Broken Wings

by Melanie Nilles

  No, there was something. The feather.

  She reached under the collar of her shirt. The soft caress of the black feather brushed her fingers, calming her. Now, that was all she had left.

  ["Is something wrong?'"] Someone moved closer. In that tight corner, the dank, stuffy air shifted.

  Huh? Raea looked up. The young guy was perceptive, and close. Too close. She pulled her legs up to separate them.

  ["I'm Cris. It's an honor to meet you, Keeper Raea. Don't worry. Leks doesn't bite. He's harmless…most of the time. Don't let him scare you."]

  A low growl from the bigger man contrasted Cris's statement. Leksel sounded pissed.

  Okay, he could quit staring, but his smile reassured her.

  She wanted to escape the attention, though.

  ["All right. Enough already."] The woman shoved Cris back. ["Leave the poor girl alone—"] She looked up with a frown to Leksel. ["Both of you. Until the neutralizer wears off, she still needs her rest."]

  ["I was just trying to be friendly."] Cris rose to his feet and winked at Raea. ["I'll see you later."] He grabbed Leksel's arms and steered him away. ["Come on. Tarin's waiting."]

  Leksel yanked his arm from Cris's hand and, after a final look to Raea, followed Cris.

  ["Men! They'll go out of their way to impress any pretty face. You're not the first and won't be the last. Trust me."]

  Raea focused on the woman with the blonde ponytail. Mid-20's perhaps, a slender build and flawless complexion. Yeah, she could see them hitting on that one too, more so than herself. ["Who are you?"]

  She smiled and offered her cup to Raea. ["Corsa. Drink this. It'll help with the headache."]

  ["Thanks."] Raea sniffed—nothing foul. In fact, it had a fruity scent. ["What is it?"] Medicine or juice or poison? For all she knew, they lied to her.

  ["Tea. Your stomach won't take food for a while yet."]

  Fruit tea? Odd, but she was on a different world. They didn't seem like they wanted to hurt her, and she was hungry. Raea took a sip, and grimaced. Definitely not juice. It was bland like any tea she'd tried. She didn't like tea, and she didn't like this.

  ["Drink. Ronaki leaves have an analgesic effect. It's all we have. Medical supplies are limited to what we can carry. A pouch of ronaki doesn't take much space."]

  Corsa eyed her like Debbie did when Raea didn't want to do something that was supposed to be good for her. By now her aunt must have realized she was gone.

  Raea stared at the shimmer of waves in the cup. Debbie. Elis. Josh. Everyone. Would she ever see them again? Or would she die on Inar'Ahben, alone and afraid?

  ["Drink."]

  Under Corsa's gaze, she drank the tea a small swallow at a time. Her body numbed with her mind. Just as well—it numbed the sting of her emotions too. After some time, she handed the nearly empty cup to Corsa and laid down. Corsa probably wouldn't let her leave, but Raea didn't know where to go anyway.

  ["That's better. Rest a while. You'll feel better soon."]

  ["Thanks,"] Raea mumbled. Strange dreams filled her head a moment later.

  Vodin gazed at Salera, his wings out of sight and his jaw steeled. The muscles of his jaw flexed and flattened beneath the skin.

  ["I'm sorry. I didn't realize…"]

  ["I told everyone to stay high. That included you."] Vodin's chest rose and fell with a deep breath, his eyes hard. ["The safety of everyone on this ship—yourself included—is my concern. Do you understand?"]

  ["Yes."] Her voice wavered with uncertainty.

  Vodin doubted her. The look he gave her said it. He dropped his eyes and stepped around her in the room, to a counter of a desk in the corner. ["I don't think you do. I don't think you fully realize the dangers of this world. I suppose I should not expect a young girl to appreciate what we hope to achieve in the time we plan to spend here."]

  She bowed her head. Tears gleamed from her cheeks.

  ["Part of that's my fault. I should have made it a priority that you study our mission, but I didn't think it important."]

  ["You want to study the humans, understand their cultures and languages…and…not expose us?"] She wiped her cheeks and looked up.

  Vodin's eyes softened. ["That's a start."] The edge in his voice melted. ["To achieve our goals, we need to maintain secrecy. The men and women on the surface must not be exposed. These humans are primitive and barbaric. We don't know what they'll do. They may see us as a threat. A threatened animal will defend itself…viciously."]

