Windrunner's Daughter (4 page)

Wren screamed as her brother pretended to snack on her arm. “Let go, let go.”

Colm rolled his eyes.

Wren stared at the curtain. How old was the memory? It had been a long time since care had worn away her father’s humour. When had he last played with them like that? She glanced at the thick record books. Easy to find out, she simply had to look back to find the first time her handwriting appeared on the tightly pressed lines.

“Wren?” Her mother’s voice again. She couldn’t put off the moment any longer.

Kneeling, Wren drew back the curtain. She swallowed against the smell of sickness that wafted towards her, bit her cheek to keep her terror from showing and finally, looked.

The flesh had melted away from her mother’s face, leaving hollows in her cheeks and wrinkles on her throat. Her skin looked like dead leaves: crispy and transparent, and the blonde hair that had once tickled Wren’s cheek lay in greasy tangles. When Mia opened her eyes to look at her daughter, they were bloodshot and the colour so faded they were almost grey.

Yesterday she had moaned and thrashed in her sleep, but now she seemed too weak even for that.

“Water?”

Steeling herself for the feel of her, Wren lifted her mother’s shoulders. “Here.” She held the mug steady as Mia sipped and when the liquid made her cough, Wren rubbed her back, wincing as she felt her mother’s bones through the sweat-stained shirt.

After a while Mia stopped coughing and fell back onto the bed. “Is your father home?”

“Not yet.”

“Didn’t I hear the airlock?”

Wren bit her lip.

“Are your brothers home?”

“Nobody’s home.”

“How long?” Mia had lost track of time.

“Jay and Colm have been gone for a week.”

“A week.” Her mother fell silent. They both knew what that could mean. Then Mia tried a smile. “Colm’s found a little-Mistress maybe …” her voice faded. He would have told them if he had.

Wren squeezed her fingers. “They’re still partner-Running, they’ll be looking out for each other.”

“I suppose.
Did
I hear the airlock?”

Wren cleared her throat. “That was me.”

“You?” Her mother struggled to sit upright.

“I went to Elysium.”

For the first time, Mia looked at Wren properly and her face changed as she took in her daughter’s expression. “Oh, Wren.”

Wren took her hands. “I’m fine.” Her gaze swept the empty sphere, over the long table, empty of the usual tumble of brothers, visiting Runners and her father’s glowering presence.

Books lined the back wall: treatises on flight, maps of Martian air currents, details of every trade and exchange made by their colony.
Useless. Uneducated
. Win’s words clanged in her skull. “I went to see Grandfather.”

For a terrible moment Mia’s face lit up, then her eyes reflected the misery on Wren’s face. “He wouldn’t help, would he?” She turned her face to the wall.

“He said Father had to look after us,” Wren replied as she buried her face in her mother’s lap. Exhausted, Mia closed her eyes and, stroking the snarls in her daughter’s waist length curls, was dragged almost immediately back into sleep.

After a while Wren disentangled herself. She rose carefully from the sick bed and quietly drew the curtain. Then she strode to the viewing window, a single hexagonal panel that was transparent, though pocked from the seemingly endless storms, and squinted in a vain attempt to see the landing platform. The storm still raged and she couldn’t make it out through the red-brown sand. She stared for a while and then turned away.

In the corner Jay’s training wings leaned against the wall. He had outgrown them, but there was a rent in the graphene that needed repairing before they went away to be used by the next son of their line.
Her
son.

And if she failed to bear a son, to Colm’s or Jay’s.

Wren snorted. No Runner had yet come calling for her, but she had seen them begin to look, peeling the humanity from her with voracious eyes.

It helped that she was smaller and thinner than the colonist girls, she looked young, not Mistress material. But when Colm really did go courting, her father would remember how old she was. Then the bidding would begin.

She shuddered.

“
He
refused to marry the girl that Council wanted him to after Aunt Blue got Caro’s.” She spoke to her own fingers as she removed the mending kit from Mia’s dresser. “Why do I have to make the union
he
wants?”

She didn’t need to hear the answer. Colm had told her so many times that he had stopped arguing with her.

“The men in the Sphere have to live and work together. So the Sphere-Mistress has to take the man approved by the Patriarch.”

