He landed on the ledge beside Vesta. The bushes they had arranged so carefully the day before were green no more. Smoke, not fog, swirled around their blackened, skeletal stems.
‘What happened?’ He spoke the words softly, taking Vesta’s hand.
Something awful had happened. Vesta’s fingers tightened around his.
‘Basalt? Iggy?’ Vesta called as they approached the cave.
Something dark was lying in the entry. Rocco stooped to pick it up: a glove with clawed fingertips, and still in the shape of its owner’s hand.
‘Oh, Rocco, no! Air Marshals have been here already!’
Their wings went stiff. Inside, Basalt was lying in the same place, on the mound of pine boughs. The light was dim. Rocco squinted. Basalt’s head didn’t look quite right; it was oddly angled.
eighteen
Burial tree
Rocco and Vesta walked deeper into the cave. Was Basalt sleeping? He was lying face down with his arms flung straight out. No one could relax like that.
‘No, Basalt. No!’ Running forward, Vesta threw herself on Basalt, tugging his shoulder as she pulled him towards her. Rocco watched from the side of the bed. He was numb.
Basalt was missing his wings. They’d been torn off, cut with a jagged knife or sword, the bloodied root stared out grimly.
The blackness was back in Rocco’s head, the same blackness as when he’d been standing on the palace platform with Harpia. His knees went weak as he seized the arrow sticking out of Basalt’s back.
Had he at least been dead when they cut his wings? And where was Iggy? Rocco scoured the cave’s interior.
‘Oh, Basalt, what have they done to you?’ Vesta cried. She drew Basalt’s half-turned shoulders into her arms. She brushed back his hair, kissing his cheek.
An invisible wall went up around Rocco as he fell on his knees beside Vesta. He could hear her crying, but the sound seemed to enter his head from somewhere far away. As if in a dream, a nightmare, he was being attacked by a pine bough – only he looked down, and it was Iggy. Dear sweet Iggy.
Rocco grabbed Iggy’s hands and pulled him out of the mound.
‘Air Marshals killed him,’ exclaimed Iggy through his tears. ‘They’d have killed me too, but Basalt made me get under the trees.’
Vesta pulled Iggy into her arms.
‘We didn’t even hear them coming. Basalt was asleep and – and –‘ Iggy choked. ‘They rammed their swords – I had to roll.’
He trembled, jerked to his feet and ran outside. Vesta ran after him.
Rocco stared down at the body that had once been Basalt. It was still him, but he’d never speak to him again, never look at him with his steady brown eyes. Rocco’s chest began to heave.
He couldn’t get any air. He reached down and yanked the arrow again. This time the shaft broke off in his hand: it was almost a metre long, with short black guide feathers. It was the same type of arrow that had struck Jafari in the back.
Rocco took Basalt’s hand in his. It was heavy, like stone, cold to his lips.
Rocco pulled himself up.
This was all his fault. He was responsible for his mother’s death and Jafari’s. Death had stalked him, but he had spurned it, challenging Death to take their lives. Now Basalt was dead.
The air was crushingly thick as Rocco stepped outside.
‘We can’t stay here.’ He struggled to breathe. Birds were dipping in and out of the trees. He half expected an arrow to come flying through the air and hit him in the neck or better yet, his heart. He deserved it.
‘He’s hurt.’ Vesta pointed at the blood oozing from Iggy’s side.
‘I don’t care if I’m dying! Py’s dead! Basalt’s dead! Magma doesn’t care about us!’ Iggy’s eyes swelled with tears.
Rocco took out his knife. Crouching down, he cut off Iggy’s left legging.
‘Here. Hold it like this,’ he said, pressing the cloth into Iggy’s wound.
He stumbled back inside the cave. In a daze, he picked up his belongings. If he left now he just might be able to save Vesta and Iggy. He could fly south, and draw the Air Marshals away. They were bound to follow. They were vultures after all, and he – he was a rotting carcass.
Iggy’s small frame appeared in the opening. He made a sputtering sound.
