Wings of Creation (14 page)

Kayleen nodded.

Marcus glanced at Chelo. “We’ll need you once Joseph gets started on his work. You can come tomorrow and keep learning, or you can go with some of the others.”

“Like maybe with Alicia and Tsawo,” I suggested.

She gave me an odd look. “I might like to stick with Dianne, and maybe Jenna and Tiala.”

“Maybe. Let me check with Jenna when I get home.”

“Can we take the kids? Give Liam a break? You’ll need Kayleen.”

“Go with Alicia and Tsawo,” I said again.

Chelo glared at me. “You’re not my big brother, you know.”

Marcus laughed. “You can decide in the morning.”

“I’m starved!” Kayleen proclaimed.

“Well, we’re almost home, and I’m sure someone saved us some dinner.”

“Race you!” I called to Chelo, and she grinned and immediately took off. I’d never loved running as much as she did, but this time I beat her home.

I rushed through the door to find Jenna and Tiala working side by
side in the kitchen. Except for an underlying wariness in Jenna, the sisters looked like twins. Tiala chopped vegetables neatly as Jenna peeled them and handed them to her.

“Have you seen Alicia?” I asked.

Jenna shook her head.

I glanced out. The windows were darkening squares, the first stars beginning to fade into being. I ground my teeth.

We left an empty place for her at dinner, which made her absence conspicuous. As we were finishing, Kayleen voiced my fears for me. “Could she have been hurt? Did Tsawo kidnap her? Is she coming back?”

Jenna looked exasperated. “Normally I’d tell you that if you’d asked one question at a time, I could answer them, but in this case, ‘I don’t know’ works.”

“How did you find Tsawo?” I asked Marcus.

He tapped his fingers on the table. “He came to me, and offered.”

“Offered what?”

“To teach you to fly.” He glanced at my sister. “I think he was hoping for Chelo, but I need her with me, and Chance will teach us.”

“So Alicia’s not as important?”

He laughed. “No. Alicia’s not as diplomatic.” He swallowed. “Let’s wait a little longer before we worry. I’m not sensing anything dangerous in the webs.”

So? He didn’t know her as well as I did—she could be off doing something really stupid. “When will you teach us to use these webs?”

“Now?”

Kayleen glanced at me. “Can you work now? Aren’t you worried?”

I was her teacher, which meant I had to set a good example. “Let me take Sasha out first.”

Marcus nodded. “Okay.”

Outside, the sky was bright with stars and the flashing lights of ships. None seemed to be headed toward the spaceport near SoBright. There was a much larger city a few hours flight away, Oshai. The bright lights of a passenger ship fell gracefully toward it.

Sasha gave a low growl, and crouched.

I looked around, but didn’t see or smell anything wrong. “Maybe
it’s nothing, girl.” She snuggled close to me, whining low and baring her lip to show her teeth. Then, with the mercurial nature of dogs, her tail started going fast, and she gave out a happy little yip as a slender silhouette rounded the corner on the path to our door.

Sasha ran to Alicia.

“Shhhh.” Alicia knelt down and Sasha turned her nose up for a greeting. “Gee, you make it hard to sneak home.”

“Why would you sneak home?” I asked.

Alicia turned slightly guilty eyes on me. “I didn’t mean to be so late.” Her words were stilted. “Did you figure out how to save the fliers from themselves?” she asked.

Why would she put it that way? “Not yet. I think you should tell me about your day. Did you learn to fly? Where’s Tsawo?”

“He was flying above me most of the way home. And no, I can’t fly yet. But every part of me is sore from trying. Maybe tomorrow.”

“How is he? It turns out that he’s a bit of a rebel.”

She stiffened.

“And maybe you should find a new teacher. It might . . . make problems for you to keep working with him.”

It was hard to see her features in the dark, but she sounded almost angry. “I had a great day today. The best I’ve had in a year or two.”

Her words stung. “Of course you did. It’s the first day you haven’t been stuck in a space ship since we left Fremont. I bet we all had the best day we’ve had in a long time.”

“Well, good. So we’re both happy.” She stood up and walked into the house.

The only problem was, I didn’t believe her. She hadn’t even said hello, or kissed me, or anything. Or I her.

