Skylark

by Meagan Spooner

  •  •  •

  I avoided Kris the next day, which was easy enough. I was scheduled to work all day helping one of the metalworkers. Though I hated the heat and the noise of the forge, the work was a welcome distraction. Every time my thoughts started to wander, the threat of a nasty burn snapped me back. It wasn’t until I was heading back toward Tansy’s family’s house that I had time to think.

  Of course Kris was drawn to Tansy. Who wouldn’t be? She was strong, independent, capable. Her every step and gesture spoke of years of training to fight and move in the wild. The only training I’d had was reading in the back of my school classroom.

  I reached the house at dusk to find it dark and empty. Tansy had patrol duty tonight, and her parents were likely dining with friends in the square. If I’d been in my city, I would have come home to my parents and my brother, to dinner on the table, a nightly ritual like clockwork. Here, I had no place I was meant to be.

  I reached for the latch and was about to enter when a noise inside made me freeze.

  It was no more than a thud, but something about it tripped instincts I didn’t know I had. If someone with a right to be inside was there, why not light a lamp? I eased forward and pressed my ear against the door, listening. There came a second sound, fainter, little more than a scrape of fabric.

  I sucked in a deep breath and grabbed at the latch, shoving the door open.

  It was dark inside, but there was enough light from outside that a faint shaft of it fell on a figure kneeling at the foot of Tansy’s bed. The figure half-spun toward the door, falling back and staring at me.

  “Kris!” I gasped.

  It took him a second to start breathing again, pressing one hand to his chest and sucking in oxygen. “Lark! What were you doing bursting in like that?”

  “Me? What are you doing sneaking around in the dark?”

  When he failed to answer, I stalked across the room to light one of the lamps. When I turned back, Kris was still sitting where he had been kneeling—at the foot of Tansy’s bed, the chest there open, its contents strewn about the floor.

  Tansy’s belongings. Tansy’s bed. I shut my eyes. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Does she know you’re here?”

  Kris blinked in the light, eyes clearly adjusted for darkness. “What? Who?”

  I waved a hand at the clothes and belongings scattering the floor. “That’s Tansy’s stuff.”

  Kris looked down at the clothes on the floor as if seeing them for the first time. He was struggling for a reply, mouth opening and then closing again. I’d never seen him so rattled.

  “You live here, too,” he said eventually, looking up at me.

  “For now,” I answered, nodding. “Tansy’s out on patrol.”

  “No, I mean—” Kris got to his feet, stepping over the scattered belongings toward me. “I know that. I didn’t come here because Tansy lived here. I came here because you live here. I thought these were your things.”

  I stared at him. “Why did you want to go through my things?”

  Kris shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking down at the floor for a few seconds. When he looked back up, his hair fell into his eyes, making my fingers itch to fix it. “The bird. The paper one that you had with you when you entered the Institute. I gave it back to you with the key?”

  He was looking at me as though I might not remember. I managed a nod.

  “I thought if I could find it, I could—” He shrugged, bowing his head, shoulders stooped. “It sounds ridiculous now. But I thought I could make some sort of gesture. Show things haven’t changed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  In the lamplight, I could see a flush beginning to creep over Kris’s features. “Back there you were something else. Frightened and weak and needing every inch of help you could get. Needy. But now . . . you’re so different. You seem taller. You’re strong and you know what you’re doing. You don’t need anyone now.”

  He smiled, though there was a sadness in it that robbed me of breath. Too sad, I thought, for what he was saying. “You don’t need me.”

  “But—Tansy?” I’d seen him unleash that same deadly smile upon her, exert every bit of charm he’d ever shown me.

  “She’s your friend. I tried to get to know her.” Kris took a step toward me, reaching for my hand. I let him take it, too shocked and confused to object even if I’d wanted to. “Why do you think I helped you escape?”

  I opened my mouth, but it took a few seconds for me to find words. “Human decency?” But as soon as I spoke, we both knew how ridiculous the words sounded. There was no decency in that place.

