Skylark

by Meagan Spooner

  A shape darted down and across my vision. At first I thought it must be Nix, who had left that morning to explore the village, but the blur had been brown, not copper-gold, and there was no whir of clockwork whizzing by.

  The shape settled onto a branch not two trees away from me. I stared at it, so familiar and strange all at once—it puffed up its little breast and gave a series of chirps that escalated to a piercing trill.

  “Tansy,” I whispered fiercely, willing her to hear me, though I dared not raise my voice for fear of scaring the creature off. “Tansy!”

  She came up beside me, following my line of sight to the branch, where the little bird was still singing its heart out. “Oh! Yeah. It’s a sparrow.”

  “But—” I spluttered, still staring at the bird. “Birds are extinct!”

  Tansy shook her head; I could see her smile out of the corner of my eye. “There aren’t many of them, but every now and then, a few more show up. We don’t know where they come from. But they find us somehow and come to live here in the apple grove. They help us pollinate the blossoms.”

  The bird, mottled brown and white, crouched low as if bowing, eyes darting all around. And then it was gone again in a flash of wings, leaving only the branch bobbing up and down behind it. As I scanned the trees, knowing now what I was looking for, I saw other birds here and there, of varying types, flitting from branch to branch.

  “Kind of like you,” Tansy was saying.

  “What?” I blinked, turning to look at my new companion.

  “They find their way here, we don’t know how. Kind of the same way you did.” She handed me a shovel. “Come on, let’s get some work done.”

  •  •  •

  The days passed in a rush of activity. I had thought my crosscountry trek of the past few weeks had been rough on my body, but it didn’t compare to the labor I put out in the Iron Wood. As far as I could tell there was no physical currency, despite the market I had seen. Work was their means of exchange. They bartered, and when someone had no goods, they’d offer hours of labor. Being a new arrival with little more than the clothes on my back, I spent much of my time performing menial tasks for various craftsmen in the village.

  The market ran from dawn until midmorning, except for the rest day, when it lasted all day long. In exchange for continuing to live with Tansy’s parents, I did their shopping for them, sparing them the trip out at dawn. Tansy’s mother, an herbalist, also made a tangy cider from the apples in the orchard that was in high demand at the market.

  The vendors would often include a little something extra—a handful of sweet carrots here, a potato pie there—for me, despite my protests that I had nothing to pay them. I was reminded of what Dorian had told me, that the majority of people in the Iron Wood still remembered what it had been like to be on the run and had found their ways here like me, bringing only what they could carry. They knew what it was like to have nothing.

  There was no rite of passage, no trial to pass to be an adult here. There was nothing to set me apart from the others but that I was new. There were no formal schools, no graduations, no harvests. And despite being the first new person to turn up in over a year—a detail Tansy revealed days after my arrival— I still felt more at home than I had in the past several years in my own city. Maybe this was why I slept more soundly than I ever had, despite waking with a jolt each morning to the sound of the village stirring at dawn.

  I was never happier than when working in the orchard, where the breeze tossed the living branches and dappled sunlight snuck through the leaves and blossoms. In the Iron Wood the muffling trees were rigid and dense, a tight-knit shield all around the village. Here, at least, I could breathe.

  Nix settled into the daily life in the Wood as well. It vanished for hours, no doubt cavorting with the birds in the orchard. I often found Nix, transformed into the shape of some unidentifiable bird, flitting from apple blossom to apple blossom. It always drew a crowd. Dorian tried to press it into service as a messenger, and sometimes Nix would oblige, but it made its own decisions about when it felt like helping.

  It was only in the evenings, before exhaustion caught up with me, that I let myself feel a tiny pang of discontent. Unlike the abrupt dawn, dusk was slow, a lazy winding down of the machinery that was the village, like clockwork running out. It made me long for action. My feet were restless, despite my weariness, and part of me longed for something new again. I couldn’t see the sky here except in the orchard, and the still closeness of the air made me itch to be on the move. For all the terror of the past few weeks, I found—to my utter confusion—that I missed the journey.

