The One Who Could Not Fly

by E G Stone

  The leader, a short-haired man with a long knife (“sword” they had called it—though no such thing existed in modern sylph society), said something curious to his companions. She’d only caught a few words. “Price…? An angel!” he crowed.

  “Angel?” Ravenna muttered to herself, testing out the word. The one holding her ropes gave them a tug.

  “Angel,” he repeated, pointing to her.

  Ravenna shook her head, biting back tears.

  “I’m not an angel,” she said. She had not heard that term before, but if ever sylphs had been these “angels,” she would have known. She was not what these humans thought. She just wanted to be let go.

  “… talks! Listen, it talks!” the lightest one grinned. The language they spoke seemed to suddenly be clearer, though Ravenna knew she was just grasping the translation better. Whatever language they spoke, it was a variant of her own. They had probably only diverged a few generations ago. That, too, made the pang in Ravenna’s stomach grow larger. The male prodded her with a foot. “Talk!”

  Ravenna said nothing more. She doubted that pleading her case would work. No story or history she had ever read indicated that humans were merciful. She turned her head away and wrapped her wings tighter; the feathers kept her dry from the ocean spray and hid her trembling. The humans grumbled and talked amongst themselves. Ravenna could pick up the familiar words, the lilt to their tongue that was almost like the one she spoke. But she did not want to hear. She did not want to know what sort of things they had planned for her.

  At least the other sylphs would never need know her suffering. At least they would not be bothered with her anymore. Maybe Desarra would stop worrying about Ravenna’s presence dragging her down. Maybe Tacitus would finally be able to devote all his time to his studies. She hoped he was not too inconvenienced by her loss.

  Tears continued to prick the corners of Ravenna’s eyes and she blinked them away. She took a breath through her nose and held it. “I am not weak,” Ravenna murmured to herself, quietly enough that the humans couldn’t hear. “I will not be weak. If not being able to fly did not break me, then these humans cannot break me. I will not cry. I will not beg. I will be strong.”

  She blinked away the last of the moisture and straightened as much as she could with her hands and feet hobbled. She lifted her head to peer over the side of the boat and, though she fought it, could not stop the knot of dread forming in her stomach at the sight that met her. They had reached the mainland. Surely, they could not have travelled so far that fast. But there it was, rising out of the water, like a terrible mockery of the cliffs of the Aerial City. Her home was far behind her.

  This place was nothing like Shinalea. There were pine trees, yes, but they were few and sparse. The ones that stood taller than a human or a sylph were scraggly and twisted. The ground, too, was not lush and green as it should have been. Instead, it was dry, dusty, rocky, pitted with pebbles and sharp points. Ravenna knew, as the boat scraped along the bottom of the shore, that she was headed into a land unlike anything she had ever experienced. This was a land of humans. This was a land of death.

  “Up,” her captor ordered, tugging on the ropes. Ravenna schooled her expression into a mask of calm and rose, unfurling her wings as she did so. There was barely ten feet of wingspan on her, but it was enough to make the humans gaze upon her with a mixture of awe and fear. Her back muscles ached from her earlier injuries, the rope chafed against the cut on her arm, and her ribs screamed in protest as Ravenna tried to take in a full breath. But she fought to hide the pain from her face. And she succeeded.

  “Come on, Angel,” the leader of the group said, stepping out of the boat, his leather boot splashing gracelessly in the water. Ravenna considered struggling again. But the sword at the human’s hip and the ropes around her limbs kept her from fighting. They did not stop her from standing straight and stepping out of the boat with as much dignity as she could muster, though.

  Her own leather slippers were not thick enough to keep the sharp rocks from biting into her feet. Ravenna stumbled up the beach, the wet sand turning quickly to dust that clung to everything it touched. She followed the others as they climbed up the beach and led her behind an outcropping of rock. And then she saw it.

