by Rabia Gale
Miss Levine nodded, as if she’d expected that. She raised a hand, and alarms began to shrill, blaring in patterns that no one had ever heard except in drills. The remaining lights flashed emergency red.
Sanders said, with a low, bitter laugh quite unlike him, “So that’s it for the sunway then. That twerp Turnworth may have been caught, but he’s done his damage. That radioactive sun of the Cooperative’s might be our best chance after all, though the government will take over that, I bet.”
Miss Levine said briskly, “Rainbird, in spite of what you and I talked about earlier, there is space for you in the lifeboats, should you choose. I do not promise acquittal for you, but I believe I can alleviate the sentence somewhat.”
“No, ma’am,” said Rainbird, woodenly. “I’ve made other promises.”
“Well, then.” Miss Levine looked at Sanders. “Do not linger long. I expect you in my boat, young man. You have to give evidence.” She stalked off without waiting for an answer, out of the chamber with the binneys, Turnworth and the hybrid in her wake. The rest of the sunway personnel scurried out after her.
Strange how empty and quiet it seemed, even with the sirens shrilling and a distant recorded voice emphasizing, Evacuate! All personnel to evacuate the sunway immediately!
Sanders said, “She’s right, you know. You wouldn’t be worse off downside than up here. Things are changing. There’s a movement to give equal rights to halfbreeds and other races. It won’t be perfect, but you’ll have friends. I know it. Come with us, Rainbird.”
“I can’t.” A lump formed in Rainbird’s throat. “There’s nothing for me downside, except…” She swallowed. “Papa.”
Sanders squeezed her hand. “I wired ahead. They’re waiting for him downside, to take him to the hospital. You could go see him in a day or two.”
She smiled at him. He was still trying to change her mind. “And the other thing. With everyone evacuating, can you shut down all the messages going through the spinal cord? Dampen all the communication going on all the waves? Make it quiet?”
Sanders’ mouth twisted. “Once everyone is off, it won’t need me to make it quiet. I’ll see what I can do.”
Rainbird squeezed his hand back once, released it. “You should go.”
“Take my gondola, then,” said Sanders. “I won’t need it.” He made no move to go, just stood there looking at her, waiting for her to change her mind.
Perhaps he’d wait forever. She couldn’t let him do that, so she turned away first.
“Good-bye,” she said, not looking. “Thanks for everything.” And left.
The gondola was skittish, like a nervous horse. The sunway bucked, its electromagnetic field in flux. Lights flickered on and off all over it. Dark shapes detached from it: boats and balloons dropping down to the ground.
At least the Day Sun was down at one end. Rainbird shuddered to think what would’ve happened if that brilliant ball of heat and light had fallen. But the way the sunway shook, falling bone might be hazard enough.
In trying to save the sunway, had she destroyed it?
She’d woken the dragon.
Don’t attract the attention of the stars. Those rogue wandering bodies that threaded the sky, cosmic dragons that shone their doubled glare into the universe. One that had fallen in fire and pain and heat and friction, slamming into the planet, throwing up debris and folding the land into mountains. And had, unbelievably, lived. Survived the impact, survived the centuries of decay, survived being picked clean and drilled into by humans.
Something prickled at the edge of Rainbird’s hearing.
Singing. The eiree were singing.
The sunway stopped trying to twist itself right over, quieted a bit, still trembling like a scared horse.
Rainbird listened, the wordless music threaded deep into her muscles and bones and eerie senses. Singing, like the stars, but different. Just a little different.
And then she knew what to do.
She had to atone.
The Wing stretched up, a web of bone, a frozen tracery, unbroken and beautiful. Rainbird stared at her feet. Under her soles, bone vibrated. The beast’s raw emotion carried through what was left of its nervous system, its pain momentarily dulled by the eiree singing. High, with a touch of sweet.
One step. One step and I’m on eiree land, subject to their law. A shudder rippled down her back, and she took that step before she had time to lose her courage.
As she climbed, eiree fell back from her, dropping to the other side, or gliding away. She didn’t look at them, bent as she was on climbing. Finally two warriors stopped her with spears above her kidney and under her ears—going for those eiree senses. That’s right. Loss of identity was worse than loss of life to them.
“You may not go further.”
“Justice awaits at the top. You care that this is done right? Then step aside.” Rainbird reached out to touch him, and he started back. “Ah, yes. Your purity will be compromised, won’t it?” Another eiree rule, another thing that she could not—would not—understand. No, she’d never find a home among them after all this was over. Not that she expected an afterward.
She pushed the spear tips aside gently, and met no resistance. No one bothered her again as she went up, further, closer to the aerial choir that sung upon the Perch, the highest point of the sunway.
Up here the air was so cold and clear that it pierced through her halfbreed skin and slipped into her thin blood and sought to crack her weak bones. But the view—of the stars above and the bone of the sunway and the vast ripple and fall of cloak-land below—joined the air and altitude in taking her breath away.
