Aerie

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  An hour later, I’m in Grimm’s car. We pull away like we’re headed for an early morning coffee rather than escaping a locked ward and looking for a girl stolen by—maybe—a country in the sky.

  It’s so easy to escape, I think to my shame, the only thing that was keeping me in there was the lingering suspicion that I might actually need to stay in.

  Which is still lingering.

  Savior complex.

  Yeah. It’s not like I’m your usual.

  Grimm’s silent. I look behind us, expecting to see SWAB, police, but there’s no one on the highway. We’re alone. The whole horizon is black, lightning moving like strobes. My SWAB glasses are showing me ships all over the sky.

  I open my backpack and bring out the information I swiped from SWAB on my way out the door the last time around.

  “SWAB’s been trying to source images of Maganwetar for years,” I say.

  “They still haven’t put eyes on it?” Grimm asks.

  “No. And it’s pissing them off. They’re using drone surveillance, and a couple of small planes taking unusual paths. It looks like they want to overtake it. Use it to bring weather to some places on earth and . . .”

  “And deny it to others. If you control the weather, you control drought, for yourself, and for your enemies.”

  “SWAB wants to control the weather. Whatever they want with Aza, they want to use her.”

  Grimm looks over at me, assessing.

  “Not bad,” he says grudgingly, and drives.

  I can see the field, a big wide expanse of nothing. There should be a giant skeletal tree right there at the edge of it, a black, perfectly straight-lined tree bigger than any tree for miles.

  But there isn’t.

  We pull over and get out of the car. Just a field. Nothing in it. Windblown, trampled cornstalks. A crater where the tree used to be.

  There’s a print on the smooth clay of one side of the crater. I look more closely. A small human handprint.

  A shining object on the ground. Eli’s phone, in its distinctive constellation case, dark blue enamel, silver stars in the positions they were in the moment Eli was born. A gift from Aza with a manufacturing assist from me.

  Grimm’s instantly mobilized, shoveling away at the edge of the pit, banging a stake into the ground. Attaching ropes to it.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “A bounty hunter,” says Grimm. “This is worse than I thought. It will have taken Eli on a Magonian contract.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who. What. A mandrake.”

  I . . . what? “A mandrake.”

  A mandrake isn’t a sentient creature. It’s a root. A root that people used to think could scream and kill people with the sound of its voice. Folklore. Plants that walked and talked, old-school witchery, that kind of thing, and even as I think that, I think, yeah, skyships, that kind of thing.

  Who am I to decide on what’s possible? I should know that by now, if I know nothing else. Who am I to decide if there’s such a thing as a mandrake bounty hunter?

  An old Aza phrase, coined in a moment of total indecision. “Analysis equals paralysis, Jason, let’s just go!”

  Is this good advice? No one said it was. But it’s the only advice I have in my head right now.

  “Everyone up there is looking for Aza, and the mandrakes are high-end hunters, no surprise one of them would come looking here,” Grimm says. “They just misjudged the fact that SWAB—”

  He gives me a look of disdain—

  “—got to Aza before they could. I’m guessing they didn’t realize they’d gotten the wrong sister. Otherwise, Aza and Eli would both be captive, to be sold to Zal for the highest price they could get. Mind you, I’m just as wanted as she is. Breath is a permanent job. If you leave, you’re a fugitive—”

  Something catches my eye on the cemetery cliff. Something on the edge.

  That tree. It shouldn’t be there.

  “Grimm—” I say.

  But Grimm’s looking too, and his face changes.

  “RUN!” he shouts. “NOW! GO!”

  The tree on the edge of the cliff disappears before my eyes. Like that. GONE. Like it’s been sucked away, or taken by a sinkhole.

  The sky starts screaming, and it’s suddenly full of birds. I’m hearing shrieking and wings, and I’m standing here, in the middle of this cornfield, with feathers falling all around me.

  There’s a ripple in the surface of the earth, in the crater. The field starts to roll up, right next to my feet, like a carpet unfurling backward, the whole field shuddering and shaking. An earthquake?

