Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  Captain Groll picked up where Ghita left off. “What can you tell us about them? We understand they fought with your people.”

  Across the room from me, Liam stiffened and leaned forward. “That’s history.”

  The captain’s eyes widened just a touch. “But you don’t live with them?”

  I spoke quickly, before Liam could say more. “We’re here to explore this continent.” Figuring out what to say felt like walking blind toward the Lace River falls. “We’ll be picked up after we’re finished, sometime next year.”

  I glanced at Liam for help. He continued my fiction, although his voice shook a bit. Maybe they didn’t know him well enough to hear it. “We would be happy to show you some of Islandia. We’ve found some interesting wildlife here, and, of course, you flew in over the Fire River. Perhaps you’d like to see it up close.”

  Liam still hadn’t seen the river. Not really. I stifled a nervous giggle at the idea of touring them to places we had never been, then I spoke into the gap. “We have things to do to care for our camp, and wish to return there as soon as possible. Perhaps we can plan a trip around this area sometime soon.”

  “We’d love to show you the ocean cliffs.” Liam’s voice strengthened, falling into his storyteller’s cadence, the one he used when he and Akashi related their season’s adventures for the town-bound twice a year. “There’s a clear, hard-packed path all the way along them, usually traveled only by the animals of Islandia. Here and there, freshwater streams fall from the cliffs in bright waterfalls. There are also waterfalls from the mountains—”

  Ghita held a hand up. “I’m sure there is much to see here.”

  Captain Groll asked, “Would either of you like something to drink?”

  I was thirsty, but we needed a quick exit. I shook my head. “We’ll take water for our journey back.”

  “Would you show us around the ship?” Liam asked.

  Ghita answered. “Perhaps after you show us around Islandia, and we have a chance to discuss Jini as well.” She said it smoothly, sounding very friendly. A trade of information for information. She leaned in toward us. “We want to learn about this place. That’s part of why we came.”

  My hands trembled in my lap, and I held them tightly to keep them still. I wanted out of this damned ship. “Would tomorrow be all right?”

  “Yes.” The captain glanced at Ghita. “Late morning?” Ghita nodded, and the captain continued. “We will have enough web up to travel over this half of Islandia by then.”

  It had taken generations for Artistos to build a sparse data web around less than half of Jini. “Why would you put up a web here if you plan to go to Jini?” Why did you land here at all?

  Yet the captain apparently heard my unasked question. “This is a good base to start from …we want to understand Artistos before we visit.”

  And the web here would help them understand Artistos? Maybe Kayleen could tell us what they monitored and how.

  Ghita said, “So we will see you tomorrow?”

  “Shall we meet you here?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Ghita stopped and looked closely at me, searching my face. She did the same to Liam. “Please. I will escort you out. But will you answer one question first?”

  Liam and I looked at each other. “What is the question, please?” Liam asked.

  The captain leaned forward a little, the light from the star brightening her hair, seemingly setting the gold threads in her tunic on fire. “Do you care for the people of Artistos?”

  “Of course we do,” I said, just as Liam also answered. “Yes.”

  Captain Groll sat back in her chair, and gazed levelly at Ghita. A few moments of silence passed between them, or perhaps they shared the same nonverbal communication skills. “We’ll give you food and water for your journey.”

  We glanced at each other. Would they really let us leave?

  Apparently. The captain stood up. Ghita stood too, and gestured for us to do the same. She bowed slightly as the captain left the room. What about being from Silver’s Home set us up for better treatment? I felt stupid and slow, like a whole conversation we didn’t understand had happened during the awkward meeting.

  We followed Ghita outside. A skimmer fled into the sky as we stepped out of the Dawnforce, heading toward the mountains. Two more skimmers sat outside, and a group of four people in light blue uniforms seemed to be loading one of them with boxes. Maybe building the web? “How many people did you bring?” I asked Ghita.

  “About fifty.”

  I wondered if she told me the truth. It seemed like more people. Looking around, I counted at least ten outside of the ship, and we had probably passed that many getting out.