  Face to face with a creature that looked like something out of a nightmare, it peered down at her from atop a long neck and face, four legs ending in shaped stones powerful enough to kill. Standing taller than Ravenna by a good seven inches, its long tail whipped through the air. Ravenna backed up, running into the human holding her ropes. He growled and shoved her forwards, towards the beast.

  “No, no,” Ravenna shook her head.

  The creature let out a high-pitched sound that echoed off the rocks, stamping its foot against the ground with a definitive click.

  Ravenna shied back again.

  Her captor laughed, the sound full and dangerous. He said something to the others, speaking so quickly that Ravenna could not understand anything. But he pointed to the beast and Ravenna, and the others laughed, too. Ravenna flared her wings, causing the beast to let out another terrible cry. Her captor let out a snarl and grabbed her wounded arm, brushing past her feathers roughly as he did so. Ravenna drew in a sharp breath.

  He pulled her to a wagon hitched to the back of the beast and shoved Ravenna inside. She fell forwards, barely managing to keep herself upright. Then the human slammed shut a door made of bars and Ravenna realised, too late, it was not a wagon. It was a cage. Bars rose up from the sides of the wooden platform, arching high overhead lashed together with thick rope. It looked crude, like tree branches strung together with twine, but Ravenna was not foolish enough to believe that. These humans would not have had a cage waiting if they hadn’t expected to put something in it. And they would not have done that if they didn’t expect it to hold.

  A word danced through Ravenna’s mind, one that she had read years ago in a tome falling apart with age. Slave. The buying and selling of sentient beings for the purpose of work. Owning another person. Owning their life.

  Ravenna’s resolve almost broke. She was not going to be strung up as some sort of entertainment, a freak of nature for having wings in a world were wings were impossible. She was not going to be delivered to the religious temples of a people who did not understand what she was. She was going to be sold. She was going to be a slave.

  The word sank into her mind, echoing like a cruel jibe from Crispin. It did not actually change her circumstances, the knowledge, but it began to hurt more than Ravenna could possibly imagine. She sank to her knees in the cage cart and allowed her wings to hang limp. Her eyes followed her captors, riding those terrible beasts like it was nothing. Beyond them, the land became even more desolate; the trees changed to scrub grass and the stone sculptures and boulders turned to flat, dusty rock. There was little to break up the monotony except her thoughts. And even those gave way to exhaustion.

  Despite her fear, her pain, Ravenna fell asleep, grasping at the only escape she could find.

  Ravenna woke to shouting and the undeniable reality that they had stopped moving. She sat up, stretching her stiff wings as much as she could. Sometime while she slept, the ropes around her hands and feet had been loosened. Ravenna tossed them off and shoved them away before crawling to the edge of the cage.

  The sun had set and now the only light came from three large bonfires. Ravenna spotted other wagon-cages, each full of people who were probably going to be slaves as well. There were a few humans picketed in lines with rusty steel chains. Her captors and a few new ones, including a short-haired female who looked like she would happily kill someone who got in her way, walked between the slaves, putting down buckets of water or tossing scraps of bread. The chained and caged humans lunged at the scraps.

  The female stopped in front of Ravenna’s cage. Ravenna instinctively shrank backward from the emptiness in her eyes. Twin scars ran across the female’s pink cheeks and there were at least three weapons attached to a worn leather b
elt. The female said nothing, and Ravenna did not break that silence. Silence was safer than interacting with this empty female. After a few moments, the female threw a large loaf of bread into the wagon. She also put a full water skin within Ravenna’s reach.

  Without another word, the female turned and strode away.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Ravenna jumped, clutching the water skin closer to her chest, her wings flaring out. She peered out of the bars of her cage and saw a line of picketed slaves not too far from her. The closest, an old female with leathery skin and hair whiter than the clouds, gnawed on a stale crust of bread, considerably smaller than Ravenna’s full loaf.

