Rocco's Wings

by Murdock, Rebecca Merry

  twenty-four

  War

  Darkness fell. Rocco could barely lift his wings as he and Vesta flew back to camp. His new muscles ached. The shoulders of his wings felt as if they were on fire.

  They settled with the other warriors around the cook’s fire. The vat over which the cook stirred endlessly was spattered in mud. So were the logs they were sitting on, as well as the warriors’ clothes and everyone’s faces.

  Without speaking Dolerite sat down beside Vesta. His face was drawn tightly. Spoons clacked against bowls. The forest was mostly silent except for the patter of rain.

  ‘There’s got to be an easier way,’ said Rocco quietly to Vesta.

  ‘Harpia can’t be reasoned with. We’ve tried,’ answered Dolerite.

  ‘Do you know what happened to Feldspar?’ asked Vesta.

  Dolerite shook his head.

  Vesta’s shoulders sagged.

  The next day proceeded as the first, only now Rocco’s limbs were so stiff they felt as if they were clamped in irons. He and Vesta didn’t talk much except to give each other brief shouts about where they would move next across the battlefield. The rain continued. It became harder to distinguish the Shalites’ muddy jackets from the Krakatoans’.

  When they returned to camp that night Belarica and the Plymouthians had arrived. They’d been travelling in the rain. They weren’t dirty like the warriors coming off the battlefield, but their hair hung limply, and their clothes were drenched.

  Around their necks they wore the Shalite collar of spiky feathers, a marker so the allied forces could recognize each other. If that was the intent, it wasn’t going to work very well, not in the rain. Most of the feathers lay flat.

  The Air Commodore entered Belarica’s tent. Supper had just ended when they both came outside again. Their faces were fierce, as if they’d just received some bad news.

  Belarica flew up to a stump. She was every bit as regal as she’d been on that first day, thought Rocco. A grey cape was draped over her shoulders. Her upswept hair, full of red and gold jewels, framed a long neck. She’d adopted the colours of the crowned crane, one of her spy birds.

  ‘The air trembles with the suffering going on inside Krakatoan,’ said Belarica, addressing the warriors. ‘We are here for the citizens of Krakatoan, but also to stymie the decay of urvogel life everywhere in Upper Terrakesh. Harpia must be stopped. Urvogels have a right to live in peace without fear of losing their wings.’

  The warriors clapped.

  ‘We must now fight the weather as well.’ Belarica pointed at the sky. ‘We sleep in tents while Harpia’s army returns at night to their beds.’

  A murmur went around the troupe.

  Belarica raised her hand. ‘We are motivated much more than the Krakatoans. They grow lax in their comforts. We are hardened by our conditions.’

  The Air Commodore stood up. ‘We also have word that Gabbro has arrived. They are now formally allied with Harpia.’

  ‘Can I say something?’ Vesta stood up.

  Belarica nodded.

  ‘The Krakatoans, they are all under Harpia’s spell. She has drugged them by adding something powerful to her wing dust. If we could just stop her ability to spread the dust, then the Krakatoan warriors might realize they’re fighting on the wrong side.’

  ‘It’s a good point, Vesta,’ said Belarica. ‘But Harpia is barricaded inside the city. She doesn’t come to the battlefield. The Krakatoans will defend her to the death.’

  Vesta sat down. ‘There must be something,’ she muttered.

  On the following morning, the fighting continued. Now the sides were swollen in size. Gabbro was allied with Krakatoan; Plymouth fought with Shale and the rebels led by Dolerite. Warriors fought over the field of green.

  Rocco and Vesta drew the enemy into the trees of Wildergarten.

  ‘There’s one,’ Rocco would call. Up they would fly together, driving one, two or even three warriors down. Inside the closely growing trees, Rocco and Vesta would apply their acrobatics. Small compared to the adult urvogels, they nimbly sprang from branch to trunk to thrusting a sword into an enemy’s chest.

  Every evening the porters would come out to the field and carry those they could reach back to tents that had been set up as the infirmary. The dead were carried to a hillside some distance away and burned, according to urvogel custom, in a large fire. Wolves and other scavengers lurked at the edge of the trees, lured close by the stench of burning carrion.

