by Jenn Reese
Aluna had just ruined her chance of ever returning to the ocean.
HOKU WATCHED, horrified, as the tendrils of Aluna’s breathing shell retracted into the device. She wasted no time. Still holding her breath, she slapped the necklace against the Deepfell’s throat below its wound.
Nothing happened at first. She pushed and twisted it. Her face started to turn an unhealthy shade of purple.
“Stop!” Hoku said. “Put it back on. It’s not too late!”
Aluna shook her head. She twisted the breathing shell again. This time it glowed and whirred. The Deepfell’s eyes — those ludicrous black orbs — widened even more.
“The shell’s tails are burrowing to your lungs, demon,” Hoku said. “Lie still. Struggling will make them lose their way.” He’d never seen a shell affixed to an adult before. Kampii received their shells within a few days of birth, once their mothers were sure they were healthy enough to journey beneath the waves. He had no idea how the Deepfell’s body would react.
Beside him, Aluna gasped. She’d held her breath as long as she could. Now she toppled forward, onto her hands and knees, and choked.
The demon choked, too. And gurgled. And tried to claw at its own throat. Let it, Hoku thought. Aluna was his only concern. He grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to steady her as she coughed and hacked.
“What’s . . . happening . . . to me?” she managed between choking sobs.
“The shell does more than burrow. I don’t know what. But it does something to your lungs and your breathing and eating tubes. I . . .” Her face was red, her eyes bulging. Her body was trying to expel something, and it wouldn’t leave.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said, frustrated. He held her shoulders tighter. That’s all he could think to do. The Deepfell squirmed nearby, and if the demon wanted to, it could grab Aluna’s knife and murder them both.
“Don’t fight it,” Hoku said. “Your body knows what it needs. Don’t fight it.”
Her coughing eased slightly. He saw her take in a shuddering breath, and then another. She looked at him just as another spasm shook her body. She fell out of his grip and curled into a ball on the sand.
Behind him, the demon had stopped clawing at the breathing shell and had started wriggling toward the surf. It was heading back to the deep — with Aluna’s shell.
He glanced at the sand where the Deepfell had been. Aluna’s knife was still there, where she had dropped it. The demon was a dozen drags from the water. Hoku had time to get the necklace back. He could take the knife and . . . what? He’d never deliberately hurt anyone in his whole life.
“’Ku, ’Ku,” Aluna said, wincing. “My insides burn.”
The Deepfell was only a few drags from the sea now. Hoku should stop the demon, but how? Even if he were strong enough to strike, he could never be a killer. He watched the Deepfell pull itself the last few meters. Once it reached the surf, it disappeared quickly into the waves.
Maybe he couldn’t be a killer, but he could be a best friend.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Oh, no,” Aluna gasped. “Not again.” And she was off on another coughing bout. He winced and held her. He couldn’t look at her face, so he stared at the knife, his water safe, the dead bodies on the beach. Anything but her pain.
And that’s when he noticed the birds. A dozen winged shadows glided across the sand. It took him a moment to realize that they were getting larger, and another long moment to find the courage to look up.
The birds weren’t birds. They had wings — vast feathered wings — but their bodies and faces were Human. Not only Human, but female. They wore sleek silvery armor around their chests and elaborate metallic bands around their arms and necks. They gripped their spears and harpoons with warriors’ ease.
“Tides’ teeth,” he hissed. “Aviars!”
According to his grandfather, an Aviar warrior could kill a Kampii in one thrust of her spear, but needed a full day to cook and eat her prey afterward. “Sharks,” he whispered to Aluna’s shuddering body. “Sharks in the sky.”
Two Aviars drifted to the beach and landed near one of the dead Deepfell. They stood over the creature and pointed to something in the sand. Another pair dropped behind him, and another. Were they assessing the battle scene or planning for their next feast?
Hoku reached for their bags and pulled them close. He wrapped his body over Aluna’s, trying to hide her from their view.
