Windrunner's Daughter

by Bryony Pearce

  “Runners fly in the sky.”

  Wren frowned.

  “Come on, both of you. Runners fly in the sky.”

  Suddenly Raw’s voice dropped from above. “Creatures hunt …”

  Words flowed across Wren’s tongue, burning with memories. “Boys lie,” she choked.

  “Runners fly

  In the sky

  Creatures hunt

  Boys lie”

  Thunk, thunk. The rope swung along its arc, whipping the ground with each downward blow and then scything up, as if into the clouds. The two girls on each end sang as they turned their arms in huge circles.

  “Nitrogen, oxygen, argon rise

  Carbon dioxide fill the skies

  Three other girls jumped in and out of the cable, kicking up puffs of dust as they ran from one side to the other, clapping one another’s hands as they passed.

  “Soy will grow when it gets warm

  Hide us from the sand filled storm.

  Creatures hunt,

  Boys lie.”

  Wren watched from behind a rock, her fists clenched. It looked fun.

  “Runner’s fly free

  In the sky.”

  She’d never be allowed to join them.

  “Nitrogen, oxygen, argon rise.” Orel’s voice was lower and further left, Wren dipped her shoulder. If they stuck close to the sound they’d be able to stay on his tail.

  “Carbon dioxide fill the skies.” Raw’s voice blended with Orel’s, deeper and more melodious than she ever imagined it could be.

  “Soy will grow when it gets warm,” she called.

  “Hide us from the sand filled storm.” Orel’s voice was still moving away and curving to the left.

  “Creatures hunt.” Raw’s voice was almost on top of her.

  “Boy’s lie,” she murmured.

  “Runners fly free in the sky.” Orel’s voice grew fainter. Suddenly light glimmered round the curve of the wall and an alien sound interrupted the whisper of the wind.

  Nothing like the shrieks of the creatures, or their strange hissing, this was more like the whispering of the leaves when Wren had run among the Gingko trees. Yet it was louder, somehow more purposeful, a determined rushing from one place to another. She stared downwards. Something below her moved and glittered and a gust of wind brought a splash of cold onto her face.

  “Water.” Wren’s heart jumped. They were over the course, close enough to hear it, touch it even. She inhaled. Her nostrils, even filled with the plastic tang of her halfie, still picked up a fresh perfume, clean, something that reminded her of the ferns that sucked up the ground water and spread green to the sun. She wanted to taste it.

  She wished she could see better in the growing dark.

  Raw flew beside her, his own fingers spread as if to catch the flying droplets on his palms.

  “We’re here,” Orel called.

  Wren squinted downwards. “I don’t understand. Where are we meant to land?”

  Chapter sixteen

  “Just follow me.” Wren’s heart jumped as Orel’s voice plummeted. He was heading downwards, but she couldn’t see much of anything, let alone a swathe of rock large enough to make a safe landing away from the Creatures.

  She followed closely, the cold air even colder above the river and knew that if she got this landing wrong, she was in deep trouble. There was no way she could fly back to the rock before morning. In Phobos’ light, she saw Orel drop his legs. Wren frowned. All she could see was the dark ribbon of water that widened with each passing moment.

  “What’s he doing?” Raw echoed her thoughts. “Is he landing?”

  “Where?” Wren’s frustration made her loud.

  Orel’s legs started to kick; he was well into his landing sequence. He must know about a rock or platform hidden beneath the wall but did he realise she and Raw could not see it?

  She started to call out, but before her lips could open, there was a splash and Orel’s wings blinked out as if snuffed. Wren gaped. He had landed in the river.

  She tore into a circle in an attempt to arrest her own descent and scanned the rushing water frantically.

  “Did you see that?” Raw’s voice stabbed into her ears.

  Wren ignored him. There was no sign of Orel. Was it possible that he had landed in the river on purpose?

  “Burn it.” Wren stared at the river, straining for a sign of the other Runner, but he had utterly disappeared. Curses stained her lips but she bit them off, who knew who might hear her.

