Magonia (17 page)

Amina Pennarum is a fishing boat, I decide, except not,
because we’re fishing not in an ocean, but on earth.

A launch loaded down with apples waves a flag to ask us if we want to trade. The robins in its crew lift the boat to our level, and Zal comes out on deck to offer them a sack of dry corn from our hold in exchange for the fruit. We trade for a pig from a small tug. Our Rostrae haul it aboard and it totters past me, heavy and determined. I feel vegetarian just looking at it.

We fly over a field, and a swarm of bees appears over the rail. The cook tromps up from pig butchery, wiping blood from his knife, and barters with them for honey. (Yeah,
with them
. The bees themselves. They speak to the Rostrae. I don’t know how that works, but it’s a kind of humming whirr from both parties.)

Midafternoon,
Amina Pennarum
goes low, in a hailstorm created by our squallwhales. The blue jay girl does some of that twitchy lasso work along with a couple of other Rostrae, and the ropes swing out of a little cloud, slipping around something down below, which gives a disgruntled moo.

I stare. Are they pulling up . . . a cow? Our rustlers attach the ropes to the big crane jutting over the edge of our back deck. Its engine runs and we haul the creature up. You’ve never seen surprise until you’ve looked into the eyes of an ascending bovine.

So. Those legends about UFOs stealing cattle? Right, apparently the cause was not UFOs, but Magonian ships.

Mostly it seems we just milk the cows and let them go. The poor girls sit around in a pressurized hold, until they get grumpy for lack of grass. Which is more quickly than you might imagine.

It’s like we’re on a floating farm. Except we don’t grow anything. We just take it. We’ve got corn and wheat, animals that rotate in and out, and animals that end up meals for the Magonian crew.

For a week, the sun rises and sets. I’m put to work, I’m put to bed. Every morning I wake up expecting my room, my comforter, the life I knew.

Every morning, instead, I’m greeted by Wedda’s clucking, scouring, dressing and braiding. And then Dai’s stern face as he lectures me about finding my voice—and gives me something new to scrub until I do.

I feel like I’m in a book written by George Orwell.

Except that this is nicer than Orwell. This is
Animal Farm
plus
Peter Pan
, plus . . . squallwhales and bird people. And, somehow—somehow it’s real. I have to keep reminding myself it’s real.

I know it is, because I’ve attempted to determine my aliveness or deadness in several ways.
Be she alive or be she dead, I’ll grind her bones to make my bread, fee, fie, foe, fum
, and no, that doesn’t help me, but it’s what I mutter when I’m at a loss these days, even though I didn’t climb a beanstalk to get up here. Most of my tests have involved infliction of medium amounts of pain. Vital signs, modified. Each of my experiments yields the same result: alive. Alive and presumably sane, yet completely and utterly messed up.

Because Logical Aza, Rational Aza keeps wanting to wake up—to shake someone by the shoulders and scream
ships can’t fly
!
You can’t sing something into happening!

Except that they can. Except that Magonians do.

I’m trying hard to stay calm and deal with all of this. All things considered, I’m doing reasonably well. Practice gained from years of dying. Credit due.

This morning, I’m in a harness, trying not to look down at earth while I’m carefully washing the figurehead on the ship’s bow: a patchwork bird carved and painted. One crow’s wing, one thrush’s, half of its head an owl’s, half a parrot’s. One heron’s leg and one flamingo’s, and a bird of paradise’s tail. Apparently the mascot of
Amina Pennarum
is a messy hybrid creature, which makes me feel sympathetic toward it, given that’s exactly how I feel.

“I’ve heard we’re embarking on a special mission,” Dai says. He’s agitated, as usual.

I stare at him, awaiting the further explanation that I know is coming. Dai loves nothing so much as the sound of his own voice. It’s the only reason I know anything about this place.

“Before we got you, we were on field duty, sending Rostrae down to net crops. It was dull. Feed the capital. Send our forage off to them. This new mission, on the other hand, is what Zal’s trained this crew to do.”

I lean forward, but he shuts up, because the golden eagle Rostrae lands on the deck rail, and with a shrieking stretch transforms into a shining woman, her hair to her waist, her eyes yellow.