What was she always saying — still as a starfish, calm as a . . . jellyfish? That didn’t sound right. And how was a silly phrase going to help, anyway? Here they were, out in plain sight, not a single hidey-hole within crawling distance, and he was acting like it mattered if he stayed calm or not. Did a shark care if your heart was racing when it bit your head off? No, the only reason they hadn’t been plucked from the beach already was that the dead Deepfell probably smelled more like food than they did.
The bird-women called to one another. He understood “too late” and “food.” Their language was more similar to the Kampiis’ than the Humans’ had been. Only the Aviars’ accents made it difficult to figure out their words.
“To pull so many Deepfell from the water would take a great beast. Or a machine,” an Aviar with orange-and-red-feathered wings said.
“Agreed,” the other said. Her white feathers were covered with strange symbols painted in blue and black. “Upgraders did this. The bodies have been desecrated. Fathom’s minions always take pieces for their master.”
“This far north? We must inform the president immediately,” Redfeather said. “Perhaps he is planning another attack.”
Whitefeather turned and spat on the sand. “Go. Scout east. You know the signs to look for. Be back by dawn.”
Redfeather pounded her fist to her chest, then leaped into the sky.
“Aluna, what should I do?” Hoku whispered. She was the tactician. She was the fighter.
And she was unconscious.
Hoku lowered his ear toward her mouth and listened for her breathing. Her heartbeat was there, weak and ragged, but growing steady. His own breath came a little easier. Maybe the worst was over. Her lungs were figuring out how to work on their own again.
Whitefeather let loose a high-pitched screech, and two Aviars flew over. “Bring the two Human children,” she said. “They may have witnessed the attack. The president will wish to question them.”
“Yes, Sister,” they said.
Heavy ropes fell across his shoulders and back. Hoku lunged for the knife, but it was out of reach. Three Aviars swooped to the sand. Rough hands grabbed him, tumbled him back. He smelled dead meat and sweat. Feathers brushed his legs and face.
In no time at all, he and Aluna were tangled tight together. Two Aviars vaulted into the air, and the net jerked into the sky.
The ground fell away. The sand became a yellow ribbon between the blue of the ocean and the green of the trees. They rose fast. The frantic flapping of giant bird wings resolved into a steady rhythm. His hair flattened against his face with each downswing.
The sea spread out to the horizon, seemingly endless. As vast as the ocean had always seemed, he’d never seen this much of it at once. If they flew high enough, could he see around the entire world? Trees, mountains, birds, clouds . . . his eyes couldn’t take it all in fast enough.
He should have been planning their escape. He should have been trying to wake Aluna or negotiate with their captors. At the very least, he should have been panicked or frozen with fear.
But as the Above World sprawled out below him, all he could do was stare.
ALUNA’S THROAT BURNED. Something was on top of her, crushing her cheek against a web of coarse ropes. And, as if that weren’t enough, she was adrift in a choppy current.
No, wait. It wasn’t water buffeting her skin, but air.
She opened her eyes.
The world swam below her, all blue ocean and trees and chiseled gray rocks. She wanted to scream, but her throat hurt too much. She was i
n a net — mashed under Hoku and his bag — dozens of meters above the ground. She twisted her head to see what was holding the net and caught sight of wing tips.
Hoku’s words came back to her: sharks in the sky. Her brothers had spoken about the Aviars often, usually speculating about who would win in a fight. Even underwater, the bird-people’s warrior skills and tactics were renowned.
The net surged upward and the landscape changed. The trees dotting the mountainside were replaced by row after row of black squares tilted toward the sky. Hundreds of them hugged the ground, obscuring the natural contours of the rock. They sparkled like waves in the sunlight.
“What are they?” came Hoku’s voice in her ear. She tried to whisper back, but her throat refused to function. She tried again, and a third time, until it obeyed.
“Hoku,” she said. “Are . . . ?” She swallowed, closed her eyes, tried again. “Are you okay?”
