Ayrie: An Auxem Novel

by Lisa Lace

  The grim sound of his voice terrified me. “A storm’s approaching. We have nowhere to land and no way to outrun it. We’re going to have to let it hit us.”

  AYRIE

  Elle’s terrible perception of herself had me fuming as I flew toward the land mass I could remember from the map. I thought it was south of our island, but I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. I didn’t know where I was going, which direction was correct, or how long I could actually keep flying.

  The worst part was I didn’t have a choice. We had to leave the island to find help for Elle. When I began to tire, I started to second-guess myself. Vandwa was famous for storms rising out of nowhere, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. They could disappear as quickly as they appeared, just like the one we weathered on the island.

  I started finding it harder to maintain our course in the face of the rough winds. I wondered if we should turn around and go back, but we had been flying for hours. I would have the benefit of a tailwind, but it might blow us completely off course.

  I decided to keep moving in our original direction and hope we weren’t far from land. I had been flying all day. Maybe we were out of the dead zone by now.

  As I glided, using my wings to keep us on the course and trying to move a little faster, I noticed a wall of dark gray clouds building along the horizon. I could smell the scent of ozone in the air. The towering clouds were huge even from a distance. I saw flashes of lightning and heard the distant booms of thunder. I also noticed several waterspouts stretching from the ocean to the nasty-looking clouds.

  I had never been afraid to fly before, but I had always had the option of landing if a storm became overwhelming. I changed direction and started heading even higher, hoping to fly over it. It wasn’t long before both Elle and I began to gasp from thin air. I had forgotten that Vandwa had a different atmosphere than Auxem. There was no way we could go above the clouds if we wanted to keep breathing, so I dropped back down.

  If we flew under the storm, all we would have to deal with was rain. It was hard to keep flying in wet conditions, but not impossible. It was certainly preferable than trying to fly through lightning and waterspouts.

  “What are you doing?” Elle sounded frightened.

  “I’m going to pass under the storm. I can’t get above it, and there’s nowhere for us to land. If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to deal with rain.”

  She clutched me tighter. Unfortunately, it wasn’t our lucky day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AYRIE

  The wind was getting stronger than I had imagined possible. I had to adjust my flight speed to account for the forces buffeting us around. I needed to flap my wings more often than in calm air. Once I reached the point where continuous pumping was required, I would only have enough strength to keep going for a few minutes before I fell out of the sky from exhaustion. And that was if I only had to worry about supporting myself.

  I tried to use my wings as little as possible, using the air currents to guide us.

  I needed to stop overthinking things. I would talk us out of the sky in a couple of minutes with negative thoughts like those. An important part of remaining airborne was having the right mindset.

  Instead of wondering what was going to happen, I forced myself to think about something else. When we had first learned how to fly, instructors trained us on visualization techniques where we imagined we were as light as balloons, floating effortlessly in the sky. Our scientists had found doing mental tricks could extend our time in the air by thirty to forty minutes. I hoped it would still work if I was carrying someone on my back.

  We couldn’t stop ourselves from watching the approaching storm. The dark, gray clouds looked threatening as lightning flashed, illuminating the sky around us.

  The waterspouts frightened Elle the most. Every time we saw one rise from the ocean, she would clutch me more tightly and bury her head down on my shoulder to hide her eyes.

  When I wasn’t keeping an eye on the storm, I was scanning the horizon. I was certain there had to be land nearby. If there wasn’t, we were doomed. I thought I saw a dark land mass far off on the horizon, but I might have been imagining things.

  Rain started to fall, and our visibility dropped to nothing. I was able to fly steadily, but I was blind and struggling to keep our heading without being blown off course. I had nothing to gauge our direction when black clouds hid the sun.

  We were drenched in seconds. Elle started shivering, and I felt her wet shirt pressed tightly against my back. I couldn’t help her her. All I could do was keep us in the air until I collapsed. I was now certain we were going to fall into the sea. It was only a question of when.

  A new problem was that we had flown out over the open ocean where we would be on the animal side of The Barrier. We were going to be in danger from water monsters as soon as we hit the sea. Considering this, I realized everything was going to end for us in the water. If the wildlife didn’t kill us, we would drown.

  I tried to be efficient with my wings to stave off our doom. With luck, we could outfly the storm. I didn’t say anything to Elle. She was scared enough already without the additional burden of our impending deaths on her shoulders. It was going to be a bad way to die.

  I could have been happy on that island forever with Elle. We should never have left. It would have been better for Elle to get sick there and risk death than to come out here and die for certain. I hadn’t thought about the consequences of our decisions. I should have known better, and now we were both going to pay the price with our lives.

  Minutes passed and the storm grew worse. The rain drove into us and felt like a thousand nails hitting our exposed skin. The wind started to come in gusts. It was worse than a steady headwind because I couldn’t anticipate where the air currents would come from. I had to be vigilant and on guard. The stress was tiring out my mind just like the flight was wearing down my body.

  We passed into the thickest, darkest clouds I had ever seen. Lightning flashed all around us every few seconds. I flew around two waterspouts - they didn’t suck us into them.

