Magonia (21 page)

So there’s that.

In some of the illuminated medieval manuscript stuff, which I ended up wandering around on the Harvard Library’s site, there are bird people, and other kinds of people too. Angels from that period, particularly the ones that deal with crops and weather tend to be human-looking, but feathery. And then there is another section of angels from this period who are just . . . blue.

Not that this is any indication of Magonia, really. No one says “Magonia” in those margins.

But there are similarities.

The history of humans is 73 percent people talking about the weather in freaked-out ways. The discussion of Magonia is basically that:
Where did that storm come from? Oh my god, the clouds.

Jacob Grimm—not Mr. Grimm, my English teacher, the fairy-tale guy—talks about a country where people sell the wind. Selected quotes (I’m being kind and not making you scroll through the thousands of pages of information available on the issue):

“The witches of Norway . . . tie up wind and foul weather in a bag and, at the proper moment, undo the knots, exclaiming ‘wind, in the devil’s name’ and then a storm rushes out, lays waste to the land, and overturns ships at sea. . . .

“A violent thunderstorm lasted so long that a huntsman on the highway loaded his gun with a consecrated bullet and shot it off into the middle of the blackest cloud; out of it a naked female fell dead to the ground and the storm blew over in a moment. . . .”

And this is the kicker: “Sometimes the aim of sorcery is not so much to destroy the produce, as to get possession of it, to carry it off the field, either to one’s own garner, or that of a favorite.”

So we’re talking stealing crops. From the stories, the thing in common is that anyone floating around in skyships up there is hungry. And that makes sense. I mean, what the hell would they be eating up there? Gnats?

The crop-destroying storms plotted by my app seem to stay in most places for several days, and then move on.

There was an enormous storm in Iowa a couple of weeks ago, and that storm was one of the few
where people actually reported loss of crops. At the end of it, some farmer’s cornfield was stripped, as though locusts or crows had taken it down. Each cob bare. The farmer mentions seeing an eagle that day, right before the storm came in.

The strange reports and stories continue to move along the trajectory I plotted for them with such accuracy that I can nearly predict where the next one will be. So what’s across the sea, to the northeast of America? That’s where it looks to me this thing is heading. No crops on water. The islands out there aren’t fertile—just rock outcroppings in the middle of the ocean.

I’m not pretending this—my being right about Aza—isn’t causing me to have a pretty major existential crisis. I
might
be reading a few philosophers. I
might
be losing my way just slightly. Eve and Carol
might
have reasons to be worried about this whole situation.

I keep waiting for Aza to fall out of the sky and into my arms. I know I sound unbelievably sexist saying that, but I keep imagining catching her like a fireman outside a window.

Just thinking this way makes me want to bang my head against the floor.

If she were here, listening to me, she’d be puking right now because I’m losing all my dignity.

But. I can’t text her, can’t email her. Can’t call her.

This is sucking, Az.

I hate it. I’m scared that maybe I’m missing some kind of giant point, something everyone else knows, that I’m trying to hunt down a dead girl who doesn’t even exist anymore, a dead girl who’s gone and now alive only as a figment of my Vivid Imagination, like Aza always said she had. Me and Aza, Vivid Imaginers. Maybe I should just be taking myself to her grave, and sitting down beside it, and saying, for once and for all, good-bye
.

But I don’t think she’s dead. And I don’t think I’m crazy.

I have something in front of me on my screen, a little scrap of video that some girl in Maine took with her phone.

It’s about a second long, the important part. It’s a ship. Just a part of a ship, with portholes and full rigging, sailing out of a cloud and then disappearing.

It checks out with my charts, the weather conditions. Other people saw something, and there was a jokey news piece about illusions. Sky mirages and long winters. Newscasters made fun of the people in Maine, saying they were drinking too much. There was a piece in the
Onion
that spoofed the whole thing pretty accurately, a bunch of drunk people looking up at the sky and seeing ships. Exactly what people said in the 1890s.

I saw something out Aza’s window that day, the day she died. I saw a mixed-up flock of birds on her lawn—majorly out of season. I heard something in the sky on the day of her funeral, and
I don’t think I’m losing it
I’m not losing it.

After Aza’s funeral, after her voice coming out of the sky, I remembered the helicopter. Of course.

I know what you’re thinking.
Pretty stupid, Jason, to not think of it before,
right?

Yep, pretty dumb, because there’s a black box.

That’s a new thing for helicopters. Not all of them have them, but life flights get sent out into insane weather.

Today, I got what I needed. Through some of my more reliable and illegal back channels, I had it emailed to my most secret account.

I hit play on the helicopter audio. It’s all communications with the hospital at first, talking about where exactly the life flight needs to go to pick us up, and I can picture it in the most horrible way. All over again, us in the ambulance, Aza beside me.

The audio shifts to the medic in the ambulance itself, updating the copter on Aza’s condition.

I have to move the cursor. I’m afraid I’m going to hear the rattling, terrified sound she made at the end, and I can’t hear it again.

A second later, I’m listening to something else, the flight, the pilot, and the medic in the copter with him, talking about the storm.

“Whoa. This came out of nowhere,” the pilot says.

“Global warming,” says the medic. “We okay?”

“Yeah, it’s good, we’re fine,” he says.

There’s a moment.

“Wait. Did you see that?”

“What?”

“What the”—jumbled sounds—“is that a—”

“Ropes? Oh my god—”

And then there’s a sound, a huge, screeching ripping of metal, smashing of glass, crush and tear and screaming from both of them, and what they say, what they try to say is—

Yeah, no, because I can’t. They died right after this. I can’t listen to their last words. It’s too horrible.