  “Go, Kerwin!” Grimm shouts. He has rope and some sort of torch, and he’s looping the rope frantically into a knot.

  I can’t keep my balance. I’m running over the ruts in the field, and the whole of the ground is moving, and in the sky, birds everywhere, still screaming, a flock of them spinning hard above me.

  My foot gets stuck in a hole I swear wasn’t there before, and I’m yanking at my ankle, trying to get it loose, when something lurches up out of the earth, fast-moving with tons of spiky branches, and even as my brain identifies it as “tree,” I know it’s not.

  It has arms and legs. It’s made of roots, or wood, pale and twisted. It has a face. A face that is gnarled and set in a howl. It rises up out of the ground with a wailing moan.

  My foot’s stuck. I can’t move. I’m still not moving when Grimm steps in front of me, and the thing that isn’t a tree, that isn’t a person, snatches him up in one fist.

  It must be thirty feet tall.

  Things go into slow motion. I can’t absorb what I’m hearing, Grimm screaming, fighting, and then his spine making a noise a spine shouldn’t make, a broken crack like the sound of something being trampled.

  The mandrake bends over and picks me up too, claw hands, splintered fingers, crushing me in its fist. I’m shouting and my body is in agony, my lungs bursting, my brain a morass of numbers, thousands of numbers, shaken out of sequence, a collapse of decimals, data—

  Then birds screaming—

  Birds screaming—

  Feathers falling—

  Birds are diving at the mandrake, bombing it from above—

  It’s crushing me, turning me to pulp, ribs cracking, body breaking—

  When it looks up at the birds and howls. It dives into the crater.

  The cries of birds and then nothing.

  Darkness and the screal of wind through my ears, as we

  F

  A

  L

  L

  through the earth.

  CHAPTER 17

  {AZA}

  We travel silently through the night, deeper into the Tangle, and then out the southern corner, and across the sky, moving past the equator. I realize I’ve been so, SO missing this—the wind around me, the tossing of ships on clouds and storms. This last year of land legs makes me understand why sailors in earth’s oceans often refuse to come in from the sea, and when they do, just keep leaving again, no matter what happiness they have at home. Or that’s the story anyway.

  Maybe they don’t actually have happiness at home.

  Maybe someone’s lying to them, someone they trusted, and maybe that’s why everything you’ve ever read about sailors is them searching for some mythic mermaid to fall for, some manatee in the shape of a girl-delusion, some white whale out in the middle of the waves. Maybe there’s no reason to come in from the sea once you’re out. Maybe the world is better in solitude.

  Maybe you should just stay away from love. Lonely whales. Maybe that’s a better version. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be if you’re the only one like you. No one else around you. Out there in the dark, singing your song alone.

  I smell thunder. The sky shakes when we move through it, invisible waves of wind and rain.

  It’s both exactly the same and vastly more beautiful than it ever was. In this little boat, with my not-sister, I can see it all more clearly than I did the last time I
was up.

  I can see the way pods of squallwhales are everywhere, not just escorting Magonian ships, but roving wild on their own. I can see other things too, scars on the squallwhales’ skin, but at least these are free. Not tied to any vessel, not making storms for anyone but themselves.

  A surging pod of white-speckled whales stops beside the boat and sings to me.

  I put my hand out to touch one of them, and it comes closer, so I put my leg over the edge of the boat and climb onto its back.

  I’m thinking of my dad. What would it be like to ride a whale? Like a zeppelin. Like a submarine. Like a train.

  Like riding a whale, is what it’s like.

  Its skin is rougher than I’d have thought it would be, like the texture of ice over sand, and there’s nothing vaporous about it. It feels real. It IS real, I remind myself. It’s a squallwhale, not something I made up.

  I touch the ridge over the squallwhale’s eye, and it’s hard and tough, like touching a dinosaur.

  This isn’t a matter of skill, but of trust between the squallwhale and the passenger. Heyward watches from the boat, her skin going bluer by the minute.