  I longed to leave, to find Oren and tell him there was nothing to fear about the Iron Wood, that they’d welcome him if he chose to come. Maybe if he were here, I wouldn’t feel so restless. But even if I had any hope of finding him, I still wasn’t allowed outside the perimeter for fear I could signal another city. And so I tried to push Oren from my thoughts and let weariness carry me to sleep.

  One morning, a hand shook me awake when it was still dark outside the window.

  “Lark,” said Tansy’s father. “Wake up.”

  I struggled out of sleep, muttering blearily about the sun and the dawn and the market. I apologized for sleeping in, too muddled to understand what was happening. The smell of Tansy’s mother’s herbs hanging to dry from the ceiling nearly overpowered me.

  “It’s fine, the market hasn’t started yet, that’s not why I’m waking you up.”

  I sat up, running a hand through my hair and squinting at him in the gloom. He carried a single candle, which he handed to me. There was someone standing beyond him at the door, a dark shape silhouetted against the slightly lighter purple darkness beyond.

  “What’s going on?” Tansy’s voice came from behind me. She looked fully alert. Scout training, I guessed. I envied her competence. If she’d been the one lost in the wilderness, she never would’ve needed Oren’s help the way I did.

  “There’s someone here for Lark,” said the person at the door. I recognized the voice as belonging to one of Tansy’s fellow scouts, one of the ones who’d caught me that first day, though I could not remember his name. “He’s at Dorian’s.”

  “What?” I stared at him, sleep falling away.

  “A guy a little older than you,” said the scout. “He said he followed you. We brought him to Dorian. Will you come see if—”

  He didn’t have a chance to finish his question. I scrambled out of my blankets, not even bothering to change out of my night clothes, throwing on a coat and shoving my feet into my shoes.

  I ignored Tansy’s confused questions, her voice falling away as I broke into a run. I sprinted out past the scout, my heart surging. He came after me.

  Dawn was breaking, the faintest light surging in the east. Here and there a light shone from a window, marking the house of an early riser.

  A cluster of people stood near the ladder to Dorian’s house. I sprinted for them, Tansy’s fellow scout not far behind me.

  I plowed into the knot of people, most of whom were dressed in the ash-gray tatters of the scouts. Shoving them out of the way, I climbed the ladder to Dorian’s platform two rungs at a time. When I reached the top the door opened to reveal Dorian standing there, his expression quiet and grave as ever. He stepped aside, and I rushed past him, crying in spite of myself, “Oren! I knew you’d—”

  I skidded to a stop, staring. The visitor turned, his face splitting into a familiar, heart-stopping smile as he saw me.

  Kris.

  Chapter 26

  Kris took a step toward me, and I backed up a pace. He lifted his hands, smooth palms out. “It’s me, Lark,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course,” I said, struggling for breath. I could not have been more floored if Gloriette herself had come strolling across the village toward me. Kris was wearing a red architect’s coat. Though it was dirty and tattered, speaking of days spent in the wilderness, I couldn’t help but cring
e at the thought of trying to stay hidden and safe wearing a color that bright. “What are you doing here?”

  “I followed you,” he said, voice electrifying in how familiar it was. “They figured out I helped you; I had to escape. Lark, I—” His expression softened and he took a step toward me. There he stopped, his eyes flicking toward Dorian.

  The village leader seemed to take this as his cue, and straightened from where he was leaning against the door frame. “This young man claims he followed you here,” he said quietly. “And that he is on the run like you.”

  Dorian’s voice betrayed doubt, and I nodded vigorously. “He’s telling the truth,” I said, words tumbling over each other in my haste to defend Kris. “He helped me escape the people who wanted to enslave me. He’s the whole reason I’m here.”

  A pair of pale eyes, grass-scented hands, a fierce smile— the images flickered in my mind and I pushed them aside.

