People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  A fresh wind blew into her face from the depths of the Barranca, bringing the heated-stone smell of the great canyon. The black and amber rocked slightly beneath her, breasting the current of air that swirled about them both.

  She felt lightheaded with the sensation of it. She found herself laughing aloud like a child while her body quivered in a mixture of fear and wild joy. The thrum that danced through her was not the mechanical vibration of engines but the pulse of life that powered flight.

  The flier turned its head so that one compound eye shimmered at her. The droning sound of the wings changed. The ground began to slip backwards beneath her as the aronan began slow forward flight, still half-hovering to maintain altitude. It drew up its legs, folding them into its body.

  Below stood Imiya with arms folded and a patient expression on his face. He looked small. High in the air, with nothing close with which to compare her size, Kesbe felt she too had shrunk to such pixie proportions that she could ride a dragonfly. The black and amber hovered in very much the manner of that insect, keeping its head level while tilting its body and wings to compensate for shifting air currents.

  Gradually the aronan gathered speed until it was whirring along the mesa, leaving Imiya and Haewi behind. At one point, the character of its wingbeat changed. The teeth-jarring vibration died out as the flier’s movement changed from forward hover to full forward flight. She heard only a silken rustle of wings against air.

  The world seemed to open around Kesbe as it never had in an airplane. On the aronan, she became part of the sky.

  She glanced down to see she was rapidly approaching the edge of the Pai mesa. Soaring beyond it wouldn’t dismay the black and amber but she was not yet ready to face the dizzying abyss, at least not without a seatbelt. She felt a pang of regret when she realized she would have to come down, then a surge of panic when she recalled that she didn’t know how.

  She looked back. Imiya was mounting Haewi to give chase. They both looked tiny against the long dusty sweep of the mesatop.

  Serves me right for trying to solo before I was ready, Kesbe thought. Damn! What happened to my discipline? You can bet I’d never try such a stunt in Gooney Berg!

  The mesa’s edge approached. Kesbe tried to catch the aronan’s attention by waving one hand near its compound eye. She pointed emphatically. Turn! To her astonishment and relief, it worked. The black and amber wheeled around in a one-eighty, one wing dipping in a bank that grew steeper as the creature tightened its turn. Alarmed by the flier’s bank angle, Kesbe leaned far to the opposite side, praying that the creature would soon level out. Her inboard foot slipped. Her leg dangled over nothingness. Sweat broke from her forehead as she felt herself slide.

  In a nightmarish instant she tumbled from the aronan. Her mind made an insane snapshot of ground rushing up at her, framed in the fingers of her outstretched hand.

  A thunderous roar boomed over Kesbe. She glimpsed a flash of black and amber wings above her, then below her. Something spiny slammed in behind her knees and gave a yank that threatened to separate her backbone from her pelvis. Her hair fell across her face. Her hands clawed uselessly at the rushing air.

  She felt herself dangling upside down from the forelimbs of the aronan, hanging by her knees. The flier completed its turn and glided down. Kesbe shielded her face against the onrushing ground, sure that she would be dropped headfirst.

  The flier, however, made the last part of the descent in a hover that set her down gently. Her legs wouldn’t even pretend to operate, so it laid her down on her front just as Imiya swept in on Haewi. She didn’t care about his opinion of the situation, all she wanted was to lie and let her adrenaline shockwave subside.

  I sit beside the foolish woman as she lies on the ground. She has only the sickness of fear it will soon pass. I have seen the same thing in the younger children of my village after they have taken a first fall from their flier. I felt it myself before I gained full trust in my Wind Laughing.

  I no longer believe in the woman as a spirit. Only people wet themselves in the sickness of fear. No, she is not the kachina I thought her to be, nor is she of the Pai Yinaye. If she is anything, she is the wild rohoni, the three-legged coyote of ancient tales who is both mad and wise. I have seen her madness. I have yet to see her wisdom.

  She sits up. She gropes for water. I let her have just a little, lest her stomach should spew it back. She glares at the rogue flier. It is not the aronan’s fault that she fell, it did as she asked. She makes rohoni eyes at me and asks why was I not there? Why did I not run after and immediately command the flier to come down? Had I no thought that harm would come to her, like a child flying for the first time?