  There must be a better way to end the war, Rocco thought as he stood with the warriors paying tribute to the dead urvogels turning again to ash.

  * * *

  Rocco sat with Vesta, Iggy and Rummy around the cook’s fire. They were now in their fifth week of fighting. The battle line had not moved. It remained firmly entrenched in the field of green. Green no more, the field was brown with mud and variously red or black depending on how fresh the blood was.

  ‘Will the rain never stop?’ asked Vesta.

  On the other side of the fire were warriors, heads pulled down into the raised shoulders of their wings. The warrior on the left had glassy eyes. The other’s face was sickly. Belarica’s camp had been successful in fighting separation sickness, but a flu had been making the rounds. No one talked of winning any more.

  ‘Lots of warriors are ill.’ Iggy picked a nit out of Rummy’s fur. ‘Rummy and I’ve been helping the Alchemist in the infirmary.’

  Rocco nodded. ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Later.’

  As soon as the Air Marshals left, Vesta said, ‘Okay, what is it?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said that day Belarica arrived – that there must be a way to stop Harpia. That if only we could stop her wing dust, the Krakatoan warriors might change their allegiance.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You also said something that day on the flat rock, when we were all sitting there just before you flew out foolishly over the lake.’

  ‘You don’t need to bring that up again.’

  ‘Okay. Okay, that’s not the point. The point is what you said just before. You said there was a type of mushroom that put urvogels to sleep.’

  Vesta nodded. ‘The dropsy mushroom.’

  ‘If we could put Harpia’s army to sleep long enough, we could bust into the palace and capture Harpia.’

  Vesta frowned. She wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Harpia’s wing dust. The Krakatoans are used to smelling it, even breathing it. We could mix the dropsy into the royal dust and distribute it while everyone’s asleep. Then we’ll capture Harpia.’

  Rocco kept talking, giving all the details he’d been thinking of. When he finished, Vesta wasn’t shaking her head, but she still looked sceptical. ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll be dead.’

  ‘I know,’ said Rocco. ‘But look around. We’re just being killed off one by one anyway.’

  ‘Lots of the warriors are dying,’ said Iggy. ‘The Alchemist doesn’t let me watch, but I see the porters carrying corpses from the infirmary out to the burning pyre.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell Belarica? Get her to help us?’ Vesta’s face was thin. She was getting worn out like everyone else.

  ‘They’ll stop us. Belarica will, for sure. She didn’t even want us to join the fight.’

  Vesta nodded.

  ‘You have to take me and Rummy,’ said Iggy.

  ‘It’s dangerous, Ig. We might not make it back,’ said Vesta.

  ‘All the more reason to take me. We belong together, don’t you remember? Everyone always forgets about me and Rummy.’ Iggy sighed and pulled Rummy into his lap.

  Raindrops began pelting the top of the tents. Getting up, they walked back to their tent.

  ‘Well, what do you think, Vesta? Should we try it?’ Rocco asked as the flap on the tent fell shut.

  Vesta agreed. She roughly described the mushroom. ‘But you have to be careful, there’s another one that’s poisonous that looks very similar.’


  Early the next morning Rocco walked deep into the forest. He found two types that seemed to match Vesta’s general description. Both were spotted, but one had a more slender stem.

  ‘I can’t sleep at night; which one should I take?’ asked Rocco, holding his hand out to the cook as he stirred his vat over the fire.

  The cook looked puzzled. ‘Don’t quite know. Go ask the Alchemist.’

  Rocco found the Alchemist in the infirmary. He asked him the same question.

  ‘That one,’ said the Alchemist, pointing at the fatter stem. Tossing the poisonous fungus into the cook’s fire, Rocco returned to the forest where he gathered as much of the mushroom as his flying belt would hold. He returned to his tent.

  ‘You can grind it up,’ he said, dumping the contents of his flying belt on the ground. ‘Here’re some rocks too. Small ones for a pestle and the big two for a mortar. I’m going to get more.’

  He returned again to the forest. What if they couldn’t find Harpia when they got there? What if she’d left the palace? Perhaps the Archurvogel of Gabbro had given her refuge while the war was on. Anything was possible, he thought as he searched the underbrush.

