Authors: Brenda Cooper
I would. I’d fly really well. But I’d imagined looking like the fliers, graceful and kissed by sky. Everything about these wings looked awkward.
“How come there’s no one else here?” I asked.
“There will be. We’re early.”
Here and there, fliers touched the sky with color, but no one appeared to be heading our way. “Are you going to teach other people, too?”
“Right now?”
I nodded.
“No. Just you.” A puzzled look crossed his face. “Why?”
My cheeks heated and I looked away. “I’m just curious. I’m still trying to learn what Lopali is like.”
He started walking down the row of hanging dead wings, his own ebony wings making them into a mockery. He walked less awkwardly than most fliers, but even for him, the ground wasn’t comfortable. About halfway down he plucked a set from the wall and gestured me close. “Hold out your arm.”
I did, and the wing he held up was twice as tall as my arm, and slightly longer. “These’ll do.” He plopped them into my arms. I tensed, expecting weight. As big as the wings were, they were as light as my shoes. “What are they made of?”
“Carbon cloth, coated with temperature-regulating nano.”
At least they were probably more elegant in design than looks.
He grabbed a different rig from lower on the wall below the hook he’d plucked the wings from, and started back toward the door. I
flipped the lightweight wings up so they rested on my shoulder and followed him, noting that from behind he really looked like nothing more than a pair of wings with a set of long feet below them. He even waddled a little.
That didn’t stop me from noticing his chest muscles and his long, strong fingers as he fit the wings carefully to my arms. He smelled of air. He smelled of sweat and the oil on his feathers and something musky, like sex but not quite that. Maybe it was just the difference between man smell and flier smell.
I didn’t want to feel so swayed by his nearness.
I loved Joseph. I had loved Joseph since I was five.
But there had been only Joseph and Liam and Bryan, and Bryan and Chelo had been inseparable as children. They should be together today; I saw it in Bryan’s eyes. He loved her, still and desperately. Kayleen had always had a crush on Liam. Since, back then, I only saw Joseph twice a year, I had loved a boy in my own caravan, thought maybe he loved me, but he died. Varay, of the dancing brown eyes and the fast hands and easy laugh. After him, there was just Joseph. Joseph who I loved and who was maybe going to save this world.
And now there were hundreds of thousands of men with power and grace and beauty, if only a few had as much as my Joseph.
I forced my focus back to helping Tsawo put the wings on me. Once all the parts were buckled and tightened and fitted to my shoulders and back and arms, and my fingers curled around the grips on the ends, and my legs fastened into fluttering thick-and-light material, I felt like a chicken trussed for dinner. There was nothing light and airy about the wings. Nothing beautiful, nothing comfortable. My shoulder blades itched with dried sweat from my run and there was no way I’d be scratching the itch until I got all of this stuff off.
I trotted a few steps and raised my wings.
Behind me, Tsawo laughed. “Not yet.”
But I wanted to fly.
“Remember, if you fall out of the air, the ground is hard.”
Duh.
“Follow me.” He sounded like Liam talking to Caro.
Be patient. Do
what I want.
Well, I wasn’t a three-year-old, and he was my teacher, and so I followed him. Four steps in, I tripped over my own toes and almost fell, pinwheeling my arms to stay up.
He smiled. “Come on. It’ll be all right.”
“Can you help me?” I asked.
“You’ve got to learn to walk before you can fly.”
I listened for warmth in his patient voice. I’d heard it when he admired my running, but now his words sounded rote. Like words he used with students every day. Now that I was all dressed up in awkwardness, I was probably less attractive.
I needed to peel my stupid self away from thinking about how Tsawo affected me. I was here, where I wanted to be. I was on Lopali, with a beautiful flier, learning to fly even before Joseph or Kayleen or Chelo, who were learning how to save the world.
I waddled forward, keeping my head up, determined not to fall before I reached wherever it was Tsawo was taking me.
M
ore sweat poured off my face than when I ran to Fliers’ Field. A lighter sheen beaded Tsawo’s angular face and his feathers glittered in the noonday sun. Two other students with another teacher had come, flown off, returned, and left, all while I stood in the sun being corrected, and corrected, and corrected. “Okay,” he barked, sounding like Jenna or Marcus forcing us to exercise on the ships, “Last ground exercise. Bend.”