Here also the star music was clearer than it ever had been before, and the eiree hummed along, almost in tune, swaying, wingtip-to-wingtip. Diamada was inside the circle, by herself, chanting, eyes closed, arms and wings uplifted. The other eiree followed her, almost a note behind, watching intently.
As if she sung music only she could hear, Rainbird realized.
Is the gift of hearing star-music so rare?
Outside the circle stood the eiree male who’d come to her prison—Rainbird recognized his scent right away. He had no eyes for Rainbird. He watched Diamada with a fixed intensity that Rainbird would’ve called hopeless adoration on a human male.
So that’s how she was able to get him to come free me.
Wing-rustle, silver-ripple. An eiree approached her, an old one, though she couldn’t tell how she knew. Eiree didn’t age in the ways that humans did. Perhaps it was in the color of skin and eye, the thinning of bones in his frame, the mustiness of his scent.
Rainbird resisted the urge to drop her eyes or make obeisance, as if to an elder of her race. I have no race. I belong nowhere. And then she thought of Petrus, and her heart squeezed.
“You hear the music?” said the eerie, without preamble. She recognized his voice. He’d been the one on the wire.
For answer, Rainbird closed her eyes and started to dance. She felt them make a space for her, a widening circle. Heard the other eiree falter in their singing, stop one by one until only Diamada was left, singing with a high pure clarity. Rainbird danced, as they matched note to step, and thought, This is the only time my mother and I will ever do anything in harmony. And again, her chest tightened.
She danced and Diamada sang for seconds, for eons. When Diamada’s voice died away, Rainbird kept up the dance, soundless, for a time longer. She came to a stop and said, eyes still shut, “I hear.”
A snort, a puff of air as if wings swept in a shrug. “Strange for the halfbreed to be the one who hears best.”
Rainbird opened her eyes, looked the elder full in the face. “But I’m not halfbreed, then, am I? I hear—doesn’t that make me true eiree, truer than some of the others?” Bold and impudent words, but the seriousness of her expression and tone robbed them of their sting. She didn’t look for Diamada, but she thought she heard her mother let out a sigh amidst the indrawn breaths of the other eiree.
She did
see her eiree rescuer. He stared back with mingled disgust and wariness. A young one, not yet used to turning his face to a mask.
“You claim the eiree wings?” The elder let a wingtip rise in surprise (if only I had the same facility with mine, thought Rainbird, with a stab of envy). “Why?”
“Use me. I woke the dragon. Help me to put it back to sleep.” The tremors under her feet increased; the beast’s misery was a vast ocean that rolled over her soul in waves.
Did they speak? Consult? No visible communication, but Rainbird felt—something—go through the group, like electricity. She felt their assent like a tingle in and under her ears, but she could make out no words in it.
“Diamada?” said the elder.
Now she had to look. Rainbird turned, steeled herself for Diamada’s expression. The eiree woman watched her, with an odd expression, too alien to be called gentle, yet not entirely pitying either. “The humans’ signals are broken, the air free of their noises for once.” Sanders, though Rainbird, with a pang. Thank you. “We can leave the Perch at last, but it is fitting punishment for the waker to stay and be guardian to the beast, to soothe it to sleep again, lest the rest of its kind take notice.” Rainbird shuddered, remembering that great voice in her head. “Little worm,” Diamada addressed Rainbird. “It is time for you to grow up. Are you ready?”
They were looking at her. Waiting for her to make the choice. Would they tear her to shreds and throw the remnants over the sunway if she refused?
She couldn’t, though. She’d given her word. Put herself into their hands. Promised to submit to their justice.
She nodded, head down, then thought that she should face her future—since she had one—with more dignity. Rainbird squared her shoulders, looked at Diamada, though she spoke to the elder. “I am ready.”
“Then be transformed.” He threw back his head and his wings rippled behind him. There was a ceremonial ring to his words, and a shiver of anticipation went through the rest of the eiree.
Rainbird stood there, wondering what she had agreed to, as groups of eiree broke out into chanting. It was a surprisingly vigorous and martial a music for such a race. They tossed eiree lyrics back and forth, till they were tattered and ragged.
An eiree knelt—knelt!—before Rainbird and offered her a tiny bottle. It was made of bone and delicately-carved and she tipped it to her lips. Silver liquid burned as it went down, closing her throat. Rainbird coughed and spluttered, hand up over her windpipe, panicking as the ache grew. Were they…what…? She couldn’t speak and her sight went blurry.
Eiree crowded her, wings and arms outstretched. Their claws ripped slits in her clothes and their hands were cold as they slid the tatters off her. Rainbird resisted the urge to grab the fabric and clutch it to her. Her clothes. They had been her disguise and her shield. She shivered in the night air.
Some touched her in those eiree places, their sharp nails pricking, leaving fire and ache in their wake. Others spread out her torn wings and coated them with a gel. Rainbird blinked again and suddenly she could see with a shining clarity.
The eirees’ wings were open to starlight, to radiation and micro-particles from space. They were like sails, threaded with fine nerves, swirling with color. Rainbird looked at their faces, and they were no longer alien, but familiar.