Rocco leaned forward. He still couldn’t breathe. He fell on his knees beside Basalt. Pulling Basalt’s body over his shoulder he stood up. They had to bury him first.
With Basalt in his arms, Rocco flew down to Py’s grave. Vesta and Iggy were behind him. Working together, they removed the rocks and laid Basalt to rest beside Py.
Vesta set Basalt’s sword on his chest. Iggy tucked in Basalt’s flying belt and waterskin. They gathered more rocks until the mound had become a double grave.
‘At least they’re together,’ sobbed Iggy. His knees were bleeding from where he’d been leaning in to place more rocks. Holding the bloodied, scrunched-up legging against his wound, he pulled his other arm across his face.
Rocco felt around the bottom of his tunic until his finger touched the sharp end of the needle. It was still there.
‘Come, Iggy.’ Rocco motioned. Iggy followed him to a tree. He cut off Iggy’s other legging. Rolling it up, he pressed it between Iggy’s teeth. Iggy’s eyes grew large as he looked at the needle in Rocco’s hand.
Vesta had disappeared. She returned moments later carrying a handful of leaves. Ripping them into tiny pieces she mixed them with water and poured the liquid into Iggy’s wound.
‘It’s sepia. It will dull the pain,’ she said, pulling Iggy into her lap.
Rocco yanked a long thread out of his wing hole. It was the same long thread the minionatro had installed there to keep the edge from going ragged.
Iggy’s wail shattered the dead calm of the forest. Were there Air Marshals around? They’d probably think it was a wild animal, in pain – so much pain that Rocco couldn’t bear to look into Iggy’s face.
Vesta gripped Iggy’s arms.
He had to be quick and efficient like his mother when she was acting as the village healer. It wasn’t all potions. Sometimes a knife came out.
One. Two. Three stitches and the wound was sealed.
Rocco sang a song his mother used to sing. Iggy closed his eyes. They talked and wept, remaining under the trees into the night.
* * *
Rocco stood up. He had to go, clear out for good. Vesta and Iggy were lying on the ground, fast asleep, completely innocent of the danger they were in. Death was stronger now. It was feasting on Basalt. It would come for Vesta and Iggy next. Maybe he could draw it away.
‘What’s wrong?’ Vesta’s eyes were sleepy.
Rocco pushed his heels into the rock-hard ground. No matter how stupid it sounded, he had to tell her something.
‘Do you believe in Death?’ he asked.
‘What? Like I believe the sun’s going to rise? What kind of question is that?’
‘Death is real, it’s around me now. It’s been stalking me ever since I was kidnapped. It wants to kill me but I – I avoided it, so far anyway. It – it took Basalt instead.’
‘What –?’
Vesta was looking at him like he was crazy. What did he expect?
‘I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I know it’s real. I’ve been feeling a dark presence around me ever since I was kidnapped by the Air Marshals. It’s all my fault, you see. I brought the Air Marshals into the village, and I should have told you and Basalt that I was infected with Death, but I thought I could manage it, stuff it down in my mind spirit. I thought it might – it might go away. I have to go now, to protect you and Iggy.’
Vesta jumped up. She seized his arm. ‘No! You can’t go! Iggy and I will never make it on our own.’
‘I killed them,’ said Rocco lowering his head. ‘My mother, Jafari and Basalt. It was me that set these awful events in motion. You’re not safe with me. No one is.’
Vesta shook her head. ‘The Air Marshals killed Basalt.
Iggy was there. He told us what happened. And Air Marshals killed your mother and Jafari, too. You just said it yourself!’
‘But things would have turned out different if I hadn’t been there, don’t you see? I infected them with my stinking rot.’
For a long moment Vesta was silent. Finally she said, ‘You’re rather full of yourself, aren’t you?’
What was she saying?
‘You think you’re the centre of everything. You’re the eye of the storm. The fire in the pit of a smoking mountain.’
‘I didn’t say that!’ Rocco marched away.
‘No, but that’s what it means. You think you’re controlling everything, making everything worse.’
‘I didn’t say that either!’ His face was hot. He whirled around, glaring down.