  Every time he exited the tent, the cook looked up. Dropping his shoulders and wings, he clutched his stomach and grimaced. Let the cook think he was sick.

  ‘Bowels upset?’ asked the cook on his sixth trip.

  Rocco nodded and ran.

  The sun was barely up. Rocco stuffed a sack full of powdered dropsy inside his flying belt. He wasn’t really built for living outside, not in the rain. He needed to be covered in fur or feathers, or at least a thicker hide for shedding water.

  The constant rain was sapping his strength. His fingers, which he didn’t want to smell too closely because of all the dropsy he’d been handling, were shrivelled and prune-like.

  ‘Got the tethers?’ asked Rocco.

  Vesta flipped open her flying belt. She yanked out the end of the rope they would use to tie Harpia up with. Rocco nodded. With their flying belts packed up, they set off. Rummy jumped to Iggy’s shoulder. They walked until they were out of sight from the camp. They covered their wings in mud.

  Gliding down the mountain, they landed by the northwest corner tower.

  ‘All clear,’ said Rocco as he fly-jumped the wall. He tried the latch of the door, the same door they had entered on the night of the clatch. He sighed with relief. The latch had clicked. The door was open.

  ‘Hurry!’ He motioned Vesta, Iggy and Rummy in.

  The room where they’d had the clatch looked as if it hadn’t been touched. The broken pieces of the musical instruments – drums, bells and flutes – lay strewn about on the floor.

  The plan was to travel in the catacombs under the city and come out in the Bathhouse where they would change into clean robes. From there, they would wait until dark and enter the courthouse.

  They would find the cache of wing dust in the cupboards up under the dome. That’s what the gold robes had been pumping out that day, wasn’t it? Rocco had only seen the hoses.

  What if the powder was something else? The whitening agent, perhaps? He’d always assumed Harpia ate a substance or chemical that turned everyone’s wings white, but what if the change was effected by adding a particular ingredient afterwards?

  What if the hoses were gone? How would they dispense the dust?

  Vesta had stopped.

  ‘Which way?’ asked Rocco. Having moved past the room where they’d had the clatch, they stared ahead at two tunnels.

  ‘I think it’s this one,’ said Vesta.

  ‘I think it’s there.’ Iggy pointed the other way.

  ‘Did you ever make the passage all the way from here to the Bathhouse before?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Vesta walked into the left tunnel. ‘But we used to play down here. I know most of it.’

  ‘We’d better not get lost,’ said Rocco. He rubbed a bit more of his wing tip clean so they could see better. The air was dank. The wall, floor and ceiling were all grey. Everything looked the same.

  Dripping water echoed in the distance.

  ‘Come on,’ said Rocco. Vesta had chosen the tunnel; they might as well see what lay ahead.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Iggy whispered.

  ‘You’ve been down here loads of times.’ Vesta tugged Iggy’s sleeve.

  Rummy sneezed. Iggy pulled the monkey from his shoulder to his chest and held her tightly as they ventured in.

  They rounded a corner. Up ahead the tunnel opened up into a much larger tunnel going the other way. The constant drip had turned into a slightly louder dribble.

  Vesta stopped abruptly, her eyebrows pulled together.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘I thought I heard something. Probably a rat.’

  twenty-five

  Catacombs, Feldspar

  Rocco, Vesta, Iggy and Rummy came to the end of the tunnel. The larger tunnel running crossways held a broad trench with a trickle of water.

  ‘Vesta?’ said a voice.

  Rocco squinted into the shapeless grey. The voice had been small and timid. He stepped forward. Small grey faces peered out of the gloom. Before he could say anything, Vesta and Iggy were running ahead, racing toward a half dozen small urvogels dressed in filthy rags.

  ‘Feldspar! You’re alive! Feldspar!’ Vesta cried as she flung her arms around the leader of the small urvogel troupe.

  ‘Vesta! You came back!’ Feldspar’s slender face was barely recognizable. Suddenly everyone was embracing, and asking if they could hold Rummy.

  Feldspar explained. ‘As soon as the fighting started we came down here. Everything’s in a mess up top. Our trials never happened, except Scoria didn’t make it. Air Marshals killed her on the palace steps. Look. I’m wearing her gold earrings.’

  Pulling a chain out of her tunic, Feldspar displayed the two gold rings.