A moment later, there’s a huge explosion. Singing and shrieking. The sound of flapping wings.

Birds.

Someone says, in the faintest and most scratchy voice:

“What are you?”

That’s all there is to the audio. I keep listening to it over and over again. Between the first talk about the storm and the crash, maybe two minutes.

I have to give that a moment. I have to sit with it, because. All of it. The sounds of people dying. The sounds of birds. Last words. Last things said before these poor people fell out of the sky, tumbling down, on fire.

The pilot and medic, their families don’t have this. Only me, and the people I got it from. It wasn’t just the two of them that died, but the medic from our ambulance too. He ran out trying to flag them down, and they never found his body.

I’m sitting at my desk, not crying, but—

Yeah, I am. I’m crying.

What are you?

That was the night Aza died, and five days later, I heard her voice coming out of the sky.

No, not paranoid, not looping, no. Not conspiracy, not obsessive, wrong notions in my head.

I’m sure, if this hit the internet, some people would say the pilot and medic were confused by the storm, air pressure, and lack of oxygen.

That “
ropes
” was not really what they said at all.

But if not “ropes,” what?

Out my window there’s suddenly a lot of wind and rain. I get up and shut it. Freezing.

What are you? What are you?
The voice repeats and repeats in my head—when the doorbell rings.

Carol or Eve, forgetting keys. It’s almost always Eve. Her brain gets snarled on things and then any hope of
not
forgetting is over. Not that I’m not exactly the same. Lots of not being picked up at school in my childhood. I spent afternoons at Aza’s. And that was fine by me.

I close the tab with the black box audio, just in case, and make my way to the front door.

Someone rings again, and then bangs. Not Eve. She’d be outside my window, tapping the glass, and performing “face of the forgetful mother” for me.

I have a moment of nervousness. I’m doing the kind of hack stuff that if it gets traced back, causes you to be investigated, locked up, and/or sued into oblivion.

I peer out the side window, but I can’t see a police cruiser. No flashing lights. Of course, if it was federal, there wouldn’t be. I scan the trees across the street just in case. Lots of wind out there. Blowing.

Maybe I’m paranoid. (Looping?) I worry about myself for a second.

The person hits the door again, hard. All I can see is a shoulder in a blue coat, and a little bit of black hair in a ponytail.

Calm down, Jason. Maybe someone’s trying to give the neighborhood religion.

Have you thought about hell lately?

Nope, I’ll say. Everything else, yeah, but not hell. Or not exactly.

I unlock the door. I open it.

Aza is standing on my front steps.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Zal wakes me, shaking my hammock. “Daughter,” she says.
“On deck.”

It’s not as though I’m asleep. I’ve been thudding with exhaustion since the pirates and the song—but then I started thinking about what got
said
on deck. And how many gaps there are to fill in between the words Ley and Zal spoke, and what I know.

You and I both know you want a new world.

I trust this is not merely a sentimental recovery for you.

The one to deliver us from all our hardship.

What did Ley mean? My brain won’t let it go.

Zal takes me to the wheel, and from it, we look out across a star-filled sky. I stay silent, but I’ve got questions.

“You must be wondering what happened today,” she says, understatement of the year.

“I know what happened,” I say. “I defended the ship from pirates who wanted to kill me. What I don’t know is why.”

Zal looks at me, and smiles.

“In good time, Aza, you and I will have no secrets. The pirate Ley Fol was a surprise, and not a good one. Her presence in these skies means that knowledge of you has gotten out into Magonia. The Breath I brought aboard to bring you up from below, perhaps. I thought he could be bribed, but one cannot wholly trust them. They’re monsters.”

I take a moment, imagining what the hell a monster might be to Zal. To Magonia. Visions of tentacles and Godzilla, visions of teeth. Those stormsharks were monsters to me. The Breath are something different. And, seemingly, more feared.

“But
what
are they?”

“They can walk among the drowners, Aza, as I cannot. They can be paid for their services, but they’re nothing good.”

Have I ever seen her look frightened before? No, I haven’t. It makes me nervous.

“There are things here that do not need to be called by name. This is a new world for you, and for us, with you in it. You are the linchpin. You’re something Magonia needs.”

Some
thing
. Not someone.

“So what am
I
?” I ask Zal.

She grins, showing her sharp teeth, her hair boiling up around her collar.

“You, Aza, are my daughter, and you were born to sing the elements into submission. You inherited that song from me, and though my voice was taken, we have yours.”

She hesitates, then: “There was a time I could sing the way you can.”

She opens the neckline of her jacket and shows me the dark, ugly scar down the center of her chest. It’s not just a scar. It’s worse than that. The place where her canwr would go has been welded shut. It’s a harsh dark line of indigo skin, twisted and gnarled.

“I was punished for trying to change Magonia with my song, to shift us from dependence on the drowners. The officials of Maganwetar broke my bond to my canwr to stop me. That will never
happen to you and Milekt. We’re stronger now, all of us.”

For the first time I really hear what isn’t there. I can’t believe I didn’t before. Her voice is raw because it’s solo. She has no canwr. Her bond is broken.

That’s why Caru screams. It must be. Caru is Zal’s heartbird.

“Is he—was he—”

Zal glances sideways. “You’ve heard him singing,” she says, reading my mind.

“The crew says the ship is haunted by him,” I say. “The crew says he’s dead.”