‘Is Death here with us now?’ Vesta craned her neck around, peering into the dark.
‘You won’t be able to see it. It’s not attached to you. It’s attached to me.’
The trees were dark and the rock grave, which he could see through the understorey, appeared larger, swollen as if Py and Basalt were fighting to get out. Was it the nightshade or was he slipping into madness?
‘Tell me what it looks like,’ said Vesta, jumping to a pile of rocks. ‘Maybe I’ll be able to see it.’
‘It’s black, smoky. It pulls after my tail wind. I can’t see it straight on, just in my bird eye vision. But I know it’s there, I know like an antelope knows to run away from a lion.’
‘Does it say anything?’
‘No… n-not out loud.’ He was sputtering now. ‘But – but I can smell it sometimes. It’s like a burning carcass.’
‘Well, Death would smell like rot, wouldn’t it?’
She wanted to know, but she was mocking him, too.
‘Maybe it’s not Death at all,’ she said from her elevated perch.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe it’s just grief or sadness that comes over you. It’s what you get instead of separation sickness.’
Rocco raised his eyes to Vesta’s.
‘Mudrocks,’ Vesta continued. ‘Don’t you – your kind – live in tribes or clans or some such thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Maybe you’re not being stalked by Death but by the shadow of your missing flock. That’s what separation sickness is.’
It was true, his innards ached whenever he thought of his mother and Jafari. That part made sense. He told Vesta about the River Gang boys and how the villagers never really liked him because of his wings. ‘Don’t you see? I’m glad to be away from them. They never liked me anyway.’
‘Urvogels aren’t permitted private attachments, but everyone knows it happens anyway.’ Vesta’s eyes darted over to the rock grave. ‘Maybe your flock isn’t the entire village – maybe it’s just your mother and Jafari. Maybe it’s just the two of them, the hole they left behind. Maybe that’s what you seeing.’
‘It doesn’t feel like them. Death is cold and hollow.’
‘But it’s not them, it’s the hole they left behind.’
He couldn’t stop walking over the ground, full of dips and shadows, so uneven he almost tripped. Every so often he glanced at Vesta. She was pleading with him. Her eyes were focussed and kind.
He wanted to stay, but what if she was wrong?
‘Maybe urvogels and humans aren’t that different.’ Vesta’s voice fell to a hush.
For all their similarities, they were profoundly different in some respects, thought Rocco. Urvogel bodies didn’t hold heat like a mammal’s, and they weren’t very attached to their young.
Picking up a stone, Rocco threw it hard, as far as he could. He listened for the satisfying plop, but the stone merely skidded into silence.
‘What are you guys doing?’ asked Iggy, staring up from the ground and the log they’d been resting against.
Vesta’s face became a blank. She wasn’t going to talk any more in front of Iggy. The small urvogel scrambled over.
‘You’re not going to leave too, Rocco. Are you? Are you?’ Iggy threw his arms around him. ‘Please. Please. Say you’re not going to leave us too!’
Rocco laid his arms on Iggy’s narrow, trembling shoulders. Vesta, so sure of herself in words, was shaking too. He pulled them close.
Had he just imagined that he was being stalked by Death? It didn’t seem possible.
Through the trees bright patches of sun were beginning to show.
‘See, there’s the sun,’ said Vesta. ‘That’s a sign.’
She was smiling, half teasing, trying to pull him out of the black hole he was in. She wanted him to come, even after everything he’d just said.
They started a small fire and cooked and ate a little of the fish that they’d caught the day before. Rocco assured Iggy that he wasn’t going to fly off. The more he promised this, the more the clench in his chest began to relax.
With their gear strapped on, they walked over to the grave, which looked normal again, and said their final goodbyes to Pyroxene and Basalt.
Vesta was the first to lift her wings. ‘Do you think we’ll ever be able to find this place again?’ she asked as they looked back through the trees.
Rocco marked the crown of the burial tree, and the surrounding slope of the hills. Basalt had been his friend. He hadn’t gawked, or mocked him about his big blue wings. Basalt had treated him as an equal – a live born human, different but not any less important than an urvogel.
