I hear myself shouting “AMINA PENNARUM!”
My crew shouts with me. I don’t see Zal anywhere now. Only smoke and swords lashing through ropes, the contorted faces of my crew shifting into bird form, Rostrae rising up, talons out.
Dai’s swinging an ax. Everywhere people are notching arrows into their bows, drawing knives.
I swing for the head of a tall figure who’s appeared in front of me, a blurry-panicky-shaky swing.
It’s Dai.
“Get down, Aza!” Dai shouts. “You don’t have a sword, and your mop won’t protect you. Idiot, get below!”
He swings at a pirate, and their blades whack together.
I’m paralyzed momentarily, and it’s enough time to find myself face-to-face with another invader. He raises his dagger, but Jik grabs me by the hair, and tugs me away just in time. The pirate’s blade meets only air and before he can recover, there’s a swoop and a screech.
Wedda. She leaps onto his shoulders, her beak tearing at him.
I retreat toward the hold, but the battle, the smoke, and the sounds of fighting, and killing and dying are too much. I hit the boat rail and scream as my feet fly out from beneath me. I catch the bar, panting. And I see them. The stormsharks, dead-eyed and made of power. Sizzling light. I swing my mop handle at one of them, crazily. It surges back at me and I find myself engaged with a crashing, slicing whiteness, the teeth so close, and each one of them gleaming and electric.
“Down below, Aza, now! Where it’s safe!” Jik grabs me and hurls me back on deck. There’s a flood of Magonians, a spray of red. A Rostrae cabin boy, oh god, his uniform slashed and burned at the edges of the cut, his bones showing and one of his wings hanging by a tendon.
“Fire!” I hear Zal shout, and from the bowels of Amina Pennarum, there’s a boom. The ship shakes and the pirates scream in fury. All around us I see lightning, and our ship lurches again, and begins to tip.
I lose hold of the ladder and start to skid across the deck. I’m clawing at the boards, trying to get my fingers on something, but it’s slippery with blood.
No one notices me, because this is a ship full of people who can fly, and half of them aren’t touching the deck.
For a moment, I’m in the ambulance again. There’s flashing light and a terrible sense of inevitability as Amina Pennarum tilts up almost on end.
I slip from the deck of the ship,
O
F
F
A
N
D
D
O
W
N
into open sky.
I’m the dying girl all over again.
I’m dropping through time and back to Icarus and his wings, back to me and Jason on the roof.
I’m dropping back to the grave I never occupied.
Air and storm, rain pouring, and me, arms out like a skydiver, falling faster than I thought anyone could fall.
The air is slick, clouds are in my throat, and hail in my hair. I can’t hear my own voice, and I can’t hear Milekt either, because he’s not with me. He was up with the rest of the canwr when we heard the distress calls.
No one knows where I am for the first time in a life of being watched, a life of buddy systems and care.
I’m alone.
I’m alone in the (how many?) minutes before I smash into the ground. I’m going to die now, and no one will know where I went.
A flick of sharp dark fins circle suddenly below me.
But it’s not a shark.
Red eyes, hooked beak, long neck covered in rough pink scales, hungry and joyful. Its wings beat slowly, up and down, their tips peeking from the top of the clouds, and it starts to sing out, calling to others. It grabs my clothes in its talons, and my falling slows.
Dead thing, I hear, a whistle croak. Dead thing falling.
Vultures.
Another flaps into me, bumping my side with its beak, wings cutting at my skin. The first vulture drops me. Dead animal, the new one whistles, dead, dead, sweet new dead blood, dead.
There’s a clattering cackle, birds surrounding me, looking into my eyes.
Dead thing! they shout, all their voices colliding with me. They’re huge, and starving.
Then I hear a scream from above, a precise song with beats of silence and rattling percussion, tiny clacking beak closing and opening, guttural whistling of rage and relief.
Milekt. I turn my head and see him diving, a golden beacon.
SING, he screams, and I tap my chest, opening it for the first time without help, and Milekt is in.
I open my mouth and because this is it, I give in.
I feel a surge up from my lungs into my vocal cords and instantly—harmony.
Millekt and I are singing together for the first time. With one voice we chant this single two-pronged note. It is a howl of holding, it is a screamed lullaby, no sound I could ever make alone.
With the song, something changes. The air feels . . . denser.
I’m hanging from the wind now, like I’m floating in a swimming pool. There is tension in the air beneath me, the feeling of it supporting me—
I stop falling. My heart slows. Between my feet I see the earth still far below and I—I hover.
A rope with a hook attached comes spinning down from above. There’s a violent snap as I’m grabbed by my jacket. Then they’re reeling me in, yanking me up through the sky, jolting and tugging.
I’m heaved into a launch boat. It’s Dai, sweating, swearing, bleeding.
“Oh my god,” I say, gasping. That’s all I’ve got. “Oh my god.”
Dai grabs me and holds me tight, and I’m uncertain. I think for a moment I’m still singing, but I’m not. I’m crying and panicked, my heart pounding hard.