“Aluna!” came his voice. She wished she could see his face. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “The Aviars captured us —”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes! They came with a net — oh. Ha ha.”
She smiled. Above them, the Aviars’ wings whooshed as they continued to rise. She felt pressure building in the back of her head and the dull throb of an oncoming headache.
“You know what you did,” Hoku said in his serious voice. “You can’t go back to the ocean now.”
“I know.”
“Then . . . why did you do it?” Hoku asked.
She could hear his real question, unspoken but loud as waves crashing in her mind: Why did you leave me?
Staring into that Deepfell’s eyes, those glossy black bubbles, it had felt so right. Deepfell came from the same ancestors as the Kampii. They changed their bodies more drastically, but they still had the same capacity to love and hate, the same right to live. Most Kampii called them demons, forgetting that three generations ago, it was a group of Kampii hunters that initiated the first raid. Daphine knew. As the city’s Voice, she had urged tolerance and tried to negotiate a peace treaty. No one ever listened. Not the Kampii, not the Deepfell, and not even Aluna.
But seeing that Deepfell’s pain and fear, his helplessness . . . she imagined she was seeing Makina’s last minutes. Would her friend’s panic have been any different? Aluna couldn’t bear the thought of letting a Deepfell, a person, die when she had the chance to save him.
“I had to,” she said. That was all the answer she had. “I’ll find another necklace, or some other way to go back. HydroTek will have the answers. This is just one more reason to find it.” She wished she felt as brave and confident as she sounded. “Besides, we have other things to worry about right now, like the Aviars.”
“They’re going to question us,” he said. “And I think eating us is under consideration, too.”
She answered brightly, trying to ignore the growing pain in her skull. “See? That’s definitely a more immediate problem.”
One of the Aviars shifted, and the net spun slightly. Their captors were headed for a small tunnel carved into the mountain. She didn’t think they’d all fit — two winged women carrying a couple of Kampii in a net took up a lot of space. But the opening seemed to get bigger and bigger the closer they came. By the time they arrived at the passage, Aluna was convinced that Big Blue himself could have swum right through.
The tunnel curved up and down and around. They left the warmth of the sun, and Aluna’s eyes instantly adjusted to the dark. Glow stripes had been painted along the tunnel’s stone walls, no doubt to help the Aviars navigate if they came home at night. Maybe they’d been so excited to give themselves wings, that they’d forgotten to give themselves dark sight. The Aviars swooped down and up one last time, and then they plunged back into the sun.
Aluna gasped. It looked as if someone had scooped a huge bowl out of the mountaintop. They emerged halfway up the side. Aluna could see tunnels and caves carved into the walls, making it look as pockmarked and pitted as the coral in the City of Shifting Tides. She imagined a network of passages and family nests and secret meeting rooms, like the ones the Kampii had back home.
In the center of the bowl, a huge tower jutted hundreds of meters into the air. Aviars flew in and out of the spire’s countless windows and perched on the resting sticks integrated into the architecture.
The City of Shifting Tides was probably as big, but you could never see all of it at once through the murkiness of the water. In the clean, crisp air of the mountain, she could make out details for kilometers in every direction. The flurry of brightly colored wings and a constant breeze made the whole place feel perched on the edge of chaos.
She heard Hoku suck in his breath. She imagined him trying to look in every direction at once, his eyes wide. She didn’t blame him.
“Hoku,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Do you think they’ll let us explore before they eat us?”
He chuckled. “They’ll need more than wings and pointy spears to stop us.”
Aluna watched a blue-winged Aviar fly straight up and out of the colony’s open roof.
“Did you see the pulleys?” Hoku said. “Over there, where the water runs down the wall. They can lift things from the ground all the way to the sky! I wonder where they get the power.”
Aluna wasn’t entirely sure what a pulley was, but she loved the way the water fell from the edge, splashed hundreds of meters down the side of the bowl, and pooled in a glistening circle around the center spire. A variety of four-legged animals stood drinking from its edges.