  I wait until she finishes. I try not to laugh. Oh, Kesbe-Rohoni, you were in no real danger. I stood still because all Pai aronans, even this one, keep you safe in the sky. You shake your head. You make me impatient with your doubt. Haliksa’i! I will show you.

  I leap to my feet. Hai, Wind Laughing! Open your wings and carry me high. I fly while she watches from below, her mouth gaping. I dive from Haewi’s back as if into a lake. Hai, the rock-spirits are eager for my flesh, but they are cheated, Haewi has me. From the cradle-basket of my flier’s legs, I scramble to its back once again.

  This time Haewi and I fly as the loosed arrow along the mesa. Just above the woman I command a complete roll-over, letting myself drop from my seat as Haewi flies inverted. In an eyeblink, Wind Laughing is below me, catching me on its underbelly before I hear the woman’s gasp.

  So it is, now and always. We do the dance of the sky, I and Haewi. My aronan is so Quick and sure that I may plunge endlessly and not know fear. Only the very young among the Pai Yinaye know the falling-fear and they lose it Quickly.

  You are still a child, Rohoni, but because you dare to fly, you will grow. Though it is hard for me to share my skill with a tribeless one who may also be mad, I find courage in that madness. Perhaps that is what keeps me from being angry at you for taking the aronan aloft before I judged you ready. It does not matter. The creature itself judged you ready, or else it would not have flown.

  Now I must teach you the signs you need to guide your flier so you do not again become stuck in the sky with no way to come down.

  Chapter 9

  Though her fall had shaken her, Kesbe insisted on another flight as soon as she understood the rudiments of guiding the aronan by hand-signs. The worst thing to do after a bad experience, as she had learned from the many unpredictable aircraft she’d flown, was to shy away from the thing or situation that caused it. She knew if she didn’t get back on the aronan at once, the fall would magnify itself in her mind until it grew to disabling proportions.

  This time Imiya would help hoist her up. If she was going to ride, she should begin by learning how to mount properly, he said. He showed her by demonstrating on Haewi Namij. Facing forward on the flier’s right side, well forward of its closed wings, he placed the roughened sole of his outside foot against the aronan’s thorax, grabbed the ridged crest of its nape and vaulted aboard. The act looked simple. It wasn’t. Kesbe discovered that she had to swing her inboard leg forward rather than back (as one would do in mounting a bicycle or horse) to avoid the creature’s wings.

  After a few awkward attempts, she managed to swing herself up, making her mount rock on its outsprung legs. Imiya swatted her on the rear, making her scoot forward into a shallow saddle-like depression. It was shaped to fit a pair of narrow adolescent buttocks and did not do a good job of accommodating her mature female build. He showed her how to draw her knees up jockey-fashion and lock her toes behind the edges of overlapping chitin plates. With a grin and a wave, she took off.

  Slowly the aronan lifted, carrying her high over the mesa. At this altitude the air was surprisingly cold, despite the rich afternoon sunlight. As she began to descend, another aronan appeared as a tiny dot to her left, and matched glides with her. As the other flier drew closer, she saw its rider, a young woman. She had been hunting, for her catch
was slung across her aronan’s neck.

  Exuberant from the flight, Kesbe landed. The child-warrior settled her aronan beside Imiya’s Haewi Namij. “This is Pesquit,” he said, introducing the girl to Kesbe Pesquit made the odd half-snarling tewalutewi face, but Kesbe was ready for it, and was pleased with herself for showing no signs of disquiet.

  “Was that your first ride on this one?” Pesquit asked, tilting her head toward the black and amber.

  “My first…uh…complete ride,” Kesbe answered, still sitting on her mount. She didn’t want to get off.

  “On my first flight I named my aronan. It is our tradition. Didn’t Imiya tell you that?” She cast a mischievous glance at the youth, who rolled his eyes upward like a teenaged boy forced to put up with a younger sister.

  “What is yours called?” Kesbe asked politely.

