Alaskan Wings: A 16-Year-Old Pilot and the Secret in the Clouds
Most 16-year-olds slept in on Saturdays, scrolling through their phones, or lounged in the mall with friends. Harper didn’t. She woke before dawn, dressed in layers that smelled faintly of jet fuel and leather, and headed straight to the small hangar behind her house in Fairbanks. Her plane waited for her like an old friend—a tiny Cessna 172, paint chipped, engine humming quietly in anticipation.
Flying solo wasn’t new to Harper. She’d started lessons at twelve, memorizing every hill, river, and ridge of the Alaskan interior. At sixteen, she had her pilot’s license, a certificate she treated like a passport to another world. Most of her friends were just learning to drive. Harper delivered groceries, medicines, and letters to her grandmother in Koyukuk, a remote village of 350 souls, accessible only by air. No roads. No ferries. No shortcuts. Only the sky.
“Harper, aren’t you scared flying alone?” her school counselor asked once.
Harper’s blue eyes sparkled. “Scared of what? I’ve flown this route in every condition—rain, snow, even whiteout fog. I know the sky better than any street near my school.”
That morning, the sky seemed ordinary. Pale sunlight cut through the chill, the wind minimal. She took off smoothly, the small plane lifting like it had wings of its own. Fairbanks disappeared beneath a veil of morning mist. The radio crackled occasionally, but only static responded.
The first sign that something was off came near mid-flight. The instruments flickered—a sudden surge of electrical interference. Harper frowned, tapping switches, checking altimeter and compass. Everything seemed fine mechanically, yet the air around her felt… different. Heavy. Charged.
She shook it off. Koyukuk needed her, and she wasn’t about to turn back for something that didn’t exist.
Two hours into the flight, fog rolled in from the north, thick and sudden. One moment, the ground shimmered in the distance; the next, nothing. Instruments were her only guides. The engine purred steadily, but the silence beyond the plane pressed against her chest like ice.
Harper’s hands gripped the yoke. Her grandmother’s insulin was on board, carefully packed in a thermal bag. The memory of last winter—the night her grandmother’s oxygen tank had failed—flashed in her mind. Harper had flown through a snowstorm then, nearly crashing into the tree line to reach her in time. She wouldn’t hesitate again.
The plane shuddered as the fog thickened. Harper adjusted her altitude slightly, scanning the invisible horizon. Then, the radio sputtered to life with a voice she didn’t recognize:
“Harper… do you copy? You’re not alone.”
Her heartbeat jumped. Static followed. Then a whisper: “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Who is this?” she demanded, but the only response was the low hum of the engine. She shook her head, thinking it must be interference. Yet the voice had sounded human. Deliberate. Watching.
Fog hugged the plane like a living thing. Harper fought to focus on the instruments, her training kicking in automatically. The compass wavered strangely, swinging as if the plane itself hesitated. She shook off the unease, remembering the task at hand. Koyukuk. Her grandmother. She would not fail.
The village appeared as a shadow through the mist, houses barely visible, smoke curling weakly from chimneys. Harper descended carefully, visibility near zero. Landing would be a challenge even for seasoned pilots, but she had done this before.
The landing strip was empty, save for her grandmother waiting with a lantern, the dim light barely cutting through the fog. Harper’s tires kissed the runway, bouncing slightly over frost patches, before rolling to a complete stop. Relief flooded her. She was on the ground. Safe. Mission accomplished.
Her grandmother ran to her, worried. “Harper! You shouldn’t have flown in that fog. I—”
Harper cut her off, voice calm but firm. “You needed your insulin, Grandma. That’s all that mattered.”
Village elders, bundled against the cold, watched in awe. “That girl has the courage of a hundred pilots,” one muttered.
Harper smiled faintly, shrugging. “I’m just doing what I have to do.”
For a moment, all seemed normal. Harper helped her grandmother carry the supplies inside. She unpacked the thermal bag, checked the insulin, and made sure everything was safe. But then something unusual caught her eye.
One of the elder men, Mr. Anvik, had approached the plane’s tail, pointing at a faint outline in the frost. “Look,” he said, voice trembling. “Something was… following you.”
Harper’s stomach tightened. “Following me? How?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something moved in the fog, near your plane, faster than anything human. By the time we lit lanterns, it disappeared.”
Her heart rate quickened. She had noticed nothing unusual in the air, no turbulence or wind shifts. Yet something had been there, silent, almost… intelligent.
Later that evening, Harper sat by the window, staring at the snow-dusted horizon. The village was quiet, children asleep, dogs curled near fires. But she couldn’t shake the memory of that voice over the radio. You’re not alone.
Night deepened. Harper felt a strange pull, a whisper in her mind she didn’t recognize. Something in the fog wasn’t just a shadow—it had intent. It seemed to know her flight patterns, her habits. It had waited for her, even while she trained and flew, oblivious.
The next morning, Harper checked her plane, meticulously inspecting every panel and wire. Nothing was wrong mechanically. And yet, when she looked out over the frozen runway, she noticed tracks in the snow—too large, too regular to be an animal. They seemed… purposeful, leading toward the forest but vanishing before reaching it.
A sense of urgency gnawed at her. Flying had always been about freedom, about responsibility, about reaching her grandmother. But now, the sky no longer felt like hers. It felt watched. Haunted.
Harper’s instincts screamed at her to fly again, to follow the tracks, to confront whatever was out there. She didn’t tell anyone. Not her grandmother. Not the village. Secrets in Koyukuk were hard to keep, but this one had to remain hers.
The following weekend, Harper prepped her plane again. The fog had rolled back in, thicker than before. Instruments flickered oddly at the start, and the radio buzzed—silent for hours, until a single, chilling word cut through the static:
“Harper…”
The voice was closer this time. Clear. Real. Not static. Not a prank. Something was waiting for her in the sky, and it wasn’t going to let her complete another routine delivery. Harper gritted her teeth, the hum of the engine echoing in her chest.
She glanced at the instruments. Everything seemed normal, yet the compass spun wildly. The horizon blurred, and the shadow of the forest below seemed darker than it should be. Something about the air had changed, charged with a tension Harper had never felt.
She swallowed hard, gripping the yoke. “Okay,” she whispered to herself, “let’s see what you are.”
As the plane lifted into the fog, the engine thrummed louder. Harper felt the presence again—a whisper against the cabin, a weight in the sky beside her. And then, without warning, the radio exploded with a burst of static, followed by a second voice, urgent and panicked:
“Harper! You have to turn back! Now!”
Harper froze, scanning the instruments. There was no one else in the sky. Her training told her to trust her instincts. And her instincts screamed—this was bigger than any flight she’d ever taken.
Somewhere, hidden in the fog, something was moving faster than her plane, waiting for her next decision. Harper tightened her grip. The wind screamed. The horizon dissolved. And then, the world went silent.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
