Authors: Brenda Cooper
Jenna came through, murmuring at us to find acceleration couches and strap in. We still stood at the top of the ramp, and I realized almost everyone else had already gone deeper into the ship. A few fliers walked slowly down the ramp, their wings canted far forward so they looked like they could take off the moment no metal blocked the sky.
Something was still wrong. Alicia! “Where’s Alicia? And Induan? Did they come in with you?”
Liam shook his head.
“Even invisible?”
“Well, maybe.” I could tell by his tone of voice that he didn’t think so. “You may have to let her go,” he whispered against my cheek, his voice as soft as he could make it. “Perhaps one of the little deaths that she needs is to stay here and see if she can live her dream and become a flier.”
“You sound like your father.”
“So?”
“It was a compliment.”
He wrapped his arms around me tighter and kissed the top of my head, still watching the ramp with me, as if we expected to see the invisible ones walk up it any moment.
I pulled his hands gently away from my sides, getting ready to go on in, when he whispered, “Wait.”
Four feet padded, running, up the ramp. Sasha’s nose appeared in the square of ground we could see from here, and then all of her, speeding up the ramp to leap up our waists, tongue out, nosing our hands into petting her. I laughed and laughed. The dog had never made me so happy before. I scratched behind her ears. “It may have been Alicia’s destiny to be stuck here, but not yours, huh? Brave little one.”
She bounded past us looking for more family to greet, and we headed in.
The ramp slid almost silently into the ship and the door closed with only a small click of the locks moving into place. I kissed Liam, hard, on the lips. “I need to go find my brother. Save me a seat.”
He laughed. “Good luck.”
The ship was bulky and over-big, as if outsized cargo had to be maneuvered around every padded corner. She was so heavy with her own oily metallic scent that I could already barely smell a world in her.
I didn’t mind.
I found Joseph in a wide corridor, walking toward me, holding Kayleen’s hand. Sasha trotted at their heels, looking happy with herself. Joseph looked different; more controlled and sadder. Older. I searched Kayleen’s eyes. She brushed a stray hair back from my cheek and returned my gaze, also changed. I had seen the one side of her being lost, Caro’s side, and now I was really seeing how Kayleen looked for the first time. I saw sanity, and oddly, a bit of wisdom in her blue eyes. I wanted to kiss her and hold her and take her away and chat, but we didn’t have time. Yet. She mussed my hair and they both held me close for a moment, the three of us almost one being. When we separated, Joseph grinned at me and gave a little bow. “We have to go, my sister-worth-a-war. There’re Star Mercenaries after us, and Paula’s coming soon, and we don’t want the fliers’ spat to keep us grounded until the bounty hunters get here.”
“Hey! That’s not my fault.”
He’d already pulled away from me, but he gave my hand a squeeze. “It never has been.”
I knelt to pet the dog while they walked off, still hand in hand.
“Wait!” I called. “Alicia?”
He looked back. He shrugged, pretending he didn’t care. His eyes gave away the lie. “Maybe she’ll show up before we leave the system.”
“I hope so.” Or did I? He could share things with Kayleen that Liam and I never could. We had our history, and our babies. And for all that I hadn’t been sure about taking her into our relationship, I didn’t want to lose her. Just the two of us, just me and Liam, would be entirely too serious; we’d lose our sense of play.
I could worry about that later.
Now it was time to go find an uncomfortable couch and Liam and our son. I let Sasha go, watching her scramble after Joseph and Kayleen, tail wagging like a flag of truce.
I still hated acceleration couches. This time, I lay strapped between
Liam and Jherrel, looking back and forth between them, drinking in the familiar comfort of every breath they took. Caro was on her dad’s far side, her eyes closed, looking disturbingly like her uncle Joseph when he reveled in things I could never see.
Every ship in the universe seemed to think passengers should see the planet they were leaving recede below them, and this one wasn’t any different. I thought about closing my eyes, but that wouldn’t bring Bryan back, or put Alicia next to me.
We took off slowly at first, the ground, then the spaceport, then the ring of perch-trees visible. Beyond those, small groups of people gathered in three places. One of those must be around Bryan’s body. Crying with your forehead strapped to an acceleration couch and your hand strapped to your side really sucked, so I didn’t do it. I just whispered, “I’m sorry, little brother. I’m so very sorry. I’m sorry, big brother.” I closed my eyes, making it a mantra.