The Aviars carrying them flew toward the central building. The pain in Aluna’s head pulsed with each wing flap. She shut her eyes and swallowed, trying not to be sick. In the ocean you had to be careful how fast you went up to the surface or back down to the city. Was the same true for the sky?
She kept her mouth shut as the Aviar flew into one of the tower’s wider windows and dropped the net to the floor. Hoku’s bag slammed into her shoulder, followed by Hoku himself. She yelped, more from the pounding in her head than from their weight.
Winged women with spears surrounded them and yanked them to their feet. Aluna gasped again. Without her breathing shell, she just couldn’t get enough air.
“Welcome to Skyfeather’s Landing,” a tall Aviar said. “You are in the Palace of Wings, and I am High Senator Electra.” She stood like a leader, relaxed and strong at the same time. The gold bands wrapped around her muscled arms were more elaborate than the bands the other Aviars wore. Her brown-and-tan feathers reminded Aluna of the hawks that flew over the coral reef, but her face was much like a Kampii’s. If she’d had a tail instead of wings, she could have been one of the Elders.
“Quickly, are either of you feeling ill?” High Senator Electra asked.
Aluna ground her teeth together and refused to answer. Never let your opponent see your weaknesses, Anadar always said. Usually right before he knocked the weapon out of her hands.
“Answer me!” the Aviar yelled.
Aluna clutched her head from the pain. Black spots swam in her eyes. Anadar would be so disappointed.
“Fetch a breather,” Electra said to one of the Aviars. Then to Aluna she said, “Listen to me carefully. You have sky sickness. The air here is thin, and your body is not adjusting. You need more oxygen.”
Aluna could hear her words, but only partially understand them. The whole world felt blurry, like the moon when viewed from beneath the waves. She breathed faster, but her lungs never seemed satisfied.
An Aviar with white feathers covered in symbols spoke. “I’m sorry, High Senator. We rose too quickly. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, you weren’t,” Electra said. “We’ll discuss it later.”
“Help her,” Hoku said. Even through her haze, Aluna could hear the panic in his voice. Why was he worried? “You did this to her. You have to save her!”
With a rustle of wings, the Aviar who had been sent for the breather returned. A mome
nt later, High Senator Electra shoved something into Aluna’s mouth. She tried to resist, but her body felt heavy, as if her arms were filled with sand instead of muscle. The artifact was the size of a clam and covered in tubes and blinking lights. It emitted a low hum that she found strangely soothing.
“Breathe through the device,” the high senator said.
Aluna shook her head and tried to spit the machine out of her mouth. Another hand grabbed her arm. A smaller one. She looked over and saw freckles.
“Do it, Aluna,” Hoku said quietly. “If you don’t trust them, at least trust me.”
She inhaled. Air rushed into her body. The invisible hand crushing her chest released its grip slightly. She breathed again, and again.
“Good,” Electra said. “Now I’m going to stick something to your skin. Do not pull it off. It will instruct your body to adapt faster to the altitude.”
“How?” Hoku asked.
“There are messengers in our blood that carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. We will tell the girl’s body to make more messengers.”
High Senator Electra gripped Aluna’s shoulder and clipped something to her earlobe. It stung, but no more so than pricking a finger on a sea urchin. She disliked earrings, but then again, the City of Shifting Tides didn’t have any that could save your life.
Her headache receded. She fisted her hand, relieved to feel its strength returning.
“The worst has passed,” Electra said. “Continue using the breather until you can do twenty push-ups without straining.”
Aluna had no idea what a push-up was, but she understood all the same. Keep it on until you’re ready to fight.
The Aviar whistled and four guards stepped forward, their spears clutched at their sides.
“Escort our guests to their chambers on the prison level,” Electra said. She turned to Aluna and Hoku. “I have saved you, but only for now. I will inform Her Royal Greatness, President Iolanthe, of your presence. It is she who will decide whether you ever leave this place alive.”