Peri swooped up sharply, beating her wings hard. Her brain, her wings, had reacted before she even knew what it was she’d heard. That familiar whine, hurtling past her. She knew that sound too well; she’d heard it often enough in the Venice as Ryan and his gang had got older. Another one, two, closer this time. Someone below was taking potshots at her.
She had her answer then. Far from her fantasy of the other kids crowding round her in awe, this was what she inspired. Meanness. Hatred. Bring the bitch down.
Time to flee, again.
Breathing hard, Peri pushed up towards a simmering cumulus cloud over the sea and used the strengthening thermal beneath it to spiral her up to around a thousand metres. Up here, she’d be no more than a spot to anyone below: a small target. What had she been thinking? She knew the danger. She had no right to expose Hugo to this. She needed to think more clearly about the risks she was running.
Once Peri let the momentum of one spiral turn push her out of the thermal, headed in the right direction, she allowed herself a smile. She was still inexpert at using thermals and was proud of the manoeuvre.
Peri put kilometres of ocean between herself and the town. This far out over the sea a chain of islets—teardrops, tadpoles of land with tails of white fringing sand—lit up the ultramarine sea with their pattern of lime paisley. After an hour’s flying south, she came back to the coast; she needed the energy from the thermals over land.
A lopsided mountain, bare of trees on its sheared-off side, rose up from the hinterland. Damn. Grims Peak, Cloudmaker to the locals; it means I’m not as far south as I should be. This flight was taking longer than she’d planned, poring over the maps at Janeane’s. Before the treatments she couldn’t have understood how she could memorise in one glance all the information she needed, all the rivers and ranges and directions and landmarks distinct and fixed in her mind. Now, though, a shiver of doubt crawled down her spine. My navigation’s fine but my timing’s out. I’m so much smaller than I realised. How could I think I can cross this continent?
The ocean and sands were deserted and Peri dropped down to around two hundred metres. Lower again, about one hundred metres, the sea flooded her vision and her breath with salt blue and green. All she could see were sheets of wet glazing expanses of sand with a floating layer of watercolour; pale blues and whites reflected from the sky. Easy to fall into a trance, flying above these mirror-sands; Hugo had been lulled by her long-distance rhythm into sleep but she must not drift away into dreaming on the wing because she was navigating by landmarks, like Cloudmaker now falling away behind her, aided by basic celestial navigation abilities, such as orienting to sun and stars, that Havoc had helped awaken in her.
Then they were leaving the salt-white sands behind and Peri marvelled at the precision of the sheared edge of the land below. Red cliffs met water with the exactness of lines drawn on a map. There was no blurring, no gentle shelving of sands; the continent came to an end here and stopped. The cliff was sliced straight down, showing its bands of rust and cream and grey. Seabirds dotted ledges and fractures, white plumage gleaming, their bodies speckling the rock with shadow.
‘Looks like layer cake, eh Hugo? Wish we could take a bite.’
Peri dropped below the brow of the cliffs. That edge, where the wind zoomed over the top, picking up speed as it was released from the compression of being forced against the cliff wall, was the most dangerous area. If she flew in the compression zone, there was a very real risk she’d be blown back over the cliffs and into the violent vortices of wind called rotors. She needed to stay either above and away from the cliffs or well below the ridgeline.
‘Remember,’ Havoc had said to her, ‘remember that air is a fluid. Air flows like a river. Look for what gets in its way, like a sharp rock sticking up, or even a large tree. Rotors spring up downwind of those things. Wind eddies around obstructions exactly like water swirls around a rock in a river.’
It was worth dropping to the right height for the ridgelift, though; she needed to rest her wings and she needed the extra energy it gave her. Oh bliss, here it was, strong steady lift below the ridgeline, air rising as it hit the cliffs and was forced upwards, warmed by the rock faces heated by the morning sun.
