings, but can fly. Not a bird. Can cry but can’t see. Not a human. Darkness follows it.

I felt my chest constrict in warning. Quickly.

What could cry and fly without wings or eyes?

“Is it the sky? It cries with rain, and lives in the sky. Darkness is the night. Right?”

My voice was so quiet, but with the deafening silence, it seemed to pierce through the night.

“Wrong.”

I felt my lungs tighten again and this time the cord around it didn’t let go. With a piercing whine in my ears, I fell to the gray earth, heart rate slowing.

As my head hit the dirt, I saw the fortune teller’s lights darken; the smile seeming to widen.

“What am I?”