  I turned back to him, aware of the way my breath quickened. He was every inch as handsome as I remembered, his brown hair still tumbling just so over his eyes as he ducked his head, smiling at my scrutiny. “How did you survive out there? You should have been—even without the shadows, the pockets, the void should’ve twisted you by now.”

  Kris smiled, though there was an odd sadness in it. “I’m like you, Lark,” he said softly.

  I’d all but forgotten the stab of disappointment in my breast when I’d seen he wasn’t Oren. My heart leapt as he spoke. “How is that possible? Wouldn’t they have locked you up, too?”

  Kris shrugged, the bitter smile fading again. “The difference is that my parents were architects. They knew what I was long before my harvest. I have no idea how but they managed to hide it from the others. Every day we run tests and experiments, trying to figure out how to create more Renewables, save the city, and I was sitting right under their noses.” He shook his head, lowering it, clearly ashamed.

  I closed the gap and reached out and touched his arm; no jolt flowed between us. His arm was warm and solid underneath his sleeve. “You didn’t have a choice,” I told him. “They would’ve made you into a thing, wired you in like they were going to do to me.”

  Kris turned his head, looking at my hand on my arm. When he lifted his gaze there was such a shift in his expression that my stomach lurched. I was close enough to smell him, but I could only detect the faintest scent of chemicals. He still smelled like a laboratory. How long will it take for that to fade? I wondered. The corner of Kris’s mouth lifted, as he moved his face closer to mine.

  Dorian moved slightly, and I jerked my hand back, cheeks burning. “I’d like to speak with Lark alone for a few moments, if you don’t mind,” he said, inclining his head toward Kris.

  Kris backed up a few paces and nodded. He circled around us, giving Dorian a wide berth, and shutting the door behind him.

  I took a long, slow breath before I looked at Dorian again. I expected—amusement, maybe, or embarrassment. Instead he was solemn, even grim. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked.

  “Thanks.” I sank into one of his chairs, grateful for the moment to gather my thoughts.

  “This boy,” he said eventually, still standing. “You trust him?”

  I nodded. “He slipped me a key to help me escape. He’s not like the others.”

  Dorian moved away from the doorway and paced across the room to the window. I assumed he could see Kris down below from that vantage point. “He had no password. No one sent him here.”

  “He programmed Nix—the machine I had with me,” I explained. “I assume he had some way of following that.”

  “A way the others didn’t have?”

  I spread my hands helplessly. “I’m not an architect,” I said. “Do you want me to go ask him?”

  Dorian shook his head. He was quiet a while, watching through the window, so that his voice, when it finally came, startled me. “I’m not sure he is what he says he is.”

  I stared. “An architect?”

  “A Renewable.” He flexed his right hand, as I remembered him doing when he read my abilities the day I arrived.

  “You said the same thing about me,” I insisted. “You said you didn’t know what I was. Maybe we just feel different, the people where I come from.”

  Dorian hesitated, turning away from the window to face me. “It’s not the same. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “You weren’t sure about me,” I said softly, “and you let me stay. Please. He saved my life, Dorian.”

  More silence. I held my breath and his gaze.

  “Fine,” he said. He held up a hand, forestalling any celebration. “But you will be responsible for him, and you will keep track of him at all times. You will be the one to orient him here. Understand?”

  I tried unsuccessfully to hide my grin. “Yes. I understand.”

  •  •  •

  Kris fit in much more easily than I did. But then, he had fit so neatly into the city. By his second day in the Iron Wood, he knew more of the other villagers than I’d met in a week, and though he was new to every task he was given, his hands were quick to learn. His mind was so much quicker than mine, absorbing details and memorizing faces. I often came upon him in deep conversation with a stall owner or a metalworker or a group of scouts, asking questions I never would’ve thought to ask. He asked where the food came from, how it was grown, why the weather didn’t affect the orchard, what the villagers used to fashion the iron trees into houses. Details I’d always thought were too boring to ask about, until he brought up the subject. The villagers were only all too pleased to share, thrilled that their lives were of such interest. Kris meshed with the machinery of the Iron Wood like he was designed for it.