As long as the cliffs lasted Peri soared along the ridgelift; when they petered out just after the triangular point of Shark’s Tooth, she allowed herself to drop a little and hunted this way and that, now seeking the boundary of the convergence zone, where cold air from the sea hit warmer air from the land. The sun was high; one must have sprung up by now. Ah, there it was, she’d found it, and with rising joy and relief she tracked right along that invisible line that was like a shallow cold front, using its energy to help power her flight over the long arcs of beach below.
She was not experienced in this kind of flying; Havoc had taught her the theory of using ridgelift, thermals and convergence zones but most of it was still just words to her. Her flights in the City had been too short for her to become expert in using lift in all its forms. She was learning on the run.
Hugo woke up. Peri gave him water and an energy strip chewed to a sweet pulp.
Something glittered so brightly it hurt Peri’s eyes. A few hundred metres back from the beach, tangled in green weeds, huge creatures hunkered down, their massive heads tipped forward. ‘It’s a graveyard for trucks, Hugo,’ said Peri. ‘They look like giant sad grasshoppers, don’t they, with their big heads down like that. Dead trucks.’
‘Tah-tah-tuh,’ said Hugo. ‘Tuh. Tuck.’
Peri dropped her gaze back down to the waves; they were running faster and more ragged than she would have expected under such a sky. A soda-water sky, Havoc would have said. You know how it feels: clear and sparkling, trickling over the wings, bubbly, heady.
Peri looked inland, searching for the Woolpack, a blocky squared-off ridge rising up behind mangrove swamps. The Woolpack would orient her again, let her know how much further to the river delta. She couldn’t have missed it. Where was it? She must be flying slower than she thought. Was she really going to risk turning inland, making the long run up that river? If she was being followed, did she have the strength to push herself hard, after her hours of non-stop flying?
Peri looked behind her. She couldn’t see anything in the sky with her, not even any birds. From below rose up the hissing of the surf; the swell was getting bigger, the breakers rolling in larger as the afternoon coastal wind sprang up. Foam laced its white membrane over the backs of the waves and churned sand drifted pale brown through the water.
No place for you here, Janeane had said to Peri. That was true—and what if there was no place for her now in the City? How could that be? It had been so exciting, arriving there, knowing it was her true home, especially once she got her residency. She patted the permit under her skin. The City had been her place, and she’d lived in the best part of it, in Peter’s house. Waking up in her room every morning, on that narrow white bed smelling of lavender, in the clean quiet room washed with light reflected from the sea, was like waking up into a dream.
She’d spent her entire pregnancy there; Peter and Avis insisted on hiding her away but they’d fussed over her too, especially her health. ‘Now eat this,’ Avis would insist, mixing up one of her green vegetable sludges in the blender every morning and urging her to swim in their pool and nap every afternoon. It was a good life. She gorged herself on the riches of that house, staring at the real Al-Rahim paintings and the Andy Silver photos on the walls, running her fingers over the falling glitter of the rainbird sculpture in the courtyard, trying foods she’d never even heard of before.
Peri lived in a gilded cage, barely setting foot outside the house and courtyard for many months except for medical examinations and the occasional visit to the nearest beach, or her illicit excursions at Peter’s command. But her secret liaison with Peter had existed in a dark world of dreamlike intensity that had nothing to do
with the rest of this life.
It seemed to Peri that she was weirdly intimate with both of them, Peter and Avis. She was their employee, she lived in this glorious place at their whim, she had no idea what rights, if any, she had, and yet she was tied to both of them by the most intimate bond of all, her own flesh. She was carrying their baby. Except for her own parents, still unknown to her, who else was linked to her in this way? Not Janeane. Certainly not Bronte. She would probably never see Mama’lena again.
Gorgeous, expensive objects appeared in the nursery and Peri, shyly handling the toys, twirling the exquisite little earth, was happy to know how much the baby would be loved. She was doing the right thing; the baby would be healthy thanks to her and he’d be treasured by his parents. And she would get her wings.