When I looked again, Lopali was the size of a pongaberry in the viewscreen.
I
nduan and I held hands, helping each other balance as we swayed somewhat precariously in our seats on the top of a cargo vehicle on its way to Charmed. She’d been waiting for me outside the house Amalo had taken me to, and her first words had been, “About time. I’m starved.”
She still hadn’t eaten. Here we were, stuck on top of a moving vehicle, almost surely going too slow to get where we needed to go on time. Loyal Induan. At least somebody cared to find me in spite of all her other troubles.
She pointed up. I followed her finger to see fliers flocking over us, all going in the same direction. I spotted Amalo, Marti, and Tsawo; part of a group of seven.
At first I thought they were after me, but they didn’t even look down. Surely they’d be looking down if they were looking for me. Amalo, at least, could have seen me if he wanted to. Besides, they were flying too fast.
They joined a flight of other fliers, far away, like colorful dots in the sky. A dusting of wings. It was impossible to tell what they were doing, but for a few moments it had seemed like most of the fliers from Oshai had made their way to Charmed to dance together.
“I wish this thing was faster,” I said.
Induan sighed. “Or we had wings.” Even with our ugly wings, we flew faster than the unstable vehicle below us drove.
I squinted. “I can’t see what’s happening.”
“Me either.”
We watched in silence as the large groups of fliers broke into smaller groups and then landed. It looked like two of them fell, but surely that was my imagination.
By the time we got near the spaceport, whatever ceremony the fliers performed was done, and only a few remained in the sky. A large group that had been on or near the ground broke up, the fliers going different directions.
More time passed, us holding on and watching the sky. Somewhere, actions were being taken, decisions made. And I wasn’t part of it.
No ships had taken off. When we got close enough to see the individual branches of the perch-trees surrounding the spaceport, a squat silver cargo vessel rose slowly over the cityscape of ships’ noses.
“That can’t be them,” Induan said. “Joseph would pick a fancier ship.”
My stomach iced, cold and hard. She was wrong. “It’s them. I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do.”
“They’ll come back for you if you want them to.”
Did I? “Maybe.” I wasn’t actually sure. Chelo would. And Joseph. But Marcus the Great would be happier if I didn’t darken his mission with risk. I wasn’t sure what Jenna would do. “Maybe I won’t tell them I’m here.”
The ship with my family on it was now only a trail of disturbance in the sky.
“Maybe they didn’t notice you aren’t there.”
“Quit worrying about it.” I wished I could see her face. So much of communication is body language. What did I know? Her hand felt slick in mine, and her voice had been tense since she caught me up on my way out of the house. “What do you want to do if we stay here?” I asked her.
“It’s not as much fun to be invisible by myself.”
That was no real answer. It was Induan still trying to keep my spirits up. “You’re the strategist. I’m the risk-taker. What do you think we should do?”
“I saw your face when they were talking about giving you wings. You want them.”
I glanced back up at the sky. All traces of my family had gone. I felt . . . freer. Lighter. Like no one would make my choices for me. And bereft. I wanted to be in Joseph’s arms and giggle with Caro. I had never wanted to be two people at once so badly before. “I don’t know.”
“The strategist in me suggests you decide soon. We’ll be at the spaceport in a few minutes.”
Why bother? They were gone. So the only real reason we were still on the lurching transport was that it hadn’t stopped to let us off.
We neared the fields where the fliers had performed. Only a few still wheeled in the sky; it was hot enough that they should be seeking shade and getting ready to nap.
It took a long time to get close enough to make out the details and find the group Tsawo and Amalo were part of. Marti, too. They were still pretty far away but they walked awkwardly, with their heads down. They were carrying something. Someone.
I didn’t like it. As much as I knew Joseph had flown away from me, I knew I didn’t like this. “We’ve got to go see,” I said.
“We can’t just jump off this thing.”
I eyed the ground blurring under us. She was right. I let go of her hand and inched up toward the front and the wingless driver. I squatted near his driver’s-side window, turned my mod off, and knocked on the window.