  The wind was growing colder and the air thinner. Wren risked a glance behind her. The night-weakened air threatened to drop her, but she wobbled in place and maintained her height, seeking a sign. Behind them the lightless wasteland stretched back around Vaikuntha. They had to follow Orel; he had known they would.

  She recalled him telling them to follow him exactly.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She ignored Raw’s shout and started into her own landing sequence.

  Wren tensed as she dropped. Foam rushed her legs, soaking her boots and trousers. She gasped; it was freezing, a cold so bone deep that her heart stuttered. But she was coming in too fast to change her mind. Hoping to see Raw, she flicked her gaze behind her. He remained overhead, blotting out the stars. Not following, but not trying to leave either.

  Wren started to kick; swimming in the air as a prelude to the real thing.

  She began to inhale but before she’d planned it, her legs plunged into the river. Shock stole the breath that was meant to sustain her.

  Her trousers stuck to her thighs as the wind tugged at her one last time; then she was submerged up to her armpits.

  The water dragged her, heavy. How could it be heavy? And it was so bitterly cold that it burned.

  Frantically, Wren lifted her face forgetting for a moment that her O2 canister would keep her breathing even as the water dashed into her mouth and over her goggles. She tried to haul in a deep breath but the cold constricted her lungs and she couldn’t.

  Her wings billowed once, pulling her arms back; then the wind fled as the water took over. The silver material caressed the air one last time then fluttered to the surface, bulging and swelling as it was swamped.

  Wren was buffeted along gasping and spluttering. Her wings only just kept her afloat and she had no sense of the river's bottom.

  Panicking, she swallowed a lungful of icy water and flailed, sobbing for breath. In the depths of the river something touched her ankle. A Creature? Could they swim?

  Her wings tangled round her like a cocoon. Suddenly she was rolling and kicking against her own wings.

  Pain crackled through Wren’s shoulder as she bounced from a rock and spun back towards the centre of the watercourse. The shrinking rational part of her knew she had to calm down.

  A wave washed over her head and plunged her underwater. Behind her goggles she closed her eyes and tried to shut her freezing ears to the river’s roar. Struggling madly, she felt the brush of air on her cheeks and opened her eyes again.

  It was pitch dark.

  Kicking and thrashing she tried to roll, her mind going blank with dread. Why couldn’t she see anything? Had the blow to her head blinded her?

  Wren still felt the water carrying her forward, but the noise had changed, it was deeper, denser and more echoing. She was travelling under the wall.

  Wren fought to free one of her arms from her tangled wings, and managed to tear her right one loose. Floundering madly she tried to keep her head out of the water, but she was tiring.

  In a terrible counterpoint to the cold that seeped into her bones, Wren’s throat burned. Cramps gripped her muscles and tremors made her waving hand spasm.

  Suddenly her eyes caught a flash. A light was bobbing but she was so disoriented and moving so fast that she couldn’t tell where it was.

  “This way.” Her ears carried Orel’s voice and she tried to reply, but couldn’t open her mouth. I ca
n’t get to you. She thought. I can’t swim.

  Abruptly her boot caught on something and she kicked feebly.

  “It’s me. I’ve hooked you.” As Orel pulled, she tilted and grave-cold water rushed over her face.

  She was being drawn against the current but it fought to keep her. Her ankle hurt where Orel held it, but it was a dim secondary pain compared to the cold.

  Suddenly her foot thudded on something and she swung round, thumping full length against a solid surface. Hands shoved into her wings and round her shoulders and she was wrestled out of the river, over a stinging boundary and onto a hard floor.

  The world spun once more as her wings were untangled and pulled to her sides. She coughed, rolled and pushed herself up with flattened palms. Slowly her heart stopped hammering. She still panted, but now it was cold rather than terror that shortened her breath.

  Sitting in front of the small heater at home, her feet in her mother’s lap and her head on Colm’s shoulder, she had not believed such a chill could exist. She tried to move her feet and found her legs completely numb. Her lips quivered in a weak sob.