Peri knew it was the baby who was being so well cared for. Even so, she was unprepared for the instant change in her status once Hugo was born. Still torn and raw from the birth, she was now a worker, with not a minute to call her own. No more reading, no more naps. She still had to drink the green sludge but now she had to make it herself every morning. ‘You’ve got to keep up your milk supply,’ Avis said. Her months of exquisite leisure were now to be repaid, with interest. Her dream life had ended with the first contraction.
The other change, the one Peri had to work so hard to hide, was in her feelings towards Hugo. It was one thing to imagine Hugo’s happy life when he sailed, invulnerable, inside her. Now all was different: now his tiny form was exposed to the sharpness of the world, now she had to protect his body in the imperfect safety of her arms, now he suckled from her breasts, now she could breathe in his breath as scentless as air, now she awoke even before he could cry for her from his nursery, now she watched him sleeping on her bed, fascinated by the crumpled rose of his mouth that even in sleep pursed in tiny sucking motions, now his heady smell acted on her like a drug; now it was much harder.
Now the empty quiet she’d loved so much about Peter’s house disturbed her; that quiet meant Peter and Avis were away. Their excitement about their newborn child did not mean that they spent less time working or partying. Clearly Avis blamed her, Peri, for coming between her and Hugo. Hugo was always sleeping or nursing. Peri remembered very well the first time Avis tried to cuddle Hugo and he’d arched his back away from her. He wriggled and grizzled until Avis, flushed with anger and humiliation, handed him back to Peri. Please, Hugo, pleaded Peri silently, please don’t make it worse. He had, of course, by settling peacefully into her arms the moment Peri took him. Must have known it wasn’t going to work from that moment. The look on Avis’s face. She did try again a few times but she got more and more tense every time and so Hugo struggled and struggled. The more I knew what to do with Hugo, the more Avis hated me. Oh god, what would she do if she suspected her husband preferred me too?
Hiding the growing intensity of her love and fear for Hugo was so hard. She needed her daily escape to the babies’ park.
The babies’ park—there was never anyone else there, the parents were all busy—was a square of fenced lush green, an extravagance in the City and one the nannies would never have seen before working for their rich families. Green fertile land, watered and tended purely so that the children of the wealthy might enjoy it. In the deep shadow of the trees the girls sheltered, rocking their charges in their prams.
Peri was one of only two girls breastfeeding. The other nannies didn’t speak much to them but Luisa and Peri didn’t care. They propped themselves up against a tree and talked together about how they kept up their supply, how often they fed, the pressure they felt when the baby was weighed. It wasn’t enough to keep the child safe and loved; it hadn’t occurred to them before they started that they’d be directly responsible for their baby’s growth too.
Peri was delighted when Luisa confided that she too had escaped to the City. ‘I think my home was worse than yours,’ Luisa said quietly. ‘At least you were left alone, mostly. The creeps who ran our compound believed any disobedience was a sign of a child’s evil nature. They beat it out of us with lengths of heavy cable; can you believe they all wore bits of it around their necks on a string, just so we’d never forget? I mean, who’s proud of being a torturer in their own home?’
‘God, Luisa.’ Peri laid her hand on Luisa’s arm.
‘God doesn’t come into it. Or if he does, I hate him,’ Luisa said.
Next day at the park, Luisa gave Peri a little silver ring, showed her the matching one on her own finger. ‘You’re my sister,’ she said. ‘Forever.’
Forever. Forever hadn’t lasted long. Peri looked down to the waves, the same ocean that had closed over Luisa, that rolled her body back and forth, that would strip the feathers from her wings. Somehow, Luisa’s wings had been the death of her. They were the cause of Peri’s troubles, too.
Something strange loomed ahead. Peri squinted, trying to make out the dark things under the surface glitter of the sea. The water had taken a big bite out of the land here. Behind her a headland had crumbled into the sea and the sand from the beach had been dragged away, exposing grey rocks. Waves sprayed up against the cracked end of a road. ‘Hugo, what is that?’
