Chapter Five
Chelo
It took six months and two more rushed transfers from ship to ship before our feet touched a planet. It was midmorning when the Harbinger, the ship we now rode, turned lazily in the sky, surprising my stomach, and sank tail down to land on a shimmery flat surface on Lopali. Harbinger was a squat round cargo ship with a ramp wide enough to send small ships through. I’d never landed, of course—we’d left Fremont and gone through three docking and releasing maneuvers.
Only now did I really feel in my bones that we were somewhere. Below us a small planet hung in space barely more blue than green, its five continents rounded like very big islands. Well, a moon. I had been told that. A moon terraformed into a planet. Each pole had a round ice cap. As I watched Lopali grow in the viewscreen, I stroked the uneven surface of the belt the original Sasha, the girl from Fremont, had hand-knotted for me. She’d put a prayer for safety in every knot, and as I touched the belt, I remembered how earnest her face had been when she told me about her work. I’d worn it in the battle for Fremont, and I had been safe.
Lopali bulked bigger than Fremont by a factor of at least two, maybe more. As we made a full orbit above it, the dark side glowed with strings of lights, so many I couldn’t imagine a person for each light, much less many people for each light, which is what Alicia promised I’d find. We landed on the edge of a small spaceport. Green fields stretched in neat squares toward a forest.
I closed my eyes, hoping for a place I wanted to be, a home, or at least a warm, friendly town.
I didn’t care how small the big ship and the big planet and the wide ramp made me feel. As soon as Marcus gave us the all-clear, I rushed down the ramp with Jherrel and Caro beside me to find an empty landing pad and an empty field, and surrounding that, a line of trees. I squinted at it, looking for trees similar to twintrees or lace-leaves or even the tall and spiky pongaberry trees. These trees had wide branches and great tufts of leaves near the ends of the branches. It made me feel like a roamer again, like I should pull out a pad and pencils and make scientific drawings and notes.
There was ground under me and sky above me.
Sky. What a fabulous thing, sky. Suddenly, a rush of happiness filled me, a lightness.
I started dancing.
At first, the children looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, but they began to kick and sway, twisting as soon as Liam joined us, the four of us twirling in abandon until we became breathless. Dancing our joy, swaying in a light wind that smelled of dirt and trees, of flowers and sky and wind. Lopali didn’t smell like Fremont, nor did it smell like grease and metal and sweat. It smelled wild.
We’d been in so many versions of gravity across all the ships and years that it took a few moments for me to realize how light I felt here, how close our dancing felt to flight. Liam took one child in each arm and began turning circles with them both held close to his chest, all three of them laughing and smiling.
Paloma came down and stood at the foot of the ramp, staring. She looked younger than she had when we left Fremont, but still older by decades than any of us. She smiled, and lifted a foot, then another. She took Caro from Liam and, putting her on the ground, held her hand. Liam did the same with Jherrel, so the four of them were a line, two tall and two short people bounding in low gravity so the children jumped twice their height.
Alicia came and stood beside me, her mouth open and an expression of pure delight on her face. “I never thought I’d get here,” she whispered.
I still felt giddy. “To ground?” I hopped. “To a sky!”
Her mouth turned up into an amused smile, although she looked as happy as I felt. “Here.” She was still whispering. “To the fliers.” She looked up, turning her head this way and that. She stood on tiptoe, bouncing, laughing. She turned on her mod and flickered once and nearly disappeared, becoming the color of the ground, and then Induan turned hers off and appeared and I shook my head, bemused. What had gotten into Alicia about this place?
Induan had an impish look on her face. She walked toward the forest, and as soon as she’d gone even a few feet I could tell the trees were farther away than they had looked. I had been good with scale and distance at home, but here everything seemed a bit off.
Induan raised her arms above her head.
The trees began to rise.
I blinked as bunches of leaves rose from the branches.