  “I never wanted to be,” Ravenna said slowly in what she thought was the proper human dialect, hoping the female understood. Her eyes widened, and Ravenna caught a glimpse of the brown colour in the light of the fire. Ravenna bit back a twinge of pain; they were close to the amber fire of the other sylphs in that light. But they were also nowhere near.

  “You can talk. Oh, Angel, you can talk!” the female crawled as close to Ravenna’s cage as the chains would allow, her hands reaching out reverently. Only the chain attached to a raw, chafed ankle stopped her from coming close enough to touch.

  “I..not know what…angel is,” Ravenna said, too overwhelmed to wonder why the old female was so much easier to understand than the captors.

  The female sketched her hand through the air, tracing the shape of Ravenna’s wings as they fluttered quietly at her side. “Angel,” she said again, full of awe. “A divine creature. A winged human with the power of the gods. An omen of prosperity and good fortune. A saviour.

  Ravenna tossed her head back, her dark curls jerking through the air. “I am not those. There’s…no such thing as gods.”

  “And what of The One Who Watches? The Old Ones who wander unseen under the stars? Are you not theirs?”

  Ravenna scowled. Sylphs had long ago done away with such nonsense. There was no such thing as gods, or divine beings who could influence the course of things with a thought. Religion was pointless and foolish, like trusting everything that you could control to someone else. Sylphs, especially Intellecti, followed fact. Knowledge. Logic. Sense.

  The old female shook her head, a disbelieving smile on her face. She gnawed on the remaining crust.

  Ravenna’s stomach growled and she took a bite of her own bread, chasing it down with water. She did not realise the female was watching her until Ravenna was almost halfway done with her loaf.

  “They feed you more than us,” the female said frankly. “You are so much more than the rest of us.”

  “I do not understand what is happening,” Ravenna replied, looking down at the remaining bread. The female human’s words made no sense. She was not more. She had never been more. She was just Ravenna. Unable to help herself escape from this living nightmare. A worthless sylph. She clutched at the bread, crumbs breaking off to fall against the wooden platform. Part of her wanted to finish it off; she hadn’t eaten since the day before. The other part wanted to give it to the female in the hopes she would explain what was happening. Maybe she could help Ravenna. “I do not know humans.”

  The female’s brows raised in surprise. “You don’t know humans? How?”

  Ravenna shook her head. “You were…myths? Stories?”

  This brought a laugh from the old female and she threw her head back, drawing the attention of other slaves and the captors who had chained them there. The female with the empty eyes took a step towards Ravenna’s cage from the bonfire where she was eating something. The leader of the group that had captured Ravenna shook his head and put an arm out to stop the female, gesturing lazily at the slaves all around. He was saying something, but he was too far away to hear. Whatever he said, though, worked. The female sneered and turned back to the fire, paying Ravenna no more mind.

  The old human female frowned, nodding her head at the captors. “Be careful or they’ll hurt you. People don’t pay as much for a slave that’s been beaten.”

  “I need to get out of here,” Ravenna breathed, understanding only half of the female’s words. The ones she did understand were the ones that set her feathers on edge.

  The female’s frown deepened.

  “You can’t,” she said. “Even if you managed to get free, you would have to fight her, by the fire. She used to be the Captain of an army that would stretch as far as the eye could see. Some say she’s Death incarnate.”

  Ravenna frowned. “Army? Captain?” They were somewhat familiar, maybe a word that she’d read in one of the ancient stories in a crumbling tome. But they had no such things on Shinalea.

  “A, ah, group of soldiers. Warriors. Fighters. They train together and follow the orders of their leaders, like the Captain. They go to battle against other armies and peoples. Sometimes for protection. Sometimes not,” the female explained.

  “We have no such things,” Ravenna said. No warriors. No fighters. There was no need for such things on Shinalea. The sylphs only carried daggers for hunting, and even then, the main hunters were the Lords of the Wind. The Intellecti knew of such things from the history books, but for many it was nothing more than a forgotten story.