  “Dancing Water,” said the girl proudly, smoothing her flier’s folded wings. They were blue and silver with touches of white. The body was a creamy gray. “What will you call yours?”

  “I haven’t had time to think yet,” she replied and impishly asked, “What would you call it?”

  Pesquit studied the black and amber gravely. “I would give it a very different name, a name no other aronan has ever had I would call it, Carrying-a-woman.”

  It was an odd choice and Kesbe felt a bit taken aback. The name sounded dull in comparison to Wind Laughing or Dancing Water. The more she thought about it, however, the more suitable the name sounded. Pesquit was right. The black and amber would be carrying a woman, not a child-warrior. She tried making the name more palatable by translating it into a few of the Havasu words her grandfather had kept as part of his mixed tribal heritage.

  “Carrying-a-Woman,” she said. “In an old language of my people, it becomes Baqui Iba.”

  “That sounds like the words used by those of the Blue-Green-Water Clan,” said Pesquit, squinting up at Kesbe.

  “Perhaps they have the same origins,” she answered. She petted the black and amber’s neck. “Well, Baqui Iba, what do you think?” The aronan twisted its narrow-muzzled head around and regarded her with one eye. A myriad of tiny facets shimmered together into a velvety iridescence, shot through with sparks.

  Pesquit grinned. “It likes the name.”

  Kesbe looked out at the streaks of pastel color made by the setting sun over the Barranca. She found herself thinking of Gooney Berg, still sitting abandoned on the esplanade where she had landed. Though riding Baqui Iba had been an amazing experience, she could not let the flier distract her from her primary responsibility. She still had a journey to complete and an aircraft to deliver.

  Perhaps she should not have let Pesquit’s enthusiasm stampede her into naming the creature. She had no idea whether the Pai Yinaye would permit her to keep it.

  Yet the name was given and somehow it sounded right. Baqui Iba the creature would be, at least to her. But tomorrow, she would gather the child-warriors and make an attempt at rescuing her aircraft.

  A few days later Kesbe tested her weight on her healing knee in the shade beneath Gooney Berg’s wing, reflecting on how effective a simple lever could be, given enough length, strength and sufficient ballast at the far end. She had wondered if anything the Pai child-warriors could construct would raise the C-47 off its battered right wheel. Now daylight showed between ground and tread, enough room to drop the dead tire out and mount her spare.

  Imiya and Mahana rolled the huge wheel they had wrestled out of the cargo compartment across the gravel. The thing was unwieldy, showing an inclination to veer from its path. It was already inflated to the right pressure—two young Pai children had obliged by performing an impromptu war-dance on the foot pump.

  The rest of the rescue team was hanging, along with several suspended stones, at the fulcrum end of the lever that had jacked the plane up onto one wheel. It was made of a 15-meter hardwood tree, stripped of its major branches. She hadn’t thought that the child-warriors, on their lightly-built mounts, could fell and lift a log of that size, or build a cradle that could stand the pressure at the pivot point.

  Three days of work and the job was nearly done. Once cut, the tree had been raised by a dozen aronans flying without riders, guided by Imiya on Haewi Namij. Working in unison, with a droning of wings that sounded like a fleet of determined little helicopters, they bore the beam from its felling site several hundred meters below to the ledge where the stranded C-47 rested.

  Some lesser trees were cut to provide beams for the raised cradle supporting the log. The Pai had no nails, but a native reed provided lashings that were incredibly tough.

  Flourishing a wrench in a theatrical manner to her audience (who were hooting and cheering as they hung to the end of the lever), Kesbe stooped to loosen the axle mount. She put as much effort into it as her injured knee would permit, grunting and puffing until she felt the wheel bolts crack loose. Imiya and Mahana helped her ease the tire down. Both seemed impressed and amused by Gooney’s replaceable feet. When Imiya asked what had broken, Kesbe found that there was no way to describe a flat tire in the Pai language. They lacked even a word for cart wheel, much less one for tire. Finally she retreated to the simplistic. “Gooney Berg got a big blister on her foot and it popped,” she said, feeling silly.

