I see my face, kind of, the face I’ve always had, angular and weird, huge eyes but—
But this girl has wide, full indigo lips instead of my skinny, grimacing ones. And—my eyes—I recognize them as my own, but there used to be a dark blue over the colors I see now—gold and reddish, like fish deep under water.
This girl has high cheekbones, and when I open my mouth, her teeth are sharper than mine.
I’m looking at her skin, at her hair, at the echo of my face, then the forever bone-thin-weakling-no-boobs Aza body I’ve always hated, and my body, too, is converted into something else entirely.
I don’t know what to say I don’t know
what
to
do.
I want the old me. I want her pale skin and gaspy voice, I want her skinny arms.
I don’t even notice that I’ve dropped the mirror until glass splinters all over the deck.
I look up at the captain, my jaw slack. Zal doesn’t flinch. She regards me steadily.
“You are my daughter, Aza,” she says, and her voice softens. “Your life here is better than it could ever have been below. The undersky is a shadowland, and the drowners are a shadow people. You were kidnapped and placed below as a punishment for my sins, not for your own. None of this was your fault. It was mine.”
Another black tear on her face.
“It’s been sixteen years since you were born to me, and fifteen since you were taken. You do not know the pain of it, Aza. You do not know the effects it’s had on Magonia.”
She straightens up and smiles, shaking her shoulders.
“But tonight, as is fitting, we celebrate. The time for mourning is done. Tonight we glory in your birth and your return. Dai—”
She turns to the black-haired boy, who still looks at me, grudgingly, judgingly.
“—the drowners will be celebrating her birthday with a burial.”
I jolt.
“We’ll do something finer. You’ll give Aza a taste of Magonian song, the first she’s heard in fifteen years. The one she’ll join in for the deliverance of her people.”
He hesitates, but nods, and then closes his eyes for a moment. The skies have gotten much emptier than before. I can’t see any other ships around us now. This ship is moving very quickly, and I feel the wind kick up as, in his chest, he starts singing a complex song full of beats and trills.
Then his throat starts to sing along with the melody already begun.
I feel a rattling inside my ribs. This boy—Dai—has a bird in his chest, just as I do.
They sing together in gorgeous harmony. The sound is so beautiful, I’m blown away.
In my chest, Milekt trills out, Learn. Sing with him. It’s what you’re meant to do.
“No,” I say, irritated with Milekt’s insistence, and my own strange desire to do his bidding.
There is something massively important about song here. I suspect—no, I know—that it can do things.
It makes me feel nervous and too excited just thinking about trying. It’s a feeling like—
The thought surges into my head. Jason.
Dai’s looking down at me with a twisted expression on his face. I hear a fussy trill from his chest too.
“No,” Dai barks, and thumps his chest with his fist. “It isn’t time. She’s not ready.” His bird shuts up. He spins himself high into the rigging, twisting his arms in rope. The crew stands at attention, and Dai sings another note. As if he’s summoned them, stars wink on all over the sky.
A few are brighter than the rest, flaming extra hard against the blackness that surrounds them.
I count. Sixteen of them. So bright that they could be candles.
Up at the top of the mast, the other birds join in the song, and then my own bird starts, too, from inside my chest. He fills in the gaps in Dai’s song with his own notes.
I suddenly know that I should be singing too. I almost can’t keep from doing it, but why?
Seriously? I’m not a singer.
Finally something starts to emerge. This song, it causes the air to wobble around us, around Dai and me.
Who is he?
I don’t know, but my heart is pounding, and then, arcing across the sky, the Northern Lights appear, rippling out in the dark.
Green
blue and
r
o
s
e
and
R
E
D
and
t
a
n
g
e
r
i
n
e
and
w
h
i
t
e
and
SILVER.
The colors drape over our ship, and I look at Dai, glowing under the lights.
He throws his head back and sings a note into the stars, and I feel my chest shake in response. My bird trills again, and another color, pale blue, rushes up from the edge of the Northern Lights.
Dai climbs halfway up one of the masts—scaling it as though it’s nothing. A soft violet dust falls from the sky.
I’m jaw-dropped. Zal’s face is gentle as she lays her hand on my chest again.
“Happy birthday, Aza,” proclaims Dai from up on the mast. He bows his head to me.
“Happy birthday, Aza,” says the rest of the crew, in unison, and they bow too.
“Happy birthday, Aza,” says Zal, and she smiles at me.
This is the birthday I wasn’t supposed to live to. I’m supposed to be dead, but I’m not. I’m supposed to be on earth, but I’m not. I make a noise I don’t know I’m going to make, a long wail of unmistakable despair, and from somewhere deep in the ship, there is a faint answering wail. The crew rustles nervously, looking around, but I clamp my mouth shut.