Wings of Creation

by Brenda Cooper

  Good idea. Kayleen should be in the middle. So I dropped back, and as soon as there were three or four meters between me and Kayleen, an invisible hand touched my forearm. “It’s a trap,” Induan whispered.

  Well, we knew that. We were walking into it anyway. “What do you mean?”

  “Slow them down,” she whispered.

  I trusted Induan more than Seeyan. “Wait!” I called. “I forgot something.” I turned around, as if to head back to the vehicle, and a glance back across my shoulder told me the others had stopped. An expression of sheer frustration flickered across Seeyan’s face, and I knew I had guessed right. I opened the door and rummaged, buying time. Induan must still be here. “So now what?”

  “Stall. There’s help coming. More than me.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How are Alicia and Chelo?”

  She laughed. “Alicia is as headstrong as ever. She’s still ship-shocked and thinks she wants real wings. You picked a silly girl to love.” But she sounded affectionate when she said it. “Chelo’s as serious as ever. I think they’re okay—I haven’t been able to get near since they can see me in the compound—they know to look for heat.”

  That was too bad. It would keep Alicia from using her easiest asset. “Why is Seeyan turning on us?”

  “Because more powerful people than her told her she had to. She’ll turn back if she gets a chance.”

  “That means I can’t trust her at all.” I stood up and called over my shoulder to the others. “Just a minute.”

  Induan said, “You’re all right now. Stand up and turn around.”

  Seeyan, Marcus, and Kayleen were all looking at me. Which meant they didn’t see the flock approaching them from behind. The image made me smile, three wingless, completely ignorant that they were being swooped down on. Seeyan was the first to turn and look up. She bolted.

  Marcus started after her, but I yelled, “Look up,” and he stopped, waiting for the fliers. There were five of them. Matriana, Daniel, and three others we’d seen the first night. I didn’t remember any of their names, but they were part of the Convening Council of Lopali. Two of them flew off after Seeyan, and the scrabble of feet on the road told me Induan had chosen that path, too.

  I walked back to Marcus and Kayleen, and the three of us waited for Matriana, Daniel, and the third flier, a brown-winged woman with golden hair and green eyes. After they landed, Matriana gave Marcus a deep bow. “We owe you our deepest apologies.”

  Daniel picked up the conversation. “We have a delegation massing to fly down on the oathbreakers and free your people.”

  They stood in front of us, looking uncomfortable and awkward on their feet.

  Marcus touched the feather on his leg again. “We trust you. We would like to go in with your people. We’ve finished the job we promised, and we apparently have other enemies. We’d like to get off-planet.”

  Matriana’s wide eyes widened even more. “You’ve succeeded?”

  “Maybe. We think so. Chance has the results to double-check. But the sim has run successfully through ten lifetimes and twenty children. It breeds true.”

  Wow. I hadn’t known that. I pulled Kayleen in close to me, feeling briefly celebratory. Maybe we could leave now. As soon as I got Chelo back. And then I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight for a year or two. Maybe a decade or two.

  I wished there had been time to ask Induan more about Alicia.

  39

  CHELO: ESCAPE?

  I pulled the thin blanket closer around my shoulders. I had drawn last watch, along with Alicia, who sat across the room from me playing with a bright red feather. The windows were too high up to see out of, but they were beginning to grudgingly admit the day’s first light. Good. Maybe there would be some warmth added, too. The metal roof had amplified the night’s rains, and the creaking sounds of the building adjusting itself to the outside temperature jerked my eyes open every time I soothed them shut.

  Surely something would happen today—Joseph would come for me, or Seeyan would come by, or Alicia would do something stupid and get us in more trouble. I glanced over at her, pondering what that might be. She seemed completely absorbed in the feather.

  I stood up and walked, trying to keep my blood moving and warm up.

  Alicia let out a long sigh, and I asked, “Share your thoughts?”

  She shook her head, but after a moment she spoke anyway. “I thought this was the prettiest place I’d ever seen. Remember the day we got here, and the fliers all flew up from the perch-trees around the spaceport? I thought we’d landed in heaven.”