“But I’m the one who’ll have to bear the children of some pig-faced -”

“It’s your job to get on. Imagine living here with someone who caused friction.” Colm looked deep into her eyes. “He’s our Father, he won’t choose badly for you. He’ll consider your feelings too.”

“What if he doesn’t? Why can’t I fly to find a husband? Why do I have to wait here for one of Father’s friends to come to me?

“You know the reasons! We lose enough wings as it is without letting girls take them. Girls don’t Run. You’re not strong enough or fast enough. It isn’t safe.”

“If a girl could Run, just once, to her union, then you could stay here instead of having to go live in some strange Runner-sphere.” Wren’s voice broke. “I can’t think of you leaving.”

Colm sighed. “And when the girl I choose gets blown into the desert on her way across the wastes? Give it up, Wren, the rules are there to protect us.”

“I might welcome any union.” Wren whispered. “If I could fly there.”

Colm was quiet. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “It’ll never happen Ren-Ren. And would you really want to leave Mother?”

Wren sighed as she picked Jay’s precious wings up by their struts and carried them to the table. Even folded they were bigger than she was. The ancient material shone as she spread the wings and located the rip that made them dangerous to use.

“How did he
do
that?” She touched the tear. Graphene was resistant to heat and
strong
– it could be stretched by twenty percent without damage. “If they were mine they’d never need repairing.”

Still, the wings were more than a century old. Wear was to be expected, even in graphene.

With nimble fingers Wren glued the tear and held it closed until it bonded with barely a crease. The area would be weaker than the rest but there was none of the original material left on Mars with which to properly restore the wing. All that they had the colonists had brought with them from dead-Earth. Although the original landing parties had searched, Mars had no graphite with which to process the wonder material. There was a limited supply.  

One day the problem would become acute enough for the Runners try and retrieve the wings in the bone-yards, braving the Creatures in the sand to bring them back up the Mons. But they were not that desperate. Not yet.

Instead of folding the wings and putting them away, Wren carried on stroking them. The Sphere had never been so empty before; only Wren and her sleeping mother. No Runners. Her fingers walked up the straps. What would it feel like to wear them, just once?

Her mother coughed in her sleep and Wren froze. She should be thinking of ways to get access to the Communicator. Her mind raced, fruitlessly. There was no way to break into the Comms Room, no-one who might help her, no-one who would ask for permission on her behalf.

She considered the Doctor again. He was an agoraphobe: never left the safety of Elysium’s Dome, had refused to journey to Avalon even when Jay broke his ankle. But he knew Mia. Maybe if she pleaded, or took payment.

But not on Kiernan’s Day. Wren glanced out of the window. Not while a storm raged and the alarms on the Dome screamed warning.

Tomorrow then.

She stood the wings back in the corner and stood them up. More sounds from behind the curtain. Her mother was restless; in pain.

What if her illness was the result of another hybrid microbe, like Caro’s?

Even if the Doctor agreed to come to Avalon, if her mother had something new they would have to send to the scientists in Aaru for a cure. And for that they would need a Runner. Wren snorted bitterly.

Where were all the Runners?

Wren was sprinting again, almost to the Dome now, trailing clinging vines and pieces of fern. It had been a bad night and she had set off the moment the fingers of dawn made shadows of the old CFC factories on the delta.

Her pockets sagged with the weight of the valuables she had filled them with. Anything shiny, anything she thought the Grounder Doctor might value. Grounders weren’t like Runners, unimpressed with graphite glue, or massage oils, fresh goggles or clean paper. They liked … pretties. She closed her hands over the bulkiest pocket. Her mother had come to the Runner-sphere with jewellery. Wren didn’t think she’d mind using it. There was little else she could offer. She hadn't the authority to give free Runs.

And what if the Runners never came back?

No, she had her mother’s jewellery, her father’s good penknife, Colm’s screwdrivers, Jay’s small kite, her own collection of hair pins and an almost full ration card. They had nothing else portable that a Grounder might value. And she wasn’t that sure about the kite.

Suddenly the rustling of something out of place pierced the thumping of blood in her ears and Wren skidded to a stop.