  Kris laughed, no more than a quick exhalation. His breath puffed against my forehead, stirring my hair. He reached for my face, fingers sliding across my cheek. They were soft, smooth. Architect’s hands.

  “Your—” I began, before he abruptly ducked his head, lips brushing across mine.

  I jerked my head back, leaving him staring at me with his mouth still half-parted.

  “Your hands,” I said, though my eyes were on his face. “They’re soft. Your fingernails are so clean.”

  “I work with my head, not my hands,” he said. “They’ll toughen up.”

  “But they haven’t yet,” I whispered. His face was so beautiful it made it hard to think. “And you don’t have a scratch on you.”

  “You’re...angry I’m not hurt?” Kris’s brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Your hair,” I said, scarcely listening to him. “When you got here your hair was clean. I remember it looked exactly as it had the day I...”

  “I was lucky, I didn’t have a tough trip.” He reached for me again, smoothing my hair with the palm of his hand. “I, at least, stopped for shoes before I left.” That, with a bit of a smile before he leaned in to kiss me again.

  This time I froze, and he stopped.

  “How did you know I didn’t have any shoes?”

  He didn’t answer, and I pulled out of his grasp. When he looked up I could see it written across his handsome features, the eyes that wouldn’t meet mine, the sadness in his drooping mouth, his slumped shoulders.

  Guilt.

  My face burned where he’d touched me. “You didn’t escape,” I whispered, my eyes beginning to burn as well. “You were sent. You aren’t like me.”

  He must have read my unasked question in my face. “Machines,” he replied, his voice hoarse. “And stocked crystal storage. Lets anyone survive out there a little while. And it doesn’t take long to get here by walker.”

  “But you helped me.”

  Kris’s laugh was short and mirthless. “Lark, you don’t escape from the Institute. With or without help. Do you understand? No one escapes from there. No one. Ever.”

  I shook my head dumbly. I didn’t understand anything.

  Kris clenched his jaw, dropping his eyes and looking away, toward the window. Beyond the glass people strolled through the square, laughing and enjoying their evening meals. “We needed this place. The Renewable we have isn’t going to keep us wound much longer. You know that, right? Every day the city slows, the Wall falters a little more. And when it breaks, everyone will break with it. Your parents, your classmates, their families. Workers, administrators, and architects, too. Everyone.”

  “The whole thing,” I mumbled. “All of it. You left me the shoes. You wanted me to—to lead you here.”

  “The Renewable talks. In her madness and her pain, she babbles. Nonsense mostly, but over the years, the Institute learned about this place. She was captured, you know. Renewables aren’t born in our city anymore—if we were going to survive we had to find the others.”

  “But—me. I was born. . . .”

  Kris took a slow breath, like a man preparing to put his hand through a flame. “You aren’t a Renewable, Lark.”

  The words roared in my ears, surging like torrential rain, drowning out the chatter in the square, the sound of my breath, the sound of his voice. My throat closed and I
stood stunned. Kris went on.

  “You’re an experiment.” His face twisted. I wanted to claw his handsome features, to stop his tongue. Instead, I felt my fingernails digging into my palms. “By repeated doses it’s possible to infuse a person with enough power that it seems, for a time, as though she’s generating it herself. But it’s dangerous. You’re only the second one to survive, and you—” He swallowed. “You’re burning out.”

  How many times had they put me in the Machine? I had believed they were harvesting me, watching the energy grow back, harvesting me again. Dorian had said I was like nothing he’d encountered before.

  “Why me?” My voice shook. I thought of the boxes on the shelves in the Institute.

  Kris closed his eyes for a half-second longer than a blink. “The ability to survive the process seems to be genetic.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t—” But then I did understand. “Basil.”

  “He really was a volunteer.” Kris’s gaze was earnest, begging me to understand. “But we lost track of him somewhere between here and there. We think he changed his mind, destroyed his own pixie tracker.”

