Windrunner's Daughter

by Bryony Pearce

  “I tried to tell you,” he said.

  She closed her eyes, but she could still see it. Most of the bodies had been burned, but not all. Not the last ones.

  “They can’t all be …”

  “I haven’t found anyone else,” Raw whispered. His hand stilled. “I tried to stop you.”

  “I know.”

  They had started with the proper rites; there were line after line of urns. Then they had given up. A giant pile of ash and bones told Wren where they had piled the bodies and burned them all at once, with no regard for the obligations. Then the last of them had - what? Dragged themselves to the fire pits to lie with the remains of their families?

  The bone shards were grey with ash. Wren clutched her hands to her face. White pearls shone among the remains “Are they … teeth?”

  Raw nodded.

  Round skulls grinned at her, filthy rags of half burned material lay among the bones, clinging like fingers to scraps of flesh.

  She gagged again and turned, only to come face to face with a bloated corpse, his yellow face dark with veins and rot.

  She staggered and Raw caught her in both arms.

  “What happened?” she murmured.

  “I don’t know.” Raw sounded as though he had been wounded. “Come away.”

  Wren let him guide her back towards the council building but a memory made her squirm.

  “I overheard the Councillors when I went to Elysium.” She muttered. “They said Tir Na Nog wasn’t answering hails. This must be why.” She whimpered then. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they let anyone know? And where are the Runners?”

  “Whatever it was it might have happened quickly.”

  “The Creatures?” Wren froze.

  Raw shook his head. “There wouldn’t be bodies.”

  “The scientists here were looking at new ways of producing vast quantities of CFCs,” Wren tilted her head. “Could they have poisoned their own air somehow?”

  “Perhaps.” Raw bowed his head. “It makes sense.”

  They had passed the Council building and were heading back towards the airlocks.

  “We should leave.” Wren looked up at the sky. “Right now.”

  “Not yet.” Raw’s voice was strained and Wren looked at him properly for the first time. Apart from his abraded eyes, which she now realised were reddened with tears as well as dust, his shoulder was so badly swollen it looked as if he had a hunch and he walked with a limp. He must have been really hurt when he crashed into the sphere.

  Wren bit her lip. “I know where we are and which way to go. We could be at Vaikuntha in a couple of hours.”

  “A short rest then?” Raw swayed on his feet and Wren saw how tired he was, how tired they both were. “We can at least eat something.”

  Immediately Wren curled her lip. “Not here.”

  “Perhaps not,” Raw sighed. “But I’m hungry, I’m tired and … I’m hurt. I don’t know how you’re still on your feet.” He stared at her.

  Wren fidgeted awkwardly. “We’re both still alive. It seems impossible. I-I’m glad you made it.”

  A small smile flashed beneath Raw’s mask and then vanished like a Creature into sand. “There’s an open house near the airlock. That’s where I stored my wings. We can rest there.”

  Inside, the house was much like Avalon; the colonists had built to the same plans. Raw’s wings were lying on the bed, carefully arranged. Wren glanced at him and away before he could see her surprise at his attention to detail. Then he slumped into a chair.

  “That’s it.” Wren marched up to him and grabbed his left arm. He tried to pull back, but she held on. His eyes were pools of surprise and pain.

  “What’re you-”

  Wren put her foot on his chest. His eyes widened.

  “No, Wren!”

  She twisted and yanked, ignoring his scream of pain, feeling for the click that would tell her that his shoulder had returned to its socket.

  The pink patches of skin on his face lost all colour and the grey darkened. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  Click. She rotated his arm a couple of times and then placed it carefully in his lap. He groaned.

  “Better?”

  He nodded, unable to meet her gaze.

  Then she sat on the chair opposite him.

  So far from the cemetery fires the smell was barely noticeable. Still, neither of them removed their masks.

  Raw’s shoulders curled and he leaned his head on the table. His hair, long for an Elysium colonist and longer now than her own, slipped with its own weight over his neck and onto the table. Sweat soaked curls, darkened to black, stuck to his nape and with a long sigh he let his fists dangle between his legs.

  She could see only a little of his scarring, running down his left cheek and into the collar of his shirt. Was it true that her father had withheld medicine to punish him?

  Wren’s fingers twitched as if to touch the grey scales on his skin and she had to admit, if only to herself, that it was likely. If there was no punishment for trying to take wings, Runners would lose them to stupid Land-crawling adventurers all the time.

  She caught herself thinking the insult and blushed. Land-crawlers, Grounders, the Land-locked. These were the terms that kept Runners apart.

  Raw had never received a lesson, yet he was flying. He had Run ahead of a sand storm – no other Runner she knew of had ever done that. He was no longer Land-locked. And how many other so called Land-crawlers would be excellent Runners given the chance? She clenched her fists, her mind racing.

  How many girls?

  Yet what they had done was blasphemy and if they were caught … she was unable to complete the thought. In the back of her mind she could picture how they would scream when they fell.

  If nothing else though, she had news of Tir Na Nog. Wren’s hand lifted to touch Raw on the arm. He had saved her life, drawing the Creature away from her. He was a good Running-partner. She still didn’t understand why he was helping her; perhaps it was simply that he had not encountered any other Runners yet. She would have to be cautious when they reached Vaikuntha.

