Windrunner's Daughter

by Bryony Pearce

  Wren had only ever seen the devastation a storm had left after it had gone by, never the build up.

  The wind around her had a different tone to it, almost as if it knew what was coming and longed to be embraced into its power. It sang a higher note and tossed her more joyfully.

  Wren turned her face to the ground, seeing the desert spread out beneath her. The wakes of Creatures followed like old friends and patches of green reminded her of Elysium. Endlessly her colony turned out the tiny oxygen factories that were gradually, permanently changing the Martian atmosphere. What would happen to the Creatures then? Would they be able to breathe in the new air? She hoped not.

  A gust of wind whipped Wren upwards and she whooped as Raw slid into view, his great silver wings catching the light and turning it back on her.

  He leaned into the wind, his hair streaming and the foils of his pinions fluttering so loudly that she could hear them even over her own.

  She found herself racing him, streamlining her body and arcing her wings so that that wind took her faster and faster away from him. Then she grew lonely and turned, but he was right there, overtaking her above her left hand side and she grinned.

  Almost leisurely Wren rose towards him. She angled herself so that she would flatten out ahead of him and twisted into a thermal that pushed her higher, faster. She whipped past him with a whoop, hearing the rustle of his wings and his cry of surprise, before she levelled out.

  Then, with a lurch, the wind fled. It vanished as though it had never been, as if her flight had been nothing more than a dream.

  Wren’s scream was cut off by her own jolt, as she dropped instantly, like a stone.

  Over her silent screaming, her mind threw up one word, louder than all the others: turbulence.

  Her wings rattled again, whipping out behind her as she fell. Raw’s own shout: her name, loud and horrified, faded above her. At least he had missed the patch of dead air.

  Wren wanted to roll into a ball, close her eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening, but her father’s voice spoke in her mind. Years of listening to her brother’s lessons meant that she knew what to do. She locked her elbows in a slightly bent position, bullying her wings to remain locked, yet allowing a bit of give so the pressure of her fall did not break the struts. Ignoring her instincts she remained flat and slowed her descent as best she could. Her only hope was that the wind would pick her up again before she hit the ground.

  She risked a glance down. She was speeding towards the dust bowl unimaginably quickly. A sob burned her throat and her goggles filled with tears, which at least meant she couldn’t see the ground filling her vision, getting closer with every heartbeat.

  Frantically she shook her head. How would she know when her time had run out? It suddenly seemed very important that her very end did not come as a surprise. Angrily Wren shook the tears to the edges of her goggles and forced the rest back. She would look death in the eye and spit in it at the last.

  Now she could make out individual rocks, bug cairns. Her stomach lurched: she was going to crash into one of their cone nests. Tears filled her eyes once more and her heart pounded so hard it was ripping her chest open. Maybe she’d have an old woman’s death after all: a heart attack.

  Giggling hysterically she realised that it was time to spit or close her eyes. Viciously Wren curled her lips and braced. This was going to hurt, but not for long.

  She body-slammed into something so strong it stole her breath. Before she could blink at the strangeness of her continued existence, she was being lifted back up towards the sun. The wind had finally returned and caught her with the finesse of a ball-player on a holiday. With her heart fluttering like a bug’s wing Wren trembled in its embrace, unable to control her ascent or direction.

  Soon she was high enough to hear Raw’s choking admonitions. “What was that, what happened?”

  Wren shuddered silently until he drew closer, then she turned to look at him. “Turbulence. It could happen to you.” She swallowed, her throat dry. “Did you see what I did? How I kept my wings out.”

  Raw nodded and his face was grim. “There was no warning.”

  “No.” Wren said and she set her face for Vaikuntha. “There wasn’t.”

  It was not the end of the turbulent air. With the mega storm so close, only days away, the wind was unpredictable and cold. When it deserted Raw’s wings, Wren could only watch and pray. But he did not fall as far as she had done and he did not panic.