My people? Rainbird tried to lift her hand, to touch the faces she had now only begun to see, but her arm hung limp by her side.
They guided her, and under the influence of the potion, Rainbird could not resist. Did not even want to. They led her to a spot between two bones. A bulbous sac lay in the joint, slightly quivering. The eiree peeled away at its gelid layers, revealing warmth and darkness within, and coaxed Rainbird in. One by one, all the eiree came past, touched the skin under her ears, her wings, her sides, saying words that she had no meanings for.
Last of all was Diamada. She brushed her fingers over Rainbird’s face, and Rainbird managed to focus her thoughts into an arrowhead of lucidity, slicing through the mists in her head. “Where go…?”
Diamada understood. “Away for now, away from this world. Perhaps, one day when the humans are gone and the dragon truly dead, we will return.” She touched Rainbird’s lips. “Now, rest.” And then she was singing—not the song of the stars, but a croon, like a lullaby she would sing to a child.
Perhaps she had before.
Layers and layers of wet translucence closed over Rainbird’s face. The last thing she saw clearly was Diamada’s face. She wanted to stretch her hand out, to say, “Tell Petrus…” but her limbs were jelly and no sound came from her lips.
And then Diamada was gone and nothing was left but shapes and shadows beyond the sac. Rainbird leaned back, sank into gel and darkness, and met the dragon. Uncertain and pained, it was more like a child than a fearsome beast.
Don’t worry, she thought to it. You are not alone. I am with you. I will always be with you, now.
It made a sound like a whimper, and its consciousness bumped up against her. Rainbird reached to embrace it, and felt the scritch-scratch of feet and machinery upon bone, the aching hollows where its organs should be, the bump of boats on land and sea against its ribs. She saw panicked techs and wizzes fleeing from their labs at head and tail, as live wires sparked and broken tubing gushed fluid. Its heart constricted, and her own squeezed with it. Blood, the silvery dark of a dragon’s blood, ran into its nerves and muscles and brain. Already parts of it were healing, tissues stretching towards each other across gaps, twining over wires.
But it could never be completely whole. It would never fly again.
And what of her? Already the gel soaked through her skin and worked into her muscles, blood and bones. It would dissolve parts of her from within, then reform them. When she emerged from this cocoon, she would be—what?
Not just an eiree, not with her human blood which resisted the gel, resisted the undreaming sleep it would have brought to another worm.
No, she would still be herself.
She would be Rainbird. Rainbird with another purpose.
With piercing clarity, Rainbird saw herself dancing forever upon the Perch, living upon the moss and debris that the eiree left behind, sharing the music of the stars with the poor ravaged beast trapped in its brain stem and skeleton. And someday she would hear that dreaded voice upon the stellar winds—I am coming—and she and the beast would have to find a way to keep it away.
We belong together now, you and I, she told it—sunway and sun, cosmic dragon and trapped carcass, all.
And in that moment, they were both comforted.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have happened without the contribution of many people. Many thanks go to Jo Anderton for her constructive criticism, cheerful support, and for reading at least three versions of this story. You rock.
Thanks also to May-Lin Demetriou and Miquela Faure for offering structural comments, and to Liana Mir and Robin Cornett for nitpicking over typos and formatting.
A big thank you goes out to David, chief cheerleader, wise reader, one-man tech support staff, exceptional husband, and co-parent of three wild and wonderful children. I love you.
About the Author
I break fairy tales and fuse fantasy and science fiction. I love to write about embattled heroes who never give up, transformation and redemption, and things from outer space. In my spare time I read, doodle, eat chocolate, avoid housework, and homeschool my three children.
A native of Pakistan, I grew up in hot, humid Karachi. I then spent almost a decade in Northern New England among the trees, mountains, and moose. I now live in Northern Virginia.
Visit me online at http://www.rabiagale.com or follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rabiagale. I love hearing from readers!
If you enjoyed this story, please consider mentioning it on Twitter or Facebook, or reviewing it on your blog, Goodreads, or the site you got it from. Thanks!
More Books by Rabia Gale
Shattered
/> Once upon a time, stories ended happily ever after. Or did they? What if the magic mirror couldn’t decide on the fairest of them all? What if Beauty’s kiss didn’t break the curse? What if choosing a bride based on her shoe size was a bad idea?
Shattered: Broken Fairy Tales is a collection of three short stories that take a turn into the dark forest instead of out of it.
Wired
A cybernetic Rapunzel in a post-apocalyptic world fights back against the woman who imprisoned her.
Wired is a short story of about 4600 words.
Unseen
A Pakistani girl with a gift for seeing what no one else can incurs the wrath of a supernatural being. A pudgy accountant who sees far more than he wants to is chased by mysterious figures through the gloom of an industrial city. Both encounter what lies beyond the edges of the mundane world.
Unseen is a collection of two previously published short stories by Rabia Gale.
Table of Contents
RAINBIRD
Table of Contents
Rainbird
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More Books by Rabia Gale