  Had she thanked him at all? She opened her mouth.

  Raw shivered once, snorted and a deep snore rattled from his chest. Wren stared, then, as he snored again deeper and louder, she laughed.

  Wren tried to sleep alongside Raw, but she couldn't. Her mind was racing too fast to allow her exhausted body to slip into unconsciousness and she was uncomfortable on the chair. She didn't want to move Raw’s wings from the bed and so she walked around the room, trying to keep her muscles from stiffening any further. She stared out of the window port, watching the sun creep across the sky. They dare not leave it too late to Run to Vaikuntha, they couldn't be caught in the dark again. But Wren wanted to let Raw sleep for as long as possible.

  She slipped from the house; she could at least find the Runner platform so that she would be ready when they decided to go.

  Wren knew that it would be high up and likely on the edge of the ‘sphere, if not outside it, so she started at the airlock and began to walk, following the line of the wall. The colony was eerie in its silence, Wren could hear a faint buzzing and when she looked up to follow the noise she realised that it was the sound of electricity being collected in the solar panels, a sound that was normally too quiet, buried under the sounds of humanity, for anyone to hear. No air moved inside the sphere, there was no wind to move curtains, or blow leaves from the clusters of gingko. Dead brown foliage lay beneath the plants, half burying the roots, turning to mulch exactly where they had fallen.

  She reached the science block, the door swinging open on its own weight. She had no intention of entering. There would be no cure for her mother here, not with the work these scientists specialised in. Had specialised in.

  Behind the science block a tall set of stairs climbed towards the top of the sphere. There was an airlock placed at roof height and above that more stairs c
urved around the outside. At the top, a Runner platform. Wren wondered which building was the station: Raw needed goggles.

  She hesitated outside the most likely looking; it nestled at the base of the stairs. What if they hadn’t all made it to the cemetery? What if there was a dead body inside.

  Wren thought of Raw’s eyes. He couldn’t do another flight without goggles. She opened the door and ducked inside.

  Everything in the station was covered in dust. There were no wings on the stands; it was as though it had been abandoned for months. Wren found the goggles in a drawer of spare parts. Feeling as if ghosts dogged her every step, she clutched them to her chest and ran, her own wings billowing behind her as she went.

  Wren wanted fresh air. The stench here was muted by her mask but still she could feel it, winding into her nose and lining her throat, the phantom smell of burning bodies, ash in the air.

  Wren raced as fast as she could back to the house and her sleeping partner. It was time to wake him.

  She paused with one hand raised over his shoulder. How should she do it? She could shake him, but that seemed cruel. Instead she pulled gentle fingers through the dusty tangles of his hair. He made no movement at all. Wren frowned and patted his head. He twitched, turned so that his cheek rather than his forehead was lying on the tabletop, and continued to snore.

  It was the first time that Wren had the opportunity to really study Raw’s face, covered as it usually was with his long hair, the disguise he had grown to make the lives of others easier. Barely breathing, she pushed the remaining tendrils from his eyes and chin. The shape of his face was strong, his jaw wide. The hair on his chin was starting to roughen and thicken, like Colm’s, but only on the right hand side. The scarring would suppress the hair on his left. Unless he shaved, he would have half a beard. His skin though, the unblemished skin, was clear and smooth. Apart from the abrasions he had earned while flying, he had no spots or craters marring his face. It made the thick grey scarring even more of a shock. When she looked closely at it, Wren realised that it actually did look like scales; patches of skin like the leather of a sand-snake. The unbroken pale patches between the scales looked strange, almost as if they were the wounds, something inflicted rather than the parts of him that had not been touched.

  Without thinking she touched a fingertip to one of the pink patches, almost the exact shape of Phobos, that sat just above his mask, and instantly Raw came awake as though she had electrocuted him. As if that skin was both sensitive and painful.

  Wren leaped back. “Sorry to wake you, but we’ve got to go.”

  Raw rose groggily to his feet, already pulling his hair down over his face, hiding his scales from her gaze.

  “I got you these.” Awkwardly, Wren held out the goggles and Raw swiped them from her, still half asleep.

  He blinked at them, confused, and then his eyes cleared. “Goggles.”

  She nodded. “You need them.”

  “Yes, I do.” He pulled them roughly over his head, arranging his hair so that enough was trapped beneath the strap to keep his face covered. “You went looking for these by yourself. Was it okay?”

  Wren half smiled. “There’s no-one here to stop me.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.” She examined him as he finished settling the new eye-wear. “You don’t have to do that. Not for me.”

  “Do what?” He saw that she was looking at his face and jerked, spinning around so that she couldn’t see. His fingers pulled restlessly at his fringe, pulling even more to his chin, thickening the curtain.

  “Sorry,” Wren gasped. “I didn’t mean-”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Raw muttered. “Knowing it’s there and having to look at it –that’s two different things. People say it’s okay, but then I see them looking and flinching, trying not to gag. They tell me I can no longer work inside the Dome, that I have to learn how to repair airlocks and solar panels, but I know that what they mean is, they want me where people don’t have to look at me.”