He slowed the machine, fast, so fast it slewed to the right.
I jumped down and gestured for Induan to follow, changing to become invisible again as soon as Induan grabbed my hand.
Behind us, the driver opened his door and called out, “Who’s there?”
“Nobody,” I whispered, then giggled, hoping he heard the laugh. Nerves. I needed to see what Tsawo was doing. As we raced back along the trail toward Tsawo and the others, I flushed red, remembering Tsawo’s kiss.
We pulled near enough to see what they carried. A wingless. Broken. Big. Bryan. Oh! Oh! Not Bryan, not again. I shivered, the cold of being alone now far, far worse. I’d left him, way back at the festival, I’d left him. I’d just . . . thought he hooked up with the others and
got home. Chelo might leave without me but she wouldn’t leave without Bryan. She loved Bryan.
So they knew he was dead.
I was rambling like Kayleen. Just in my head. But still, I needed to focus.
What if it was my fault he was dead? I could have saved him. Should have saved him. I should have at least worried about him.
A scream filled my spine, and I fought it back, choking on it, my stomach twisting. Induan grabbed my hand, whispering, “I’m sorry. Be quiet. Don’t give us away. I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t stop gasping for breath. When we got near enough to really see what had happened to him, it took all my strength not to let the scream out.
He’d fallen from the sky.
Just like Tsawo always warned us.
He’d fallen.
Amalo said, “Hello, Alicia and Induan.” His voice was mild, a little shocky. I stopped, confused. He wasn’t someone I imagined losing control like that. Marti and Tsawo and the fourth, fifth, and sixth fliers, two men and a woman I’d never met, looked over at him.
Induan and I turned our mods off simultaneously, and I could finally see her face. She was crying for Bryan.
“How did . . . how did he fall?” I asked.
Amalo shook his head as if whatever I’d missed was too horrible to talk about. I didn’t want to look at Bryan anymore, so I looked at the others closely. Marti had broken three long feathers on her left wing and her cheek had a deep bruise on it. One of the strange fliers walked funny, too slow, like he’d hurt his leg.
My breath stuck in my throat, and I gagged and then choked. Induan slapped my back, and the words finally came out of me. “There was a fight. Over what?”
Amalo said a single word. “Change.” He fell silent.
Change? It was more than that. It was this war Marcus was trying to stop, the one that had spilled across my life and dragged me away from Silver’s Home and back to Fremont. It was all the things Chelo hated. Bryan had been killed by people, and people were miserable excuses for beings.
Induan and I joined the procession, as silent as the others, our feet dragged enough by grief that it wasn’t too hard to travel as slowly as the grounded fliers.
The fliers led us to a garden in the center of Charmed. Concentric circles of flowers selected for close shades made a bright rainbow on the ground, a thick band that snaked through lawns and pretty benches.
Tsawo broke the eerie silence. “Where would you like him to be buried? Since you’re here, you can choose.”
Clearly he meant for me to pick a place. I left the group and walked the rainbow. I didn’t want to bury him anywhere. He was too young, too strong. It couldn’t be him, except it was him. I wandered in a big circle. Would he like to be under a tree? He’d always liked to climb them. We didn’t bury our dead; we burned them.
So I didn’t even know how to think about this.
Their eyes followed me, waiting, tired, honoring us before they took care of what they needed to.
I had to think.
“Where do you want to be?” I whispered to him.
“Alive.” I could hear his voice, see him laugh in my head, the same angry but ironic laughter he had all the time. “Put me anywhere,” the ghost of Bryan told me. “It doesn’t matter.” It was all in my head, but I knew it was exactly what he would have said.
I found a large lawn surrounded by perches and benches, a place for fliers and humans together. Maybe people would sit around and talk, and Bryan would have company from time to time. He’d probably like that.
I went to Tsawo and took his hand and led him. “Is this okay?”
He nodded, and wordlessly extended an arm to pull me in close to him, so his wing enfolded me, blocking the breeze and making me feel warm, like I’d been tucked inside a living blanket.
We only stayed that way for a long moment, but it helped. I could have stayed that way forever, but Tsawo pulled away to speak to a flier I didn’t know, who flew off.