  She leaned her head against her frozen right arm and groaned. The violence of her clattering teeth made her jaw ache.

  “You all right?”

  Wren wiped her tangled hair out of her face with unfeeling fingers. She could barely control her hands.

  “Speak to me.” Panic rose in Orel’s voice.

  She glared at him. “S-so, c-c-cold.”

  Orel nodded. He was shivering almost as violently as she; his clothes clung to his skin and his wings hung limp at his sides. His goggles were tucked into his belt and his grey eyes were bloodshot. “Here, take this.” He held out the solar light, and Wren realised that the bulb was giving off a little warmth. She pulled off her goggles and wrapped her hands around it, willing the heat over her exposed skin.

  “Your partner’s coming.”

  Raw! Wren spun around. A furious shout echoed around them and immediately following the noise, a silver figure bundled from the tunnel mouth and into the slower water by her feet.

  Now Raw stroked strongly against the current, jaw held high, solid as a rock and determined as ever. How did he know how to do that?

  Orel held out his hand, but Raw ignored it, powered to the riverside and stopped with one hand on the edge. He ripped off his goggles and threw them to the floor; then he looked for Wren. Only when his eyes had settled on her shivering figure did he haul himself free of the river.

  Wren watched him emerge, wings dragging behind him, shedding water as if it was oil. One of them hung at an awkward angle and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. The water had finished the job the wind had started. Raw wasn’t flying from Vaikuntha after this.

  His face was white even in the gentle solar light and his lips were compressed with barely suppressed rage. His scars had darkened in the water; they were blacker than she had ever seen.

  “You could have warned us.” He poked Orel viciously in the chest. “We went in there completely unprepared.” His teeth were chattering as badly as hers and his lips were blue.

  Orel knocked his hand away. “I told you why I didn’t tell you. You made it, didn't you?”

  Only then did Wren look round. They seemed to be inside a cave, but like no cave she had ever seen. She touched the wall with tingling fingertips. It was smooth but her bulb showed tiny cracks where blocks had been mortared together. “What is this place?” she stuttered.

  Orel dropped to his haunches. “We’re inside the wall, within the watercourse. When it filled, the colonists invented a way through for the river that wouldn’t affect the seal on the biosphere. This cave was built for the workers.” He gestured with hands that still shook with cold.

  Wren rubbed her hand over the stone. “We’re inside the wall.”

  Orel nodded. “To get to the other side, there’s a small, one-man, airlock further down. It was built for the original engineers but it won’t be guarded. Since the water level submerged it, they’ve forgotten it even exists.”

  Raw’s shadow suddenly fell over the torch. “Fascinating as this is, how do we get to that airlock?”

  Orel’s eye twitched angrily and Wren stared around her. There was no other way out of the cave. “We have to go back in the water, don’t we?” Her dismay brought Raw to her side.

  Orel nodded. “And now you’ll see why the other Runners couldn’t come with us.”

  Chapter seventeen

  At some point the cavern they were in had been blocked off by a huge grid. When Orel pointed, Wren held the solar light higher to see that there was a gap about the length of a man’s body between the grid and brick wall. Debris nudged up against the grid: bones that bobbed and banged, floating ferns and pumice-like stones unable to move further in.

  Raw frowned at the barrier then folded his arms. “We’re trapped.”

  Mischief glimmered in Orel’s eyes. “Looks like it, don’t it?” Orel knelt down and reached his arm into a gap between the wall and the grid. He tugged and the grid peeled upwards.

  Raw nodded understanding as Orel tugged until there was a gap big enough for the three of them to slip through.

  “The wall doesn’t go down to the bottom of the river. Water has to get into the settlement. And as I said, there’s a small airlock down there, beneath the wall, drowned and forgotten.” Orel glanced at Wren. “Be careful, the edges here are sharp.”