  She’s human. I’m from up here. We’re from different species, practically.

  Is that what matters, in the end?

  That’s not how I want to see things, but maybe I should try to keep my brain from imagining utopia—everyone holding hands and sharing their food, a giant potluck attended by both Magonians and humans. It’s not like I ever felt comfortable in those situations. It’s not like I was ever a person who held the hands of her whole town. And it’s not like there’s perfection down there. It’s not like everyone is kind, not like everyone is generous, not like everyone is even remotely good.

  Maybe differences matter more than I want them to. Maybe I belong in the sky, and ONLY in the sky.

  I cling to the squallwhale’s back as it navigates, a huge thing moving gracefully, not drifting but swimming. It’s rapturous in its lightness, in the cold, in its task. It sings a frozen song, and I sing too, the notes coming from my throat and chest like icicles. Part of me wonders what we’re doing to the world down there, if we’re bringing snow that we shouldn’t, in a place that makes no sense.

  But we’re over the ocean. It has to be okay.

  These things about the sky could break anyone’s heart, the sapphire of the heavens, the way the world is around and beneath us, the chilly solidity of the whale, the grace and power in its movements. I sing with the whale’s particular sonar, our voices mingling into a soft snowfall that covers everything below us with flakes.

  Only a few creatures sing. Whales and bats, humans, birds. Magonians. Mice, according to my mother anyway.

  It’s a special thing to be one of the world’s singers. I should be grateful to be this. I should be grateful to be out here, alive, whatever else is wrong.

  Some people never get to have anyone who understands them. Some people are lonely forever. Heyward. I haven’t been lonely. I’ve had people who love me. If I’m lonely from here on out, I can live with that.

  There’s an unwelcome memory in my brain, of me and Jason in bed together, him rolling toward me and putting his hand on the part of my chest that feels like a wishbone, him touching me over the place in my lung where my canwr door is.

  It makes me sad, angry, and confused.

  So I sing ice with the squallwhale that won’t melt for a while. I wonder what people will think of it, below us. Frozen blue weather that doesn’t turn to water, in the middle of a place that should be warm. A tiny berg, newborn in the sea. Maybe if we sang hard enough we could reverse the things that are happening on earth. Save humans from the wrong things they’ve done to the climate. Save Magonians from the wrong things Zal’s doing to the sky. Maybe I could sing balance, and that’s my job, not to live, but to fix the weather as everyone else breaks it.

  Maybe that’s why I’m here.

  Maybe love doesn’t actually matter, not for me. Maybe I’m just supposed to do this alone. Would that be the worst thing, to have a job like that? Am I being selfish, wanting more? Maybe I can’t have everything.

  Maybe no one gets to have everything.

  Come, the squallwhale sings, and swims me to a piece of the sky where at first, I can’t figure out what I’m looking at, and then I can see. It’s a nursery. There are tiny squallwhales all over, little storming whales, each creating tiny rainstorms.

  It’s trite to feel safe with whales, but I guess I’m trite. I hear a series of pings and chirrups, the whales conversing in a language I don’t share with them.

  I look over at Heyward, patiently piloting our boat through the squallwhale nursery. Her face is expressionless.

  Who is she? What does she love? What would make her risk her life?

  I think maybe Heyward fell in love with the ground somewhere along the line. Or someone on it. We move away from the squallwhale nursery and back into open sky, and for a while, I drift, trying not to think about any of the things that hurt, trying to focus on what I just saw and let it make me stronger. There are plenty of hard things, but there are still squallwhales being born. That has to be a good thing.

  Suddenly Heyward motions me urgently to get back into the boat.

  There’s a sizzling sound. Birds are circling us out of nowhere, black birds and red birds, huge winged things, all of them on fire. The edge of the sky is smoke and the birds are flame. They look like . . .

  A flock of phoenixes?

  “SING!” Heyward shouts.

  If we had sails, they’d be on fire by now. Our pod of squallwhales are being hit by falling embers, and they’re singing rain ferociously, screaming in pain as the birds burn their skin.