  "Even your friends and family.”

  Raw shrugged. “Forget it.”

  “They don’t-”

  “I said forget it.” His words were a snarl. He stalked to the bed and grabbed the wings, swinging them over his shoulders. They settled down around him like a silver cloak, only just touching the floor. “Let’s go.”

  Wren led the way to the Runner platform and pointed to the stairs. “Up there.”

  “Makes sense.” Raw began to climb. Halfway up Wren turned to look back over the colony. It really was beautiful, but now there was no-one to maintain the already cracked Dome, no-one to work in the science block, or fill the houses. The sphere would eventually collapse, probably in the next mega storm and the desert would start to absorb it, as it had done the CFC factories.

  “We might be the last to see this,” she said, tears standing in her eyes.

  The council building reflected the sun and the houses around it looked like lines of scattered ornaments, gem stones on a cloth. A blackened patch on the far side reminded Wren why everything was so quiet and she started to climb once more.

  Raw wasn’t moving.

  “What’s the matter?” She followed the line of his pointing arm and her eyes widened. “That can’t be right.”

  In the far distance a thick grey line marred the horizon, bringing it higher and closer.

  “We’ve got maybe a week, do you reckon?” His voice was rough.

  Around the sphere, the dust was whirling and eddying, no longer still. It would keep moving like that until the mega-storm reached them.

  “But it isn’t due for another four months,” Wren whispered. “No-one will be ready.”

  Chapter eleven

  “Nothing we can do about it.” Raw stamped up the stairs.

  “But why is it happening? A mega-storm has never been early. Not in fifty years of Runner records at least.” Wren stumbled to catch him and they paused at the airlock.

  “Will it affect our flight?” Raw said, holding his hand over the palm reader. “Will we make it to Vaikuntha?”

  “We tend not to fly this close to a mega-storm, because there’s likely to be more turbulence, but it’s only just rising. We should be all right.” Wren placed her hand on top of Raw’s, feeling the warmth of skin against hers and the chill of his surprise. She pushed his hand onto the reader. “We'll be in Vaikuntha before sundown.”

  The airlock cycled open and they stepped out together, into the Martian atmosphere.

  “What will you do when we get there?” Wren said suddenly as the wind caught in her hair. “What are you planning?”

  Raw went still, only his wings moved. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” Wren insisted. “You followed me for a reason …

  “Things have changed,” he said roughly. “I won’t betray you.”

  Wren pressed her lips together. Her mask rubbed her cheeks. “That’s the thing though, isn’t it? If you were planning to, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  Raw made a sound that was half laugh, half snarl. “You either trust me, or you don’t, Wren. You could have left without me while I was asleep. I’d have been forced to wait for another Runner to come in, or had to risk flying myself without a guide. But you didn’t.” He cocked his head at her. “That must mean that a part of you does trust me.”

  “Or that I don’t want to fly alone.” Wren pulled on her goggles. “Well, come on then, follow me.”

  She climbed the last few stairs and stood on the edge of a Runner platform, a long metal walkway balanced on thick struts. She peered down. There was a net hanging beneath it, taut, yet bouncing slightly in the growing wind. The colony itself was mostly hidden by the curve of the solar panels on top of the biosphere.

  Wren straightened and shook out her arms. The aching was so all pervasive that her limbs felt almost numb.

  She bent into a starting position, wincing as she took
her weight on bended knee. Then she lurched into a shambling run. She hurtled straight ahead, keeping her eyes on the lines. The blue line first. She ran towards it, her arm pumping. The wind got behind her, lifting her wings to play with the fabric. She hit the blue line with her leading foot and hammered out two more steps. Then she had reached the red line: if she tried to stop she’d go right over the edge and into the net. Finally, the green: she flung out her arms and her heart thudded relief as her wings clicked into place as she leaped.

  This time the wind took her straight into its arms and she kept her eyes open as she raced towards the scudding clouds.

  She circled down to see Raw leap from the platform.

  He had opened his wings before hitting the lines and his launch was wobbling and unsteady as a result, the wind fighting with itself, the currents confused beneath the foils. Then he straightened out by sheer force of will, it seemed, and flew to meet her.

  They circled one more time, wordlessly saying a respectful goodbye to the tomb beneath the ‘sphere. The further away they flew, the lighter Wren felt, until she was smiling again. She tilted her wings, thinking of the maps on the walls of Avalon. She knew where Vaikuntha was in relation to Tir Na Nog, she just had to remember.

  The land speeding below her reflected the image drawn on her wall. A straight formation of stone that led in to the deep wriggling lines of a long dried riverbed: those were the landmarks that needed to be on her right hand side. She flew until she was sure that she had found the right configuration. Then she turned from it and headed into the lowering sun.

  It had grown later than she had thought. The rising mega-storm was straight in front of her now, a thick grey line moving terminally across the surface of the planet, destroying everything in its wake.

  Only during the mega-storms were Runners made welcome inside the ‘sphere. They joined the colonists inside underground bunkers, where they would remain for two whole days, united briefly, in their fragility.