  They flew beside one another, no longer racing, long shadows growing as the sun dropped and the Creatures returned, tracing their progress with anticipatory cries that the wind carried to their ears.

  The jerk and jolt of the turbulence began to feel horribly familiar. One moment Wren’s wings were plump and full, the next they would be hanging in empty tatters. As the afternoon wore into evening they juddered up and down, getting closer to the ground and the waiting Creatures, their onward progress slowed.

  “Night’s falling,” Raw yelled and Wren clenched her fists, glaring at the moons which were materialising on opposite ends of the sky, Deimos already two days into its slow orbit. He was right. Wren had left it too long. She had not expected their progress to be so slow.

  She laughed as she saw the CFC factories clustered in their rectangular lumps, illuminated by Phobos’ weak glow and the twilight of the dying sun. They were back where they had started that morning.

  “We’re not landing there again.” Raw shouted following the direction of her gaze.

  “We won’t need to.” The wind still carried them; they could reach Vaikuntha.

  Wren’s eyes strained, desperately looking for the colony. Her stomach began to knot. Had she forgotten the maps and badly misjudged? They were descending now, the cooling air too weak to hold them. A curve in the line of the delta ahead told her a hill might take them down even earlier than she anticipated. Wren blinked. They had turned from the sunset, putting it to their side, but the hill seemed to be outlined with its own glow, almost as if it had its own sinking orb to consume.

  “Over there!” She wheeled, trying to see around the curve of the landscape. Then, suddenly, stars were reflecting at her from the desert floor.

  “A biosphere.” Raw’s cry of relief drew an answering cheer from her lips. They were mere kilometres from Vaikuntha now.

  Wren tried not to look at the sand. Still, a part of her brain was frantically calculating: which would they hit first, the desert, or the ‘sphere?

  Distracting herself from the horrible question, Wren focused on the ‘sphere ahead. It was much, much bigger than Elysium. Laid out, as it was, on a rock flat at the flat at the foot of a Mons, these colonists had been able to spread out wider.

  The dimensions of her home colony, Elysium, were restricted by the slopes of the Mons shelf, the rise of the summit. It was well placed for the distribution of seedlings into the wind, but Wren had not realised how small the ‘sphere was until she saw the vastness of Vaikuntha.

  The diameter of the ‘sphere was so wide that Wren she could not see from one end to the other. Like Elysium, Vaikuntha was not perfectly round; instead walls, black in the evening gloom, but with a subtle obsidian sheen, rose towards the moons.

  Panels topped the walls, fitting together like a lid on a pan. The originals had used Martian rock to create an airtight barrier and their panels to top it. The shape was, Wren mused, more like a stadium than a sphere.

  She blinked. As stars emerged in the sky around her, something glittered to one side of Vaikuntha’s walls. “There’s water,” she gasped.

  Raw flew at her side now, his pinions fluttering in the edge of her vision, his fingertips almost touching hers. “Look at it, above ground. Why doesn’t it fill with sand?”

  Wren shook her head. They were approaching obliquely now, but she could barely take her eyes from the enticing shimmer.

  Closer they drew, lower and lower. The wall loomed before them like a cliff that ha
d been ironed flat by a giant hand. But where was the Runner-sphere? Hard as she looked, Wren could see no structure outside the wall. Then, as they drew close, a fragile looking Runner platform emerged from the highest point on the blockade, as if a painter had touched up the grey sky with a splash of jet-black ink.

  “Do you see the platform?” she shouted and angled her body towards it.

  Raw nodded and Wren’s heart thudded: it was going to be close. She fought desperately for height, while below her the Creatures that had been tracing their progress stopped racing and began hungry circles in front of the wall. The sand pushed into tapers that mirrored the waves that rose and fell in the river.

  “Could we land in the river?” Raw’s hopeful shout turned her head.

  “How would you get out again?” Wren indicated the Creatures, invisible but for their wakes. They would be waiting in the sand. There would be no climbing from the water. “Follow me. Do what I do.” At least the dim light should provide some cover for their amateurish landings.