  I bend a note from out of the sky, a note that says RAIN, and heavy drops start to form above us, condensation in the clouds to put the living candles out. They sizzle and hiss as the water falls, and I sing harder. I can’t even see them, really, they’re moving so fast.

  TURN BACK! they sing. LEAVE THIS SKY!

  Golden beaks and feathers in blue, red, orange, and black. They smell like a wildfire and their voices are hisses and crackles.

  Heyward is urging us on, and I can see a sea of red flaming mouths wide open and full of fire, and wings spread wide, and then they’re all in a line before us.

  Is this the Flock the agency wanted, back there on the ship? It makes sense. They’re weapons. They’re a flock of something violent. . . .

  But they’re not going to work with me to take Zal down. They’re wild. Firebirds with their own rules.

  I sing harder and the rain comes in torrents, the kind of rain the world could drown in, and inside my heart I’m remembering last year, the water rising up out of stone, me trying to unbalance everything. But in my throat I’m singing a different song. Drench, simmer, sizzle.

  Firedie, I sing. Firefade. Smokefall. Some of the birds turn from red to orange, and from orange to steel gray. Some of the birds turn from blue to black, and their wings are like torches, still dully glowing, but dimmer. Coals in the furnace, only waiting to be stoked.

  Are you the Flock? I sing at one of them.

  TURN BACK! it sings in answer.

  I glance over at Heyward, who’s bent, pushing the ship hard into the dark, gasping and coughing as waves of rainwater pour over her.

  One of the birds comes close enough to burn me, and I feel the edge of its wing. At first it’s soft as silk and then it hisses in, a slice like a hot knife through butter.

  No more! screams one of the firebirds. Turn back!

  I cry out. It opens its beak. It’s a dragon, a snake-bird, and all of it is made of glory.

  I’m drawn toward it. I want to press my body to it and hold it. I know that if I do, I’ll die, but I feel myself leaning in, feel myself singing into it, and now my song is something else.

  Not rain, but un-rain. Air, and a fanning of flames, a new wind made of song, and I’m singing fire, and the phoenixes are getting brighter, all around us. I�
��m singing with them, and I’m making them stronger. They want my anger and fear, and I’m filling them with it.

  With my desire to start everything over from birth to seventeen.

  With my broken heart and fearful mind.

  Right in front of me, this beautiful creature speaks in a brittle bright tone, a bell of light, a cracking whip of sound.

  Breathe in, it says. It opens its brilliant beak, and flares its shining feathers, and pours fire out in a song. It scorches the air coming into my lungs.

  And then there’s Heyward. She screams a Breath battle cry and uses our rain bucket to drench the bird that’s right in my face. Its wings spread out, and all of it is on fire for a moment, and then it dims, black feathers, black beak, dead song. It flicks away, ashes.

  There’s a hiss that hurts my ears, and one by one the phoenixes blink out like an electric fence with a short circuit in it, leaving a space for the boat to pass through, and onward; the edges of the smoke a path leading us forward into forever.

  One phoenix remains, a bright trail across the sky ahead of us. It looks back.

  That way is death, it sings in bleak, fragmented Magonian. For your kind.

  I feel like I’m half dead already.

  Still, I sing us forward, my voice a current of heat in the now-cooling sky. The bird’s glow is orange and brilliant, and from below it must look like a comet. It flits and smokes a pattern, until we see what it’s lit up for us.

  She was here, the phoenix sings. Magonia was here, destroying.

  It’s like a reflection seen on fog. Or a fata morgana, a mirage in the sky. It’s an image of a ship. Not Amina Pennarum. That ship, the only skyship I ever REALLY knew, was destroyed, a wreck on the shore of Svalbard.

  No, this ship is another pirate ship, a gigantic thundercloud made of black, and its sails are not bats, but manta rays, their wings bending and maneuvering the winds, their bodies tense against the sky. They’re huge. Each one is as large as a house. These rays are flying too fast. Their wings are bending more than they should, pushed by the wind, buffeted by forces they can’t control.