  ["On the surface? You reprimand me, but you risk your crew? Humans don't have wings."]

  ["No, but neither do certain Inari, if they don't want to."] He held out his hand. ["I'm told Crystal Keepers have a sense of the Starfire. Give me your hand."]

  After a few seconds, she placed her hand in his and gasped. ["Meistal!"]

  ["Yes. All of us. Enough Starfire in our genes to hide our wings, but no more."]

  Salera jerked her hand away. ["You should've told me."]

  ["Why? It makes no difference in my decisions. For the next few days, you'll stay on board. No flying unaccompanied. Do you understand?"]

  She crossed her arms. ["Yes."]

  Amusement alighted on the general's face. ["Next time, trust me when I say to stay high?"]

  ["Yes, sir."]She looked away as the commander appeared in the doorway behind her.

  ["Thank you."]

  The commander met the general's eyes and tipped her head a fraction.

  Salera stepped past the commander, who gave her a wary look.

  Out of sight, the commander said, ["You're too easy on her."]

  ["Four days should be long enough."]

  ["For me to finish, but not to punish a brat like her."]

  ["I suggest you watch your tongue."] After a moment, steps cut off with the snick of the door.

  The ache of her shoulder made Raea shift. Her wings lifted.

  Wings?

  She opened her eyes to the dim, pipe-lined nook around her. Where was she?

  The answer smacked her brain with the emotional pain of a sledgehammer: Inar'Ahben. Her breath froze at the onslaught of memories. Naviketan! We were attacked. Where was Nare? Was she there? Where were the men and the woman who greeted her when she woke last?

  She pushed herself up slowly. No headache. The tea worked as Corsa said it would. In fact, she felt more rested than she had in a long while. Not since before Pallin and the nightmares had she slept as well.

  Pallin had been Shirukan. He'd used his looks to charm her into complacency, while Elis tried to warn her.

  She'd said a lot of bad things to Elis, but he still loved her. She'd been stupid to ignore him. All this time, she still couldn't accept her feelings for him. Why was it so hard? Why couldn't she let her heart lead her?

  Her own ignorance led to her capture by the Shirukan again. If only she'd listened to Elis and let him fly with her and Nare. He was always right.

  I was so stupid. This was her fault, again.

  __________

  Cris and Leksel

  Voices trickled through the pipe-lined corridor from around a bend ahead. Raea followed them to a stadium-sized room of criss-crossing pipes of different alloys and sizes.

  The humidity clung to her like the steam after a long hot shower, except this was cool and condensed on pipes.

  At the entrance to a large room of pipes with a high ceiling, she froze and stared. What was this place? Beneath it all, a dozen Inari of various wing colors sat on pipes curved or angled around each other or stood in the open spaces. Light glowed from various fixtures around the chamber.

  ["You will not set foot beyond the boundaries! I don't care how many Shirukan you think you can disable. Touch one and the rest are alerted of trouble in that location."] Leksel's wings shifted on his back. He stood a breath away from Cris, ready to pound him flat by the harshness on his face and the reprimanding tone. ["Do I make myself clear?"]

  ["Sure. Clear."] Cris shrugged. So nonchalant and unafraid. Was he trying to pi
ss off Leksel?

  What did he do exactly to bring on Leksel's wrath anyway? Although from her impressions when she first saw him, Leksel looked ready to snap at anyone who crossed him.

  ["Think next time, Cris! Stay out of sight of any patrols."]

  Cris's wings—a shade lighter than Lekel's—shifted, and he leaned back against a pipe. ["All right. I get it. Quit taking my draft."]

  Leksel's jaw muscles flexed. The others watched him in dead silence.

  Okay. Note to self—don't get on Leksel's bad side. Check. She filed the thought away and tried to slip in unnoticed.

  ["Hey, cuteness!"] Cris's wings lifted slightly as he hurried away from Leksel.

  She clenched her teeth as Cris ducked a few pipes to catch her. Using her as a scapegoat from Leksel—so not a position she wanted. ["Cris, right?"]

  ["Aw, wow. You remembered."] He shrugged, his grin stretching wide. ["But I hear Keepers remember everything."]