  The wall was racing towards them at a breathless pace. The ground too was rising faster than thought. Wren could only hope they reached the platform before they dropped too low. At the last possible moment, she stopped fighting her descent and allowed the plunge that would put her level with the runway.

  She started to lower her legs.

  A masked figure sprinted along the boards, shouting wildly and waving a red flag. Did he want to get knocked off? No-one was allowed on the platform when a Runner was coming in.

  Trembling with tiredness, Wren instinctively whipped into a twist that took her away from the platform. Then she realised that she would never be able to regain the height. She had just doomed herself.

  A curse revealed that Raw was copying her move. She had killed them both.

  With a groan she cast her eyes back to the platform that was now level with her shoulders. The man started to point his flag, gesticulating furiously.

  Was there somewhere else to land? Somewhere below them still?

  She tried to call to him. “Where should we go?”

  The words were torn from her mask and scattered by the turbulent wind.

  Raw’s wings were just above her. She glanced up and saw them flare orange like a blooming sun. She blinked. He was reflecting lights that had suddenly blossomed on a rock just to the left of the wall.

  She yawed sideways, there was no choice: alternative landing area or not, Wren and Raw would land on that rock or hit the sand.

  Wren had just enough height left to circle the rocky outcrop; it was shorter than a traditional Runner platform, but someone had painted the correct colours on it and lit solar flares at the end to guide them in.

  She dived and levelled, knowing Raw was right behind her. Fighting for balance in the lifeless breeze, she reached the first painted line and dropped her legs. She slapped her arms together and her toes grazed rock as the last of the air was forced out from under her wings. Beside the stone, wakes in the sand followed her progress.

  As soon as she felt solid ground beneath her feet, Wren forced her weary legs into a run. Dreamlike, she staggered; her knees stiff and unyielding. At first the wind settled for pushing her from behind then a gust of air caught her folded wings and they billowed. For a second she stood still then she was stumbling backwards towards the sputtering flares at the end of the rock – and the sand.

  She thought she could hear the slithering of a Creature against stone and she gasped, but before she could cry out, hands grabbed her and expertly unbuckled the wings from her chest and wrists.

  The Creature’s frustrated wail screeched into the evening and Wren’s knees collapsed. Strong arms caught her and a man’s low voice spoke over her head.

  “It’s a boy, barely muscled. He can’t have been Running long.”

  Another answered him. “Get him into the hut; I’ll wait for his partner.”

  “No, wait.” Although her limbs felt like wet laundry Wren struggled free of the arms that were guiding her from the runway. “Let me see him in.”

  It was good to know a real Runner was going to catch Raw when he landed, but the Creatures still circled. The wail, like that of a hungry baby, angered by delay, still shivered across her skin. Wren wanted to make sure that Raw landed well - and that when he did, he kept his promise and did not betray her.

  Chapter twelve

  As he came into land, Raw’s arms shook so hard that Wren could see the effect on his wings. They juddered as if they were coming free of his back, the pinions flapping violently. Eventually he dropped his legs, only a little late, and thumped onto the rock with the sound of washing hitting stone.

  He grunted and his knees buckled, but he staggered forwards, just as she had done, trying to run as the wind, suddenly strong once more, fought to pull him back into its embrace. His jaw was set and his eyes glittered madly in the firelight. Wren saw him wince as his shoulder was strained once more. Then he forced his wings together, choking the wind from their vanes.

  She blinked as figures barged past her and caught Raw before his wings were fully empty. She strained to hear his voice, but she could hear only the strangers.

  “You all right, Runner? You timed that Run close. Set out late did you?”

  “That was a hard landing. Better get something cold on those ankles.”

  As Raw was led past her, he strained his neck until his tendons stuck out like cords and met her eyes.

  Wren’s knees trembled and the man who held her shoulders leaned down to look into her face. “You ready to go in now, boy? Your partner’s safe landed.”