  “Then I’m sorry you had to leave,” the female said. Ravenna opened her mouth to agree and closed it again. The sylphs might not have had armies or warriors, but they knew how to cause pain. Ravenna had been on the receiving end of that far too many times. Was she upset that she had been captured by slavers and taken to be sold? Yes. Was she sad she had to leave Shinalea? A twinge in the pit of Ravenna’s stomach said yes. So she listened.

  “Me, too,” Ravenna said. She looked down at the remainder of the bread in her lap before holding it out through the bars for the old human. To her surprise, the female shook her head.

  “No, my dear, you eat that. Your trials ahead will be much harder than mine,” the old female said, a slight smile touching the lines around her mouth.

  “I don’t understand,” Ravenna said.

  “No, you wouldn’t. But you must, I fear. The slave markets are a harsh and terrible place, where flesh is judged by people who don’t understand humanity. The strong are taken as labourers or fighters for the Pits. Some say they are the lucky ones. The old ones, like me, or the ones who are weaker and not so pretty, they are household slaves. Cooks. Housekeepers. Nurses. I will probably be taken on to clean for some minor household and be beaten when the days become too long for my old bones. But the pretty ones…the exotic ones. They are the most valuable. They are bought as bed warmers. Concubines. Decorations. It is a cruel life, one where you have no say over your body. Invasion. Humiliation. Childbearing, only to lose your child to slavery…” the female trailed off, a lone tear sliding down her weather-beaten face. She looked up at Ravenna, no smile able to hide the pity and pain the old female felt.

  Ravenna shrank, her breath catching, bringing spots to her eyes. She had not understood everything the female was saying, but what she had understood was clear enough. “I…I am to be one of those?”

  “If you were human, I would say yes. You are a beautiful specimen, my dear. But your wings…your being an angel, that may change things,” she said honestly.

  Ravenna pulled her wings closer, the feathers wilting while pressing together as tightly as they could. “You may be deemed too valuable to be a casual bed warmer. You may be sold to a wealthy family who wants children begot by an angel. You may even be too valuable for that. Hope, my dear, that you are too valuable for that.”

  Ravenna nodded. She looked down at the bread once more. There was no way she could stomach the thought of eating it. What she had already consumed was sitting like a stone in her belly. But she looked at the old female, bent and broken, who held such awe at the sight of her wings. Ravenna steeled herself and ate the bread, finishing off the water as well. She would need all her strength to escape.

  “Would you like me to tell you a story about angels?” the female asked gently as Ravenna l
eaned back against the bars of her cage. “About why you are so precious to us, even if you don’t say you are an angel.”

  Ravenna bit her lip and nodded. The woman smiled. And then her half-understood stories of benevolent beings who fought on the side of good with fiery swords and dragons at their behest lulled Ravenna to sleep.

  They travelled through the desert for three days. Ravenna was the only one of the slaves who had a wagon to herself. She figured it was because of her wings making her a “precious commodity.” The old human female occasionally managed to get close enough to Ravenna to whisper more stories about angels and dragons and wars long past. Ravenna’s knowledge of their language improved enough for her to try and catalogue the stories with what she knew from her own studies, but everything was different. The humans’ history was so separate from her own that she couldn’t distinguish any familiar parts. Except the Fire Wars. Everyone remembered the Fire Wars. At least that much was familiar in this horrid dead place.

  The third day brought the slave wagons to a crawl, the sun beating down on them so harshly that Ravenna had to shield herself with her wings. They ached from being held up so much, but at least her skin did not burn and blister like some of the other prisoners. The slavers rode around the caravan on their horses—Ravenna had learned the name of the beasts, as well as the fact that they were harmless and didn’t eat flesh. The female, the former Captain, bristled more often as the day wore on, her anger sharpening so that she took to beating the slaves who annoyed her.

  By midday, it became obvious what had her so tense.