  The more he charmed them, though, the more I wished he wouldn’t. At the Institute we saw each other only rarely, and always under supervision. True, even then the sight of his face quickened my pulse, but there was never anything more. Here, though—there were no experiments, no machines, no bounds of propriety—nothing to keep him from me. And yet he spent more time with them and less with me. Even the family he was staying with lived on the other side of the Wood, as far from me as possible.

  Nix, in its quiet and dignified way, was overjoyed to see Kris again. The pixie spent the first day following its programmer everywhere, watching everything he did and echoing his sentences. Much to my relief, however, the machine returned in the evening, and it was still my pillow on which it clicked and whirred to itself all through the night.

  That second day, I brought Tansy to meet Kris. She’d offered to help him sort out his roster of duties, similar to the variety of tasks I did each day. Like me, he’d try his hand at different activities until he decided where he wanted to work for good.

  “Wow,” Tansy said as she and I headed across the orchard to meet Kris. “And you swear you two aren’t—” Her gaze lingered on Kris as he lifted his hand in a wave and broke into a jog toward us.

  I felt my cheeks growing warm, and I shook my head. “It’s not like that,” I said firmly. “He just helped me.”

  “Yeah, out of the goodness of his—hi!” Kris was near enough to hear us, and Tansy moved forward to greet him. Despite her cheer and friendliness, every movement she made oozed confidence and ability. If I’d been training since childhood, surely I’d be that strong, too.

  “Tansy,” said Kris, smiling and holding out his hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

  Tansy seemed briefly thrown by his manners. I’d explained that in our city the architects were our upper class, but she couldn’t quite understand. She’d lived her entire life here, in a world without classes. “Yeah,” she replied, smiling in spite of herself as she let him take her hand. “Okay, so what’re you good at?”

  The two sat down under one of the trees to discuss his abilities, leaving me uncertain whether I should join them or leave them to it. Awkwardly, I sat down on the ground next to them, cross-legged. As they settled on chores and temporary apprenticeships, I found myself think
ing back to that first moment I’d seen him standing there in Dorian’s house.

  How had I ever felt disappointed to see Kris? Yes, I thought it would be Oren who would follow me, but if anything I should have been relieved. Life with Oren was intense and confusing and sometimes filled with such horror I could barely stand it. He was all passion one moment and ice the next. Kris was everything I had longed for in the city, regular and useful, fitting in seamlessly where he was meant to be. Even here, where everything was different, he was a part of it in a heartbeat.

  Tansy laughed at something Kris said, and I pulled my attention back to them. “We’ll just have to make sure you spend plenty of time with the scouts,” she was saying. “I’ll take you under my wing.”

  Kris smiled at her, and I fought the urge to leave. “The scouts,” he echoed. “Sounds interesting. What’ll I be doing?”

  Tansy shrugged. “Pretty simple stuff. Don’t worry, no fighting Them off for you. We’ll just do some exercises to hone your senses. Use the power to sense the shadows, that sort of thing.”

  I hadn’t been very good at it. Tansy had done her best, but I could barely point in the right direction when asked to sense the nearest shadow person beyond the borders of the Wood, much less give distance and number and speed, the way other scouts could.

  Kris lifted his head, though all I could see from where I sat was his hair. “Hone,” he echoed.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I’d rather not,” he said. It was the first time I’d seen him uneasy since he’d arrived.

  “It’s not that hard. I’ll teach you myself. We have a few pieces of equipment we use, too, to scan the perimeter, but it’s mostly the magic.”

  “It still scares me. I kept it hidden for so long that it feels weird now to talk about it. Just give me some time to adjust.” Kris turned away and leaned back against the tree, his profile visible now. He grinned. “We’ll just have to find some other way for us to spend time together, okay?” He turned his head toward Tansy again, and even though I couldn’t see it, I could hear his smile in his voice.