  Her cheeks were so numb she could barely speak. With fingers that felt like lumps of ice, Wren pulled her goggles from her eyes. With one wistful glance at the flares that were now burning themselves out on the far end of the rock, she allowed herself to be led after Raw.

  As they walked the rock, Wren heard the Creatures slithering alongside, the wakes shrinking as they burrowed deeper into the sand.

  “Pay them no mind.” There was a smile in the man’s voice. “We’re used to ‘em. They’ve never left the sand yet, so if you stay on’t rock you’ll be fine. In a way they’re company for us.”

  “They’d eat you if you slipped.”

  “They would at that.” The man gave her a quick hug. “Probably we’d eat them too, if we could catch em. Works both ways see. Just don’t step off the rock and you’ll be fine.”

  Wren nodded but her eyes kept sliding to the side, where the whisper of shifting sand followed her all the way down the smooth slab and she could not help remembering how clever the hunters had been in the factories.

  Long and wide, the rock sloped down to a plateau, metres above the sand, where a low clam-shaped building clung like a limpet; the reinforced polyethylene walls shining with the glow of the dying fire.

  Wren stared. “Where’s your biosphere?”

  The man who held her upright gave a bitter laugh. “This is temporary-like, Runner. We only use it when the main platform’s out of commission. No ‘sphere out here - just the building. Won’t last past the next mega-storm, but it’ll do for now.”

  “So don’t tek yer mask off.” A second voice snapped.

  Wren had been about to draw their attention to the approaching storm, which she realised was hidden by the curve of the mons, but she jumped as a man pushed past her, wiping his hands, and her words fled. He opened the exterior door simply by turning a handle, as if the house was one of those inside Elysium. Here there was no sphere to protect the occupants.

  Wren put her hand to the mask that nestled on her face, she knew it was secure, had trusted it all this way, but suddenly it seemed flimsy.

  “I don’t often take it off anyway,” she muttered. “Except to eat.”

  “We’ve some like that here too.” The man nudged her. “We call em argonophobes.”

  “How do you eat?” Wren’s curiosity stopped her in her tracks.

 
“You ain’t seen our masks yet have you?” Get inside and take a closer look. The man reached for the door handle. “It’ll be crowded in here. Ready?”

  Wren took a breath. Was she? The worry that the day’s events had banished from her mind suddenly reared again. So many strangers - what would they do if they realised that she wasn’t a boy? “Ready,” she whispered.

  He opened the door.

  Wren stared, unmoving until the man pushed her into the press of people.

  “Shut the door, Adler, you’re lettin’ all the heat out.”

  Behind her the door slammed shut and Wren jumped, already wistful for the emptiness of the sky.

  The air in the small building was fetid with the stench of sweat and a poorly operating latrine. The scent of over-spiced soy-stew wound around the other odours, unappetising, but enough to make her stomach growl. She clutched her mask, holding it onto her face, as her breath shortened. Men crammed around her, so close it took her a moment to see the Sphere-Mistress who had spoken, standing near the oven. She wore her black hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her skin was chapped and her lips pinched.

  Adler raised his voice. “These Runner’s need something warm in their bellies, Genna. And one of ‘em needs cold wrap on his ankles.”

  The Sphere-Mistress, Genna, nodded and picked up a ladle. She started serving stew into bowls and immediately the men sat on benches set into the walls, clearing a space around Wren so that she could breathe once more. Now she saw Raw, heading purposefully towards her.

  Automatically she stepped backwards, almost tripping over outstretched legs, and Raw grabbed her as she swayed. One hand closed around the top of her arm. This was it: he was going to tell them what she was.

  “What my partner needs, is to sit down.” His voice was rough and Wren blinked, slow to catch up with what she had heard, still certain he must be outing her to the gathering. But he couldn’t, she reminded herself. If he revealed the truth about her, she’d do the same to him. They were at a stalemate.

  Adler gestured and several of the men shifted to reveal a plastic table pushed up against a wall, with two metal stools nestled beneath. Wren and Raw hobbled to the seats.