  Imiya studied his own toes. “I get blisters, but I don’t have to take my feet off when they break.”

  Kesbe grinned, teased him back. Now that she was back with her aircraft, she felt more at ease with the boy. Setting the spare in place beneath the struts, she waved at the conglomeration of Pai children and aronans inhabiting the far end of the tree. “Let her down!” she shouted, then raised a warning finger at the grinning faces. “Not too fast, you pack of rohonis, or it’ll be flat again!” The struts descended, meeting the axle softly and sweetly. Kesbe torqued the wrench, then stood up to drink in the sight of her big bird once more equipped with functional landing gear. The plane gave its benediction in the form of an affectionate dollop of thick oil down the front of her coverall.

  She wiped the sweat from her forehead with one sleeve. The first task was accomplished. The next would be to fly Gooney Berg off the ledge she had landed on. Unlike many aircraft, including modern ones, the old C-47 had a legendary ability to fly out of any place it had flown into. She hoped it would live up to that reputation.

  The thought had a keen edge of sorrow to it. Kesbe knew why. It was not that once the C-47 was aloft she would bid farewell to the people of Tuwayhoima, although she had developed friendships with Chamol, Nabamida and of course Imiya and Haewi. No. What tugged at her was the thought of the black-and amber-winged aronan, left behind at the village in Nyenti-wakay’s care.

  She sensed that if she had ridden the creature here, it would now be nestled in the C-47’s cargo bay, awaiting take-off. She had badly wanted to ride it, arguing that her brief experience qualified her. Imiya persuaded her not to try such a long flight on an unfamiliar mount. Strong as the scent-bond might be, it did not constitute a full flying partnership. Not yet. That would come later. What he said made sense at the time, and so she left Tuwayhoima in the same manner she had arrived, borne in a fore-to-aft sling between two aronans.

  What had astonished her then and still surprised her now was Imiya’s implicit assumption that she would soon return to the Pai after her task was done. Her conscious thoughts included no such plan—once the C-47 was in Mabena’s hands and the money in Kesbe’s account, she’d catch a laserthrust shuttle for the trip back to Canaback and the first ship off-planet. There was no reason to stay on Oneway. Those, at any rate, were her intentions. She suspected that another part of her had in mind something quite different.

  It would be a strange departure, with only the child-warriors to see her off. She wished again that she could have brought Baqui Iba. Her practical self argued that such an idea was ridiculous. How could she care for the creature off-planet? Well, perhaps she wouldn’t leave Oneway for a while…

  You, Kesbe told herself, have been livin
g in a dream. You need a healthy dose of reality. Start thinking about how you are going to get this crate back into the air.

  Finding the keys in the depths of her coverall pocket, she unlocked the cargo bay door and rummaged among its contents for the items she needed to prep and preflight the C-47: a stepladder, a two-meter wooden dipstick and a heavy pair of leather gloves. Imiya stared at her as she emerged, laden with all this paraphernalia. She carried the stepladder to the right prop, set down the dipstick and donned the gloves. Mounting her ladder, she took a firm hold on the edge of the nearest prop blade and pulled. This was supposed to clear out any oil that had accumulated in the engine’s lower cylinders. She had to put her full weight on the blade before it swung. She reached for the next. Three blades later, her face felt flushed, her arms ached and she wondered if there would be a permanent indentation in the flesh of her hands.

  She felt an impatient tug at the fabric of her coverall. Imiya grinned at her. “Let me,” he said. He marched up the stepladder, flexing his adolescent muscles. A few seconds later, he was dangling ineffectively from the prop blade, having kicked the stepladder over in his efforts to master the stubborn engine. Hoots of raucous laughter broke from the other assembled child-warriors.

  Kesbe restored the ladder, then mounted it beside him. She was unable to contain a mischievous grin at his discomfiture. Gooney Berg was not so easily mastered. Her engine yielded to teamwork, pulling the last two blades through was less of a struggle with the boy helping. She tried to explain what she was doing by comparing it with how he prepared Haewi Namij for flight. She wasn’t sure she got it right, but he seemed to understand. Six blades on the left prop and both were red-faced and puffing.