  “So why didn’t you like the morning ceremony? It was prettier.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “I think because it was supposed to have a specific outcome. I don’t like being a sheep.”

  I almost bleated for her, but I held my tongue. Our relationship was fragile anyway, and so was she. If I laughed at her, we might never make up. “You’re still family. We’ll get out of here, and then we’ll get away from Lopali. We’ll be safe somewhere.”

  Her laugh sounded even more bitter than I felt. “There doesn’t appear to be anyplace safe for us.”

  “There will be.” If I ever stopped believing that, I might as well just lie down and die. “We’ll find a home. But I don’t think it’s here.”

  She didn’t answer that, and we both fell silent as the light brightened the colors. Before I could restart the conversation, the door opened and one of the tallest fliers I’d ever seen stepped into the room. He had gray wings and gray eyes.

  Alicia looked hopefully at him. “Amalo. Good morning. Do you have any good news for me?”

  I barely managed to keep my mouth from falling open.

  The flier simply said, “Come with me.”

  Alicia turned to me, a guilty look in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. She walked out the open door, carrying her red feather, and the flier walked out after her, closing the door behind him.

  As soon as the door lock snicked into place, Jenna sat up. “Damn that girl.”

  I sighed. “What do you think that was about?”

  Jenna stood up and came over to the table. “Nothing good. Wake the others. Tell them to get ready.”

  “For?”

  She gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “Us to leave.”

  I woke Dianne first. She rose silently, heading immediately for the facilities. I reviewed the room in my head. Two doors, one locked, one with no handle. Windows way too small to climb through, and too tall to reach anyway. As I shook Tiala’s shoulder, I glanced at the ceiling, which was smooth, silver metal. “Jenna says time to get up,” I whispered.

  Tiala nearly leapt out of bed, a sign she was in on whatever her sister’s plans were. But then the room was so open, everyone but me had to know. I peeled the blanket gently away from Paloma. Her eyes opened, and she smiled. She put a hand up to my face and touched it. “Chelo the beautiful.”

  I shook my head. What was that about? A thin scrape of metal on metal drew my eye to Jenna, kneeling by the door Alicia had just left through. Her biceps bulged, reminding me for a moment of the old, wild Jenna. Something moved, and she gave a satisfied grunt. She stood up and repeated the procedure, standing on her toes for extra leverage.

  Paloma looked puzzled. “Where’s Alicia?”

  Jenna answered her in between grunts as she worked. “A flier came and got her.”

  “Will she be back?”

  “Do you care?”

  I caught the look on Paloma’s face, and said, “We’ll find her later if we have to.” Paloma looked doubtful, so I added, “We might not be able to save her from herself. I don’t like it either, but that’s how it might be.”

  Jenna gave a last grunt and stood down and grinned at us, her hand holding two long metal pins that had been part of the door. She walked over to me and whispered low in my ear. “Now we wait. Have everything with you. We’ll only have moments.”

 
I didn’t know what we were waiting for, but hopefully breakfast would arrive first. I killed the time pacing, making up the bunks, and pacing some more. Full daylight came in.

  Tiala muttered, “They’re late. Something’s wrong.”

  I poked around on the plates. We’d eaten everything the night before. Tiala noticed me, and said, “There’re worse things than being hungry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The stress must be getting to us.

  Tiala muttered some more. “I bet this is Alicia’s fault.”

  Paloma drew on the old battered infoslate she’d been doodling on when I came in. I looked; a perfect imitation of Kayleen’s dead hebra, Windy, when she was a foal. I sat by the old woman and murmured, “She was beautiful when she grew up, too.”

  “Of course she was.”

  Paloma looked up at the windows, and then back down at me. “I’m glad you were there to take care of Kayleen.”

  “Me, too. I love her dearly.”

  “You’ll keep taking care of her?”

  “We all will. And I’ll keep taking care of you, too.”