  Yeah. Everything, whether she wanted to or not.

  Cris stared at her with that grin growing wider each second. Couldn't he look somewhere else already?

  Okay. This could get annoying. He was way too cheerful, especially after that scolding from Leksel. And the others watched them. Leksel's cold stare in particular disturbed her. ["Unfortunately,"] she muttered, wishing to escape the attention.

  ["Did you sleep well?"]

  ["Yes."] With more visions of a previous Keeper named Salera; but she couldn't tell him that. She hardly knew him, or any of them. She could have told Elis; he would understand. Her chest ached at the thought; she missed him so much.

  A dozen faces watched her. She hated being the center of attention, especially as an oddity, because—like it or not—as the only Keeper, and a Crystal Keeper, she stood out among them.

  From around a pipe, Corsa stepped out with a smile. ["I'm glad to see you up and about. You must be hungry."] She shot Cris a warning look.

  He backed off, but not without a wink to Raea. ["Catch you later."]

  If he thought she was interested, he'd have an unpleasant surprise. She intended to return home at her first chance.

  Raea glanced back at the others now talking quietly behind them. ["Did I interrupt something?"]

  Corsa led her across the large chamber, past Leksel, who tipped his head. Too weird seeing so many strange people with wings. She'd barely adjusted to her own.

  Yet how cool was it to be on another world? She was on, or over, Inar'Ahben. Elis was born here, or somewhere over that world. He grew up there.

  What was he doing now? If she knew what time it was, she could imagine him at home, or them together, what they would be doing.

  Her heart sank from what she missed.

  ["A rest only,"] Corsa said. ["Most of our group patrol the perimeter for Shirukan, although it's only temporary anyway. Every few nights, we find a new place to hide."] She ducked beneath a low pipe. ["It keeps us alert and we stay ahead of the Shirukan patrols."]

  ["They come looking for you?"]

  ["Of course—watch out—"]

  Raea jumped away from a steaming vent. ["Where are we?"]

  ["Close to the water recycling plant. The water is fresh when it's gathered, but we can't always depend on the sky. Besides, the Ahben don't appreciate us contaminating the ocean. Most of our liquid wastes can be recycled—usually converted to fertilizer and shipped to the searoot islands."]

  ["Searoot islands?"] A thrill passed through Raea. Searoot islands—hundreds of acres of land floating in the sky. Elis had told her about them, but to see one… She couldn't imagine how an island could float in the sky, even supported by massive plant roots filled with gases.

  Corsa chuckled and stopped. Her smile shone with a glimmer of hope. ["You really have spent all your life on Earth. You poor girl. Limited by surface dwellers…but I've heard they have some amazing machines for getting around and they've mastered atmospheric flight."]

  ["Faster than the speed of sound, and they have machines for underwater too."]

  Corsa nodded her head and continued forward without a reaction. ["Impressive. Humans have come a long way since we started keeping a history."]

  Raea stopped. She couldn't have heard right. ["You keep a history of Earth?"]

  ["We have to. You of all people should realize the necessity of blending in. It's the only world we've found where the dominant species is so close to us that we can hide among them, or at least that Keepers and meistal can hide."]

  Yeah, meistal. She shuddered. The word meant middle, as those given the description were. With Starfire in their genes but no Starburst marks to release the energy, the meistal could only transform. All Shirukan were meistal. But were all meistal Shirukan? That was the more interesting consideration.

  ["The rest of us are stuck here."] Corsa pursed her lips and paused. ["I'd love to see Earth, but we're forbidden from interfering until the world is sufficiently space worthy and ready to know the truth about Inari. Our ancestors learned the hard way when they started exploring."] She walked off and followed a corner of pipe.

  Raea quickened her steps to catch up. No doubt they learned the hard way. The Starfire had shown her flashes of worlds it destroyed because of species abusing the power of the entities. Where there was power, there was someone ready to grasp it and abuse it. ["The Shirukan don't seem to care."]

  ["No. I suppose not."] Bitterness ground in Corsa's voice. Her wings adjusted on her back.

  Raea had learned to read Elis's moods by the shift of his wings. Part of that came from learning Buddy's body language. Her uncle Mike's chocolate labrador used ears, tail, body, and teeth to make his intentions clear. Her wings probably shifted too with her moods. It happened involuntarily.

