I was on my feet, screaming the way the villagers down below were screaming. Without thinking, not even knowing whether my wings were still functioning, I thumbed the power recess on my chest panel. I shot into the air. An instant later I lashed my body around so that I dove toward the river.
It was crazy. Insane. I had no idea when my wings might fail. Still, I reached the frail boat, where two terrified faces looked up at me. I don’t know whether the boys were more frightened of the river or of me. I grabbed the one nearest to me under his armpits just as the boat rolled sideward and filled with water. It was all I could do to lift him—he was a lot shorter than I am, but a lot denser, and the gravity was fierce on this planet. Somehow I found strength. Maybe their food had given me strength. His feet almost dragged in the water as I lugged him toward shore. “Help, get the other one!” I shouted as if someone was there, Kris maybe, someone who had wings and could pluck fool boys from water. But there was no one who could help but me.
I dumped the boy in the mud at the shoreline, where half a dozen villagers reached out for him, and I wheeled and darted after the other one. Babble of voices behind me was lost in the clamor of the river. I saw the belly of the boat as it floated downriver like a dead fish, and near it I saw a head shining like a small dark sun. I thumbed for more power, flew faster, nearly out of control, but before I could reach the boy he disappeared in roiling water as the river narrowed to a deep, gushing ravine. If my wings caught in the trees to either side of that strait, I would crash, I would be lost. Swept away into blackness.
I had thought I didn’t care about anything, but I did. I wanted to live.
Yet I flew in there anyway, because even more than life I wanted—somehow this boy was Mykel…. Just as I knew I would have to give him up I spotted him again. His arm lifted toward me. I swooped and grabbed. The coldhearted water dragged at us as I thumbed for more power—but there was no more power. More strength—I didn’t have it. I knew I was not going to be able to save us both.
I hung on anyway. Struggled upward and got him mostly out of the water. Flew wildly, veering downriver with the rushing water pushing his legs along until an elbow of rock jutted from the shore. I aimed him there. Dropped him safely out of the water, but I could not tell whether he was alive. Felt a wing crumple into the steep bank, and knew I was going to die—
But at that moment I felt the Columbuscraft transport beam latch onto me. The last thing I saw on that planet was brown people running toward me along the top of the ravine. “Goodbye,” I called to them as I vanished.
The next moment I stood in the entry portal of the ship, where the captain, my father, was waiting to debrief me. And, probably, to throw a hissy fit.
Usually when I had to face my father I put on a protective armor of attitude: straight spine, hard face, silence. But there was no time for any of that. Or maybe I forgot.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Are you all right?” my father said at the same time, which was not like him. “Get those things off her,” he said to the techs who were already working as fast as they could to remove my gear.
“I couldn’t save him,” I said.
“There’s a big bruise and a clot of dried blood on your head,” my father said. “Why weren’t you wearing your helmet? Why were you out there at all? With Kris, of all people. He’s no damn good, Mishell.”
“I couldn’t save him,” I said.
But he was adjusting one earpiece of his omnipresent headset, with his listening look on his face. “The boy in the water? You did save him,” he said. He knew all about it. Probably had been watching me the whole time. “The languagetrans are picking up clear signals on the scanners. He’s alive.”
I shook my head. “Mykel,” I said.
He stiffened, looking back at me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why couldn’t there have been somebody to save him? Or something?”
Then I stood staring at him, I was so startled to see tears in his eyes. We hadn’t talked about Mykel before. I hadn’t wanted to.
He stretched his hand toward me. He said, very low, “We don’t know why things happen, Mishell. We just don’t know.” He said, “I was frightened. If you—if you went, too—Mishell, I don’t know whether I could handle it.”
I had to close my eyes. Didn’t see him step toward me, but I did feel him hug me. My arms lifted and I hung on to him, I laid my head against the rock of his shoulder as he hugged me hard. It was maybe a whole minute before he turned into his cranky self again and started hustling me toward sick bay.
Awhile later, tucked in by a nurse with a firm hand, I should have been sleeping, but I was lying there in the dim blue light listening to the laserharp music, awake but having dreams like visions—maybe from the drugs. Maybe not. I dreamed of the brown people on the planet far below. Angel, they were saying. The angel sat with us and ate our bread. In a couple of generations, an old man would tell his grandchildren how in his youth he had been rescued by an angel. The angel rescued me, he would say, but not my sister. My sister died. The angel would not save her. When I was a boy, the angel rescued me from drowning, he would say. And he rescued my friend. We knew we were special ones, blessed ones, with angels to protect us. We grew tall. But one day when he was still a young man my friend went out hunting deer and was captured by the barbarians who live beyond the mountains. And he did not try to escape, but waited in utmost faith for his angel to come and save him and punish the barbarians. His captors tortured him with fire, and no angel came. They tortured him until he died in agony. I know, because I saw. No angel saved him. And I could not save him either.
We do not know why angels come sometimes and sometimes turn their backs and fly away, the old man would say. We just don’t know. Things happen, and we don’t know why.
Edgar Award-winning author Nancy Springer,
well known for her science fiction, fantasy, and young adult novels,
has written a gripping psychological thriller—smart, chilling, and unrelenting...
available in paperback and e-book in November 2012
from New American Library
Dorrie and Sam White are not the ordinary Midwestern couple they seem. For plain, hard-working Sam hides a deep passion for his wife. And Dorrie is secretly following the sixteen-year-old daughter, Juliet, she gave up for adoption long ago. Then one day at the mall, Dorrie watches horror-stricken as Juliet is forced into a van that drives away. Instinctively, Dorrie sends her own car speeding after it—an act of reckless courage that puts her on a collision course with a depraved killer...and draws Sam into a desperate search to save his wife. And as mother and daughter unite in a terrifying struggle to survive, Dorrie must confront her own dark, tormented past.
“A darkly riveting read...compelling.”
—Wendy Corsi Staub, national bestselling author
of Nightwatcher
and
Sleepwalker
“
A fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you reading late into the night and cheering for the novel's unlikely but steadfast heroine.”
—Heather Gudenkauf,
New York Tim
es best-selling author of
The Weight of Silence
and
These Things Hidden
Learn more about all of Nancy’s titles at her website, www.nancyspringer.com.