  The look she returned to me was wise and sad, and I remembered Juss’s prophecy, and said a short internal prayer: Let it not be Paloma. Keep her safe. And Liam, and the children and Kayleen and Joseph . . .”

  Before I could finish naming everyone I wanted kept safe, the door Jenna had been playing with fell off, hitting the floor with a loud thunk and a scrape. I jumped and Paloma pushed herself up. Jenna went through the door, followed by Dianne. Something crashed to the floor outside, hard sounds of plates and cups followed by a tinny clunk of a tray and the soft thud of flesh against the floor. Tiala followed Jenna, and I grabbed Paloma’s hand, leading her through.

  Just outside the door was the small room we had entered through. We stepped over the body of the guard, who had been bringing us food. I spared a moment to check that he still breathed.

  “Hurry!” Jenna stood in the doorway, gesturing us out. Tiala must already be through. “Hold the door.”

  I did, while Jenna stripped the guard’s chrono. She smiled up at me quickly as she stood. “The key.”

  Oh. She was past me and leading, running all out, and this time Tiala helped me with Paloma. We each had one of her arms, pulling her along.

  By the time we got there, Jenna had the door in the outer wall open. She pocketed the chrono as she slid through it, waiting on the other side until we were all through. “Now,” she hissed. “Walk normally. Just like nothing’s happened and you’re not a fugitive from anything. Be a tourist.”

  My breath came too hard to pull that off completely, but I did manage to slow down. Paloma wheezed, and her cheeks were a bright red. I took some of her weight, helping her recover, and then leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Maybe you should consider a few mods.”

  She rewarded me with a shake of her head and a slightly straighter spine. Well, I’d work on her later. It wasn’t that she was old. Well, she was, a little. But with no mods, she was frailer and slower than everyone around her.

  Footsteps behind us drew our attention. Paloma breathed in sharply and gave a slight moan. Seeyan raced toward us, chestnut hair flying. “Stop!” she screamed at us.

  Two fliers flanked her, powerful wing beats sending wind to throw our hair back. Seeyan the betrayer, her body afire with urgency, speeding toward us with her avenging flier angels.

  I glanced around, looking for somewhere to run. Walls lined one side, the other was too open. Fliers would be hard to run from.

  A voice came from behind me. “Chelo!” Bryan’s voice, frantic. Sweet Bryan. I didn’t dare turn. Bryan barreled past me, head down. His finger blades were fully out, his arms pumping to give him more speed.

  Seeyan threw her arms up, a futile warding gesture. Her eyes flared in alarm, then fear.

  Bryan was big, four times Seeyan’s girth, his biceps bigger than her thighs. He tried to brake, shifting his weight backward, but he had too much momentum. He landed on her, hard.

  Something cracked. Seeyan, I thought.

  The wind of two fliers closing in brushed my hair back, and I looked up, scared for him. The two fliers were almost on him, and then they suddenly back-winged, spiraling higher. They circled ten meters up, watching him and Seeyan. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place them for sure or identify them as friend or enemy.

  Regardless, for the moment, they simply watched.

  Bryan pushed himself up off of Seeyan. I ran to his side in time to see that her neck had been broken. His nails had raked her arm bloody, and the look he gave me was full of horror. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to stop her. We’d been looking for you, and looking for you, and here we’d finally found you and she was trying to get you caught.” He leaned down and tried to straighten her up. “See, we know she trapped you.”

  I closed her eyes, barely managing not to withdraw my hand before I touched her.

  Beside me, Bryan sobbed, and I slid my arm across his great, wide shoulders. “It’s okay. It couldn’t be helped. Shhhh . . . Shhhh . . .” He needed to pull himself together; we needed to go. Seeyan wasn’t our only enemy.

  His voice came out low and controlled, but he was my Bryan, my friend from forever, and I heard the anger boiling in his heart and feeding his words. “She was smaller than me. She didn’t deserve it.”

  “Of course not. But you didn’t mean to kill her, did you? You were protecting me. And we stick together, right?”

  He lifted his face to me. “She was your friend. She loved your children.”

  No. Not my friend. “She betrayed me.”