Somewhere above and behind me, I heard a sharp exhalation of breath and the downbeat of powerful wings. When I looked up, I didn’t see Tsawo, for surely that was who had been listening, but a thick black branch quivered against the backdrop of stars.

T
he next day I woke early. A gentle rain had fallen most of the night, so the soaked path damped my footsteps and the air smelled even fresher than usual. It wasn’t yet full light as I approached Seeyan’s house, although sunshine brightened the roof. I hesitated, suddenly nervous. Maybe being away from people for so long had made me shy. Hopefully she meant her invitation. Just as I lifted my hand to knock, the door swung open and I let out a relived sigh to see Seeyan’s warm smile. “I was hoping it was you I heard.”

“Wow, I thought I was quiet.”

“Oh—well, flier’s ears are better than most people’s, and those didn’t break when my wings broke.”

My ears were enhanced, too, but apparently not as much as hers. I still wasn’t used to a world full of
altered
like us. She sounded upbeat, and I decided to match her mood. “I was hoping for tea, and then I thought maybe you’d show me the area you’re keeping? I’d love to learn.” I pulled out a gift I’d asked Joseph to carve for me. I handed her the palm-sized wooden animal. “These are from our home world, Fremont. They’re called hebras.”

She held it up, turning it all directions. “What a long neck! How big are they?”

I stood on tiptoe and held my hand out way above my head. “Their shoulders are about here when they’re full grown.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow.”

“We rode them.” That was the moment I realized I hadn’t seen
any riding animals here, or for that manner, any animals bigger than Sasha. Something to do with the low gravity, or with the choices people made about what to create for Lopali? It was probably the choices.

She ran her fingers across the smoothly carved and polished surface. Joseph had made it last night while we were getting a lecture on flier etiquette, his fingers moving through familiar patterns as he listened to Marcus and Dianne lecture us. “It’s well carved,” she said.

“My brother did it.”

“Joseph the Maker?”

So we were both legends. I could hear it in her voice. She invited me in for tea, and made us two cups with the magic self-heating water again.

“How does it do that?”

She grinned. “Fliers are good with materials nano. The cup’s got chips that sense the water and release energy, warming, whenever fresh water is poured into them.”

“Wow.”

“We have to be light, so we need pure, light materials. Every tiny bit of weight slows a flier down, or limits their range. Some fliers are so obsessed with weight purity they don’t even grow their hair long.” She handed me a mortar and pestle so light I could balance them on my little finger, yet strong enough to use to crush herbs. “See?”

“Amazing.” Like the silver ship skin.

She handed me more: a fork, a tool for peeling fruit, a glass. Everything flawless. Utilitarian, too—a contrast to the way the fliers decorated themselves.

While we drank our tea, I shared stories about Fremont with her. At one point, I talked about my anger when Nava treated us like slaves. My voice rose as I told her how Nava made Kayleen stay in town.

She held up a hand. “You need to stop and breathe.”

“What?”

She looked serious. “I hear anger. It’s in your voice, even though you are talking about something you can’t change. There’s no point in anger about the past.”

“How do you stop anger?” I felt perplexed. “I mean, I do get mad
at injustice. I hate it. People killing each other and thinking they’re better than each other. People that talk behind other people’s backs. When people with power are clearly unfair.”

Her laughter was high and genuine. “Listen to you. You’re angry now. At abstractions.”

“Well. And I’m angry at how you’ve been treated. That’s why Marcus brought us here. To fix it.”

She sat back in her chair and took the last sip of her tea. “Is it? Or did Marcus bring you here to help change us for his own purposes? Dianne told me he wants to keep Silver’s Home out of the war. Have you ever been there?”

“No.” I was pretty sure she knew the answer to that. Her tone didn’t sound confrontational, just curious. “But I don’t think you’re being treated fairly.”

“Are you angry because our children die and your people control us, or at how my people treat me, by leaving us separate if we fail as fliers?”

“I . . . at all of it.” She still called the fliers her people after they abandoned her?

“Are you finished with your tea?”

“Sure.” I took the last quarter of the liquid in one warm sip and set my cup down in her small sink.

“Follow me.” She flowed out of the door, her movements almost as smooth as Ming’s. “You asked to see the area I’m tending.”

