Fran Wilde: Updraft

I pulled my own bow and nocked an arrow. Aimed at its eye.

Nat was now out of my sight, hidden behind the bulk of the skymouth. The monster rose between us, reaching and reaching. I dove forward.

The air around me took on the sound of gust and the throttled whisper of tentacles thrashing through the air. My glide became turbulent, but I kept going.

The strangling skymouth, fighting its own internal battle for breath, could not control its limbs. I could see its eye, the size of my head, and hear the liquid in its echoes. I held my bow steady.

My elbows ached against the winghooks. My left forefinger and index held the bolt steady against the bow sight. The rest of my hand gripped the bow hard. The gust I rode now was a steady one, and I’d set a straight course. I checked the wind one last time as I drew the bowstring back to my cheek. I held until I was sure that I would crash directly into the creature if I missed, giving me a chance with my last knife. And then I opened my mouth to scream one more time, drawing all my breath. Hoping I had enough strength left in my voice.

Screaming rendered all other actions, fighting and flying and shooting, sharper. I had become an arrow of sound aimed at the most terrible creature in the city. The monster began a slow turn towards me.

No! The turn of its head would lose my mark.

I panicked and fired as fast as I could. My arrow hit the eye at its nearest point, straight through: white arrow into vast deep pool of dark eye. The tentacles stilled and drooped. The monster began to fall from the sky.

As it tumbled, another acrid cloud spewing in its wake, one long limb reached and wound around my foot. Dragged down, I felt another tentacle wrap around my neck. I looked above me and saw fliers circling and diving.

This is a good trade. Me, for my city. If they sing Remembrance at the end of this long day, those I love will sing of me too.

And then we fell, the monster and I, flipping over and over, weight over wing. Wind tore at my robe and hair as we plummeted towards the clouds and the sharp edges of the broken tower of Lith.

More tentacles squeezed my waist and throat. I realized that I might never feel the impact.

When I woke, it was to cold air and dense clouds, to slick acrid smells and the sound of the wind whistling across blackened bone.

I moved fingers and toes carefully, thankful for even this minimal range of motion. Pain was everywhere. I was grateful for that too.

I moved my right leg and shrieked. A blur of bone tangled in gray cloth, soaked with blood.

I turned my head in time to get sick on the floor and not all over myself.

My fingers touched my lenses, tried to wipe them clean of fog and splatter. Carefully, with my left hand, I pulled them away from my face. The dim light of the cloudbound tower was enough to show me finally what the hides had done to my skin.

Silvering paths, swollen and red on the edges, wormed across my hands, palms and backs both, in curls and blots.

I was marked everywhere the hides’ seams had touched me. My fingers brushed my cheek and forehead, and I felt ridges there too. They curved and curled like the ligaments of the skymouths I’d covered myself with. My hair was burned away in places. I could feel the scars on my scalp. Only my eyes, nose, and mouth had been spared, where the lenses held the hides away.

I swallowed dryly. I needed to see where I was, and find water if I could.

Testing one arm, then the other, I found I could move them without screaming. Careful not to move my leg too much, I sat up slowly. My wing was stuck. It wrenched me back, and I moaned in pain.

“Kirit?” a voice shouted from far away.

“Here!” I tried to call out. My voice sounded very loud and rough in the silence. “In here!” I wanted to laugh. I did not know where I was, but I kept shouting until a shadow crossed over my face. Someone stepped into the tier and jostled whatever was pinning my wing down. I groaned again.

“Oh, Kirit.” Ezarit’s voice. I felt her light touch on my cheek.

Behind her, Nat said, “I told you we’d find her,” and Wik chuckled softly.

“Your song will be very long, Kirit.”

They were here. I was here. They’d found me. I smiled weakly. “I’m not finished yet.”

Nat came into view, limping on a bone crutch. Wik, the tattoos on his face contorted by a deep frown, appeared beside him.

He handed me a small sack of water.

With Wik’s help, I sipped and coughed, then sipped again.

Ezarit tore bandages from her robes, then looked for a way to brace my leg. “We need herbs, honey, and some more battens,” she said to Wik. “There are supplies at Densira.”

Wik handed the water to Nat. Disappeared from my view. A moment later, he rode a breeze past the tier, headed for Densira.

“Did we get them all?” I asked.

Nat shook his head. “Not yet. Wik and Macal were helping the towers and the Singers work together. The traders have taken the Spire. They’ve destroyed the pens.”

“And the littlemouths?”

“The ones I found are safe. They seemed to have stayed out of sight, in the clouds. They didn’t like the skymouths any more than we did.”

“We will have to find new ways to make bridges,” I said. “No more sinew.”

Ezarit nodded. “We will have to find new ways to do a lot of things.”

“But,” said Nat as he freed me from the tentacles of the skymouth, “there’s enough of this monster to last a long, long time.”

I hoped the city could make use of that time to heal.

Wik returned with Elna and Ezarit’s supplies. Ezarit mixed an herb poultice and bound my wounds, using the remains of my wings to brace my leg. They brushed my new marks with a honey salve, tsking at the strange patterns on my skin.

Ezarit touched the lenses with a finger and smiled at me. “They are lucky, for sure.”

Using pulleys and sinew ropes, climbing beside me on sinew ladders, they eased me out of the clouds and to the broken top of Lith, where two more Singers waited.

They’d made a sling to hold me, to carry me back to the city’s center.

“No,” I said. “I will fly.”

Wik began to protest, but the Singer nearest me slipped off her wings without a word. I stood, one-footed, on the edge of Lith, as my friends tightened my wingstraps.

Ezarit approached, waving Nat back. She cinched the second strap tight against my shoulder, then checked the first. “On your wings,” she said, then squeezed my hand. I squeezed back, glad she was safe.

The clear blue sky filled with birds. Cooking smells wafted from the nearer towers.

When I unfurled my borrowed wings, the afternoon breeze filled them. I leaned off the edge of the tower and fell into the wind, the footsling bracing my leg. I rose as the strong breeze buoyed me up. Nat was right. Flying was simple. Landing would be hard.

Turning to catch the crosswind, I saw Elna being lifted back to Densira by the second Singer. Ezarit accompanied her. The first Singer rode the sling Wik and Nat carried between them. We passed through the city, and I felt many eyes watching us from the sky and the towers.

Wings of all colors wreathed the Spire. The thick bone wall of the Singers’ tower had become a lattice, open to winds and light.

I curved my wings and dropped slowly to the top of the Spire, curling my leg gently and letting a waiting Singer brace my descent. The gusts passing through the lattice played the Spire like a flute: notes rose soft and continuous from the mouth of the Gyre. The tower seemed solid enough, though it would never house Singers again. We had to change. To rejoin the city.

Quietly, beneath the strange new notes of the Spire, I heard singing. On Varu and Narath, and other towers too, my neighbors stood atop their towers, singing new songs and old. Some words were familiar. Some were words I couldn’t yet make out. I heard my own name in the mix.