Fran Wilde - Updraft

When I realized that Nat had dropped my hand and walked to the plinth’s southern edge, my heart sank. So caught up in my own worries. Shame on me. I joined him as he peered over the edge, then at the Spire in the distance.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Bad luck,” his voice rasped. He unbuckled his left wing, broken beyond repair, and slid the strap from his shoulder. He hung it over the edge of the plinth and dropped it.

My heart ached for him. “Next Allsuns, Nat. You will pass.”

Florian waved us back to the plinth’s northern side, and I pulled Nat after me. We would fly back to the tower of our youth together.

Using winghooks, Florian carried Nat. Nat cringed with shame. His remaining wing was secured to the Magister’s chest.

They glided away from the test plinth. Sidra sulked behind them, muttering to Dojha. My cousin and I followed, trying to read the changes on the horizon.

I would take my old wings to Viit and trade whatever else I could find to have them make Nat a new wing. I smiled sadly. That would help. But Nat wouldn’t have wings for this year’s Allmoons. He wouldn’t be able to fly in the wingfights or join a hunt.

Meantime, Singer Wik would return to talk with me. But I would have my wingmark by then. I hoped that would be enough to carry me far from the Singers’ reach.

Ahead of me, Sidra grew more strident and incensed. Not my fault, I heard. Dix will regret this.

I felt a twinge of empathy for her, and even worse for Nat. They’d have to repeat the wingtest. Sidra’s family would be embarrassed, though they wouldn’t have as many difficulties as Nat and Elna would. Sidra would have to live by her father’s rules for longer. Knowing Councilman Vant, that could be why she was raging now.

Sidra caught me looking at her and glared back at me. Embarrassed, I distracted myself by thinking of more ways to help Nat get back in the air. Ways to avoid going near the Spire until I was a well-off trader in my own right. My barely formed plans shredded like clouds when I spotted a figure waving from our balcony.

Ezarit. Home. Her lenses pressed my cheeks as I smiled. Then they fogged as the seal broke with my skin when I frowned. She’d almost made it in time. Perhaps she had seen some of the group flight. Perhaps she saw Nat’s fall.

If Ezarit had been home in the morning, she would have seen my dive. She would have told me what it looked like. We could have shared impressions, like a team, like the group I’d just worked with. Like the people who’d helped her deliver the medicines to the southeast.

Instead, she’d flown one way, and I’d flown another. So much sky had opened up between us. The skymouth and the Singer, the wingtest and Nat’s fall filled the space.

I glided the distance to Densira, and Ezarit’s form grew clearer. She’d put her glass beads back in her hair. The top of the tower danced with light to welcome me home. But silence waited there too, taut like a net.

With a wave from Magister Florian, I broke from the group and went to her.

She met me on the balcony and caught me like a child come in from a first flight. Swung me round. She held me at arm’s length.

“You’ve grown. How is it that you are still growing?”

I hadn’t grown. It had only been a few days since she left. It had been forever.

Why was she greeting me as if nothing had happened? I grew stiff in her arms, fidgeted like a trapped bird.

Her eyes were soft and golden, fringed with long lashes. On her wind-chapped face, her cheekbones bloomed madder and rose.

She touched the chips I’d tied to my wings. Her face fell into worry. “No wingmark? They must be debating results.” Her lips moved as she counted four full chips: Laws, City, Solo, Group . “But you passed!”

I nodded. I had so much to say, my lips were sealed by the pressure of it all. And against speaking any of it. I smiled at her and let my eyes speak instead.

“I know how you feel,” she said. “When I passed the wingtest…” She looked into the distance, thinking. “I was so over the sun about it. Higher than anyone. My mother would have been so proud, then.” She returned to me, saw me. “Just as I am.”

She hadn’t seen Nat fall. She didn’t know.

I should have told her then, but I couldn’t put words to it. I opened my mouth and closed it again. Everything is all right , I thought as hard as I could, Tell me of our plans, describe our future like you did the trade run so many weeks ago, with eyes glowing and fingers shaping air into promise and power. I wished those words between us.

She waited as well, her head tilting to one side, eyebrows rising. Quiet buoyed us for a moment while we believed we understood each other. Then silence grew from quiet, expanding up and out, hardening. The silence began to push us further apart.

Ezarit tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. The Laws chip tied to her wrist flashed white. “Household member broke Laws.”

My doing. A hero of the city weighted with Laws.

I wondered what Councilman Vant would ask in exchange for making the chip go away. As I opened my mouth to ask, she began to speak at the same time.

“I have some surprises.” She pulled me to the table, handed me a package. A cloud of silk wrapping, bound by complex knots, soft and light in my hands. “But tell me everything,” she said. I opened my mouth. Stopped. Pressed my lips together.

“Don’t keep me waiting, who was your Group tester?” She did not want to talk about the Laws chip either. She was distracting me with banter, another trader trick. This made me more tense, more worried. Still, I could answer her, and distract her too. “My tester was almost Dix.”

She leaned forward, her eyes searching mine. “But?”

“But Sidra protested being tested three times by Mondarath’s new Magister, and Nat and that Magister pushed for changes. Calli was switched for Dix. I got Magister Viit. We flew true.” I didn’t speak of Nat’s flight. Somewhere far below us, he was finding the words to tell Elna that his father’s wing was lost, that he’d fallen. But I could not tell Ezarit.

“I gather Sidra will be serenading her father with her woes.” My mother frowned and picked at my test marks. She sighed. “And for Solo?”

“Mondarath. The new Magister. He flew strangely, but I managed to keep up.” I did more than that, I thought.

“Strange, how?”

“Like a Singer.”

Ezarit’s eyes narrowed. “How many Singers have you seen flying?”

“We’ve watched them, haven’t we? At Allsuns? And Allmoons? And the one who came here to get you? And after—” I stopped. I’d come treacherously close to the things I could not allow myself to talk about.

She blanched. “After?”

I could not say. I could not tell her.

“Three Singers attended the wingtest.”

“Three always attend the wingtest.” She would not let go of my slipped words. “After what? Which Singer?”

“I’ve only seen three up close. They were all at the wingtest.” I was not lying. Not yet.

She relaxed, but the distance between us expanded. So many things we were not saying. The silence of our mutual homecoming deepened. I furled my wings properly to have something to do with my hands. Reached to pull the lenses from around my neck. They felt cold on my fingers. I held them out to my mother, who touched them fondly, but did not take the strap from my hand.

“You keep them.”

She was trying to mend things. “They’re yours. You need them to fly. Your good luck.” They weighed heavier now, burdened.

She smiled slowly, thinking I’d be thrilled. “I can fly without them too. I had very good luck out there.” Her smile grew, thinking of the adventure. “I want you to have them. When you’re a trader, they’ll come in handy.”