  Early afternoon sun shone on the bright green and yellow grass, and the air tasted dry. Liam looked up at the sun, shading his eyes. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Ghita looked toward the blue line of the sea, her eyes unreadable. “Good journey.”

  So we left with almost no ceremony. As soon as we were out of earshot, Liam leaned in to me and spoke softly. “That was really strange.”

  An understatement.

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the alien ship. “They didn’t treat us badly, but I felt like a captive on the way here, and now I don’t know what we are.”

  “Me either. I wish I could talk to Kayleen right now.”

  Earsets were so precious they would have been impossible for Kayleen to bring. “I know. Some days I wish I could Read the Wind, like her and Joseph.”

  He sighed. “Maybe it’s easier that we can’t. She and Joseph have both had a hard time of it. It must be mighty strange to have information pouring into you.”

  Joseph’s body had always looked so vulnerable when his spirit flew the nets, particularly when he was very young. “Joseph used to talk about how it scared him. When he was little, it made him feel like he was going crazy. But he had to do it—it made him happy, too. Kind of like the people who drink and say they want to stop.”

  “It drove Kayleen crazy,” Liam said softly. Then, “We can’t change who we are.” An echo of his father. Akashi always said everyone was perfect; they just needed to see their own reflections to know it.

  We were a few hundred meters from the ship, still alone. They really were going to let us leave. Liam grinned at me, his face momentarily alight with purpose. “Let’s go!” He started jogging, then let go into a fast lope, pulling immediately ahead of me. I laughed at him, reveling in the freedom of being out under the open sky, then raced to catch up, passing him, bursting with speed. He caught me, and took my hand in his, and we ran that way until we passed completely out of sight of the Dawnforce. We kept racing, each step releasing pressure and worry.

  Extreme physical activity always threw me into a space where what mattered became the current step, the path under my feet, the wind in my hair. Neither the Dawnforce nor the Burning Void existed, but just the two of us, and our run. For the moment, Islandia belonged to us again, and we might as well have been the only two people on her, free and wild.

  We arrived at the base of Golden Cat Valley winded, and stopped to rest, panting. We stood near the headland, our breath coming in deep, quick waves as water waves crashed against the rocks below us. Liam pulled me to him. “I don’t like those people,” he said. “What if they treated us the way they did at first because they didn’t know who we were? How would they have treated us if they hadn’t discovered we’re altered?”

  I ran my hand along the back of his shirt, sweaty from the run, scratching him, soothing. “Badly. At least, I’m sure we’d still be there, maybe even in that awful little room.” I shivered, even warm from the run and the still-warm summer day. “They’re hiding whatever it is they really want.”

  “I know.” His gazed back in the direction of the Dawnforce, his brows knit and his jaw tight.

  “I am not even sure they’re treating us well, now. Maybe we’re like tame dogs they let go because they know we’ll come back, and they want us t
o do it willingly.”

  “But why?”

  I hesitated, unsure. “It’s as if they had to treat us well when they knew where we came from.”

  We knew almost nothing about Silver’s Home, about our heritage. Only what we had gleaned from the data buttons Jenna left us, and what little she had told us. They had far more technology than we did. They designed themselves and they designed us. They were strong, and different, and they flew between the stars with impunity, apparently unencumbered by the scarcity that plagued Artistos. I was the only one of all of us who even remembered our original parents, and my memories were muzzy and thin. Most of what we knew about ourselves, we had discovered. “It felt like anything I said could be wrong. I don’t want to go back tomorrow.”

  We took the path up-valley at a slower pace.

  I began watching for Kayleen. Surely she knew we were coming. But only the rush of the waterfall welcomed us home. We stopped at the entrance to the valley, looking down. Would it look the same? Had they been here while they held us in the ship?

  Our house and the corral sat where they always had, peaceful and empty. I blew out a long relieved breath. But why hadn’t Kayleen come down from the cave as soon as she saw our signatures in the valley webs?