Tall curves were sticking up out of water. Dead palm trees. How could they still be standing in these waves? Even taller metal poles were scattered between the dead trees; light poles, glass long since smashed. Brown rectangles shivered under the water and huge irregular outlines, like splashes of water or ink, contoured around these shapes. Long ramps striped with black lines plunged into deeper water. Peri dropped down for a closer look. This place was enormous. The dead palms lined what had been seafront. ‘Hugo, this used to be a resort! Oh, it’s so eerie. The sea’s swamped it. Those brown tiles are the roofs of the villas and look there, that was a swimming lagoon, only now it’s full of sand and seawater and things growing all over it. There’s even a couple of cars sunk at the bottom of the pool. Those black lines are lane markings on the waterslides. Why are those palms still standing? One’s tipped over there, most of it’s been washed away. Oh, I see—look, Hugo, they were cemented in place but now the cement’s cracking.’
The resort must have been luxurious, once. Now the multi-million-dollar development was under water. Could Peter’s house suffer the same fate, the cliff cracking and sliding into the hungry waves below? Trouble had come, hell and high water had come, and there’d been nothing they could do to stop it.
Peri’s awareness diffused as she stared at the white smudges edging the waves as she coasted, adjusting her position to the shifting of the long, invisible convergence zone. At last there was the Woolpack rising up behind dense mangrove forest bordering the sea in scallops of deep nubbled green fringed by silvery blue-grey water. She was still at least an hour, maybe more, from the delta. The sky around her—she twisted her head to look—was still empty. So much for Zeke’s threat about her being followed.
Still, real trouble always comes when you least expect it, Mama’lena used to say, and Peri now knew that was true. It had. The very thing she had most wanted, the goal that had driven her every thought and action, was her undoing. Trouble came with her wings. They’d lost her her job and her lover.
It began the moment she woke up from her surgery. She was more disoriented, more shocked, than she’d been even after giving birth. She’d made her own way home and huddled on her bed, the new, strange wings folded down her back. Stunned as a bird that had smashed into a window, she lay still, barely able to breathe, vomiting from the drugs, wondering in horror, What have I done? No turning back now.
Poor Hugo had been looked after by another girl and fed with milk Peri had expressed before her surgery. Peri was terrified she’d be sacked as for days she’d lain crushed by the burden of her wings; the tortured, paralysed muscles of her back were unable to lift them, and she did not dare get up to look in the mirror. She’d been so sure of how beautiful she’d be with wings but now she was too
frightened to see how monstrous she must be with these dead things stuck to her.
When Peri finally was able to drag herself out of bed and start caring for Hugo again, she was alarmed by how Avis looked at her. How could she have been so stupid, not to realise how much more Avis would hate her now? Now that she was presuming to be like her.
When Peri hauled herself and Hugo in his pram to the babies’ park, the other nannies refused to talk to her at all. They walked away. Luisa didn’t. ‘You’re still my sister,’ she said, but she came to the park less and less often.
Now Peri and Hugo were on their own. She hadn’t had much to say to the others but it had been something. There’d always been the babies to talk about and they’d exchanged stories, survival tips. Her wings meant Hugo was snubbed too.
Who does Hugo play with? Avis quizzed Peri whenever she saw her. Peri could see she was worried that Hugo spent too much time alone. It wouldn’t take her long to put two and two together, to blame Peri—or, rather, her wings. It didn’t help that Peter made it clear he disagreed with Avis. Far from humiliating them, Peter had decided Peri’s wings gave them status.
That little problem came to a head at the party they threw to give Hugo his fledgling name. ‘It’s going to be Gyr, after Gyr falcon,’ Peri overheard Avis saying excitedly to a friend. Peri helped with the preparations, putting up decorations, assisting the caterers with the food. She was banished when the party started. Peter and Avis’s colleagues and friends, a whole rustling flock of them in gorgeous clothes (some designed by Avis, Peri was sure), turned up with presents. She lay in the dark in her room, listening with pleasure to the music, to the sound of adults laughing and talking, realising that somewhere deep within her this sound felt deeply familiar, reassuring. She sat up. Had her parents held parties? Certainly she’d never heard these sounds at the farm or in the Venice.
When We Have Wings Page 22