The wind was hot in his eyes.
They flew on, wending their way across the forest in a northeastern direction. He was leading. Now that they were on their way, Vesta and Iggy didn’t seem to have much sense of direction. When the top of the forest began to swell with heat, they dropped into the trees.
‘What was that?’ Vesta came up short. She hovered, listening to the sound of the wood.
‘I don’t hear anything,’ said Rocco, flying up beside her.
‘Someone’s laughing.’
Rocco tuned his ear. ‘Maybe it’s a bird.’
Vesta shot up. Iggy was right behind her. Rocco trailed at the back.
Where was Vesta going? She could be awfully impulsive at times.
nineteen
Madness and laughter
Rocco pushed his head through the top of the trees.
Vesta pointed. ‘It sounds like Magma, but it’s coming from over there.’ She pointed at the Air Marshals’ camp. The stony stretch was visible as was the top of a few tents.
‘We have to go see,’ said Iggy.
Rocco squinted. It was dangerous going anywhere near the camp.
‘We don’t have to go right in,’ said Vesta. ‘We can just investigate and then decide what to do. You rescued Iggy and me.’
Vesta was right. Magma, if it was him, deserved to be rescued as much as anyone else.
‘It just that it’s more – risky now than it was the first time,’ said Rocco.
A noise, hollow and reckless, filtered up through the trees.
‘See! It’s urvogel, that sound. I’m sure of it!’ said Vesta, dropping into the trees again.
Iggy tugged Rocco’s wing.
They flew down. Rocco kept watch at the back, looking left and right for any signs of an ambush. Another peal of laughter rang out. Whoever it was sounded utterly mad.
‘Here’s the tree I hid behind when I was spying on the camp the other day,’ said Rocco. Standing closely together, they craned their necks around the trunk. Now that they were on the ground again, the laughter was clearer and even more bone-chilling.
Getting down on their hands and knees they crawled through the field of grass. Parting the stalks, they peered into camp.
Magma was sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire pit. It wasn’t lit. As if he sensed their presence, his head came up. His eyes were blank.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Iggy.
Magma’s hands were moving incessantly over something in his lap. As if to show them, he suddenly lifted his wing
s. They weren’t attached to his back any more. Holding the appendages tightly to his chest, he let out a twisted laugh and then began to rock.
Iggy made a noise in the back of his throat.
Rocco couldn’t look anymore. The sight made him sick.
‘They – they’ve turned him,’ whispered Vesta.
With a hard swallow, Rocco looked back. Magma had been rocking so hard he fell over on his side. His back was exposed: a mass of tissue and dried blood gaped out.
‘It’s horrid what they did to him,’ said Rocco.
A tent flapped open. Out strode a half-dressed, surly-faced Air Marshal. He walked over to the fire and picked up a pair of boots. As he moved away, he used the toe of the boots to hit Magma’s shoulder. With a grunt he returned to his tent.
‘But he can’t fly anymore,’ said Vesta. ‘How’s he going to come with us to Shale?’
‘That’s just it. He can’t.’ Rocco gripped his sword. How would the Air Marshals feel to have their wings, or their arms or legs whacked off?
‘We can’t just leave him,’ said Iggy.
Two fully dressed Air Marshals stepped out of their tents.
‘Get him up,’ said one. The Air Marshal who’d given the order began packing his gear. The other one threw a sky net over Magma, who lay limply on the ground while the Air Marshal bundled him in. The Air Marshals slid a pole through the netting.
‘Got it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Steady.’
The Air Marshals lifted off. Magma hung between them.
Iggy made another choking sound.
‘We could go after them,’ said Vesta.
Rocco held her wing. Maybe she wasn’t serious, but she was leaning in so intently it was hard to know.
‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’ asked Iggy.
Vesta put her arm around Iggy. ‘It’s not like we can stick his wings back on, Ig. What do you think, Rocco?’
‘There’s Feldspar and the others to think of. At least Magma’s alive. They haven’t killed him.’
Iggy began to sob.
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