Windrunner's Daughter (7 page)

“Open and close your fists to make sure the blood continues to flow.”

She clenched her fists and realised how numb they had become. Opening her hands she repeated the exercise until her arms started to tingle.

“If you want to go right, dip your right shoulder by one thumb joint.”

In her memory her father held up his right thumb and shook it to make his point, but one joint didn’t sound like much. Wren ducked her right shoulder as far as she could and tipped into the wind. Her body turned towards the dipped shoulder but, with rising alarm, she realised that she could not straighten herself out: she was in danger of rolling.

She teetered like a balancing toy as she fought the wind, unable to bring her right arm up. Then it struck her: instead of bringing up her right arm, she should dip to her left. She would need to be very careful, if she tipped too far her wings would flap shut and she would fall.

Moving her attention from her right arm to her left, Wren shifted her shoulder muscles. Gradually she felt a slight relaxing of the pressure on her right. Again she shifted her left shoulder and felt herself straighten out a little more. One more dip and she was level.

Unclenching her fists, Wren tried shifting her left shoulder no more than the length of one thumb joint and rolled gently left, changing course again, but maintaining her smooth flight. “Sorry, Father,” she whispered.

The only noise in Wren’s ears was the rustling of her wings. Soothed, Wren finally allowed herself to open her eyes.

She had been imagining that the wind cradled her in gossamer arms, so when she saw nothing between her and the desert but wisps of cloud, the shock made her squeeze her eyes closed again with a whimper.

Several shaky breaths later, Wren cracked her eyes open once more. Unable to look down, she peeped straight ahead.

For a moment, confusion clutched at her thoughts. She was staring towards a cliff with a tiny ‘sphere gripping its edge.

Where was she?

She circled, mystified. Beyond the ‘sphere a belt of green surrounded a much larger biosphere, the sun glinted from the panels that ringed its roof. Trees stole out from it, merging into ferns, then into wide flats of green, which looked almost like lakes themselves, and only then finally into the red wasteland of the mountain top, like a patchwork quilt creeping from a bed.

Her eyes went back to the stubby Runner platform which ended by a biosphere that looked tiny as a shell on a riverbank.

Wren had turned herself completely around. She was looking at her own home.

Suddenly her breath caught in her throat. Out by the Runner hut someone was moving: a figure wearing wings. While she had being flying with her eyes closed, one of her brothers had finally come home.

She had her sign. Wren smiled on a long exhale as she circled low towards the Runner-sphere. Tension lifted from her shoulders. She wouldn’t have to commit any further transgression. Whichever of her brothers was back, she didn’t care. She would land, send him to set out again to save Mother and hope he didn’t tell Father what she had done.

    But the Runner was heading
away
from the house. He was running towards the platform and he wasn’t removing his wings.

Wren frowned as she swept closer. The Runner’s build was unfamiliar; too wide to be Colm, too tall for Jay. It certainly wasn’t Father.

The figure started to sprint along the platform. The metal juddered with the thudding of his feet. Suddenly the straps over her chest felt too tight. It couldn’t be … but there had been one more set of wings in the hut.

    “Raw!” Wren’s voice sank like a rock into the wind. “What’re you doing?”

With tension winding her shoulders together, she willed herself faster. What was Raw thinking? Did he imagine he could catch her? Punish her? He’d heard none of her brother’s lessons. He would fall from the platform, plunge through the clouds and be lost in the bone-yards - with the last set of wings on his back.

Her skin crawled. These weren't training wings, they were full sized adult wings; her Uncle Hawk had worn them until his accident. They were waiting to be cleansed and passed down to the next Runner in the generation. No Runner would wear another's uncleansed wings. It was like taking someone's dirty underthings. Or their very skin.

“
Stop!
” she cried as she hurtled towards him. But it was too late - he was passing the red line.

Wren howled and Raw looked up, his eyes narrowed in bright determination. He wasn’t even wearing goggles. “
Jump
you idiot.” She swept past and wheeled as hard as she could. “
Jump!
”

Chapter four

Raw leaped from the end of the platform and his arms whipped out in a fair imitation of Wren’s own launch. The breath whooshed out of her as the wings locked into place and lifted his weight.

