Magonia (31 page)

I calculate frantically, quickly. A few tons of matter is all it’ll take. An island here, a mountain there, the seas will rise, and earth will flood.

Dai’s song is right in me, moving with my own heart, my own lungs, my own body. I try to tell him no, try to appeal to him with my eyes.

I can see his fear, but he’s loyal to Zal. He warned me that he’d do anything she commanded. I didn’t know this was what he meant.

A new sound mingles with our song. First a hum but soon a deafening roar.

Rushing downward from out of the clouds, I see it. Something huge moving through the sky, something surrounded by wind. It’s so huge I can’t see the size of it. Whirlwind. Oh god. Oh my god. I see clouds and spinning, and ropes dangling from it.

Maganwetar.

Zal barks, “Bring the plants up now! Stations!” The pulley turns, and the rest of the crew starts whirling ropes and chains.

We’re surrounded, out of nowhere, by the capital city and its twisting borders. And I’m still singing with Milekt in my chest—

The epiphytes are still rising up, and—

I’m losing myself. The song is singing me. I’m drunk with it, and some part of me thinks I don’t care anymore.

I’ll drown everyone, all of us, sing until my throat tears out, sing the sky open, sing everything into an abyss—

Another human runs out from near the repository, fighting the wind, shouting into the dark. It’s snowing and hailing and I’m looking down at this person on this little island of ice, a tiny person seen from above.

We’re maybe twenty feet up, hanging in the mist of our song, pulling up the plants, and the world is turning to water, and tears are streaming down my face, from rage and powerlessness, from grief, from desperation.

He’s waving his arms.

I can’t see him through the mist and flood. A person. A drowner.

“
Finish it!
” Zal bellows. “
Flood them.
”

I see the world Zal wants. A sea made of the earth. A flash of a ship on a great sea, and of a bird above it all, a bird like Caru. Then gone. A flash of a flood rising up and covering over the world. The sea full of bodies. Drowned.

Someone near me screams. Someone above our ship screams louder.

An anchor drops onto our deck from the massive city above us.

Arrows zing by and stick in the deck beside my feet.

The whole time, Dai’s singing “
Don’t stop
,” and I’m singing “
FLOOD
,” even as
Amina Pennarum
tilts.

Below, that flood is surging up for the person on the ground. He shifts and the mist moves away from him, the one person, the one drowner, his face suddenly visible, and—

A giant squid on a backlit screen.

An alligator at my birthday party.

A hoodie for the hospital.

Driving a car to fetch a hoax.

Together on my front steps.

Jason.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I’m right below her. I can see her. I can see everything, at least
every few seconds. It’s like a bad connection.

I see a ship. More than a ship. I see something so insane up there, so high in the sky, way above where the ship is. There’s a city in the clouds.

Mostly hidden, a huge ponderous thing, buildings with spire tops, wind whirling around it.

I’m alive. I didn’t think I would be. The lightning struck, leaving me three burns—one in each hand, and one in the middle of my back.

When I opened my eyes, the groundskeeper was bending over me and saying “Son, you been struck. Should I restart your heart?”

“I think my heart’s beating, thanks,” I said.

Then my heart stopped.

He gave me CPR.

I was in the hospital for the next week. I was pretty much unconscious for four days, with people freaking out all around me. When I finally came to my senses, my body hurt like I’d been beaten up by a gang of giants, and I had long red burns branching down my arms and legs. But I was freakishly okay. In fact, I felt better than I’ve felt ever.

Magonian lightning. I don’t know. I can see things now, no spyglass necessary.

Mr. Grimm was one of the first people who visited me, asking about the lightning, asking about how it felt, and I didn’t know what to tell him, so I described everything. He went very pale. I felt kind of bad for him.

The note un-Aza handed me, the one I’d given real-Aza, it was gone.

So I knew where she was going. And I knew where Aza was going.

Ergo, I knew where I was going.

That got me out of bed, even though I fell over when my feet touched the floor. But there was no version of my life in which I wasn’t getting my ass to Svalbard.

You don’t want to know how I got here, you don’t want to know how much it cost, you don’t want to know how gigantically in deep shit I am. I left a note for Carol and Eve. They’ll never forgive me, except they love me, so they will.

I told them I’d be back and not to worry. I’m going to be explaining for the rest of my life. But hey. Some things you don’t have time to explain in the moment.

The fact that I got here before she did is a miracle.

Forged documents. Hacked computer. Claiming of consular privileges. I have called in favors. I have accrued debts that I will be spending the rest of my life paying off. And I am officially the biggest pain in the ass in the entirety of the dark side of the internet right now, but it was worth it.

I can see her there, every few seconds, a flash of her in a wet suit and a hood, on deck.

She doesn’t look like herself, but I can hear her voice mixed with other voices. It’d be hard not to hear it. Everything else is birds.

There are screaming birds everywhere, but when I blink, I can see that they’re not birds, really, not at all. Nope.

Human bird things. Some kind of hybrids.