Another Rostrae lands with her, the girl I keep noticing, the blue jay girl with the electric-blue mohawk. She considers me for a moment, her black eyes with white streaks beneath them, and a yellow stripe on each of her cheekbones. She’s more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen, though she also makes no sense with her combination of human features and beak.

She
could
be my age,
I think,
or near it.

“Nice scrubbing,” says the blue jay, and grins. She looks at me for a moment in a way that might be friendly.

I’m shocked to discover a smile spreading across my face. I’ve had plenty of attention since finding myself here, but no one’s been actually friendly.

Do I want a friend? I’ve only ever had Jason.

I look around for Dai, but he’s wandered off, nowhere to be seen. Not surprising. He doesn’t relish fraternizing with those beneath his rank.

“I’m Aza,” I say.

“Thus revealing an impressive grasp of information we both already possess,” she says, and tilts
her head.

Is she . . . joking with me?

“I just thought—I want to ask—do you think you might be able to answer some questions for me?”

She shrugs elegantly and her shoulder feathers ruffle. The trim on her uniform is as bright as her plumage.

“Possibly,” she says. “I don’t know how helpful I’ll be. I’m only a sailor.”

“I’m only a skyman,” I tell her, and she laughs.

“An ordinary skyman with more power than all the other officers on this ship combined,” she says, pointing at my insignia. “Captain’s Daughter. Savior of Magonia.”

Savior?

She’s mocking me, clearly.

“It’s Aza,” I insist.

She nods. “I’m Jik. I was born aboard this ship, and I’ve been part of the effort to locate you—ever since I can remember.”

“So I guess, thank you?” I say weakly.

She smiles. “You look ordinary, Aza Ray Quel. It’s hard to believe you’d be capable of so much.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. But Jik turns toward some piece of business and, despite her human form, I see that she has a long, blue-feathered tail. It’s weirdly glamorous—tails on a tuxedo.

I’m entranced.

The Rostrae she’s with don’t correct my scrubbing and washing. The Rostrae seem too busy with their own crew assignments to stop and stare at me.

And soon, it seems they’re sharing a meal.

“Birdseed,” one of them says, looking dismissively at a cake of some kind in his hand.

“We’d be better feeding below, where there IS food,” says Jik. She’s quickly shushed by an older crew member, a robin.

“Do you wish to make trouble? This is our ship, and we are lucky for it. Not all of us have access the way you do. Your place is assured, but what will become of us when she’s through? Have you thought of that?”

The robin glances suspiciously at me and then walks away, leaving me scrubbing.

“What was that?” I ask Jik.

Jik shrugs.

“Magonians can’t go to ground to bring up wheat. They need us to pull the ships, to net their harvest, and to be their help shipboard. I am a part of the
Annapenny
as much as the rigging and the sail are. And I’m as easily replaced.”

“That can’t be true,” I argue. “You just said you were born aboard.”

She nods. “Yes, and I’ve done every job on this ship—from knotting nets to braiding hair.” She pauses. “Captain’s Daughter, I don’t know if you know this, but you don’t inspire confidence. You’re
pretty unskilled.”

She smirks and looks pointedly at a streak of grime I’ve been unable to buff out of the figurehead.

I laugh. It comes out a giant, sarcastic bark. “I don’t know how to do anything . . . except talk. I’m not great, am I?”

“Perhaps.” Jik regards me a moment. “But you’re not the worst.” She nods to where Dai is striding back into view. Then she flies up to the top of the batsail, grabs a rope, and tugs it until the bat’s wing is straightened out.

“What’s this new mission?” I ask Dai when he’s at my side, keeping my voice low.

“We’re hunting,” says Dai casually.

“Something alive?”

“It’s classified. Ordinary skymen don’t have that information,” he says smugly.

Superior show-off. I’d give him an ostentatious eye roll if it wouldn’t turn into a
thing.
I’ve already had to endure about a million too many of Dai’s lectures on proper protocol and duty.

He observes the streak of dirt Jik pointed out moments ago. With a “tsk” he takes the brush from my hand and swings like some kind of acrobat out onto the figurehead. Securing himself in place with his feet, he makes quick work of the grime while rattling on about technique. A tuck and a backflip, and he’s returned to the deck again. His movement is so fast and sure, I have small struggles about my gaping jaw. No, thou shalt not gape.