Then he panicked.

“Turn back
.” Wren yelled so hard she thought her throat would tear, but Raw was beyond hearing. Instead of trying to circle back to Elysium, he lurched into a current and headed beyond the safety net and over the delta.

His flight was no smooth meeting of wings and air; he rocked like Jay’s lost kite launched into a gale, yawing and wobbling alarmingly.

Wren could barely swallow; her throat was blocked with fear as hard as gristle. Any moment those wings would snap shut, he’d be gone and she knew who would be blamed.

She drove herself into the same current that had taken him and felt the wind flow around her, drawing her past the cliff. Refusing to look down she kept her gaze focused on the fluttering wings ahead of her.

Wren’s flight was much smoother than Raw’s and her wings held a better angle. It wasn’t long before she caught up. From above, Wren saw Raw fighting his pinions. “Can you hear me?”

Raw’s flight didn’t alter in the slightest.

Wren dipped her right wing and circled, hoping he would see her. He gave no sign. She would have to dive to draw level with him.

Taking a deep breath, Wren brought her father’s instructions to mind. ‘To drop, you must lift your legs from the hip. Lift them higher to descend more sharply.’

Wren recalled watching her brothers lying face down on the floor, lifting their legs stiffly from the ground. With a deep breath, she tensed her thighs and lifted. The air rushed beneath her and she started to tip.

Straight away Wren’s heart thumped and she levelled out as fast as she could, but the wind still embraced her and when her chest stopped aching she saw that she had dropped closer to the guttering wing-set below.

“All right.” With another breath Wren lifted her legs again and the wind tipped her like a favoured child. As soon as she could see Raw’s wings glowing silver at the tip of her fingers, she pulled up. “Raw!”

He still couldn’t hear her. Even over the flutter of wind in wings, Wren caught the frenetic pants that heaved from his mask. She tried to catch his eye but without goggles, his eyes were watering madly. He couldn’t see her.

As she considered circling round and trying again, Raw yawed more violently and overcorrected.

Their screams harmonised as the inevitable happened: his wings unlocked, lost their shape and were abandoned by the wind.

Raw’s cry mingled with hers’ as he dropped towards the formless clouds.

Instinctively Wren threw herself into a dive to match his crazy tumble.

Raw’s arms and legs flailed as he tried to catch the insubstantial air and he hit the cloud cover like it was water.

Wren followed a moment later. She braced, but although she went face first into the mist, there was no impact, just water that clung to her goggles and blinded her.

    “Raw!” She could no longer hear or see him but Wren had to hope they would break through the clouds together and that she would have enough time to save his life - and the wings - on the other side.

She counted as she dived. Her cheeks and fingers went numb and drops of water poured into her hair like tears.

“One, two, three, four …” Wren had reached ten when the light on her goggles grew abruptly brighter and warmth tickled her back and fingers. She was through.

Putting her face into the wind, she forced the air to whip the spray from her goggles. In moments she could see.

The red desert was still far below, spotted with flashes of silver as sand moved lazily over the bone-yard. But where was Raw?

Frantically she turned her head one way, then another. There was no sign of plummeting silver.

A deadening blow smashed her right arm downwards and she spun in the air. Wren fought to keep her arms locked as the wind tried to close her wings against her body.

She had overtaken Raw inside the clouds.

Three times she turned; so fast the ground and sky blurred together. Then a gust of warm air slid beneath her and she yawed level.

Her right arm ached as if it had been struck with a hammer, but she had to hold it steady. With a shake of her head Wren took a single deep breath; then she pitched downwards once more. At least Raw now knew she was there.

As she dived she saw that he was finally trying to straighten out. But each time he attempted to thrust out his limbs, the wind shoved his arms and legs back in. Still plunging, he tried to spread his arms. The wings fluttered above them, useless and lank. Suddenly though, they netted the wind and billowed.

Wren gasped and her heart leapt.