I’m forcing myself not to pi, because I can’t do it. I have to be
here.

I can see her surrounded by people I can’t understand—“
Something has happened above the clouds that man has not yet accounted for
”—and up in the sky right above her, there’s this city, sending ropes down to her ship. She’s right there in the middle of it.

Aza, Aza, Aza . . !

I’m running from where I’ve been hiding, and out into the open space, because if she sees me, she can’t—

She can. She keeps singing, and around me things are cracking open. The whole world is breaking into pieces.

This is some kind of earthquake, some kind of natural disaster, and somehow it’s because of her singing. I feel her notes stabbing into the ice around me.

There’s water pouring out of rock where there shouldn’t be, and a hook rising up beside me, coming up through the ground and attached to her ship. It’s minus I don’t even know how many degrees. It would be ironic, my brain informs me, to freeze to death, just after I was almost fried.

I shout her name. She doesn’t respond. I shout harder, but the sky’s full of ships now, and some kind of totally insane battle starts happening.

Cannonballs, arrows.

My vision goes in and out.

Blink. Blue sky.

Blink. Ship battle.

Blink. Clouds.

Blink. Cloud city.

Blink. Skysharks and skywhales.

I wave my arms.

“AZA!” I scream and the water rises around my ankles. I look up at her and shout her name again, and I see her standing there, frozen, staring down at me, still singing.

I don’t know anything. I can’t tell anything.

Except that Aza is here, and she’s alive.
I
might not be for much longer, but maybe that is okay as long as—the first part.

“AZA!” and I’m crying, but my tears are freezing, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, because up in that sky is her, and down here is me, and I’m without any kind of backup.

“3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286,” I shout as though it’s magic, as though pi is enough to summon her down, as fast as I can shout the numbers, the basic numbers, waving my arms frantically, and then, suddenly, she stops.

She sees me. I feel it happen. The whole island shakes. And something comes flying fast out of the sky above her.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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NO!! I cover my mouth with my hands, clamping it shut, and
Milekt screamsings inside my lung.

It’s Jason! It’s JASON.

Alive, alive alive!

Every note I sing is making the sea rise. Every second I sing is two hundred years of climate change. I stop my song,

But

I’m

Not

S

T

O

P

P

I

N

G

NO.

The sea is rising

and the song

is pouring out of me

WHY CAN’T I STOP?!

I look at Dai. He stares back at me, and he has no mercy. He and Zal are making me dissolve the world, and I won’t do it. I won’t sing the world into a flood. I won’t lose Jason again.

But I’m singing as hard as ever.

I’m looking down at Jason. I’m going to drown him. I’m going to drown everyone, and Dai is beside me magnifying my voice, and Zal is screaming at me, and Milekt is inside my chest, when everything—

Stops.

Out of the air above me, I hear a cry like only one thing I’ve heard before, a damaged opera, a
sweetness so high and bright it hurts, discordant and ferocious, desolation and love twined into a song.

CARU.

He shoots down, black feathers and red wings. He doesn’t land. He hangs in the air above me, and there’s fighting all around, ships and planes, and arrows and I—

SING
, Caru screams.
SING.

I take a huge breath from the bottle and then rap hard on my own breastbone.

You will not!
Milekt shrieks.
She’s mine!

Caru screams back at Milekt.
Never yours!

I open the door in my chest, open it to lay my lung bare to the cold and there’s the bright yellow thorn inside it, shrilling at me.

This is my nest!
whistles Milekt, and then he tries to force me back to the flood song, but he can’t, because now I can see Caru.

Caru, who is loyal. Caru who is no one’s.

She chooses
, he sings.
I choose
.

Caru, heartbird, chooses me.

He rises from the shadow of the ship where he’s been flying, staying quiet against his own nature.

I grab Milekt, his tiny gold body, his screaming beak.

Traitor!
he shrills, and I pry him out of my lung, where he’s anchored his claws. I pull him out, and close the door. The yellow bird stares at me, his eyes glittering like jet.

TRAITOR!

But I’m not the traitor.

I hurl him out into the air, and he hangs there, shocked and enraged.

Caru’s been here all along. I’ve been hearing scraps of his song. He’s here to sing with me.

I know it now. He stayed for me.

She would drown the earth
, Caru shrieks.
She would kill all. Kill the world. Drown the fields and the trees.

Caru jabs his beak into my hand, and prods the ring on my finger. Zal’s grabbing for him, but he dodges, glances off, and he screeches at her, too, and all around us, still, there are Magonians and Rostrae screaming, dying. There are Breath dropping down from above.

Svilken’s out of Dai’s chest and dive-bombing the falcon. Zal’s now aiming something at Caru, and I can see it. She’s going to shoot him with her bow and arrow.

I look at Jason, this tiny figure on the ice. I can hear him shouting still, his voice, and I know what he’s shouting. I know that number. It doesn’t end.

Like {(( ))}. It never ends.

I know myself.

I know what to do.