  He blinked, and another sob caught in his throat, but that was the last one. We held each other’s eyes for a long time. In his, I saw old pain behind the new pain and, like I always had, I wished there was a way for me to erase it from his past.

  I’d always wished him happiness most of all of us; he ate anger in place of it, and now the anger had bitten him again, laid down a fresh scar.

  Not that I could look at what had been Seeyan, either. In some moments, everything sucked. I cursed Juss, and then cursed myself for a fool. He’d only told the truth, and I’d seen that even then. I leaned over and kissed Bryan on the cheek, and he startled a little, then pulled me closer to him, his bulk making a safe place, however momentary.

  Someone pulled at my free arm, the one that wasn’t around Bryan. And Ming stood on Bryan’s far side, and when I looked up Jenna’s face swam into view above me. She was talking, and maybe she’d been talking to me for a while. “. . . need to go. Now. The fliers are gone. They probably went to get reinforcements.”

  40

  ALICIA: ANGELS AND DEVILS

  I followed Amalo out. Really out. We left the compound and ventured into the fair. The booths were still closed, although a few vendors had stirred and were making col or talking amongst each other. Near the entrance, two nearly finished sculptures stood, waiting for the artist’s final touches. I startled: one was Joseph, Chelo, and Kayleen standing hand in hand together in a circle, each holding a baby. They wore Keeper’s clothes, with grand smiles on their faces.

  Where were the rest of us?

  Amalo stopped, letting me look at it from all sides. When it was done, it was going to be beautiful, perhaps as beautiful as the first statue I’d seen of a flier, on Silver’s Home. Tears came to my eyes, completely unbidden. The artist had chosen to show Kayleen graceful and strong instead of half-crazy. Her hair had been rendered in the manner of fliers, with silver charms in the shape of hebras dangling from her wooden braids. Chelo, as always, had her own stark beauty, and she appeared to be looking far away, perhaps into the future. Joseph’s face had been rendered true, except the artist had given him a few years by adding tiny lines around his mouth. His eyes were right, soft and full of the infinity of knowledge, and I wanted the statue to climb down and hold me.

  What if I didn’t see him again? Cou
ld I bear that?

  And where were strong, angry Bryan, and steady, loving Liam? Where was I? They needed a risk-taker. Jenna had said so long ago. If it weren’t for me, we’d have never left Fremont. A tear slid down my cheek, and I swiped it away, keeping my face averted from Amalo’s until it had dried.

  “Let’s go,” he said softly. “We don’t want to get caught.”

  He’d taken me without permission. They wouldn’t have taken me if they hadn’t decided to tell me yes. If I agreed, Joseph and Kayleen and Chelo would fly away from me. I wanted to be part of the statue in front of me, captured forever as one of the children of Fremont. Trying for wings felt like too big a risk, too irreversible.

  As we walked out of the gates, we passed other statues, but none of them were as beautiful as the unfinished one by the doorway. Our progress was slow because of Amalo’s awkward gait. He kept our pace wandering, going from sculpture to sculpture, pointing out the pain and beauty in each one. A few showed only one emotion or the other, but the ones Amalo prized the most were full of both. It felt surreal to move so slowly.

  Eventually, Amalo took me to a flier’s house close to the fair, all big rooms with oversize chairs designed to work as perches, and sweeping spaces in the kitchens and bathrooms. Inside, Marti waited with a wingless woman who offered me col and bread and nuts. I had never seen fliers without at least one wingless waiting on them. Was it hard for them to be alone?

  Marti cocked her head at me. “Do you have questions? Is there anything you’d like to know about the process?”

  My throat closed, and I coughed the words out. “Does . . . does that mean you’ve decided?” I knew the answer, but I didn’t know how I’d react when I heard it.

  Amalo spoke from behind me. “It will be a great honor to have you attempt to join us.”

  I froze.

  He came around and sat beside Marti, so I could see them both. “If you succeed, you will be honored for all your life as our first flier from Fremont, and as sister to Joseph and Chelo.”