But Raw’s wings hadn’t locked. For a short moment the spreading material arrested his fall, but then his arms were pulled behind him with a crack that even Wren could hear.

The wind carried his cry and trapped it under her hood. It pealed in Wren’s ears until she quivered at the sound. She hissed, moved her arms to a slight backward cant and pushed herself to dive faster.

Raw was rolling again, wings tucked round him like the shell of a louse. Wren’s eyes flicked to the ground, then away. She could already make out individual boulders at the base of the Mons. Among them she could make out clusters of bones, showing where unlucky Runners had made their last landings. Jumbles of curving ribs and grinning skulls showed where the majority had met their end. In the distance she spotted skeletons that appeared whole, spread-eagled for the sky. But soon she saw that even these were missing limbs; taken by the Creatures.

Her stomach lurched, there was very little time before both Raw and the precious wings were smashed to pieces.

Finally she reached him.

“
Raw
,” she screamed.

His eyes rolled, terrified and staring. He’d never understand instructions; there was only one thing to do. Wren’s heart beat a terrified rhythm:
please don’t, please don’t, please don’t …

She had never watched her brothers practise this move, she’d been too scared, but she knew the theory and now, if she wanted to save the wings Raw had stolen, she had no choice.

Before she could change her mind, Wren flicked her wrist just so, unlocked her wings and pulled her arms into her body.

Now she was falling too.

Wren pulled her legs in to imitate Raw and her dive immediately became a chaotic tumble. Panic clawed into her throat and her heart pounded faster:
don’t die, don’t die, don’t die
…

The ground rushed towards her, but she only saw it in pieces; patch-worked into a dizzying jumble with the sky, the cliff and the fool plummeting with her.

Somehow on a roll, she caught his eye. He had to understand what she was doing and watch her do it.

Wren inhaled, glad that her mask kept pumping O
_2,
because the air, even if it had been breathable, now whipped past her too thin and fast to do any good. The ground rose like dough, a blur of bronze that started at the corner of her eye and then filled her whole vision.

Furiously Wren thrust her legs out behind her and forced herself back into a dive. Every instinct fought against the streamlining of her shape; demanded that she make herself less aerodynamic; called for a few extra precious seconds of life.

Over-riding her terror, Wren drove her arms back so her hands touched her thighs.  She shot past Raw and saw him roll as he tried to follow her descent.

Finally she thrust her arms out from her sides, making a T. The wind battled her, trying to pin her limbs back to her body, but she was fighting for her life. Her shoulders threatened to give way. Suddenly she passed the halfway point and the wind allowed her to flick her wrists and lock her wings into place.

She was still heading at insane speed towards the rocks below - oh and a small patch of greenery, it seemed the ferns had spread to the delta. But she had her wings once more. Hysterical laughter hissed out of her as she began to bend her torso upwards.

Just as with her arms, it was a matter of reaching that point where the wind stopped fighting her and got beneath her straining body. But Wren wasn’t strong. She grunted with effort, unable to tear her eyes from the ferns. In moments she’d drive through them so hard no-one would even know a Runner had crashed there.

Would she feel her bones breaking, or would it be over too fast?

Abruptly the wind pushed her upwards. With a crazy whoop Wren straightened out, blood pounding in her ears so loudly she could hear nothing else. Then she wheeled back to Raw. “
Now you!
”

There was no sign that Raw had taken her display on board.

"Do it,” she cried.

He won’t, he won’t, he won’t.
Her pulse goaded her until finally Raw thrust his legs behind him.

Raw was stronger than Wren and it seemed easier for him to create a disciplined dive. She wheeled over his head, heart banging in her throat, as he accelerated towards the ferns.

His right arm was slower to move than his left, but it looked straight enough. Maybe the wind hadn’t broken it after all.

Still it took Raw a couple of tries to lock his wings into place and Wren held her breath until he had his wings extended, seconds away from control. Too many seconds away.

“Pull up,” Wren murmured. Her eyes were glued to his body as he struggled to bend his torso as she had done.