I bent my knees so deep they screamed, holding the ever-heavier wings out to the side.
“Thrust.” I stood up, pulling the wings down gently, feeling a touch of lift at the top of my stand. This time, I managed to stop the downbeat before the wing tips brushed the grass.
“Very good. Bend.”
I thought he said one more. I bent. “Thrust.
Bend.
“Thrust.”
And then silence for three breaths while I stood there, thighs and butt clenched for strength, knees slightly bent for balance.
“Very good.”
I spoke through teeth clenched with the effort of standing just right. “Can I fly now?”
“No. Your wings aren’t part of you yet.” He glanced up. “Besides, it’s too hot. Your first flight should be a morning.”
Which morning? But I held my tongue, since I knew anything I said now would result in a third lecture about how flying could get you killed. I had thought I did well, but the look on his face suggested maybe I didn’t. I didn’t ask. “Can you fly in the heat?”
He glanced up. “Almost no one flies this time of day. We fly in the morning. In the middle of the day the sun bakes our crops and flowers and the Keepers work and we sleep, and then later on we fly again if we want to.”
The sky was empty of fliers.
“So now you sleep,” he said.
I didn’t want to sleep. But I didn’t think he was going to give me a choice. “So do I go home?” I didn’t relish the trip in this heat, and I didn’t want to be done with Tsawo yet, even though I should.
“No. There are rooms here. I’ll put you in one.”
And him in another. I could hear that. I was a chore to him. “And then?”
“Then Marcus asked me to show you the general layout of the town.”
He didn’t sound thrilled about it. He sounded patient, like he’d sounded all morning. Hopefully the rooms had some way to clean up so I could get the salt and sweat off my face and neck before we went anywhere public. If I couldn’t fly in them, I wanted the wings off. I slid a hand out of the wing-tip grip and reached it toward the other arm. One wing hit the other, and all my careful balance fled as I struggled to stay upright at all.
“Do you remember how I said you should get them off?”
I held them in front of me, and slid just my wrists free, using my right hand to unbuckle the left forearm fastening, and the left, awkwardly, to get the right fastening loose. Now I could bend both arms at the elbows and free my biceps. Except the wings slammed together again and this time I fell on my butt.
A
full hour after Alicia left with the dark-winged flier, Marcus led me, Chelo, and Kayleen out of the house and back into the city. Fewer fliers graced the air than we’d seen out our window, and nearly everyone aloft seemed bent on specific tasks. I watched for Alicia, or for anyone in a harness and fake wings, but saw neither. But then, surely it would take more than a day to learn how to fly.
As we passed the boundary that marked the common space of the city, I noticed the name of the town on a wooden arch—SoBright. I almost groaned inwardly—it went with the too-pretty everything else and the lack of anything that looked like predators. An amazing number of the fliers seemed to have nothing to do. They sat about silently, apparently lost in data. I took a few extra steps to catch up to Marcus. “Don’t they work?”
He laughed. “They are working. Think of this as a great church—part of what the fliers do is internal, and some between and among each other. Besides, they do most of their work in the first few hours of dawn—that’s when they patrol for things to fix in the wilds, and practice long flights. Even here, on a planet designed to support human flight, people can’t fly all day. It’s too hard.”
“So the silent ones are working with data?” Kayleen asked.
“You’ll understand more after you’re not shielded.”
“When is that?” I asked.
“After you understand Lopali on the physical level.”
He wouldn’t bend. Besides, Kayleen was new here, and new to
these kinds of data streams, and fragile. But not patient. “When will that be?” she pressed.
“As soon as you learn enough. Data flows are a language themselves, and reflect culture.”
Kayleen grinned up at him. “Like the difference between Islas and Fremont.”
“Exactly.”
We walked all the way through SoBright and left it again on the far side, continuing down a street full of buildings sized for fliers. Unlike the guest house, which felt like a regular place when the roof was closed, and had walls and windows on every side, these were open—just roofs over benches and tables.