  “But there were others,” I protested, the words tumbling out of my mouth now. “Basil went with other volunteers; there was a whole group of them.”

  Kris shook his head. “Only he left the city. The others died during the infusion.”

  I stared at him, my stomach roiling so much I began to think I might be sick. “You sent him out here alone?”

  “As we did you,” Kris said softly.

  “And why you?” I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry, though my voice shook with effort.

  “It was my idea,” Kris whispered. “The misdirection.” He looked at me for a few moments and then swallowed. “The lie.”

  “Why not just ask me? Maybe I would’ve done it.”

  “Because your brother said he would, and he failed. We had to make you think coming here was your only choice. We had to make sure you were running so fast from us that you didn’t think twice about where you were running to. And you fit into the role perfectly, Lark. Like clockwork.”

  I caught a glimpse of copper-gold by the window, flashing in the lamplight. I gasped, and Kris flinched, thinking my exclamation was one of pain. He reached toward me but I jerked away, forcing my eyes to stay on his face. “Why were you really in here?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  Kris hesitated, but when I started to turn away he hurried to place himself between me and the door, his back to the window where I’d seen a flash of the pixie. “Fine. Truth. Tansy mentioned equipment used for scanning, tracking. I wanted to find it and sabotage it. Keep them from seeing.”

  “Seeing what?”

  Kris looked at me a moment, stricken, then dropped his eyes.

  “No. Kris—they’re coming, aren’t they? To take them.”

  Outside, as a clump of teenagers passed the window, conversation swelled and receded again.

  “It’s us or them,” said Kris. “If there was any other way, the Institute would have taken it. Would you sacrifice your parents? Your friends? Your brother? For them?”

  I couldn’t think about that. All I knew was that the people who had taken me in were under attack. I stepped to the side to move past Kris. “I have to see Dorian.”

  “Lark, no!” Kris put himself between me and the door again, reaching out to grab at my shoulders. “Listen to me. The Iron Wood has fallen. It’s over. Those people out there— it’s all gone, they just don’t know it yet. The Institute’s only a few days away. You still have time, though. I came here for you.”

  I made a sound in my throat, like a laugh but choked and strangled.

  Kris’s hands tightened. “Believe what you want, but I do care about you. I came to get information, yes, but I mostly came to get you. If you stay here, throw your lot in with them, then you’ll be captured like the rest and locked up. Your borrowed magic will burn you up from the inside and you’ll die horribly. All the tests we’ve done—you don’t want to die like that. Please believe me.”

  I stared back at him.

  “Or you can come with me.” He gave me a little shake and my eyes rolled to the side. Nix was there—I could just see it, half-hidden against the windowsill. “If you come back with me now, voluntarily, it’ll all be different. We can undo what we did, reverse the process. And you’ll be fine. You’ll return a hero, the savior of your city. You can do whatever you want. We can even help you find your brother.”

  My stomach turned to lead. “My brother’s dead,” I whispered.

  “We don’t know that for sure. He could be alive somewhere. We could help you find out. I would help you find out.”

  “Let me go, Kris.” Even though I wasn’t sure how I was still standing, my voice sounded like iron.

  “No.” Kris’s face was twisted with remorse and feeling. Could it be he meant what he said, and he actually cared for me?

  “I won’t let you do this.”

  “It’s happening with or without me,” he said. “They’re already coming. Lark, you’re coming with me now. Whether you want to or not. I’m not going to walk away and let you—”

  Something in me snapped, and I shouted, “Nix! Help me!”

  The pixie burst in, and I jerked my face away, anticipating some sort of blow or outraged scream from Kris. Eventually the grip on my arms loosened and Kris gave me another, much more gentle, shake. My eyes opened.

  The pixie was sitting calmly on Kris’s shoulder, as it had spent so many days occupying mine. Its faceted eyes were as still and glittering as copper-set jewels.