Was it possible that a Creature had finally, inevitably, left the dust bowl? Holding her breath, she squinted into a stand of gingko. A rock fractured the leaves and smacked into her elbow. She cried out and, as though her voice was the signal, a hail of stones rattled around her. Wren threw her arms over her face and three boys in light sphere clothes, their storm jackets gaping open, strode from the trees.

“Raw.” Wren stared as he hefted a branch. “What are you doing with
that
?” Even Wren, who had blithely ripped her way through the ferns, was horrified at such wanton destruction of a big photo-synthesiser. She jerked forward, but as Raw’s smile reached his eyes, she realised what she was doing and backed away. She lowered her gaze. “I just need to get past.”

Raw dangled the branch in big hands. “I don’t think so. Call us ‘protectors of the biosphere’. We’re keeping the unsavoury elements out.”

Wren pursed her lips. “I need to see the Doctor. You know why.”

Raw laughed. “Yeah and you’re not going anywhere.”

A snort from behind told Wren that Raw’s friends had her hemmed.

“You can’t be serious.” Wren tilted her head. “I need a Doctor. She’s
really
bad today.”

“Really bad?” Raw smiled. “Really,
really
bad?”

Wren ground her teeth as he mocked her. “Yes.” She bit off an insult. She had to persuade him to let her pass. “Please.” She swiped inky curls from her eyes.

Raw picked thoughtfully at a burr on his club. “Go back to Avalon. No-one wants you here.”

“No-one? Really?” Wren leaned forward, almost spitting. “You know what happens if Mia dies? We’ll have no Sphere-Mistress. Do you know what’ll happen then? Either Chayton will have to choose another Mistress from your precious Grounder colony, or
I’ll
be put in charge of the Sphere when the Runners are out.
Me
. I’m old enough now.
I’ll
choose which of your trades are worth making,
I’ll
choose which of your messages the Runners take.
I’ll
decide when or
if
your babies are taken to exchange. You don’t want to upset the Runners, Raw. You don’t want to upset
me
.”

“You refuse our messages and we refuse to feed you,
Runner.
You think you’re so special. You’d be nothing without the workers in the ‘sphere.”

Wren lifted her chin. “We do the most important job. You think we should use crusky equipment to carry babies between ‘spheres, or bring back trade goods? You think we should go hungry? Without us you’d have had no way to replace the seedlings destroyed by the last mega-storm.”

“Liar.” Raw threw the branch to one side and gripped her shoulders. “
You
should be in the women’s house with the other girls, not out there, breaking Designer Law, thinking you’re too good for Grounder men. It’s unnatural.” Raw’s smile was hard edged as he shook her.

Colm’s screwdrivers fell from her pocket and thudded to the ground.

“What’s this?” Raw brightened as he swept them up.

“They’re for the Doctor, give them back.” Wren reached for them, but he kept a hand around the meat of her arm and held her tightly. She twisted and he laughed.

“Nice. Do you want them, Bone?” He tossed them over her head. One of the other boys caught them and cheered.

“What else has she got?”

“Nothing.” Wren wrenched sideways but Raw pulled her close. His cold green eyes trapped hers, hypnotic. There was gold in the irises. He pinioned her with one arm and used the other to pat her down.

“Look at this.” He yanked out Jay’s kite and her hair pins scattered over tree roots. Her father’s penknife followed, then the ration card that she had tucked into her belt. The boys shared the things out. Raw took nothing.

Last was her mother’s jewellery.

“Not that.” Wren whispered.

Raw hesitated, a bracelet dangling from his closed fist. “You were going to give it to the Doctor, it’s meaningless to you. Why shouldn’t we take it? There are a few Grounder girls who’d give even
me
a kiss for this.” He leaned so close that his mask pressed against hers.

Tears gathered. “If I’ve nothing to pay the Doctor he won’t come.”

For a moment Raw looked almost sympathetic. “Stupid Runner.” He shook his head. “That man won’t leave the Dome for anyone. Not for you, not for your pretty jewellery. He’s terrified of open sky.” He looked up scornfully. “There are more and more like him now. Generations who’ve never left the Dome. It’s only the Green-men who go out now and even they don’t leave the tree canopy.”