Marcus clearly knew where he was going. Ten or twelve airy buildings that only vaguely matched each other in style sprawled across a large and immaculately gardened campus. Benches and perches had been fit artfully into nooks and crannies, making outdoor study space that was full of fliers and wingless, some sitting alone and others in groups. A warm breeze carried the soft voices of people lost in conversation.
Shadows blocked the sun for a breath, just before Matriana and Daniel landed in front of us. After greetings were exchanged, Marcus asked, “Is Chance here yet?”
“In just a few moments.” She turned her gaze to me. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Sure. For whatever. Why did Marcus always like to surprise me? I glanced at him. “We’re ready.”
Kayleen cleared her throat. “Ready for what? Is this a school? Are your geneticists here?”
Chelo grabbed her hand and squeezed it, stopping the flow of words.
Daniel smiled. “Ready to start learning, and yes, this is the biggest university on Lopali, the School of Heaven’s Flight, and yes, our geneticists are here.”
Kayleen grinned.
Chelo pointed up into the sky, and I got my first glimpse of a flying regular human. The wings were smaller than a flier’s, and more rigid, and clearly made rather than grown. The sun glittered on slender
sparkly stripes of bright white across a gray-blue just duller than the color of the sky. They stretched from just past the human’s fingers on each side, and swept back to tuck in near the hips. The legs had a second set of small winglike protrusions that looked like they might be used as much for stability as steering. It eventually became clear the wings carried a smallish and slender man. The whole contraption creaked, the wings flapping audibly and squeaking on the downbeat as he came within a few meters or so of us. He slowed, then, with a little hop, stopped on a patch of green grass in front of us.
Marcus headed straight toward him, so I followed, curious.
He looked young and healthy, like everyone else here, except his hair was a silver-gray that offset bright blue eyes and a wide, friendly smile. “Good to see you! I hear you’ve brought us a protégé”—he glanced at me—“and I’m betting this is him.”
I nodded and stuck my hand out, then realized he didn’t have a free hand. “I’m Joseph.”
“And I’m Dr. Chance.” He started peeling off the wings and handed one to me and one to Marcus. They were much more elegantly made up close than they’d seemed from a distance, with clever spars and a soft fabric. “Or just Chance.”
The single wing I held weighed no more than a few ounces, and balanced easily a little off-center on a single finger. “You’re the geneticist?”
“You were expecting a flier? No. I mean, yes I am, and I’m from Silver’s Home, too. I couldn’t stand the death rate, so I came here to help when Marcus asked.”
We started back toward the others, who appeared to be entangled in one of Kayleen’s grand convoluted conversations. “So why do you need us?” I asked him.
His cheeks reddened. “Well, I’m no maker, for one. Not even a basic Wind Reader. And I didn’t have access to all the secrets. But I know a few things, and between us all, we’ll puzzle it out.”
Matriana laughed softly at something Chelo said, and then she and Daniel swept back up into the air. Marcus led the rest of us to a long room where Dr. Chance clipped all the parts of his flying gear together and stuck them on a hook next to three other pairs. We entered what must be one of the fliers’ classrooms. Partway across the
floor, a rope ladder dangled from a lattice platform. Marcus held the rope for us so it wouldn’t sway too much as we climbed.
The platform was only about twice as high as I was tall. Matriana and Daniel had flown in through the wide-open wall and they sat comfortably on two of many tall benches that surrounded a single square table. At their invitation, we scrambled up, and even with each of us taking a bench, the table was less than half full. While I felt like the table was the right height for my hands, my feet dangled over empty space, as if I were a child sitting in a grown-up’s spot.
Chance got right down to business, plugging a data button into a clever reader built right into the table. Images shimmered to life, duplicated for each of us. A slightly see-through three-dimensional flier hung in the air in front of us, wings spread. “What do you see?” he asked.
I glanced at the very real fliers sitting across from us. “The wings are bigger than the body. They might be heavier.”
He nodded. “Wings and body usually weigh about the same. What else do you see?”
“The muscles are different. Longer and more . . . I don’t know? Streamlined.”