  Wren bit her lip and Orel leaned down to squeeze her shoulders. “I’ll go first. I’ll open the airlock and keep it cycled green for you, so you won’t need to do anything but float through. You’ll need to be quiet though, so no-one hears you on the other side. Leave the light.”

  Reluctantly, Wren moved out from beneath his arm and propped the light against the wall nearest the hole. Then she looked at Raw. He was glowering at the black water as if it had offended him. “You all right?” she murmured.

  Raw turned the force of his glare on her. “Fine,” he snapped.

  There was a gentle splash as Orel slid beneath the grid and into the river. Wren watched his muscles flex as he fought for control against the sucking current.

  He glanced at Raw and pushed his water-darkened hair back from his forehead. The light caught on his chiselled cheeks and turned them to copper. Wren’s breath caught and she had to struggle to focus on his words.

  “We won’t be coming back this way, so last one down needs to pull that back into place.” He gestured at the grid, registered Raw’s curt nod, then turned with the current and dived. His feet kicked once on the surface; then he was gone.

  Wren’s breath shortened.

  “I don’t want to go back in either.” Hesitantly Raw patted her shoulder. “You’d better go next if I have to pull this thing shut behind us.”

  She pressed her lips together, skin already crawling at the memory of the cold. Then she thought of her family. Somewhere past that wall her brothers needed rescuing and she had to get hold of some of the cure Orel had mentioned.

  “Suck it up, Runner,” she muttered to herself. She sat on the rock, careful not to trap her wings beneath her. Gingerly she slid one foot into the sucking water. Immediately it was pulled away from her. She tugged it back out and took a deep breath. The cold didn’t seem as bad as she’d remembered: her skin was still numb. Before she could change her mind, she threw her whole body into the current.

  Unable to stop a gasp, Wren at least managed to keep her head above water by holding onto the grid with fingers turned to claws. Her wings floated out behind her, then slithered underneath, tugging her down, in league with the current.

  “Go.” Raw was sliding his legs into the river, just as she had. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Wren released the wire. She barely had time to turn her face in the right direction before she was pulled down. Pretending that she was flying, she shaped herself into an arrow and let the river tug her towards the wall. She forced
her eyes open, saw the gap as a darker hole and reached towards it. Her fingers jarred against stone with a thud that made her whole arm shudder. Her hands were too deadened for her to tell if she’d broken bones and she had no time to try bending them.

  She groped for the gap and pulled herself through, easily clearing the stone breach.

  As soon as she thought she was past, she started to kick. Her heel smacked against brick, but she kept going, aiming herself upward and breathing through the halfie in her nose.

  And then there was the light of an airlock, flashing green, cycled open as Orel had promised. Struggling towards, it, Wren managed to grab the edges and haul herself inside. She floated in the lock, her wings streaming around her. Orel was on the other side of the aperture, his palm pressed against the reader, holding it open.

  He gestured to her to come forward, his arm laggard in the dragging water. Wren nodded and kicked, bubbles streaming out behind her as she reached him.

  He gripped her shoulder with one hand and steadied her against him.

  Wren looked behind her. The water was black and there was no sign of Raw. She squinted into a darkness that was alleviated only by the glow of the airlock, seeking the brightness of his silver wings. Where was he?

  She shook Orel’s arm and pointed, trying to get him to understand. He shrugged, eloquently uncertain.

  The airlock began to beep. Wren’s eyes widened: the automatic cut off was kicking in and it was going to cycle closed with or without Raw.

  Raw couldn’t swim much better than Wren; if he was left behind, would he manage to operate the reader and turn the handle underwater as Orel had done?

  Wren wanted to shout for him, the words bubbled in her chest, but water pressed against her from every direction, filling her mouth. Was it possible to get lost in the tunnel; what if he was turned around?

  She watched in horror as Orel pulled his hand from the now useless palm reader and the airlock cycled shut, leaving nothing but murky water on the other side.

  She kicked to the door and, as the water drained out, she pressed her face against it. As soon as air touched her face she shouted his name: “Raw!”