  Through it all, Elle never said a word.

  The only thought I could keep in my head now was to keep fighting. I wasn’t going to give in to the fatigue beginning to creep into my flying muscles. I would outfly the storm if I had to.

  Every beat of my wings was hurting now. Lactic acid filled my muscles.

  I had to keep flying. The thought beat through my mind like a drum. But repeating a mantra couldn’t change reality. A gust of wind blew into us when a waterspout formed and pushed us around. I lost my balance and Elle fell off my back. Her arms were too tired to hold onto me through the violent shaking.

  I managed to grab hold of her arm as she fell, but I couldn’t pull her up to me. Instead, she was dragging me into the ocean with her. I didn’t care. I was tired too. There was no point in going on if we weren’t together. If she ended up the ocean, I would be by her side. It was better to die with Elle than live without her.

  The thought shocked me but was instantly driven from my mind when we hit. The water felt like liquid ice against my skin. It was nothing like the warm shallow water near the island. I released Elle’s hand as soon as I dipped beneath the surface. If I couldn’t pull in my wings, I was going to drown, and I didn’t want her to die with me. I managed to drag enough of my head out of the water to pull in a deep breath before I went under again. My waterlogged wings were dragging me down.

  I heard Elle scream my name before my head sank beneath the waves again. I didn’t know if I could pull in my wings when I was underwater, exhausted, and out of breath. But I had to try. If I failed, Elle would be all by herself.

  I tried to pull them in three times, but the water was stopping me, and I was running out of breath. I felt small, firm hands yanking on my arms and pulling my head out of the water. I gasped, breathing in sweet air and unable to think of anything except oxygen.

  “What’s happening to you?” She sounded scare
d, but there was a determination in her voice. She was stronger than she thought.

  “It’s my wings.”

  Elle was pumping her legs and dragging me to the surface whenever my head sank under the water. She was a great help, but I could tell the effort was becoming too much for her.

  “You have to put them away, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I can’t do it under water.”

  “You can use me. I’ll lift you up.”

  She rolled onto her back and tried to position her tiny body in a way that would support me. I had to put my full weight on her. I rolled onto my stomach and lifted my wings out of the water. Elle had taken a deep breath before her head went under the waves. She was still trying as hard as she could to support me.

  It wouldn’t do either one of us any good if I started to panic now. I avoided thinking about the possibility of Elle drowning to save me and focused on retracting my wings. It took two tries, but I finally did it, screaming as they came back into my body.

  I hoped it wasn’t more than a few seconds but seeing Elle in danger and being the cause of it made the time feel like a million years. I yanked her to the surface, hoping she could still breathe.

  “You did it!”

  I didn’t have the strength to respond to her. The agony of my wings was more painful than ever before because my body was so exhausted. The water wasn’t an ideal environment for suffering.

  Elle saw I couldn’t swim while I was recovering. She wrapped her arms securely around me while using her legs to keep us both afloat.

  Huge waves started to roll over the ocean now. We were trying to stay together, but the seas seemed determined to tear us apart. Sometimes we were in the troughs, and other times we found ourselves in the peaks. As I recovered, I broke away from her and started to swim on my own. I wondered what creatures lurked beneath us and were thinking about us for dinner.

  Elle had to yell to make herself heard above the noise of the storm. “I think I saw a ship out there.”

  I managed to give her a weak smile. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a sailing vessel? We could die in a watery grave together in the storm. I knew she hadn’t seen anything real. People who were close to death often saw what they wanted to see.

  “It was probably a hallucination.”

  Something brushed against my foot. I twisted away in the water, looking down to see a dark shape swimming beneath us. It wasn’t alone, either. A pack of creatures must have thought we looked like dinner. I hoped we wouldn’t suffer.

  Elle was starting to drift away again. “Ayrie!” She reached her hand in my direction. I stretched toward her and kicked my feet, hitting something in the water that felt like it had teeth. It was scary enough to make me start swimming frantically in her direction.

  “I saw something in the water.”

  I nodded. I didn’t have enough energy to speak. Did it even matter if I said anything? The creatures in the water were going to eat us, and the only thing I wanted right now was a chance to tell Elle how much I cared about her. I had wasted all the time we spent together.

  “Ayrie?” She sounded terrified, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I could feel myself starting to slip beneath the water. Something pushed into my body. I knew everything would be over soon.

  I couldn’t hear Elle screaming my name anymore.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ELLE

  “Ayrie!” I had to scream if I wanted him to hear me over the roar of the storm, which was getting worse.

  His blond head slipped under the waves. I wasn’t close enough to pull him back up. I raced toward him, kicking as hard as I could while trying to stay close to the surface. I reached the point where Ayrie’s head dove beneath the surface and groped for him, hauling him back up by his hair. He seemed to be breathing but was unconscious. He had flown today already, and we had followed that exercise with a swim. He must be worn out.

  I wasn’t going to let him die. I was a good swimmer. At university, I was on the swim team and worked as a lifeguard at the campus pool. I could save him as long as I kept my wits about me. I wouldn’t let him go under again.

