He spends the seventh night rotating a telescope and watching the stars move from the observation deck that hangs suspended over the lip of the canyon. None of this is like him—the reckless abandonment of his own comfort, the secrecy, the barely suppressed joy. My master is a man of great confidence and grace, unlike, he says, the other Masters of Galilei. He hides from no one, particularly from his assistant, who is all but part of his own body.
Every few hours I check that each egg still dreams, and I turn them gently in the nest, and then I check on my master.
Sometime after midnight the not-lady meets him there, her green-black cloak catching the heat still rising from the depths of the canyon. I must have missed her ascending the narrow spire to our workshop—there is no other way to come, save from the canyon, and that is impossible. They stand apart, my master drinking fermented meadfruit as they speak. I can’t hear his words, but he watches her with something that I think must be close to love, because it is the same way I watch the eggs, the same way my newest sister dreams of plants. Once I think there is the slip of a wingfeather, a gleaming pinion sweeping the night from underneath the cloak, but it must be a trick of the light. Nothing that flies still lives on Galilei. My master did that long ago.
I wake three hours before first dawnlight, start the forgebox, make my master’s drink like usual, but he is gone, and the eggs with him.
Last night, after I checked on my master, I held each egg in my hands and listened to it dreaming. In the time I’d been outside watching my master and the not-lady something changed. Inside each egg there was a new high note, and all those notes together made a harmony connecting each to each. I didn’t know what they were becoming, but it vibrated with longing and belonging and justice and sisterhood. I listened to them sing it to each other for hours, my hands on first one egg and then another, until water fell from my eyes onto the eggs. I jumped straightway to wipe it off with the linen shroud.
But when I touched the drops of water my eyes had left, there was a sharp zap, an arc of lightning from the drop to my finger, and then a soft curious contact, the mind inside twisting a tendril of consciousness, quick as a morningvine fruiting in darkness, to brush against my own.
They showed me the stretch of wings spreading between star systems, greenblack and lush; seven sisters with teeth and talons raised in song.
Who?
I don’t know all of what I told them. I told them of Master Damon. I told them about eggs and sisters and the masters and their Greenway. I told them about the moon over the canyon, red dust and heat and the shimmer of water at great distance. It could have been a moment or an hour. I stood there, telling them all I knew of purpose and want, every thing I had never said, even to myself, until everything went dark.
I have never run so far or fast as I do now. I all but slide down the spire’s narrow walkway, trusting the red rock beneath me to hold.
I know where Master Damon is taking them.
It is minutes before first dawnlight when I come gasping to Court’s gate. The same sister is on watch, her face bored and sleepy.
“Halt,” she says, and yawns. “Oh, Dimwit. Your master has been inside for hours already. You better hurry. Bigwise don’t like to be waiting.”
He is alone in the Greenway. I do not see the not-lady, but I am sure somehow that she is here. My master is wearing a strange contraption. A pair of wings sweep out from his back, and as I watch, he flies upwards to deposit an egg on one of the platforms rising above the Greenway. I see now that there is an egg resting on six of the platforms already, leaving just one empty in the center. The platforms glow faintly in first dawnlight, lines of energy pulsing upwards towards the platforms.
As soon as the egg is centered, he falls like a stone, his wings opening clumsily enough at the end to ease him ungently against the thick grass. His head is high and proud as he stares upwards at the eggs: glittering, priceless treasures on platforms of stone high above us.
I have known Master Damon all my life. I was born to know him better than I have known my own self. I have never seen this strange emotion that is now on his face, burning like a curse in him. I wonder how I did not see the shape of it before. It scares me, and instead of walking out to him, I duck behind a bower and watch.
Now that he has landed, I see that the wings are no contraption but a second skin grafted to his own. They collapse into slits underneath his finest robes, settling invisibly against his back. They are thin, dew-light and transparent, and as like the wings the egglings showed me as a moon is like its planet. This must be what he has been keeping from me, growing the wings in secret, grafting them to his skeleton late last night, knowing that the masters have forbidden involvement with all such things.
He would not have kept it from me for my safety, but because he thinks me too stupid and small to keep his secrets. This is the first seditious thought I have been bold enough to think, and the shock of it runs through me.