I distract myself from his gymnastics routine by scrubbing the figurehead until its every tiny painted pore is clean. All the while, I try to put things here in perspective by thinking of them in terms of my old life.

This boy, Dai, he’s nothing to me. He’s essentially one of the kids from school, tramping down the hallway, not super interesting.

But um, except not really at all. And I can feel Magonia sidling up around the edges of my brain.

I should be grateful,
it says.
I’m walking around. I can breathe. I’m not the dead girl I was always going to be.

I’m something else. Something important. What? No clue.

It’s different here. Aza, YOU are different here. Better?

But no.

Even if I’m in this place for the rest of my life. Even if I never see my family and Jason again, I can’t forget them. I won’t. Because, what if I forget myself along with them? Who will I be then?

I scrub until my fingers bleed blue, and as I scrub, I chant.

“Jason, Eli, Greta, and Henry. Jason Eli Greta Henry. Jasoneligretahenry. And Aza.”

When I look up, Zal’s standing above me, a disappointed look on her face.

She kneels, and extends her hand to help me back on deck.

“I started out at the lowest rank on this ship and made my way up to captain, faster than anyone imagined,” she tells me. “These were the years when everything went wrong. Magonian ships
couldn’t harvest enough to sustain even our own sailors. Our squallwhales sickened. Our people began to know hunger.

“Our problems are worse now than they were before. The world is overtaken with drowner poisons. Magonians suffer and die. We’re at their mercy.

“You’ll soon understand, Aza, what it means to be in charge of the future of your people. Some of us are born to crew ships, and some are born to captain them. This ship was my salvation, as it will be yours. And as you will be to your people.”

Zal puts her hand on my back, and it feels strangely good. Is it because she’s my mother? Or is it because of her power aboard the ship? Is it because part of me likes being in favor, being special?

“
Amina Pennarum
sails for treasure, Aza,” Zal whispers. “You’ll be the one who raises it from the deep.”

“Treasure?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

“Learn to sing for us,” she says. “And you’ll see. You
must
see.”

My brain whirrs. Is there actually still treasure in the world? The notion is exciting. I think about curses and pirates. Skeletons guarding booby-trapped hideaways.

I think about the bird I keep hearing—the one who, every night, sings along with my emotions, my pain—the one Wedda called a ghost.

I mean, obviously it’s not really a ghost? But what do I know about Magonia? There could easily be ghosts all over this sky. I wouldn’t know about it. I’m a stranger here.

Zal takes the ship’s wheel, her charts open to some highly cartographed territory. I can see monsters drawn in the margins.

Below us, for a moment, I see a flash of earth, but then a squallwhale comes between us and the ground, stirring the air until there is only cloud, and we’re only a thing hidden inside it.

Jason (
stop it, Aza, just stop thinking about him, just stop
) would love it here. He’d be prowling around with his hands out, asking question after question after question. And people would answer him, because he never met an expert who wouldn’t tell him anything he wanted to know.

He never met a fact he didn’t want to add to his secret fact-hoard either.

There were things Jason didn’t know, of course, but in the realm of the memorizable, not that much as far as I could tell.

What did he
not
know? How to be a normal person? Neither did I. But apparently I have a better excuse.

God. Jason, my best friend and the most annoying thing, who’d rattle off a thirty-minute monologue of his mind’s flotsam and jetsam and then cackle when I didn’t have the same levels of geekitude at my disposal.

Jason, who once forced me to dance in front of all the curators at a museum because I lost a bet.

Jason, who once in a while, when I’d be coughing, wouldn’t even be there at all. He’d be standing right next to me, yes, but inside he’d just be a frantic calculating machine, tallying oxygen
percentages and dust quotients, pollens and amounts of time between wherever we were and the hospital.

Which I hated, because it reminded me that I was sick.

Some days he’d be muttering to himself, diagramming things he wouldn’t show me, thinking things he wouldn’t discuss.

So he wasn’t perfect, Aza. He wasn’t. It’s just that your brain keeps trying to revise him into something he never was. Never mind that the moment you saw him, your first memory of him in the alligator suit, you thought,
Oh god, finally, someone like me.