  I kicked out at the ominous shadows under the water, ignoring how fast my heart was beating and how scared I felt. I wouldn’t let those bastards eat us. I wrapped my arms around Ayrie again and began moving my legs.

  I didn’t have a place in mind, but I wasn’t going to stay here with the shadows. Once in a while, my foot brushed against something solid, giving me a burst of energy and letting me swim furiously for a few more minutes until I started to feel tired again. I had to remind myself that Ayrie had done his part taking care of us. It was my turn.

  I didn’t know why the creatures below us weren’t attacking, but I was grateful for the small respite from our streak of bad luck. I still wasn’t sure we were going to survive. How much longer could I keep going? We were in the middle of the ocean without a place to rest. Even if the storm stopped, I didn’t think Ayrie could take off from the water, so flying was out of the question.

  My hope was fading, but I kept moving. Ayrie had said that he saw me as strong and resilient. Maybe I was. Could I become the person he saw me as instead of who I saw myself as?

  I didn’t know how we would survive. There wasn’t any reason to have hope.

  But that wasn’t a good reason to give up, either.

  I don’t know how long I splashed around, going up one wave and down the next. I thought I caught a glimpse of a ship in the distance. I knew I was hallucinating like Ayrie had said earlier. But it gave me hope and something to work for if I swam toward it.

  The bulk of the storm had moved past us. It was still raining hard enough that I could hardly see most of the time. But sometimes when the rain let up, I could see the ghost ship, and I felt like it could be our salvation.

  Soon the clouds completely disappeared. There was no more thunder, lightning, or waterspouts. The ghost ship loomed closer than before. I wondered about it for a minute before realizing that if I were imagining everything, I would want the ship to approach me. I started to panic. Maybe I should give up and let the sea take us.

  By this point, my body was on autopilot, kicking rhythmically without conscious effort. The soreness and exhaustion in my muscles floated somewhere in the background of my mind while my survival mode kicked in, pushing me to work harder than I ever thought possible.

  I would keep swimming for Ayrie. I couldn’t let him die. He might have to live his life without me, but I wouldn’t leave him.

  As the hallucination approached me, I started hearing sounds in addition to seeing things. There were people on the ghost ship. Before I knew it, a wooden hull was in front of me, and I caught the scent of soup.

  “I told you I saw something fall, Nat. Take a look at this.” A woman’s voice floated down from above. Were they angels, like Ayrie? Maybe we were already dead, and I hadn’t noticed.

  “Yes, Ash, you’re a genius. This was as close as I could get to them. I wasn’t going to risk a ship and its entire crew for what might have been nothing at all. Does anyone want to volunteer to go in?”

  There was silence after that. I trod water, wondering if I should do anything. The voices kept talking above me. I tentatively reached out my hand to the wooden hull and was surprised when I felt resistance.

  It felt remarkably like a wooden ship. Was this thing for real?

  “No takers for going down into freezing water? Okay, I’ll do it myself.” There was a splash beside me as Nathaniel jumped into the water.

  “Nat, wait a second. Vess, throw them a life preserver. The girl looks like she can’t last much longer, and the guy is unconscious.”

  There was another splash, and a floater landed beside me. I grabbed it like a starving person might desperately reach for a crust of bread. I hung on with one arm and used the other to keep a death grip on Ayrie. Nothing could have made me let him go of him.

  Something bumped my foot again. I instinctively kicked out. The shadows
were back.

  “Hey!” Ash was yelling from above me. “Calm down. We’re trying to help you. Don’t kick Nat. After he puts a harness on you, we can pull you up.”

  I wondered if I looked as befuddled as I felt. I tipped my head back and stared up at a beautiful woman with long blonde hair. When I felt another touch on my foot, I didn’t kick it this time. I felt something slide up over my legs. The harness closed tightly around my waist, and I saw Nathaniel swim away from me to put a harness on Ayrie too.

  How was he holding his breath for so long? He had been underwater for at least five minutes.

  “He’s not coming up!” I tried to get the attention of the woman on the ship. She appeared to be watching something in the water.

  “Don’t worry.” She didn’t sound concerned at all. “He’s a native and has gills. He’s almost finished.”

  I had forgotten in the heat of the moment. Every alien race seemed to do something incredible that humans could not.

  A few minutes later, they hauled us up and dumped us onto the deck of the ship. Ayrie looked as white as snow. I wondered if he had succumbed to hypothermia.

  The woman took his pulse and said he was still alive. Vess, their first mate, had basic medical training. If we needed to go to a hospital, we would sail there right away.

  “Where is Nathaniel?” The blonde woman sounded concerned now. People appeared all around us. We were on a ship — of course there would be a crew.

  “He said he wanted to check something while he was down there.”

  “Is he performing maintenance on the ship when these people might die from exposure and exhaustion? Grab a few of the guys to carry them into the empty cabin.”

  “You know how he is.” I imagined I could hear the body attached to the male voice shrug. “Of course, Ashlyn. We’ll bring them down. That won’t be a problem.”