The doors on the far side of the Greenway burst open, and out pour the masters, twistwise and furious, descending on the garden. None of them think to look up, at where the eggs rest on their high pedestals. All of the masters are here, lured away from their morning meal by the promise of unexpected dramatics. In the center of them all comes the King. He is unconcerned. This distraction can only be an entertainment. It is impossible that something unknown should threaten his comfort, let alone his life.
I have heard the sisters whispering vengeance. I know better.
“Damon!” The Master Gardener shouts. “What is the meaning of this? You have no authority on the Greenway!”
Master Damon doesn’t take his eyes off the eggs. “Watch, Master Gardener, and you will see.”
The suns have crested the horizon, light stretching towards the eggs. They gleam like a blessing. There is a sound. At first I think I am remembering the song from last night, that it is looping and repeating in my mind the way it has been all morning, twisty and relentless as weedwind, until I see the masters looking for the source.
That’s when the not-lady drops from above onto the last remaining platform, her wings spread and glorious.
“Masters of Galilei,” she says, loud enough for all assembled below to hear her speak, “Here are your crimes. Through trickery and deceit, you broke covenant with my people, the Arbiters of the Universe, the Termagant. Your arrogance and greed caused you to make an enemy of those who could have been your allies. You hunted my sisters across the sky, breaking their wings and spirits until only I was left, hiding among the stars, to bring you to justice. It is time to render your judgment.”
The song grows louder. I can see from here how the eggs have started to crack and shake. Together, they shatter at the same time. The shards of the eggs fall, slicing sharp, from the platforms down onto the heads of the masters.
I have never seen anything so beautiful as these sisters bursting reborn and keening out of their eggs, crested heads held high, unfurling their wings and talons.
They dive upon the assorted masters, rending and tearing, laughing and singing, and the masters fall before them screaming, all their pride and conquest repaid, all their terrors returned.
And Master Damon stands in the middle of it all, unflinching, even when the Greenway begins to burn; even when his own brother, his King, catches fire; even as the King runs screaming through the Greenway and falls to ash and bone on the ground.
When the Sisters are finished, sated and drowsy with the taste of vengeance, they touch each others faces with tenderness and, without a word spoken aloud, turn their gaze towards the waiting universe.
Master Damon takes a step forward, his wings unfurling behind him, and the seventh Sister laughs at him.
“Where we are going is not for you.” She looks over to where I am hiding. She cannot possibly see me, but I know it is for me when she says, “And Galilei belongs to another kind, now.”
“But you promised,” Master Damon says, his voice harsh and assured. “You promised
me the stars. I have given you everything for it.”
“You are welcome to them, Damon, if your little wings can take you there.”
Without another word, there is the thunder of seven pairs of wings heading onwards, to other planets orbiting other stars, and the sisters have launched themselves towards the sky.
“Wait!” Master Damon screams. He launches himself at the sky, his wings beating clumsily, trying to keep up with the Sisters. He climbs above the smoke and fire of the former Greenway, an arrow launched at the vault of the universe, and I am still watching when his wings tear high above us in the atmosphere and he drops, an arc of fire falling with him, to break on the ground.
At first I and my Kind have no idea what to do. We have always been given breath and purpose by the masters.
It is the Gardenkind who remember their purpose first in the days after. Their Greenway may have burned, taking with it all the masters and their grass and roslings, but Galilei has plants of its own, tall thorntrees and morningvine and weedwind and smallfruit, and all of these they begin to tend, so that we all can eat. And it is the Soldierkind who stand watching the horizon while they work, some protecting the Gardenkind from Galilei’s wildness while others make shelters, rebuilding what was lost with the masters.
Purpose is something we have even without the bigwise, as one of my sister Soldierkind says.
I return to my master’s workshop. I know more about his machines than I was made to know, but if the last few days has taught me anything, it is that we are all made for more than we know, and the Kind will need to be able to create itself in the days ahead independent of men like Master Damon. I work like I have never worked before, and there is no one to tell me what is twistwise or straightway but myself. I grind hollow bones. I replace will with hope. I cry over each one of my new sisters and brothers and hold their gifts in my hands. It takes months, but I fill the canyon floor with our genetic profusion, sustainability, rebirth, choice, the beginning of something new.
These are the first eggs I ever craft on my own. They are beautiful.
If I have done what I have done right, they will also be the last.
© Copyright 2020 Katrina Smith
Katrina Smith - [BCS298 S04] Page 2