We went farther down the trail I’d followed on my way here. She left the beaten path at a grove of wide trees adorned with sweet, hanging purple flowers the size of my palm. As she stepped from root to root, she left no footprints. I followed her lead, and she occasionally reached a hand out to help me since my feet were smaller and lacked her long, gripping toes, which curled over round things even in her shoes. The root-path took a long time to traverse, and while we were on it, she didn’t say anything. I felt compelled to be quiet, too. She stopped at the edge of the trees and waited for me to come up beside her. A soft breeze lifted the wild edges of her chestnut hair and dried the sweat from my forehead.

In front of us lay one of the nearly perfect meadows that I’d noticed
between the copses of trees on the way home with Dianne. Only more perfect. The meadow had a song. The stream meandered like the wild ones from back home on Fremont, moving fast or slow over rocks so that it played notes I could have found on my flute. The colors were as perfectly random and soothing as the sounds, a wave of oranges and yellows over a multitude of greens.

How did they grow meadows and gardens with no weeds? Had they just never imported them here? I might have been looking at an idea, or an icon, as much as a real thing.

“Do you like it?” she whispered.

“Who wouldn’t? It’s like a painting.”

Her grin was wide and genuine. She led me to a bench in the middle of the meadow. The bench cupped me comfortably, and was just the right height to rest my head against the back. We sat side by side with our legs crossed at the ankles. “I made the bench and finished the meadow.”

“Wow.” Fremont was as pretty, but its beauty masked thorns and predators. “Is this what the gardens are like in the city?”

“Oh no, those are much grander. They also have a stronger effect on people—we like to be sure the seekers don’t bring anger into our world.”

“Seekers?”

“People who come to find themselves in the beauty and calm here. Sometimes it’s for a few days or a few weeks—but the real seekers stay until they change.”

“Change?”

“Become so different that even their families don’t recognize them. One part of that is that they lose their anger.” She sounded mysterious. “But that’s only a part.”

I licked my lips, unsure how to respond. I really didn’t want to change much. Finally I said, “It’s hard to imagine any place more beautiful than this.”

“You can come here when you’re angry, or sad, and the meadow will help take away any feeling you no longer want.”

And sure enough, in that moment, I felt no anger at all.

Strangely, I missed it.

I
found time alone with Joseph early the next evening. He and Sasha were outside and partway around the side of the house. Sasha trembled at his feet, watching the small grass-eating animals that the dusky light had emboldened into coming quite close to the house. They were about the size of jumping prickles back home, but without any apparent protections, and would be two to three bites for the dog. When I came up beside him, Sasha shifted to make room. Her eyes never left the small creatures.

Joseph’s arm snaked around my waist and I voiced my thoughts. “Tough for her. I bet she’s the only dog on this whole planet.”

“Maybe I should let her eat them. This place is too placid.”

He had that right. “I’ll show you the place I told you about last night—the one Seeyan took me to. I think I understand what they’re buying with this. Since they have everything they want, they’re free to be peaceful. It’s what I always thought I wanted.”

“But not now?” he said.

“Still.” Maybe. I didn’t know. “I’m not sure this is a peace I trust. It’s too engineered. Seeyan seems happy in spite of everything. And that’s how I think it should be—maybe because, like Jenna said, they made me to be positive. But positive and happy aren’t the same.” I glanced down at Sasha. “I never thought I’d miss paw-cats and demon dogs.”

“There’re places on Silver’s Home with predators. They probably have paw-cats by now.” He grinned. “I’ll take you sometime if you want.”

“Great.” He knew that wasn’t what I meant at all.

He pointed out a ship taking off from the spaceport we’d landed at, the graceful arc of its trajectory making a quarter-circle in the sky before it flamed through the atmosphere in a brief hot flash. After it was gone, he turned back to me. “On Fremont, it was our war. We were fighting for our peace. This isn’t our peace. It’s someone else’s.”

I couldn’t have put it better. “Dianne told me to ask you about the stories they’re telling about us.”

“That who’s telling?”

“Your enemies in the Port Authority, for one. But us, too. Dianne
for sure. I think Jenna and Tiala, too, and maybe even Marcus. That’s why so many people know our stories. They’re using us for something.”