  30

  THE STRANGER’S NETS

  Our valley empty, we raced to the cave.

  Windy stood in the back against the wall, her head down, nuzzling Kayleen, who lay inert on the floor.

  “Kayleen!” I ran to her side.

  Windy raised her head and stepped back, snuffling mournfully. I placed a hand on Kayleen’s neck. She breathed, but her skin was so white and bloodless the blue of her veins glowed under it. She lay with her eyes closed, one arm flung up over her head, as if warding off a blow. She was fully dressed, but her feet were bare, the long toes curled in. I shook her shoulder gently. Her body felt slightly stiff. “Kayleen. Kayleen. Are you okay?”

  Liam’s hand stroked my back, and I looked up into his worried blue eyes. “What could have happened?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “She won’t wake?”

  “Did they do something to her?” I shook her again, a little less gently. “Kayleen?”

  She moaned, but didn’t open her eyes. Windy stepped a little closer to us, and stretched out her long tongue, licking at Kayleen’s toes. Liam called to her, his voice commanding, “Wake up.”

  Kayleen’s eyes fluttered open for just a second, and then closed, tightly, as if keeping out bright light. Liam went around to her head and carefully lowered her upflung arm, laying it across her swollen stomach. He lifted her head, settling it on his thigh, stroking her forehead and working his fingers through her tangled dark hair. “Kayleen, what happened?”

  She mumbled something unintelligible, her eyes still squished shut. “What?” Liam asked, leaning down closer to her.

  She suddenly clutched at him with the arm he had just laid down and opened her eyes. “They are evil people,” she said. “They came here to kill us all. To do what our parents couldn’t.”

  Tears rolled down her face.

  “I rode their webs. You confused them. They might still kill you—they haven’t decided.” She let go of Liam and raked at her face with her hand, then pushed into a sitting position. “They thought you might be on their side. Help them kill everybody else.”

  I shivered, repelled. That explained a number of their questions.

  Kayleen continued. “We have to go home. We have to warn them.”

  “How?” Liam asked.

  “They have skimmers. We need to steal a skimmer.”

  Now? “We can’t lead these people there.”

  Kayleen laughed, a high thin reedy sound like the night we’d found her by the hebra barns. “You think they don’t know where Artistos is?”

  “We have to figure out how to stop them,” Liam said.

  “Is being in their data what did this to you?” I asked her softly.

  She reached a hand up and pushed the hair from her face. Color had begun to seep back into her skin, but her eyes still looked unfocused. She nodded and bit at her lip. “It’s so hard. So much. More than all of our data in every thread.”

  We still had the food and most of the water Ghita had given us. Liam handed Kayleen his flask, watching her drink greedily. Her eyes widened as he held out a bag of crisp wafers they had given us for journey food. “Throw it away.” Her voice was insistent, edged with anger. “Throw everything from them away.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Who knows what they’ve put in the food. They are surely tracking you—I overheard them. They dropped dust on your clothes that tells them where you are. Like the nano-stuff in Joseph’s blood, in mine.” She bit her lower lip and stared at each of us for a moment, then her eyes briefly rolled up into her head. “Who knows what they would put in food? Something to make you compliant? To kill you? To change you? Burn your clothes and bathe and throw away everything that came from them. Burn everything you took there.”

  Liam sat blinking at her, fingering his shirt. He’d put on one he liked. “Can’t we just wash them? We don’t have much.”

  Kayleen narrowed her eyes. “Burn them.”

  “Won’t they know we did that?” I stood up and offered her a hand. “Could it be better to let them track us and simply not do anything unusual?”

  She took my hand and let me pull her to standing. “I don’t want them to know where we are.”

  “Are you ready to go back home?” I asked.

  She nodded, standing shakily. “Best be where we have a better perimeter. At least we’ll know if they’re coming.”

  “Why not just leave our clothes here?” I asked.

  Liam answered. “I don’t want them to find the cave. It’s more defensible than the valley.”