I drew in a breath and held it, my heart racing as they spread out in the air, becoming wings, spiraling up with powerful slow beats like the great blaze fliers from home. As they rose one by one, all of the leaves became fliers. Behind them, a circle of empty perches gave lie to the idea that we were surrounded by forest. As they came closer, I could see that they were much larger than the birds at home, and at least as graceful. Sunlight illuminated bright blues and greens and golds, and flashed on bits of glass or jewels as the evening sun caught their wings. Here and there, paler colors. Whites, even pastel lavender. Two fliers had wings so black they’d be shadows in a night sky.
They hung above us, silent and so very beautiful. Close to twenty.
Art in the air.
The bodies suspended between the great wings were long and thin. They wore tight-fitting clothes that left their legs and arms free. Their shoulders seemed to split: forward shoulders that hunched more than ours and that attached to long arms, and a second set of shoulders, or perhaps a very different back, mounded up behind their slender necks, supporting and sprouting the wings. Wide torsos tapered to slim waists and hips, and long slender legs. Some wore colored shoes to match the tight-fitting clothes, and a few had tied strings with beads or shells or bits of metal on them to the toes, so they glittered behind and below them.
They kept enough distance that it was impossible to see their facial expressions or what their wings were made of.
Invisible, Alicia clutched my arm so tight her nails dug furrows in the soft skin of my inner arm. I pulled away. She flickered into herself, staring upward. Transfixed. Paloma gathered Caro into her arms, and they pointed up together. Liam and Jherrel stood hand in hand, eyes wide, mouths open. While they clutched each other tightly, they didn’t flinch.
Induan dropped her arms and came and stood by Alicia.
The others walked quickly down the ramp, Marcus in the lead, Kayleen beside him. Then Ming, Tiala, and Jenna. I didn’t see Joseph, Bryan, or Dianne. Everyone else was soon at our side. Marcus’s eyes narrowed in worry. He watched the fliers carefully, his gaze flicking from one to the other, bouncing on his toes. It felt like I was standing beside a paw-cat, the feline strength of the man again clear and dangerous.
As if Marcus’s arrival triggered a change, a flier with silver and white wings laced with delicate gold spiraled down closer to the ground. The others flew up and hung off a little ways, swirling and swooping slowly in careful patterns.
As the single flier neared us, tiny round breasts gave her gender away. This close, her wings closely resembled bird’s wings, complete with bones in the front and feathers hanging from them. Amid the feathers, various decorations streamed in the wind. Beads and metal glinted in the mass of braids held back from her face by a strip of black leather that contrasted with her golden hair.
She threw back her head and flapped of her wings so hard a sharp huff of wind lifted the loose edges of my hair. She landed with a single hop, and her wings tilted forward, her shoulders slumping to take the weight of them in this new position. She waddled toward us, nearly as awkward on the ground as she had been graceful in the air.
“Hello, Matriana.” Marcus leaned in and gave her a gentle hug, as careful of her wings as if they were glass instead of feathers.
Matriana wore a long thin sheath strapped to one side. She had a water flask and a few other items I couldn’t identify strapped to the other. I hadn’t noticed them as she flew, so perhaps she wore them on her back then. She reached into the long sheath and withdrew a shimmering silver feather with a gold tip. It matched her wings.
She handed the feather to Marcus, who took it gingerly by the quill, raised it to his forehead, and only then slid it into a similar sheath belted to his leg. It seemed to be made to hold the feather. Clearly, he had expected the gift, for he simply said, “Thank you.”
She looked around, as if checking on each of us. Her eyes lingered longest on Liam, comparing his features to the children’s. Her gaze flicked back to Marcus. “Where is this strong Joseph?”
“He is on the ship. I will be glad to introduce you.”
She narrowed her eyes and glanced at the Harbinger, as if counting the painful steps between here and there. I sensed she was used to giving orders, and held back, wanting something. When she nodded her head, the gesture implied quiet power, like Hunter wielded on Fremont. “I will meet Joseph and the rest of your group in town this evening. We will offer a feast.”
“Our quarters?” Marcus asked.
“The gold guest house has been unlocked for you.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” She turned, crouched low, and with a single powerful wing beat, she launched herself into the air. As soon as she joined the other fliers, they turned and flew together in a formation that reminded me of wild birds flocking across the Grass Plains.
Although my feet didn’t want to dance anymore, my shoulders itched to understand the weight and heft of wings.