  “I programmed it,” Kris said gently, watching my face as though he knew what he said would pain me. “You had to think it was real. It’s hard-wired into our natures as humans— we can’t resist things that speak to us, that learn from us. We had to make you believe it was sentient. So you wouldn’t destroy it as your brother destroyed his.”

  “Even Nix,” I whispered. My gaze went from Kris’s face to the pixie. It looked back at me, as emotionless as ever. How had I ever believed it was anything other than a machine?

  Then, very slowly, without so much as an extra whir of its mechanisms, one eye winked for the briefest second. I shot my eyes back to Kris, forcing myself to keep looking at him.

  “So everything was a lie,” I said, uttering the first words to come to my mind. Keep him talking. “Down to your charm and your interest in the people here. You weren’t interested in them; you were interested in our defenses.”

  “Our?” echoed Kris. Something was happening to the pixie, a movement I didn’t dare look at for fear of drawing attention to it. “You’re not an ‘us,’ Lark. You don’t fit here. They aren’t your people. We are. And we need you to come home.” He lowered his voice. “I need you to come home.”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, feigning indecision. “But all the people here . . .”

  “They’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “Well,” I said, smiling. “So long as you promise.”

  Nix struck with the stinger it had unfolded from somewhere underneath its body. I had assumed it had broken when I first attacked it—I’d certainly never seen it since. Until now.

  The copper barb sank deep into Kris’s neck—he gave a shout and swatted the pixie away with his hand. Nix struck the opposite wall and clattered to the floor.

  “Son of a bitch!” snarled Kris, rubbing at his neck and inspecting his hand, checking for blood. Nix’s stinger had left behind an angry red welt on his skin. “Stupid bug—I’ll have you decommish—decomm . . .” He swayed, blinking hard and staring at me. “You did this, you . . .” He shook his head and reached out for something I couldn’t see. “All I wanted was to help you, keep you safe. They’ll kill you—they’ll tear you apart....”

  His grasping hands found no support, and he slumped to the ground with a thud. I stood breathing hard for a few long seconds, every muscle trembling. Then I darted for the spot where
Nix had slammed into the wall.

  The wings were bent and twisted, but already the little spindly repair arms were at work. “Go get Dorian,” said Nix, its voice shattered and distorted.

  I stroked the little bug’s head with a fingertip. “Thanks,” I whispered.

  I lurched to my feet and burst into the night. I shouted Dorian awake and had him dropping down the rope ladder in moments. He listened to my frenzied explanation and then— along with a handful of scouts attracted by my racket—made his way to Tansy’s house.

  Kris was gone—and so was Nix.

  •  •  •

  The town was in a frenzy, work abandoned in favor of packing and fortifying. Half of the Wood’s occupants wanted to stay and fight—the others, those who had come from cities and seen what they could do, wanted to scatter across the wilderness and hope to find somewhere new to hide.

  I stayed as hidden as I could. No one blamed me for what had happened—at least not to my face—but I felt each glance and whisper as a knife in my ribs. I tried to leave Tansy’s house, saying I would camp outside the village amongst the iron trees, but her parents confiscated my shoes until I promised I’d “stop this nonsense,” as Tansy’s mother called it.

  Over the next day, Tansy stayed by me when she wasn’t off with the scouts, although keeping watch took up most of her time.

  Though I loved Tansy for her unquestioning friendship, part of me wanted nothing more than to be alone. With a few well-chosen words, Kris had taken everything from me. He’d taken my identity, my sense of power and understanding of my life, even the accomplishment of having made it from the city to the Wood. For what teenager could break out of a heavily guarded cell and escape capture for weeks? How could a girl believe she was surviving in the wilderness when she had never seen the sky?

  I was an experiment, a tool. I was what I’d once longed to be: a cog in their mechanism, nothing more. And I had fulfilled my role as efficiently as anyone could have hoped. I was a valuable part of the machine. I wanted to return to the bog and let it swallow me down.