  Rocco had barely known Scoria – hadn’t even heard her name until now – but he felt the air in his lungs go flat.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘Scoria was just trying to get out of the way. She was running and the Air Marshals shot her. Guess they thought she was a rebel.’

  ‘We try not to go up top very often,’ continued Feldspar. ‘We wouldn’t go up at all but we need food. Everything’s gone from Singhurvogel Hall, but the palace cooks are still feeding Harpia and the warriors.’

  ‘So Harpia’s in the palace?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘We haven’t seen her since all this started,’ said Feldspar. ‘The palace minionatros say she’s in a very bad mood. She’s locked in her rooms, but her windows are open. We heard she flies in and out at night, watching how the battle is going.’

  ‘But no one fights at night,’ said Vesta.

  Feldspar shrugged. As she had been talking, the size of her ragged troupe had steadily been growing. Rocco now counted fifteen white robes dressed in clothing that was little more than rags.

  ‘We’re on our way to the Bathhouse. Can you show us the way?’ Vesta threw Rocco a sidelong glance.

  It hardly mattered how they got there, so long as they arrived.

  ‘Sure,’ said Feldspar.

  With Feldspar leading the way, they set off again, walking along the catwalk at the side of the trench. ‘This used to be full of water, but the rebels shut it off. No more water from Mount Zetna.’

  They passed from one tunnel into another. It was a maze. Vesta would never have led them through it, thought Rocco as they made yet another turn. All the tunnels looked the same.

  Every few hundred metres they passed a ladder going up to a hole in the ceiling. When they came to the fifth or sixth ladder (Rocco had lost count), Feldspar stopped. She climbed up and threw open the top.

  Everyone followed her up. The Bathhouse lights and fire were out. The pools were filled with water, but the air was stale.

  ‘I’ll find you later in the Courthouse. I’ll see if I can find out something more about Harpia’s whereab
outs,’ said Feldspar as she and her troupe disappeared back into the trapdoor.

  Rocco entered the small room with the stacks of clean robes. Removing his tunic and leggings, he dressed again. While Vesta and Iggy were finding clothes, Rocco returned to the area marked ‘Minionatros’ Corner.’ He lifted the lid of a large wicker basket, intending to throw his old clothes in to hide them. The basket had leather shoulder straps. He’d seen minionatros carrying such baskets on their backs, shopping in Merchant’s Alley, or carrying bed linen in and out of Roosting Hall.

  Dumping the contents on the floor, Rocco slid the basket onto his back. It was a tight fit with his wings on either side, but it could work.

  ‘Look,’ he said to Vesta as she emerged in clean white robes.

  Vesta emptied another basket and pulled it on and they found a third for Iggy, who lifted a chattering Rummy into the basket before slinging his arms into the straps.

  Rocco stood at the door, peering out at the drizzling rain. The paths were empty. They proceeded out. Krakatoan, once so beautiful with the flower beds and borders so clearly defined, had fallen into decay. Leaves and rubble covered the stones and footpaths. The fields, which the minionatros had kept clipped to a precise stubble, were long and unkempt.

  With Rocco leading, the three walked in single file, heads down and hunched against the rain. Avian Plaza was empty, so they ventured across it. Rocco held his breath, waiting for an angry shout as they climbed the steps of the Courthouse. They reached the door. Rocco pushed it open, and they crept in.

  Rocco had not entered the Courthouse since the day of the trials. His chest tightened and his breathing quickened as he looked around at the empty seats and the gloom beneath the judges’ desk. Cristobalite hadn’t really screamed, but now the air screamed silently for him.

  A window in the top of the dome was open, permitting a small ray of light into the otherwise darkened room.

  ‘Come on,’ said Rocco. He retrieved his kaffy from inside his flying belt and put it on. Vesta and Iggy did the same. With their baskets strapped to their backs, they flew up.

  The dome of the Courthouse was striking with its intricate paintings of urvogels flying against a blue sky full of puffy white clouds. Rocco opened another of the windows at the bottom of the dome. A few more rays of weak light filtered in and threw into relief the painted knobs attached to cupboard doors. Rocco pulled one, and a door swung open. A large glass jar full of white powder stood inside.