Eugene Lambert - The Sign of One

We reach the plateau and the path comes out behind the old barn we saw from the ridge. Sky hurries round it, towards the still-smoking winch.

‘Wait here,’ she says.

Fine by me. This is close enough.

Thought so – the man covered in soot and scorch marks is that massive bald guy who pulled Sky off me at the Fair, a lifetime ago. Even from here, I see he’s very red in the face. Sky marches straight up to him and starts shouting. She waves her arms and then points at me. Not good. I wonder if I should run.

He glances at me, but doesn’t seem interested.

Next thing I know, Sky’s on her way back, pinch-lipped and angry.

‘Not going to introduce us?’ I say as she stalks past.

She stops, and definitely thinks about punching me. ‘His name’s Chane. And I’d stay out of his way if I were you. You’d better come with me.’

I follow her the length of the runway.

‘Help me clear this,’ she says.

Coarse netting is draped over the windjammer’s hull and wings, foliage woven in to break up its outline. We pull the greenery clear, then haul the netting off. I help her to fold it. While she’s stowing it, I stare nervously.

‘You’re sure this thing flies?’

Sky gives a short laugh. ‘How do you think we got here?’

I look more closely and wish I hadn’t.

The windjammer looks like an enormous metal bug. Where I expected sleek, the body of the machine is fat and round. The hull is a patchwork of battered metal panels, many stained orange-brown with rust. The wings are thick and stubby.

My heart sinks. ‘Who sold you this scrap? You should get your money back.’

‘Ha ha.’ Sky reaches up and strokes the hull. ‘She may be ancient, but she’s still the finest jammer on Wrath. We call her Rockpolisher .’

I open my mouth, then shut it again. Don’t want to know.

‘Could Chane use any help?’ I say later, after another winch explosion.

‘Don’t make me laugh,’ says Sky.

Annoyed, I wander off to the barn. Inside I find an old cable-retrieve tractor rusting away, roughly the same as the ones we plough with back in Freshwater. The barn’s roof has kept the worst of the weather off it. There are even some mouldy old lumps of coal left in its hopper. Getting my hands dirty working on it is a relief and it takes my mind off Rona and Jude. All it needs is a patch for a leaking high-pressure line and a fill of water, before I light the firebox. Pressure builds nicely. She rattles like a box of nails when I crash her into gear, but goes okay.

Who’s laughing now?

They both come running, gobs open, as I drive her out of the barn.

‘How’d you fix that?’ bellows Chane.

‘It’s what I do,’ I shout back.

See, Rona heals people – I heal stuff. That’s how we put food on the table. Or how we used to, I mean. I peer up through the smoke and steam at the hillside trail we came along, but nothing moves. What the hell’s keeping her?

‘Why didn’t you say you’re a tech?’ demands Sky.

How badly I want to say she didn’t ask me. I don’t though.

An hour later, Chane and me get the winch going. It’s a punch-the-air moment, but scary too. Even at idle, the winch’s boiler runs at far higher pressure than the tractor, but it’s much rustier. Some of the vortex-multiplier pipes look so knackered I swear I could crush them with my bare hands. We both step back as it starts. It coughs and splutters, but keeps chug-chugging away.

‘She won’t last long at full revs,’ I say.

‘No problem,’ says Chane. He slaps my back, nearly knocks me over. ‘She only has to last a few seconds – that’ll get us off the ground.’

I can’t decide if he’s joking or mad. Or both.

We use the tractor to pull the cable out from the winch to the windjammer. I watch, fascinated, as Chane unhooks the looped end of the cable and attaches it to a quick-release hook set into the jammer’s belly. We’re all set now. I know roughly how this works, even if I’ve never actually seen it. It’s like flying a kite – the winch winds the cable in at full power and hauls us into the air.

I think that’s how it goes anyway.

When I look up, I see Sky standing at the edge of the plateau. She’s holding a small device above her head and staring at it. I wander over. One boot-length behind her is the cliff edge, a drop that makes my palms go all sweaty.

‘What you doing?’ I ask.

‘Checking the wind speed,’ she says, chewing her lip.

And that’s when I notice how calm it is, no breath of wind on my cheek.

In the wind-scoured Barrenlands, that’s weird.

Chane joins us. For such a big man, he moves quietly.

‘No wind, no ridge lift,’ he says. ‘Our lift-cells give buoyancy, but to soar we need updraughts from wind hitting the cliff. Launch now and it’s a one-way trip down to the valley floor.’ He grins, showing me teeth green and rotten from chewing shadeweed. ‘Don’t worry. Wind’ll be back, soon as the day warms up.’ He stomps off then and starts checking all the windjammer’s control surfaces.

Sky holds the instrument up again. Still nothing.

‘It wasn’t my fault, you know,’ I say.

‘What wasn’t?’

‘That twist. At the fair, when you clobbered me. They made me do it.’

She looks at me. ‘ Who made you?’

‘Nash and the rest. My mates. They ganged up on me.’

‘And poor little Kyle couldn’t say no.’

I shift uneasily. ‘I wanted to, but they’d have beaten me up.’

‘Right,’ she says, staring at me. ‘Better to zap the twist than risk a kicking?’

‘Like you wouldn’t.’

‘No,’ she sneers. ‘I wouldn’t.’

She throws me the wind meter, lifts her left hand to her mouth, makes sure I’m watching, then sinks her teeth into the flesh of her wrist. With a grunt, she pulls her head back and starts peeling her skin off . It comes away with a rubbery sound. I’ve skinned countless rabbits, but I still groan seeing this. One last tug and the skin hangs from her mouth, a fully-formed, inside-out hand. She holds her hands up and wiggles her fingers. Right hand, five of them. Left hand, only four.

No little finger – a stump where it should be. The indelible mark of the ident.

My hand twitches, but I stop myself from making the Sign of One. I stare at the glove – thin, skin-coloured rubber, the fake little finger padded and stitched to sit next to the next finger along. Cunning, that.

Without a word, she tucks it into a pocket.

I shiver. Sky’s a scab. She’ll have watched her twist sister die.

‘Look, I still feel bad about it,’ I say.

‘Oh, I bet you do. Especially now you could end up in that cage with your mates paying to hurt you.’ She points at the wind meter in my hand. ‘Shout out if you see twenty on the gauge. Sustained, not gusts.’

She turns and limps away.

‘We all have to survive,’ I shout after her, but she doesn’t look back.

Just then, I feel a tiny kiss of wind on my cheek, but when I hold the wind meter up, the little spinner thing can hardly be bothered to turn. It’ll come sooner or later, so says Chane. Yeah? Well, I’ll take sooner if that’s okay. . .

Two hours later, the wind has picked up like Chane said it would, the steam winch is up to pressure and he wants to launch. I’ve yelled at him until I’m hoarse, but as far as he’s concerned, he’s already risked his precious Rockpolisher enough.

‘We can’t go,’ I say again. ‘I don’t care what Rona told Sky. I’m not going anywhere until she gets here. You can’t just leave her behind.’

But he’s not having it; says I can stay if I want, but he’s out of here.

It’s Sky who finally persuades Chane to accept a compromise. I get to run back up to the ridge and take one last look, in case Rona is close. If there’s no sign of her, I come straight back. We launch out of here, and that’s that.