  Corsa turned around a column of thick pipes.

  ["Where are we going?"] The chamber seemed to go on forever, although Raea saw ahead what appeared to be a doorway into a low-ceilinged, narrow corridor.

  ["Are you hungry?"]

  Hungry? For the first time, Raea noticed the twinge in her gut. ["A little."] She lied—at the thought of food, her middle rumbled loudly.

  ["We have a temporary kitchen here. You missed the midday call, but Kallara saved you a plate."]

  Temporary kitchen nothing—no more than a couple crates stacked as a counter with something like a hotplate. She had expected something more impressive, like some sort of instant cooker. She could have done more with a microwave.

  ["It's not much. Down here, we don't have the luxuries of living quarters."] Corsa shrugged and reached for a covered bowl set aside from the hot plate, or whatever the thing was. ["Sorry, it's cold. Unfortunately, most of what we're able to obtain is."]

  Alien food. Maybe she didn't want to eat. Her stomach argued against skipping food, though, traitor that it was to avoiding strange foods that might not agree with her. She might have been meant to live on that world, but she'd grown up eating food suitable to humans.

  Raea accepted the bowl and flipped up the hinged lid. Strange but familiar. It kind of reminded her of sliced water chestnuts in some type of orange sauce. ["What is it?"] She poked at it—soft and spongy. So not water chestnuts.

  ["The best we can get here. All our rations are dehydrated and only need water added. It's sliced loprol with seim sauce."]

  What with what sauce? On second thought, Raea didn't want to know. She had to eat something and she wasn't exactly going to get a hamburger and fries here. She took the ladle-like utensil Corsa handed her and stirred the mushy stuff.

  ["Not the best cold, but we thought you'd be awake sooner."]

  Great. By the sound of it, this stuff wasn't very good cold. Just her luck. She was too hungry to wait for it to reheat, though. Raea lifted one of the pale slices to her mouth, detesting Corsa watching her. She wouldn't react, even if it tasted dreadful.

  The slimy piece slipped into her mouth.

  Aside from the squishy chewiness of the solid pieces, the sauce was sweet, reminding her of lemons, honey, and…berries, ma
ybe. She took another bite. Sure enough. ["Not bad."] Kind of like calamari—without the fishy flavor—in a sweet sauce. She could get used to this.

  ["Not too different from Earth food?"]

  Raea choked down a mouthful. ["No, actually. I—"]

  Something clattered on the pipes behind her, but it was Cris's face popping up next to her that made her jump. He smiled and squeezed through a couple of large pipes. ["I thought I'd find you here."] He glanced between pipes back the way he had come, before sitting on the lowest next to her. ["So, when you're done, you want to join me on my next shift?"]

  ["Absolutely not."] Corsa crossed her arms, the shadows of her high cheekbones seeming to darken with her mood. ["We can't risk her running into the Shirukan. Leksel would rip out your feathers."]

  Cris shrugged, but peeked back over his shoulder. ["I'm not afraid of him."]

  As if! Raea swallowed another bite to hide the grin tugging at her mouth. ["Then who are you afraid of?"]

  ["No one. No one. Just looking out for you."]

  What a liar. Raea met Corsa's doubtful gaze, which hinted of a smirk.

  Corsa looked aside. ["Leksel."]

  ["What?"] Cris scrambled to slip between pipes, his left wing joint catching.

  Raea covered her mouth to keep from laughing food all over. It served him right for lying.

  Cris hesitated and looked back. The fear gave way to narrowed eyes as he crawled back to join them. ["Not funny, Corsa,"] he grumbled.

  ["Too easy. Besides, aren't you supposed to be going on patrol?"]

  He shrugged, his eyes on Raea, a question in the lift of his brows.

  The answer was still no. Raea held her tongue and took another bite as an excuse to say nothing. If he was Elis, that would be different, but she wasn't interested in Cris. He was funny and cute, but disrespectful and too desperate. Elis had never been like that, until the matter of bonding came up.

  While she couldn't imagine her life without Elis, she barely knew him. Their relationship was so new and yet wonderful, except that she couldn't have it all. She had to choose.