  I hated it that he was right. That we might have to defend ourselves. “Maybe we should hide some weapons in here,” I said.

  Kayleen grinned at me. “I already did.” She pointed at the woodpile.

  As we came down the slim path into West Home, I asked, “Where are they from? Where is the Islas Autocracy?”

  She shook her head. “Go. Burn your clothes. Take Windy—give her food and water. I’m going back to see what they do. Before they see me and kick me out.” She headed for the house.

  Liam stared after her, his brows furrowed. “Should we let her do this?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think we can stop her. Besides, she’s right. We need to learn.” I reached for Windy’s lead, and we walked out into the early evening.

  “Go on, take care of Windy,” he said. “I’ll start a fire.”

  “You’re going to do this? Burn everything?”

  He nodded, his face grim. “I trust Kayleen more than I trust those people.”

  Well. When it came down to it, so did I. As I secured Windy in the corral and left her with her head buried in an armful of dried grass, I imagined that I was dropping locators I couldn’t even see into Windy’s food and water, into the dust of the pasture. I shivered at the idea that these visitors seemed more likely to kill us than Islandia with all of its dangers.

  I found Liam standing by our outdoor fire pit, naked except for a drying-skin around his waist, watching the arms burn off of his favorite shirt. His jaw was set tight. He looked at me for a long moment, weighing his thoughts, or me, or both. “If what she says is true, we owe it to Artistos to attack now if we can.”

  I sagged bonelessly onto one of the two rough-hewn benches by the fire, instantly light-headed. How could he say such a thing? “I don’t want to kill anybody. I don’t want the war to come back. It’s done. It’s over.”

  The sheer unfairness of it, the enormity and stupidity, washed over me. Why couldn’t I just live in peace? That was all I wanted, to live in peace.

  I cradled my head in my hands, focused on the rustling sounds of Liam feeding the flames and the crackling of the fire, sniffing as my nose was assaulted by the smell of burning clothing
. Normal sounds, too: birds calling back and forth in the trees along the edge of the clearing, the wind shushing leaves against each other. Natural things that didn’t have someone else’s fight dogging their every move.

  Liam leaned down next to me. “I brought you clean clothes.”

  I nodded, keeping my head down. Tears stung my eyes. “Okay. Go jump in the water and get rid of the damned dust and I’ll change and watch the fire.”

  He ignored me, settling his strong hands on my shoulders and quietly massaging them, working at the tension. The tears I’d been holding back flooded my eyes and spilled onto my hands and knees and onto the ground. “Why couldn’t it have been Joseph?” I missed him so much. And having the strangers be dangerous made it even worse that it wasn’t him. How could I face such a thing without my little brother? “Why not Joseph? Why these people?”

  Liam leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I’ll go. Change, okay?”

  I nodded, listening to his retreating footsteps. I stood and stripped, quickly, so violently I ripped the shoulder of my shirt taking it off. So I kept going. I ripped the fine green hemp shirt, the perfectly good green hemp shirt, and ripped it again, and again, throwing pieces no bigger than my palm into the fire. I watched each one catch and burn, and threw my pants and underclothes on the fire in a single big heap and stood, naked, warmed by the flame as it burned my clothes and their dust.

  As Liam came walking back, fully clothed, I bolted past him and raced for the water. He’d have to stay and watch the fire—I could be alone. I catapulted off a rock at the edge and dove into the darkening pool. Damn them. Damn whoever sent them. Damn whoever, anywhere, wanted to kill for no reason. I came up spluttering, my feet churning the cool water. I didn’t try to swim under the waterfall this time, but circled the edges of the pool, letting the powerful ripples of falling water keep me far away from the cascade.

  There had to be another way.

  After three long laps, I climbed onto a half-submerged rock near the gap where the water spilled out of the pool, watching it tumble past me and run down another meter of gentler fall into a stream. I looked up, waiting, alone with the waterfall until the first star shone brightly overhead.